What Went Right in the Rock

A post by a friend of mine recently reminded me that there were many good things at Summitview and the Rock.  While I maintain my criticisms, I don't want to forget the good things as well, things I hope the Rock continues to hold on to and things I wish to hold on to as I go to a new church.  I also have to admit that my experiences and perhaps my perfectionist side tends to bias me toward negative criticism.  I want to correct that by listing some of the positives.

1. Sound Teachings: It may seem odd to mention this as a major strength of a church whose teachings I disagree with.  To be clear, though, I disagree with what is taught privately through "council" and how those teachings are put into practice.  In the church and college ministry's public teachings, one would be very hard pressed to find fault (many at the Decommissioned Forum have tried, and the mental gymnastics required to do so is one of the reasons I am no longer with that forum).  Public teaching was very sound and Biblical.  It was also balanced and emphasized a desire to connect with other churches (something that GCC churches and the Rock have historically struggled with).  I would very much like to see this kind of teaching continue and, in fact, hope it manages one day to suffuse the entire organization's beliefs and practices, public and private.  Many of my negative experiences would have been quite different if the public teachings had been applied privately (for example, the unity of believers was a common topic during the time when the rift between me and the young woman was being allowed to expand into our other relationships; also the week I left because the leaders told me to follow others over direct leading from God, the sermon was on praying to God for guidance and listening to Him).
2. Apologetics: While this could be considered a subset of sound teaching, it deserves special mention.  I had never before been in a group of Christians which so specialized in sound apologetics.  Here, the Rock contrasts very favorably with the Navs.  In the Navs I would run into members and even leaders who thought that Neo-Darwinian evolution was perfectly compatible with the Bible and Christianity or (as one of them confessed) simply tried not to think about the apparent contradictions as they believed both.  There were other areas as well where Navs were content to live a not-well-thought-out faith.  This was a weakness.  In the Rock, though, even casual members could probably give you three reasons why a literal interpretation of Genesis was a better fit with the scientific evidence, just from listening to a few of John Meyer's sermons.  Apologetics didn't come just from sermons, though.  There were additional "classes" students could take in the Rock which would give a more in-depth look, and the church seems to have hosted at least one speaker on apologetics each year, generally on Creation or some other hot-button topic in the world of a college student (this past semester they hosted a speaker on responding to homosexuality Biblically--I regret that I was unable to attend that conference).  There was even one year where the small groups in the Rock spent their Bible study time watching and discussing The Truth Project, a video series designed to give a comprehensive grasp of apologetics.  Critical thinking was (and no doubt still is) a required course at the Rock, which is perhaps why it surprises me so much that so little of it is applied to the private teachings and practices there, many of which would collapse under a fraction of the scrutiny Rockers automatically bring to bear on outside heresies.
3. Evangelism: While the Rock and Summitview are officially non-denominational, their teaching and practice puts them firmly in the realm of Evangelical Protestant Christianity.  Evangelism is a big deal around the Rock, bigger even than in the Navs.  The Navs had an "evangelism team" that went out cold-turkey sharing every week, but in the Rock every small group meeting or activity (and there was generally one every night of the week, whether everybody could make it or not) has the potential to be used as outreach and many are for that express purpose.  The Rock is very good at evangelism and focuses very strongly on it.  Several of my friends owe their salvation to the outreach efforts of the Rock, which is more than I can say for any other Christian group I've been involved with before or since.  It makes sense that the Rock and Summitview would be strong evangelically, too.  After all, they're part of the Great Commission Church movement.  I may never have had any concrete idea on what that movement was and where it came from until after I left and looked up its history myself (the history given to members joining the church--unless it's been updated--is extraordinarily vague), but I was clear about one thing: the great commission and its call to evangelize was one of (if not the) main focus of the group (this was why it was so shocking to me when a leader let emotional purity override the great commission).  I think the Rock needs to keep an evangelistic focus, and would only caution that some balance is necessary.  Evangelism has become such a focus in the group that it is sometimes difficult for a member to imagine any other purpose in being a Christian, or any other role for a Christian to take in the church (though according to Ephesians 4:11 this is only one of several important roles in the Church, and, as the Navs have it "to know Christ" comes before "to make Him known" in importance and order).  In my own time at the Rock, evangelism became the defining mark of Christianity to me, and it took me a lot of studying and caused me a lot of shock to find out that, Biblically, the real mark of Christians and the true highest commandment of Christ isn't the great commission but the New Commandment to "Love one another" (John 13:34).
4. Community: The Rock was very effective at building communities of believers out of widely dissimilar individuals.  Small groups became very close-knit and viewed one another like families.  In explaining my attempts to get onto a small group (called a "D-Team" or a "House Church" currently) to those outside of the Rock and Summitview, I ran into a language barrier.  I had chosen to call them "Bible study groups" to avoid having to explain what I meant by "D-Team" all the time and since the small groups' major meeting is a midweek Bible study.  But the term turned out to be misleading.  In the Navs and in other groups, Bible studies are temporary arrangements which meet together only for actual Bible studies.  In the Rock, a D-Team is far more than a Bible study.  For all intents and purposes, when you join a D-Team, you automatically gain anywhere from a half-dozen to twenty new friends, some of whom may be quite close.  There is only one official meeting of each Team every week, but there are many unofficial meetings as well.  Teams sit together during the Rock's worship service and during church on Sunday.  After both, they will almost always go out together for a meal or fun group activity (or both).  If you go to a conference or retreat, you can expect to go with and spend the entire time with your Team (I went once without a Team, and it was very difficult with several periods of time where I was in limbo because the activities planned to fill that time were all Team-based).  Additionally, any discipleship relationships that are formed will (with the exception of leaders, who are discipled by other leaders higher up) be formed within the Team.  Given that you already hang out with the members of your Team frequently, Teams tend to fulfill many unofficial functions as well.  Transportation arrangements are almost invariably made within the Team.  Housing arrangements often come out this way, too.  Study groups and gaming groups spring up within them as well.  In this way, it is fairly typical for a member of the Rock to be hanging out or doing something with at least one member of their Team every day of the week.  Your Team is your friends and your friends, the Team.  This arrangement has the benefits of creating a closely-knit small community of believers, and I cherish the memories of the fellowship I had in that community.  At the same time, the arrangement does have some drawbacks.  Since one's own Team consumes so much time and social energy, some may find it hard to form or maintain friendships outside of their Team, much less outside of the Rock.  This also explains why many ex-members like myself have found that to leave a Team or the church is to lose all of their friends.  It is not, as I discovered when I returned, that the friendships formed in the Rock are all fair-weather friends, highly dependent on one's organizational loyalty.  Instead, the most likely explanation is that Teams are such all-consuming social structures that they leave little room for relationships outside their confines.  If there were some way to balance the community-building property's of the Team with a greater openness and availability toward outside friendships, that would be ideal.  There are some indications that the Rock is moving in this direction.
5. Gender Roles: This is a very odd praise, considering how much I've spoken against the state of gender relations in the Rock.  While I stand by my criticism, there is something to be said for the Rock's approach to gender.  The teachings of the Rock and Summitview do present elements of a solid framework for approaching gender Biblically and traditionally.  Biblically, they have maintained male-only leaderships positions over mixed groups and provided some good apologetic defense of that.  They also have a good emphasis on Biblical marriage relations (not long before I left, there was a sermon that touched on Ephesians 5 and was very Biblically sound).  The church is also excellent for setting up and training for traditional family gender roles of the husband as a the breadwinner and the wife as the homemaker and child-rearer.  The danger comes in confusing the traditional with the Biblical: the traditional roles have roots in our culture, but not necessarily in the Bible.  This distinction does not seem to have been made very clear in the Rock or the church at large, leading to several of the "Myths of Summitview" blog posts on the church site becoming necessary (the misconception that homeschooling is the only right choice, that larger families are inherently more "faithful," that working mothers are unbiblical, and the whole dogma around emotional purity).  Additionally, while there is no problem with any of the traditional roles or values in isolation (even emotional purity can be a good thing if practiced as a private conviction--though I have never seen or heard of it being so used), these roles and values are often applied too broadly and accepted with too little examination.  For example, a common report among women is the huge emphasis on marriage and family, but this is not appropriate for all women, as the Bible says that some Christians (including members of both sexes) are called to celibacy (something which is, from a Biblical perspective, severely undervalued by most Protestants).  So while teachings on gender relations need to continue, I do feel they need to be balanced by a firm delineation between what is traditional and what is scriptural and a refusal to insist that everyone conform to values, practices, or roles that lack firm Biblical support.
6. Cookies: Snacks after the service make everyone happy.  Enough said!

