A Man after God's Own Heart

I am loving the new pope! As a lifelong protestant, I’ve never been all that aware of the pope or the business of the Catholic church. But with the choice of Pope Francis, they’ve got my attention.

The pictures of the Pope on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday were shocking. A pope—a 76-year-old pope, no less—lying prostrate on an alter to worship Christ? The world’s most recognized religious man kneeling before a group of prisoners, washing and kissing their dirty feet? It’s outrageous! How beautifully, perfectly outrageous.

Before the feet-washing pictures began screaming from the newspapers, I didn’t even know that was a common Holy Week practice among popes. I learned that traditionally, the pope has washed the feet of 12 of his bishops, men dressed in elaborate, flowing robes of honor, in Rome’s grand St. John Lateran Basilica, as a remembrance of one of Jesus’ most famous earthly acts. But Pope Francis does not appear to be overly concerned with following tradition. He washed feet all right, but they were not clean, honorable feet. They were the feet of the poor, the prisoner, the rejected, the outcast—even the Muslim.

“This is a symbol, it is a sign—washing your feet means I am at your service,” Pope Francis told them. This same man was washing feet long before the rest of the world cared. As the archbishop of Buenos Aires, he washed feet in jails, hospitals, and hospices. Newspapers and blogs attest to the fact that his attention has always been turned to the poorest and most marginalized of society. He says he wants the church to be for the poor. What a concept!

The pope’s lifestyle indicates that these are more than just headline-making words. In Buenos Aires, he chose to live in an apartment instead of the palace that was provided for him. He cooked his own meals and used public transportation. He has eschewed the elaborate papal robes. Upon his first public introduction to the world as pope, he refused to be elevated on a platform above the other church leaders, saying simply, “I’ll stay down here.”

I have to wonder if the Catholic church knew what they were getting into with this man. If they knew that he would choose for himself the name Francis, after St. Francis of Assisi, who sought not to abolish poverty but to make it holy. If they knew he would choose simplicity over ceremony and prisoners over priests. Maybe they didn’t know, but surely God did, and I have to think He is very pleased. The Bible calls King David a man after God’s own heart. From what I’ve seen so far of Pope Francis, I think he may be called that, as well. 

Truth and Love

I want to love the way Jesus loved. I want to pull the planks out of my own eye before I look at the specks in other people. I don’t want to cast judgment or throw stones. But I also want to be on the side of truth. People, and this crazy culture we live in, make that a tricky balance.

A family in our city is suing their school district for not allowing their transgender child—a boy, with male anatomy—to use the girls’ restroom. The child is six. SIX!! According to the newspaper article I read, he—and I will continue to call him a he because that’s what simple biology says he is, no matter that he wears dresses and hairbows—started “expressing himself as a girl” at 18 months. I remember 18-month-olds. Mine expressed themselves by poking Cheerios up their noses and drawing on the walls with my lipstick. They also threw fits, hit other kids, pulled the dog’s tail, and stole candy from Walgreens. Like most every parent, instead of deciding this is who my child was—a thief, a bully, an animal torturer, or a psychopath—my husband and I worked hard to steer their behavior in other directions. We didn’t let them choose their clothes, their friends, their food, their religion, or their political affiliation at 18 months.

But gender is a whole other issue today. It’s close-minded, bigoted, ignorant, and just plain mean to question someone’s gender confusion today. Probably the very term “gender confusion” just marked me as an uniformed, bullying religious zealot.

I don’t know what it’s like to raise a boy who wants to wear dresses and play with Barbies. I’m all too familiar with raising girls who only want to wear “boy shorts” and play in the dirt, but I realize that is different. I don’t personally know people dealing with gender confusion in young children, and I don’t know for sure what I would do under those circumstances. I do feel compassion, and I hope that if I ever meet someone in that situation, I’ll be a loving friend. I also think the parenting issue looks different when the child is a teenager, capable of making his or her own choices.