This list is not comprehensive.  There are probably some things I left out, but I think this hits the highlights.  There are still some mixed blessings out there, of course, like the emphasis on seeking council (which is good, but should not be the be-all-end-all of decision making) or not gossiping.  On the one hand, gossip is a sin and is given very little attention by most Christian groups.  On the other hand, the emphasis on gossip caused no noticeable drop in negative comments about other Christians in or outside the Rock compared to other groups (I actually heard a lot more negative talk about other Christians while in the Rock, from members and leaders in good standing--let alone those like me who weren't--than I ever did in the Navs) and was/is commonly used to deflect valid criticism which might otherwise be used constructively to help the group grow.  There are also a number of aspects of the church I never got to witness, like the children's ministry or the other life-stage ministries like Symbio.  Still, it does show where some of the group's strengths lie, and some of the things I'll be looking for as I move on.

Emotional Purity

After my last post, there was a lot of discussion about emotional purity doctrine, and I wound up reading a lot of articles and posts that others have made on the topic.  In all of this, I was reminded that, while I have very strong beliefs about emotional purity doctrine and am convinced I can back them up, I have never really made them public in any concise form, only giving passing mention to emotional purity in a few previous posts.  I will attempt to do so now, again using outline form to make things easier to follow.

1.       Defining Emotional Purity

a.       Sexual Purity for the Heart: In a nutshell, emotional purity is the Biblical concept of sexual purity applied to romantic feelings and other associated emotions.  Emotional purity’s proponents say that it is not enough for a young person to save him or herself physically (that is to say, sexually) for their future spouse, but that they must also save themselves emotionally as well.  While sexual purity teaches us that sexual relations outside of or before marriage are sinful, emotional purity teaches us that emotional attachments, attractions, and other romantic feelings are also sinful outside of or before marriage.  In both cases, things are taken to the level of the heart.  In Matthew 5, Jesus taught us that it is not good enough simply to abstain from sleeping around while lusting after other people in our hearts: He said that if a man looks at a woman and lusts after her, he has sinned already.  Similarly, emotional purity does not merely condemn overtly romantic gestures (cards, flowers, dates, etc), but goes down to the heart level to condemn the feelings from which they arise: feelings of attraction, emotional attachment, and romantic dreams and aspirations regarding the other gender.  Beyond this, both take to extremes in the name of “saving oneself for a future spouse.”  Extreme proponents of sexual purity regard it as a necessity to save oneself sexually for one’s future spouse, and regard any level of sexual impurity before marriage as “giving oneself away” and “being used” to the end that such a person “has less to give to their future spouse.”  In order to avoid this, legalistic cultures spring up which rigorously ban anything deemed remotely sexual and several things that aren’t.  The same goes for emotional purity, which holds that someone who has experience previous emotional attractions or entanglements is less capable of loving their future spouse because they have “given their heart away.”  This has also frequently given rise to legalistic cultures which ban not only openly romantic gestures but also a number of non-romantic ones which they deem to have a corrupting influence.

b.      For Singles Only:  While there is no formal statement that emotional purity applies only to singles, I have never heard of or seen an example where the concept was applied to the married.  This I find very strange, since it is actually in a marriage relationship where one could argue emotional purity makes the most sense (if a wife is entertaining romantic fantasies about a coworker, her husband would justifiably be upset).  Generally speaking, emotional purity is applied to young men and women who have never been married, but plan on becoming married some day.  Indeed many of the analogies and arguments of emotional purity would make little or no sense if applied to someone who had previously been married (whether divorced or widowed) or had determined to live a life of celibacy.  This is unfortunately also true of many of the approaches to sexual purity (though notably the Bible’s approaches to the topic apply equally well to the single, celibate, married, and widowed/divorced).

c.       Your Mileage May Vary: Like extreme forms of sexual purity, there is no one concrete form of emotional purity.  Some extreme proponents of sexual purity will tell young singles that they should never kiss anyone who is not their husband, others that they should never hold hands or hug, others that they should never do anything with a member of the opposite sex they would not do with their biological sister (which is a bit confusing for those of us who actually have biological sisters: I hug and kiss my biological sisters!).  Each proponent has their own standard, which is inevitable once people start taking things beyond what is taught in the Bible (the Bible teaches us only not to have sex outside of marriage or entertain lust outside of marriage—it does not mention hand-holding or kissing!).  With emotional purity things are even more conflicted because the Bible does not even provide a baseline (as will be discussed later).  Emotional purity proponents are all over the map as to what feelings constitute emotional impurity and when romantic feelings can be entertained and how, etc.  They also differ on enforcement of emotional purity (rendering different answers to questions like: who decides when it’s okay to have romantic feelings?  How do we deal with feelings that are emotionally impure?  What steps should we take to avoid the possibility of such feelings, etc?).  They also differ widely on the degree to which emotional purity is enforced and (in my opinion) what travesties they are willing to commit in its name (some of the below descriptions will not apply to every culture that embraces emotional purity).  In general, though, they agree that romantic feelings, attractions, and entanglements are impure/sinful and that they should be avoided and stamped out when they occur without authorization.  They are also all unanimous on the bleak picture of what will happen to those who fail to follow emotional purity.

d.      Culture of Fear: One thing all emotional purity doctrine shares is an emphasis on fear and a liberal use of scare-tactics.

                                                               i.      Fear of the Other: In many emotional-purity cultures, the differences between the genders are emphasized to the point where having normal friendly relations with a member of the opposite sex would seem as difficult as communing with a sentient squid.  Many proponents will even go a step farther and say that opposite sex friendships are impossible or else doomed to fall into emotional impurity every single time.  Men and women are trained to believe that romantic feelings are hard-wired into them as the inevitable response to any close contact with a member of the opposite sex.  They are, of course, also taught to fear these feelings because they are sinful/impure.

                                                             ii.      Fear of Failure: A common analogy in the emotional purity world is to take a flower or some other object and tell a young audience that this is their heart.  The speaker will then pluck a petal from the flower and tell their audience that this is what happens when they fall in love/experience romantic attraction or feelings for a member of the opposite sex.  The speaker will proceed to ruthlessly disassemble the flower in front of the audience, perhaps listing for effect what each tug represents (“first crush,” “high school boyfriend/girlfriend,” “a friendship that went too far,” etc).  In the end, they will present the thoroughly mangled thing to their audience and tell them this is what their heart will look like on their wedding day when they present it to their spouse, if they have not followed emotional purity faithfully.  The scare-tactic is generally successful.  Even where the particular analogy is absent, the concept is present: where emotional purity is present, there is also a fear of failing one’s future spouse and ruining one’s future marriage by having feelings for someone else before marriage.  The reality is that love does not work that way (it is possible to actually love your future spouse more for having had previous attractions) and that redemption is always possible.

                                                            iii.      Fear of Heartbreak: Another universal idea in emotional purity is the fear of heartbreak and the emotional pain that accompanies unrequited love or a romantic relationship that falls through.  Heartbreak is treated like a terrible plague to be avoided at all costs.  Such pain is said to leave emotional scars which, according to some, can never be healed (which is, of course, untrue: the Bible promises healing).  Emotional pain and risk are already scary things to young people, but emotional purity preys on this fear, inflates it, and then tells young people that strict adherence to emotional purity’s principles is the only way to escape the pain.

                                                           iv.      Fear of Sexual Sin: Since emotional purity sees itself as an almost seamless extension of sexual purity, it is no surprise that those who do not follow it are held to be at a higher risk of falling into sexual sin as well.  After all, if you never let yourself even like a member of the opposite sex, you’re not as likely to fornicate with them, or so the logic goes.  Genuine Christians who fear sexual sin and do not know how to effectively combat it may find themselves drawn to emotional purity as an easy way out.

                                                             v.      Fear of Dishonoring Christ: Many times, emotional purity proponents will say that romantic feelings distract from God.  In this, they arguably have the support of Paul, but they almost invariably take things further than he did, saying that those who are distracted by emotional attractions etc have made an idol of the opposite sex in their heart.  While above emotional purity proponents explained how “giving your heart away” left you with less for your future spouse, the same analogy can and often is used to describe the present state of affairs between the “emotionally impure” believer and Christ: every “piece” of their heart they “give away” is one less piece they can give to Christ, now and forever (again untrue because romantic love and love for God are not mutually exclusive and, again, redemption is always possible).

                                                           vi.      Fear of Being Like the World: Emotional purity almost invariably sets up a false dichotomy between itself (that is, between whichever incarnation of the doctrine the proponent him or herself embraces) and “worldly dating.”  Emotional purity proponents are generally people who have taken a look at the darker side of hookup culture (premarital sex, teen pregnancies, divorce rates, obsession, heartache, guilt) and decided to avoid it at all costs.  Many of the authors of emotional purity books confess that their pre-marital years were turbulent, troubled, and left them in lasting misery.  These people then approach young singles (whether their own children or those of others put under their care) and, with the best of intentions, try to steer them clear of the mistakes of their own youth.  Emotional purity adherents see their position as the only alternative to a dangerous culture of flippantly giving away one’s heart and body to be used and abused by members of the opposite sex.

                                                          vii.      Fear of Man: Many emotional purity cultures are also very legalistic in this area and in others.  While I have heard from at least one proponent who claims that emotional purity can and has been applied without legalism, I have never seen or heard of any workable model where this could actually occur.  Emotional purity doctrine therefore generally goes hand in hand with strong authority figures (parents, church leaders, Christian college staff) who can and will enforce its dictates on unwilling members, believing that they are protecting these members and their entire organization from falling into sin by doing so.  Members, therefore, may find themselves adhering to emotional purity not out of any personal conviction that it is true, but out of fear of punishment from the authority figures in their lives.

2.       Problems with Emotional Purity

a.       Pure from What?  Purity is an exceptionally simple word when it comes to definitions.  It means simply the absence of impurity.  An impurity is some undesirable thing, a contaminant.  When the term is applied to Christian living, an impurity is a sin.  Therefore, in order for one to accept that emotional purity is a legitimate concept, they must also tacitly admit that there are some emotions which are, by their nature, impure and sinful.  The question is, what emotions and how do we know?  The answer, it seems, is something we have to make up.

                                                               i.      Beyond the Bible: The Bible, as it turns out, says nothing about the possibility of impure emotions.  While Paul has a chance in 1 Corinthians 7 to condemn the distractions of romantic love, he takes pains not to and even says “it is no sin.”  In fact, nowhere in the Bible do we see a single verse or phrase that can be legitimately used to say that romantic attractions are sinful.  Aware of the importance of Biblical support, emotional purity advocates will stretch a number of verses in bizarre ways to try to support their doctrine, but these efforts invariably collapse under careful exegesis.

1.       “Guard Your Heart” No discussion of Emotional Purity doctrine would be complete without including this phrase.  It is the catch-phrase for emotional purity, almost synonymous with it.  If someone tells you to “guard your heart,” chances are they’re proscribing some form of emotional purity to you.  The reason the phrase is so popular is because it is 100% Biblical: it appears right there in Proverbs 4:23, “Above all else, guard your heart.”  At this point, Emotional Purity advocates stop quoting and would prefer that you stop reading to instead acknowledge their victory in that we today take “the heart” to mean romantic feelings and the Bible says “guard your heart” right there in black and white.  But as it turns out, this is only the first half of the verse, and the context puts it in an entirely different light.

a.       Proverbs 4:23 in Context: My son, pay attention to what I say; turn your ear to my words.  Do not let them out of your sight, keep them within your heart; for they are life to those who find them and health to one’s whole body.  Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.  Keep your mouth free of perversity; keep corrupt talk from your lips.  Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly before you.  Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways.  Do not turn to the right or the left; keep your foot from evil. (Proverbs 4:20-27, NIV)

b.      What it Means: In context, Solomon is clearly telling his son to store up the wisdom of his proverbs, the wisdom passed from father to son, and keep his heart and life away from wickedness.  Several forms of wickedness are specified and romance is not among them.  In reality, the only way we can make this passage apply to romance and support Emotional Purity is to presuppose that romantic feelings are evil and/or presuppose that “the heart” refers always to romantic longings (when, in the Bible, “the heart” has much, much broader applications).