But when do we rise up and say, “An 18-month-old with a penis is a boy, and he should be treated as such”? What about a 6-year-old? Is it the best use of his parents’ efforts to be fighting for access to the girls’ bathroom? Are they doing all they can for this child by suing the school—a school which has, by the way, offered him his own private bathroom in the nurse’s office any time he needs it? When do we rise up and say little girls shouldn’t be bullied by lawsuits into sharing school restrooms with boys?

Truth and love. They can and should coexist. To love like Jesus loved, we don’t have to compromise or deny truth. The Bible tells us, “Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church” (Ephesians 4:15). That brings me peace. More than being right, more than winning a culture war, more than being politically correct, I want to grow more and more like Jesus. 

Killing My 'Self' with Paul and Lewis

You know that whole biblical idea of dying to self? That line Paul writes in Philippians 1:21, “to live is Christ, to die is gain”? I’ve always struggled with that. Is it OK to admit that I kind of like myself? Self-preservation is hard wired into me, and the idea of “killing” that self has always seemed confusing and unattainable to me. I’ve sort of figured out that it means not serving my selfishness, putting others ahead of myself, and following the Golden Rule, but those things are definitely not the “natural” me.

Who is my true self, anyway? Am I trying to find it or will it to die? What about all those people who are on a quest to “find themselves”? Is that a noble pursuit? And what are they going to do once they find themselves?  

C.S. Lewis has some revealing thoughts on such things. They come at the very end of Mere Christianity. I’ve written before about my pathetic attempt, at age 19, to read this book. I gave up about five pages in, convinced all the Lewis fanfare was a bit over the top and it just wasn’t for me. It was tempting to think, when I recently picked up the book again, that C.S. Lewis had really come a long way. “He’s so much more accessible now. His writing has really improved,” I thought for a second. But of course it’s not the writer who changed but the reader. Thank God that it’s me who has come a long way!

Hear what Lewis has to say about dying to self.  

The more we get what we now call ‘ourselves' out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become.

The more I resist Him and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and natural desires. [I don’t know about you, but there’s a lot about my heredity and upbringing that I’m happy to “kill.”]

What I so proudly call ‘Myself’ becomes merely the meeting place for trains of events which I never started and which I cannot stop. What I call ‘My wishes’ become merely the desires thrown up by my physical organism or pumped into me by other men’s thoughts. . . . I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a person as I like to believe: most of what I call ‘me’ can be very easily explained. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.

Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most 'natural' men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike are all the great tyrants and conquerers; how gloriously different are the saints. [I like that a lot.]

Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in. 

That last part is hard to accept. Most people won’t buy it. We kinda like ourselves. But the longer we spend really getting to know ourselves, the deeper we understand who we are, the more honest we have to be about what’s inside. There’s some good, for sure, but there’s also loneliness, hatred, despair, and decay. That’s what I am happy, eager, grateful, to kill. And when I do, I am filled with the wholeness—the love, hope, and fullness of joy—of Christ. To live is Christ, to die is gain. Yeah, Paul, I get it. 

Small Investment, Big Pay Off

Around this time last year I did something I’ve never done before. I tracked down a prisoner and wrote her a letter. I had followed her story in the local paper for months. She was a veteran and a very young single mom who, in a moment of stupid, selfish neglect, accidentally killed one of her babies. Normally, I would read a story like this, feel sick, and be glad she was getting what she deserved, which was a whole lot of jail time. Instead, all I felt was sympathy and compassion.

It reminded me of all the stupid, selfish things I’ve done as a mother. I can’t remember ever jeopardizing my kids’ lives, but I’ve certainly allowed some things that could have turned out badly while I sat with my back turned at the computer or hid out in a locked bathroom for five minutes of alone time. All I could think was, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Yet reading the online comments about this woman was like attending a modern-day stoning. And here critical, judgmental me had no stone to throw. Weird.  