2.       “Do nothing from partiality” Beyond the ever-famous “guard your heart” passage, Emotional Purity proof-texts seem to be a diverse crowd with the odds being slim that any two proponents will share the same proof-texts unless they learned them from each other.  But the above passage from 1 Timothy 5:21 bears mention because it’s one that people from the Rock have probably heard, as it was used in a pamphlet titled Rock Solid Relationships that presented it among other proof-texts for emotional purity.  The idea with this verse is that having an emotional attachment to a member of the opposite sex causes us to treat this person different than we would other members of the opposite sex.  A boy is more likely to spend time alone with a girl he’s crushing on than with a girl he isn’t attracted to, or so the logic goes.  This is said to be partiality in favor of the one we are attracted to and therefore sinful (which, by extension, makes the feelings that inspire the “partiality” sinful).

a.       1 Timothy 5:21 in Context: Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching.  For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain,” and, “The laborer deserves his wages.”  Do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses.  As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear.  In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of the elect angels I charge you to keep these rules without prejudging, doing nothing from partiality.  Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, nor take part in the sins of others; keep yourself pure…The sins of some men are conspicuous, going before them to judgment, but the sins of others appear later.  So also good works are conspicuous, and even those that are not cannot remain hidden. (1 Timothy 5:17-22, 24-25, ESV); ed: verse 23 is a parenthetical aside addressing Timothy’s stomach problems and has been omitted for clarity, as parentheticals by their nature are not necessary for the understanding of the passage in which they are embedded.

b.      What it Means: In context, the charge to do nothing from partiality or prejudice is smack dab in the middle of a passage regarding  church conduct toward appointed elders, specifically connected with the process of appointing them (“laying on of hands”) and disciplining them.  For a church that does not even believe that women can be elders, there is no possible connection to romance unless we want to say that Paul was addressing homosexual desire, which I think is patently absurd.

c.       Double-Edged Sword: However, assuming the passage were applicable broadly (“do nothing from partiality” certainly seems broad, and we can all agree with Paul that “prejudice” is bad), could they be applied to support emotional purity?  Only if, at the same time and to a greater extent, it was allowed to destroy the practice of the same.  Emotional purity does go out of its way to make sure that all members of the opposite sex are treated equally—in that they are one and all to be avoided by singles for fear of causing emotional impurity to rear its inexplicably ugly head.  The result is prejudice.  It’s okay for a man and a male friend to talk together alone, but it’s not okay for a female friend to be in the same situation with the same man because she is female.  It’s like the rule that says you shouldn’t talk to those kids over there because they’re black: don’t associate too closely with those Christians over there because they’re male (or female, take your pick).  This is not always overtly stated as much as it is practiced, but it’s still there.  I remember one young woman emailed me saying she was taking particular steps to break off our friendship rather than resolve our conflict, and confessed that she would not do these things if I was female—but supposedly it’s okay to throw rocks at boys because they’re somehow less human?  One can try to argue that spending more time with this person or that person is prejudice (though one invariably runs up against the realities of circumstances forcing people together, people having limited time in which to invest in relationships, and other things that keep the accusation of prejudice from marking the fact that people have “best friends” as a sin), but the argument that avoiding the opposite gender is prejudice is almost impossible to combat—since, really, if that other person were the same gender as you in the same situation, it would be totally fine to hang out with them as much as you liked (the only reason you’re treating them differently is because of their sex: which is, by the way, discrimination and prejudice under the definition of the law).

3.       “Like a sister” This is a popular verse, also from 1 Timothy 5 (verse 2), which proponents of emotional purity and sexual purity use to teach young people that they need to keep themselves free from emotional attachments and physical contact with Christians of the opposite sex because, well, if you did that with your biological sister it would be just gross.  I wonder immediately if these people have biological sisters.  God has blessed me with two biological sisters with whom I grew up.  If I told you I had no emotional attachments toward them and that my relationship with them was “purely” dispassionate, I might be struck dead for lying (possibly by one of my sisters).  They are my sisters, and I love them.  I love spending time with them and I am close to them.  I also share physical affection with them (we’re not talking incest here: we’re talking hugs and such).  While I am not physically or romantically attracted to them, I do consider them attractive in that regard (they’re hotter than your sisters, anyway ;P).  Under the wisdom of emotional impurity, none of these things would be allowed between me and a member of the opposite sex (someone would probably die if I got up on stage at the Rock and glomped—a type of hug, for those of you who are uneducated in these things--a girl like I would my little sister).  Thus, when this verse is used to try to enforce emotional purity, it is doomed from the beginning since the concept of a distant dispassionate relationship is anathema to family.

                                                             ii.      Guilt by Association: Since the Bible does not directly say anything against emotional or romantic attachments to make them “impure,” proponents are forced to look elsewhere.  Two easy targets present themselves, as already introduced in the section about fear.

1.       Sexual Impurity: The first target is sexual impurity.  It is taught that emotional impurity and sexual impurity are different parts of the same spectrum of sin and that stepping into the former puts one on a slippery slope to the latter.  At first glance, the logic seems to follow: after all, you wouldn’t be tempted to have sex with someone you aren’t romantically involved with, would you?

a.       Free Sex; Love Sold Separately: Well, as it turns out, you would.  In fact, this sort of thing happens all the time in hookup culture.  Young people may involve themselves in one-night-stands or drunken orgies with people they have no feelings for.  If the relationship lasts, it’s called “friends with benefits,” because, while sexual favors are exchanged freely, no romantic feelings are involved.  Some have even been quoted as getting annoyed when romantic entanglements spring up to complicate the free sex.  In this culture, from which emotional purity flees, the ideal is sex with “no strings attached”—that is, completely free of romantic entanglements (I find it incredible that on both extremes of this debate people are telling us that romantic love is bad—wasn’t it something that God-fellow invented way back in Genesis and mentioned as a picture of His own love countless times throughout that one book?  You think maybe Satan doesn’t like it?  I do: I think both sides are demonic).

b.      Sexual Abuse: There are, of course, further extremes.  The rapist does not attack out of romantic adoration but sexual lust.  Sexual harassment is also generally free from emotional attachment (if it weren’t, the abuser would probably respect the victim’s wishes).  Then, there’s prostitution and pornography, both of which involve sexual impurity completely divorced from romantic entrapments.  What is truly disturbing is that, in some cases, studies have found that environments rife with emotional purity teaching actually fostered sexual abuse, addiction, and pornography.

                                                                                                                                       i.      Effect of the Elephant in the Room: When you think about the psychological implications of emotional purity, the fact that hidden sexual abuse and addiction follows it like a shadow is actually not very surprising.  If you tell a man, “Don’t think about a pink elephant,” he will immediately think of a pink elephant because trying to banish an object focuses it in the forefront of the mind.  Thus, cultures (like the Rock) that aim to suppress romantic feelings are often rife with romantic tension, emotional drama, and are places where relationships are an almost constant topic among the membership (such topics and tensions were comparatively rare and fleeting among the Navs, a college ministry that does not embrace emotional purity).  Throw in the teaching that romantic entanglements should suppressed because because otherwise you will think about sex and now guess what’s on everybody’s mind.  It’s like telling a man, “Don’t think of a pink elephant, because then you will think about a blue kangaroo.”  I know what you’re thinking right now (blue kangaroo).  As an example, while sexual purity was a struggle men (and presumably women) shared privately at the Navs, I was never accused of sexual impurity anywhere but the Rock—and the thing that brought on the accusation wasn’t even sexual in nature!

                                                                                                                                     ii.      Life on the Slippery Slope:  In theory, when you tell someone that if they do X, it is just as bad as doing Y and they are at risk of doing Y also, it should keep them as far away from X as possible.  The problem comes, when, in practice, X is something that is not really avoidable.  Neither gender has control over who they feel attracted to, or when, or how strongly, or how long.  Emotional purity comes along and says that to feel emotionally attracted to someone is like lusting for them, which is, of course, as bad as actually committing adultery with this person.  So, what are the logical implications to an unfortunate who develops a crush on a member of the opposite sex?  Well, he’s already crossed the line and soiled himself.  What difference does it make if he goes a little further and actually lusts for this girl: doesn’t emotional purity say they’re the same?  And if he does that, well, then, he might as well let things go all the way.  The logic isn’t valid (the entire “slippery slope” argument from which it derives is classed as a logical fallacy), but it does happen.  Even if it’s not with the person with which the unfortunate has a crush, they may still slide into a downward spiral.  Emotional purity says that if you have a romantic attachment, you’ve cheapened and dirtied yourself.  Well, if you’ve fallen and found you can’t get up, you might as well have a good roll in the mud while you’re down.  So goes the logic of many who, depressed by their inability to hold up under the legalistic demands of emotional purity, decide to live as the “bad girl” or “bad boy” they have been branded as (this is something all legalistic cultures share in common: they are breeding grounds for the very “denigrates” they shun).

2.       Heartache: The second target for guilt-by-association is heartache.  Nobody likes having their heart broken, so it’s a very easy target.  It’s also a very true target.  C.S. Lewis rightly observed that, “To love at all is to be vulnerable.  Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal.”  Pain is a thread that is woven through every part of the story God is telling: even He Himself is not untouched!  But should we avoid heartache?  Certainly, it is unpleasant, but there is nothing in the Bible to say it is a sin or a consequence of sin.  In fact, the only way to avoid it is to stop loving entirely: to break the first and second commandments upon which (according to Christ) everything hangs.  C.S. Lewis goes on to say that to avoid vulnerability to heartache we must isolate our heart and “wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements.  Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.  But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change.  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.  To love at all is to be vulnerable.”  In this way, heartache is a little like waste heat in thermodynamics: nobody wants it, everybody’s got it, the only way to get rid of it is to stop playing the game…and you cannot stop playing the game.  In thermodynamics, it’s a matter of impossibility; in love it’s a matter of monstrosity—stop loving and you commit a selfish evil act more twisted and demonic than any romantic entanglement or heartbreak could ever be (and scripture has a lot to say about the wickedness of people who do not love).

                                                            iii.      The Commandments of Men: In the end, the quest for a Biblical basis for calling romantic feelings impure (and thus the entire logical foundation of emotional purity doctrine) is fruitless.  This is perhaps why most advocates don’t spend much time on it, instead doing a brief gloss of one or two proofs and diving right into scare tactics and instructions on how to avoid emotional impurity.  Comparatively little (or even no) ink is spilled on saying what is actually “impure” about these emotions or even which emotions are impure to start with.  This essentially leaves an open field for whatever authority figures happen to be on the scene.  If they say that knowing enough about a guy to know his schedule is emotional impure (an actual scenario from one of my friends: the guy would be her husband in less than a year), then no one can really dispute it with them.  This sets up a system where groups are “teaching for doctrines the commandments of men” often commandments that explicitly violate commandments of God.  The most obvious examples are the commands for love and unity between all believers (brothers and sisters in Christ inclusive), which are quite simply incompatible with a lot of the measures taken under emotional purity (some versions of it, as mentioned above, go so far as to say that it is impossible to have any amicable interactions with a member of the opposite sex or any love for them at all without falling into the sin of emotional impurity).  But there are other ones as well.  In the Rock, there was one occasion when a leader forbade me from sharing the gospel with a non-Christian friend because the friend was female and it would be emotionally impure.  As above, there is also the very strict command to do nothing from prejudice or partiality, which—if we take it to have broader applications than the process of appointing and disciplining elders—is in direct opposition to a system of thought that tells us to treat 50% of our fellow Christians differently and/or disassociate with them because their sexual organs aren’t in the same place as ours.

b.      Christ-like Love: You’re Doin’ it Wrong: As discussed above, emotional purity sets itself at odds with love.  It does so explicitly and unabashedly in the case of romantic love (supposedly it is only opposed to “unauthorized” romantic love—but what love is authorized and what isn’t is a murky game that very often comes down to power-play and winning the favoritism of the authority figures).  Since Scripture nowhere condemns romantic love and everywhere sets it up as an example of God’s love for us, this is crossing a line.  When emotionally purity puts constraints on the love between brothers and sisters in Christ out of fear that these relationships will turn into “unauthorized” and “impure” romantic entanglements, it crosses another line.  When it obliterates those relationships, it crosses all the lines.  This becomes particularly obvious when one considers that the standard for love between Christians is the love that Christ had for us: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12).  One of the most audacious things about Christ’s love was that it crossed the gender line, and the most despicable thing emotional purity can do is push it back to the other side.  Jesus Christ came in the flesh: this is a fact the denial of which constitutes demonic influence (1 John4:1-3).  While in the flesh, Jesus was tempted in every way just as we are, yet was without sin (Hebrews 4:15)—deviation from which doctrine constitutes heresy.  Therefore, any teaching that would condemn a man (or woman) for doing the things Jesus did on this earth with the opposite sex is both heretical and demonic.  There can be no flexibility, no two-ways, about this!  An analysis of one of many possible example scenarios follows.

                                                               i.      One-on-One at the Well: John 4 records a story that would have been baffling to the religious elite of Jesus’ day, and is sadly equally baffling to many in the church today.  Jesus and his disciples are traveling through Samaria, the region of the hated-apostate-halfbreeds, and while the disciples go into town to buy food, Jesus sits down on the edge of a well.  A woman comes out to the well, to draw water for herself, and Jesus strikes up a conversation.  Being Jesus, He quickly turns the conversation to the gospel, and during the course of the conversation two facts emerge.  The first is that this woman is a “loose woman.”  She has had five husbands and is currently sleeping with a prospect for number six.  The second fact is that Jesus is perfectly aware of her sexually impure life—and He chooses to talk to her anyway!  Jesus talked one-on-one and shared the gospel with a woman who was known (to Him at least) to be sexually and (if we accept emotional purity) emotionally impure—and He did so not only without sin, but actually as an act of obedience to the Father (John 4:34).

                                                             ii.      Analysis of the Well: Honestly, the test of the Samaritan woman is one I can think of very few incarnations of emotional purity passing.  Only the mildest versions need even apply.  Most teach that one-on-one interaction with a member of the opposite sex is bound to cause emotional impurity and many account it as romantic pursuit (and unauthorized romantic pursuit—that is, pursuit of someone the authority figures don’t think you should marry—is a sin).  By this logic, Jesus was sinning just by conversing with a woman alone, let alone bringing up the intimate topics of the gospel and her romantic relationships.  When we throw in the fact that this woman was known to play fast and loose with her sexual morals, Jesus is definitely in trouble.  This is certainly someone an emotional purity culture would tell every male to avoid and to never, ever speak to one-on-one.  But Jesus did, and if we condemn Him for it, it is us and not Him who are in sin.

c.       Fear, not Faith: The Bible tells us that “whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23) and further that “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.  For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love” (1John 4:18).  But, as discussed in the definition, emotional purity creates, operates in, and responds with a culture of fear.  Fear is the antithesis of faith (so long as we are not talking the “fear of God”).  Emotional purity’s proponents have been quick to proclaim that theirs is a method of faith in that it relies on God and waits for him, but a number of things belie this position, revealing that the true foundation of the doctrine is fear, not faith.

                                                               i.      Reaction, not Action: As mentioned in the section about “fear of being like the world,” emotional purity sets up a false dichotomy between itself and the hookup culture with no “middle road” between them (this is a logical fallacy, by the way).  Then, rather than modeling itself on what the Bible says dating should be (because, despite all the attempts of emotional purity books to prove otherwise, it is silent on the topic), emotional purity takes a bundle of positions from hookup culture, reverses them, and turns it into a doctrine.  Hookup culture says that there is no difference at all between male and female, so emotional purity overemphasizes every difference to the point where they seem like different species.  Hookup culture makes light of going out with people you never get married to, so emotional purity makes much of it.  Hookup culture believes in pursuing what you want now, so emotional purity believes in waiting.  Hookup culture tells you to follow your heart, so emotional purity tells you to crush it.  Hookup culture flaunts authority, so emotional purity enforces it.  The most obvious case is the most trivial: hookup-culture calls it “dating” so emotional purity avoids the “d-word” at all costs.  This is not action taken based on truth, but simple reaction based on the lies of hookup culture.  When we go about blindly doing the opposite of whatever we see “the world” doing, we are as much their puppet as if we followed them directly—since in neither case are we giving any heed to direction from God.

                                                             ii.      Take Me to Your Leader: The whole argument of emotional purity being the road of faith hinges on the idea of “waiting for God to bring along ‘the One.’”  But really, is the idea of “the One” even Biblical?  Much ink has been spilled here by other authors, but the long and short of it is that, while it is Biblical to say that God has a plan for your life, there is no mention in the Bible of Him hand-picking our future spouses.  It’s possible He does, but the Bible doesn’t say it.  Mostly, the idea of “the One” comes from the romance genre.  But assuming, for the moment, that God does, indeed, pick out “soul-mates” in His divine plan, how do we know, in emotional purity, when “the One” has come along?  Practically speaking in every emotional purity culture I’ve ever heard of, the answer comes down to “when the resident authority figures say so.”  This may mean parents approving of or arranging a match. This may mean leaders no older than the couples themselves evaluating and approving of each individual’s character and fitness for a relationship.  In either case, God need not be involved because man has this one covered.  Seriously, in a lot of the stories out there about emotional purity all the important decisions were made by authority figures based purely on their personal judgment.  This may constitute an act of faith on the part of couples, but it certainly isn’t in God.  One may ask why God doesn’t have a freer hand in all this or why everything has to be rubber-stamped by these authority figures, and the reason comes down to fear.  With the authority figures firmly at the helm, a trusted human face is in control (or at least seems to be—since humans really can’t even control much of anything).  Without that face, fear and uncertainty threaten, so the authority figure remains on the throne.

                                                            iii.      God Walks into a College Ministry: A few years ago, I had the dubious distinction of being there to witness first hand where a particular emotional purity culture put its faith and who was really leading the relationships.  A young man and a young woman both professed to have had powerful spiritual experiences wherein they believed God told them that a romantic relationship between them was His will.  The young man’s parents at least approved, though I do not know if the young woman’s parents were ever consulted when the question was at issue.  Whether they were or weren’t turns out to be irrelevant, because in this culture the primary authority figure was not parents (former members have told me leaders encouraged them to defy their Christian parents) but church and college ministry leadership, dominated by single or married men and women in their early-to-mid twenties who had no formal training or selection process and little oversight in the decisions they made (one leader was effectively able to exercise “church discipline” without the pastorate of the church ever being aware of it).  These leaders were against the match from square one.  They feared it would bring both members into emotional impurity and harm, and they were totally unfazed by the prospect that they were, in the eyes of these two members, giving direction that was in direct opposition to the revealed will of God.  They produced various arguments for why these young people needed to listen to their leaders instead of whatever they believed God was telling them, with the end result of bringing emotional purity doctrine to bear on all interactions between the pair, eventually demolishing a friendship from which both had derived spiritual encouragement previously.  To me, the message was clear: God is not welcome here.

d.      After Purity: In addition to the above problems, emotional purity has a number of detrimental effects, some of which apply specifically to people who have engaged in romantic feelings, whether with or without the approval of their resident authority figures.

                                                               i.      Needless Guilt: The biggest effect, is, of course, guilt.  This is only logical.  After all, emotional purity has gone out and made up a bunch of sins we can commit, and if we’ve embraced the doctrine and then gone and done the things it condemns, we naturally feel guilty about it (and because those things aren’t actually sinful in the first place, our guilt is needless by definition).  This occurs even if the particular romantic entanglement one “commits” is one approved by the necessary emotional-purity-backed authority figures.  By this point, fear of emotional entanglements is a programmed knee-jerk reaction and it simply cannot be turned off just because a leader said you could be a couple now.  The situation is exacerbated when you throw in the fact that many or all couples who eventually get leadership approval (at least in the emotional purity culture I most closely observed: again, your mileage may vary) spend a significant amount of time feeling attracted to one another without having that attraction “legitimized” by the necessary leaders—or worse, having those leaders actively condemn the attraction.  After months or years of taking and internalizing this treatment, it is impossible to simply roll over and start loving someone without feeling guilty about it.  This is pointless suffering.

                                                             ii.      Run Before You Can Walk: Another effect several of my friends who are currently in relationships have attested to (together with numerous strangers on the internet) is that following emotional purity leaves one totally unprepared to handle a relationship with a member of the opposite sex, especially a romantic one.  People who have grown up in an extreme emotional purity environment and are suddenly thrust into a romantic relationship are the relational equivalent of a kid who has spent his whole life in a wheelchair being suddenly asked to run a marathon.  They have no clue how to relate to a member of the opposite sex on even the most fundamental level of both of them being human beings, let alone how to build a lifelong, deep, committed relationship with one.  All they really have is two fists full of dreams and expectations that are completely untested by reality.  They are in for disappointment.  They are in for frustration.  They are in for confusion and pain, and they are a practically guaranteed client for the next marriage step-by-step book or equivalent (they navigated their single years by letting other people tell them what to do, what do you think they’ll do when marriage gets confusing?).  They are not hopeless, thank God.  If they are aware of the weaknesses emotional purity has left them, they can combat them.  Even if they aren’t, if they remain in the emotional purity culture that put them together that culture is likely to continue to support and direct them (the authority figures that directed their single years will continue to preside over their married lives).  Since all of these cultures have very strong prohibitions against divorce, they are unlikely to become divorced or even (if not yet married) break up (keeping in mind that, in order for them to have come together in the first place, leadership had to have approved them for each other as “the person God wants you to marry” or “the One”—you do not dump “the One”).  Since they further promote (generally) Biblical models of marriage itself, they may even build healthy, God-honoring marriages, but when this occurs, it is not much to the credit of the emotional purity that left them so otherwise ill-prepared.

3.       A More Excellent Way? When emotional purity arguments are made, they are made in opposition to a hookup culture that does not honor God.  When it comes between the two of them, emotional purity seems the clear winner.  Thus, even seeing the systems flaws, one might cling to emotional purity as the only option that honors God out of fear (there’s that word again) of falling into the hookup culture of casual premarital sex.  But the reality is that there are not just two ways to handle romantic relationships and platonic friendships.  A God-honoring way needs to be sought between the two, but anyone coming to this part looking for a six-simple-steps solution is bound for disappointment.  Man leads through six-simple-steps, but God is more creative and more difficult to anticipate (and more wonderful for it).  While reading this, do keep in mind that the author is a single young man who has never been romantically involved: take it with a grain of salt.

a.       Love one another: This is one of the highest commands of the Bible, as well as one of the most frequently repeated (the highest, of course, is “Love God,” but if you’re going for a God-honoring way to relate to the opposite sex, I’m going to assume that’s already a priority for you).  It is also a listed criterion for knowing and loving God (1 John 4:20-21).  However we behave ourselves toward friends or romantic interests of the opposite sex, we must be sure it is out of love.

b.      Flee Sexual Immorality: The Bible is very, very clear that sex is something that belongs in the marriage bed (well…technically it isn’t too particular about where married couples do it, just that they do it and that other people don’t).  Sexual immorality is also a sin that can be committed in the heart, through lust.  We need to turn away from things that tempt us to sexual immorality and turn to God.  In doing so, it is important that we not make the mistake many have made in making sexual purity legalistic.  Sex is not evil: sex is good.  Our sexual desires, feelings, and organs are all parts of us made by a God Who is not prone to massive design flaws, Who loves us very much and wants to be Lord over all of our lives, ruling over and being glorified in every aspect of our being.  For some, this may mean becoming eunuchs (Matthew 19:11-12) either practically or actually.  Some are going to be called to celibacy, some to marriage.  We should not assume that either is better than the other or that we are called to one over the other.  Particularly, we should not think that submitting our sexuality to God involves obliterating it.  He made it, He paid for it, He loves it, and He gets to say what’s done with it: this is the opposite of sexual immorality, which says that my sexuality is something that I rule over, or that rules over me, for my own satisfaction and not God’s glory.

c.       Do not be Unequally Yoked: When it comes to finding an actual spouse (and we should be careful this isn’t our sole aim in interacting with the opposite sex: that’s not loving), we need to remember that marriage is a spiritual union.  It shouldn’t be, as a general rule, entered into by people with differing beliefs.  Christ should be the most important person in any Christian’s life, and if a Christian is married to a non-Christian, then their spouse cannot understand the part of their life that is most important to them and that shapes all others—and that is a sad situation indeed.

d.      Follow God: God needs to be our leader.  He is the only one who knows His plan for our lives, and we need to follow Him.  This may not look the same for every person—in fact, it will not.  For some people, God may lead them to follow leaders and walk in emotional purity (Jesus did tell the crowds to do as the Pharisees told them to do in Matthew23:2-3).  For some, He may lead through circumstances, for some through the sound council of their elders (note that just council is not enough: there is such a thing as foolish council and young people are particularly prone to giving it—as the story of Rehoboam proves well), for some through feelings, for some through various forms of direct revelation.  For most, it will probably be a mix of these things, and all of them are important in considering a direction.  The critical thing is that we are following God, not ourselves, not others, not our fears, but God.  This will not lead to any one-size-fits-all solution, but we do not serve a one-size-fits-all God.  Additionally, it will not lead to a pain-free dating, friendship, or marriage experience.  “To love at all is to be vulnerable,” and God calls us to be terribly vulnerable to Him and to each other.  If we follow Him, there are two things of which we may be assured: we will be hurt, and it will be worth it in the end.

Setting the Record Straight

The following post regards an interpersonal conflict between me and a certain young woman.  I wouldn’t write about it here, but it seems that a number of people have been led to believe or say things about my conduct and intentions in this conflict that simply are not true.  While these allegations were made privately, the fact that they were made to multiple people at multiple times by multiple people makes them public for all practical purposes.  I therefore thought it appropriate that I publically set the record straight.

Nevertheless, the internet is a very public place, so I won’t be getting into details or naming names.  If you’ve heard about this conflict, you already know who the players are.  If you don’t, you don’t need to, and probably don’t need to be reading this post anyway.

Equality of the Heart

A friend of mine once said, "Women's hearts are delicate, like vases: you have to handle them with care. Men's hearts are like Nalgenes: you can punt them off a mountainside and they'll be fine." While I appreciate her faith in Nalgenes and the tough-guy image of the male psyche we work so hard to project, I question her conclusions about the difference between how men and women feel.

She is far from alone in her assessment. In fact, it's a popular view. Men are always portrayed (and we tend to portray ourselves) as tough, self-sufficient, and romantically-disinclined. Women accordingly may be portrayed as sensitive, loving, caring, and romantically absorbed. Post sexual revolution, women are increasingly free to violate the stereotypes about them, to the extent that the tough, romantically-disinterested girl who enjoys violent shooter games has become a stereotype in its own right. Men, however, remain mostly bound by the stereotypes about them. As a man, I avoid admitting that I'm a avid fan of Robin Jones Gunn and the Christian romance genre, which I read in private for fear someone will find out and think me less of a man. I hesitate to disclose that I read gender relations and gender psychology books as a hobby, and only then if I can get away with saying it is because I am fascinated by gender differences and see them as a reflection of the relationship between God and man--which is true, but completely omits the fact that an even bigger factor in this reading interest is the fact that I am a hopeless romantic who dreams of someday putting all the information I've accumulated to work in a real relationship that will (God willing) blow my partner's mind. Again, I fear to reveal that I don't fit the stereotypes because it might bring my masculinity into question. In this post-sexual revolution world, the stereotypes seem to be the only measure of manliness we have left...but that doesn't mean they're true, or that adhering to them is doing us any favors.

According to the stereotypes, women feel more deeply and freely than men, especially in the romantic arena, and therefore their hearts need to be treated with greater care. But if anything, the facts tell the opposite story. Studies of young couples have repeatedly found that men reported falling in love much faster than women, some even reporting the fabled "love at first sight." As a measure of how deeply each gender falls, one could look at who is more likely to call it quits. There the answer is overwhelming women. Statistics say that women initiate 2 out of every 3 divorces. After the breakup, studies have shown that men may be more deeply hurt than their exes, as men  more likely to suffer mental health problems as a result of a breakup. I am not saying that women are cold with Nalgene-like hearts, but perhaps in the light of this evidence, we need to re-evaluate our stereotypes about men and how we treat them as a result.

There is, to be sure, nothing wrong with encouraging men to be gentle with the hearts of the women in their lives. That's what I appreciate about the stereotypes. But too often, I see them used in more negative ways. They are used to prioritize needs by gender. If we see a man and a woman have both emotionally wounded each other, we are likely to comfort the woman and confront the man with a charge that he "man up" and a rebuke for him daring to hurt a woman. This is a double-standard, plain and simple. Worse yet, sometimes we seem to take the stereotype's assertion that men's hearts can be safely punted off mountains as justification for doing just that. After all, he's a man, he can take it, right? At this point, we are using someone's gender as a justification for what amounts to relational and/or emotional abuse, which takes us beyond the immoral and edges us toward the criminal. Seriously, "boys are stupid, throw rocks at them" is a slogan that appears on t-shirts and magnets all over (one actually hangs behind me at my workplace, apparently for sale). We men don't complain, lest we appear to violate our tough image, but if a similar slogan were displayed about women, someone would complain about hate speech.

But there is another troubling thing about these stereotypes. According to Ephesians 5:25-32 the dynamics between a man and a woman reflect the dynamics between believers and Christ. What we say about one reflects what we believe about the other (at least to an extent). If we believe that men are insensitive and less capable of love and feeling than women, do we believe the same about God? Do we see Him as a distant, disinterested, emotionless god-in-the-clouds? If so, we have bought into a heresy. The Bible tells us that God loved us first by an incalculable margin (before we were even born) that He loved us so deeply that He died for us when we hated Him, and that He is so faithful in His love that to leave us would be to deny Himself, which He cannot do. He is sensitive, loving, emotional, romantic, and near. While men are not perfect reflections of Him, they are meant to be the images of His character. Perhaps it is time we re-evaluated our stereotypes about men (and the ways that we, as men, stereotype ourselves) in the light of this fact and the truth about who Christ is.

What Unity Doesn't Mean

It's no secret that unity is one of the big things (if not the biggest thing) Christ wants from the Church. John 13:34-35; 17:20-23; and 1John 4:12 all say that it is through the unity of the Church that we know God, and that others know the truth about Christ. One of the last and most famous of the prayers of Christ is for love and unity among Christians, and, as stated in a previous post, love for other believers is one of the highest commandments of Christianity.

I don't claim to be an expert on achieving or maintaining unity, or even knowing exactly what it's supposed to look like, but I do know some things that it isn't.

First, the unity of the Church is bigger than unity within a single church or even a church group or denomination. This is a mistake cultists make. Many of them will turn to the divisions between mainline Christian churches and use these to dismiss all churches besides their own, since, supposedly everyone else is divided, but they are still united. Of course, this usually backfires when one finds out that these cults have splinter groups of their own.  It's also a mistake that Christians make.  Being united and loving one another is easy when we can narrow the boundaries of that love and union down to a relatively small number of individuals (a church group, a Bible study, etc) and even easier when we can control who can and can't be a member of that group.  But the Bible doesn't make things easy: it says that the unity of the Church is something that extends to all Christians everywhere, regardless of their membership in any group or denomination. We cannot say that Christ is worshiped only by Methodists, Baptists, or Presbyterians, He is worshiped by members of every kingdom, tribe, a tongue. As we are all united in the worship of the same God, we should strive to be united with each other, no matter what churches we go to.

Second, and related, being united in the Church doesn't mean that we all need to be members of the same organization, or even members of a organization. This is something that a lot of churches disagree with. Churches often discourage Christians from going along without being members of a church. The accusation is that such Christians cannot be properly united to other believers, since they have no formal associations. While it is true that Christians who don't associate with others at all aren't united (and that Christians who don't go to church can risk falling into this category), we should distinguish between believers who don't associate with other believers and believers who aren't members of a church institution. The latter category includes a great many believers, possibly the majority of all Christians throughout history. Membership in churches was not formally organized until hundreds of years after Christ, and in many countries today is greatly restricted or non-existent. Nevertheless, these believers still gather together and are united with other believers. Even in countries where membership in the institutional church is unrestricted, there is no Biblical mandate that Christians take advantage of it. The Bible commands unity and love among individual Christians, not commitment to organizations made by Christians.

Third, it doesn't mean a going with the consensus of a superficial "Christian" culture.  True unity must be based on truth, and there is much in even the most well-meaning "Christian" cultures that has nothing to do with truth.

Finally, unity does not mean pleasing and serving the popular or powerful Christians in a community. Again, unity must be based on truth, and not only do the popular and powerful have no monopoly on these, but also the truth is that Jesus came to serve and love the outcasts and sinners, and calls us to do the same.

Forgiven So That I Can Forgive

The more I learn of Christ, the more I read in the Bible, the more I am convinced of the central importance of brotherly love between believers. Yesterday, I was reminded by one of my roommates, a man from Brazil. When he found out that I was a Christian, a Protestant, and even a member of the same denomination as him, he clasped my hand and said excitedly, "You are my Brother!" We are probably more than a decade apart in age, from separate countries on separate continents, severed by a formidable language barrier, but my roommate is right: in Christ, we are brothers.

Today, I was reminded of it when Paul, in this morning's passage, made a point of telling the Colossians that the things he was suffering, he was suffering so that they could mature in Christ and "reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ."  As a part of that process, he thought it necessary that they be "knit together in love" (Colossians 2:2).

...And then right after the message, I walked out and passed by a sister in Christ and the cluster of my old friends who surround her, trying as gracefully as possible to pretend they didn't exist because this sister has a problem with me that she doesn't want to even try to work out, preferring that we simply not be on speaking terms ever again, period.

In retrospect, I have to wonder: were either of us paying attention during the message? My roommate from Brazil, bless his heart, he can barely speak English, but he gets it: if you are a Christian, even if I have never met you before and our homes are a thousand miles apart, you are my Brother and I love you! But me and this young lady, we've known each other for years, live in the same city, attend the same church, and worship the same God in the same way...but we let some imagined offence cut off all love and kinship between us. We let this root of bitterness spread to encroach on other relationships. We call it holy, good and peaceful.

What are we thinking?

Christ was very clear about what we as Christians were to do if we ever had a serious disagreement with each other: forgive.  It's been laid out in the song we've sung two weeks in a row: as Christians, we are forgiven so that we can forgive each other.

Christ laid it out even more plainly in Matthew 18:21-35. When Peter, thinking himself very patient and forgiving asked if 7 was the upper limit for how many times he should forgive his brother for the same offence, Christ didn't give him a number to use. Instead,He put things is perspective by telling the story of a man who, having just been forgiven a debt of roughly $6 billion in today's currency, goes out and strangles a guy who owes him the approximate cost of a used car ($12,000). All of us as Christians stand forgiven before Christ of an incalculable weight of sin. How hypocritical of us to then turn around and beat each other up over a pale pittance of petty grudges! When we were dedicated life-long enemies of Christ, He died for us...but we can't even acknowledge each other's existence because of our petty grudge-match? When we heaped up mountains of sin to separate ourselves from God, Christ came down from heaven and gave his blood to remove the offenses and restore the fellowship between us...but we think it's okay cut all ties between each other over a handful of perceived slights?

Was this what Christ saved us for? I cannot imagine it is.