I thought about writing to her dozens of times, but I never got around to it. It seemed like too much work to track her down, and besides, what would I say? But as the months went on, I felt the prompting to write her getting stronger and stronger, until I knew I needed to at least try. So early last February, I used my remedial internet skills to see what I could find. I landed on the Department of Corrections site, only to learn that I didn’t have enough information to get beyond the first step. I tried a few times, but no luck. Days passed. I tried again. Nothing. I decided to forget about it, but the nagging thought continued. In mid-February, I tried again, and this time, all sorts of information popped up, things like her middle name, her prisoner number, her location, and the history of her transfers to different facilities. I sort of felt like I was invading her privacy. Then I saw her birthdate. It was February 29, 1988. She was a leap-year baby, and it just so happened she would be celebrating her “sixth” birthday in a few weeks. (As my friend Nate says, “Oh, God, you have fun with your kids.”) Now I knew what I would write.  

Side note: You don’t realize how singularly minded birthday cards are (“Whoop it up!” “Party all night!” “Eat more cake!”) until you’re trying to find one for someone in prison. I finally landed on a “thinking of you” card.

My mom, who knows about such things, told me I couldn’t send anything in the letter. If I sent pictures or stamps or even a bookmark, it would probably be confiscated by the prison guards. She also warned me that the letter may not reach her at all. Using an address I was only about 50 percent sure of, the kids and I prayed over the birthday card and dropped it in the mail about 10 days before the birthday.

Weeks passed, and I didn’t give the letter another thought. I’d given it a shot, and I was done. But actually, I wasn’t done at all. In fact, I’d just begun, because she wrote back. I’m not a terribly emotional person, but when I read her response—when I read that my card had arrived on her real leap-day birthday, and that it was the only one she had received—I crumbled into the fetal position on my dirty Shome carpet. Sobbing, I read how much my words had encouraged her, how they’d given her hope, how they showed her God’s love in a real and powerful way. She said she was thankful to have me as a friend. A friend!

Never have I seen so clearly how such a small, seemingly insignificant act of obedience could reap such monumental blessings.

We have written back and forth for the past year. My letters are short. I never say anything profound. Sometimes I share a verse I’ve recently read, or I just ask her how she’s doing. No matter how lame the words seem to me, every time she writes back she tells me how thankful she is, how blessed she is to have me as her friend. To me, a friend is someone you eat dinner with or have over to your house. To her, a friend is someone who writes a letter every once in a while and tells her that she can get through this. Amazing.

Amazing that we have a God who can turn our paltry little offerings into more than we could ever imagine.    

What the Bible Isn't

Here’s a confession: I don’t really read other people’s blogs. There are a million good ones out there that would stretch me and entertain me, I’m sure, but searching them out seems counterproductive to my goal of spending less time online. So it’s with some hesitation that I’ve let someone’s blog consistently creep into my screen time. Hers is a challenging voice, one that’s got me thinking on a lot of different fronts.

Her name is Rachel Held Evans, and she’s written a recent bestseller called A Year of Biblical Womanhood. I first encountered Rachel’s writing just after the election in a post called “The Real Evangelical Disaster.” Her name popped up again after the shooting in Sandy Hook. And if those weren’t thought-provoking enough, she wrote a piece called “Do Christians Idolize Virginity?” This woman is unafraid to take on anything. While I don’t agree with everything she writes, I’m captivated by her style and challenged by her thoughts. In other words, I wasn’t willing to spend fifteen bucks on her book, but I’d check it out from the library.

The Biblical Womanhood book is an experiment in living out some of the commands in scripture that pertain to women. These include internal things like cultivating a more gentle and modest spirit as well as extreme things—which have gotten all the press—such as calling her husband “Master” for a month and camping out in a tent during her period. Critics have called the book heretical and a mockery. I can see how those labels come to mind, along with gimmicky and silly. But beyond the labels, I found the story of a sincere woman learning more about her Christian faith, about the way other people practice that faith, and about the Bible that she dearly loves. Of everything I’ve read from Rachel, her words on her new-found respect, awe, and appreciation for God’s Word are the most meaningful to me. They encourage me to stop feeling guilty or stupid for not understanding so much of the Bible and to think twice before casually using the word “biblical.”  

The Bible isn’t an answer book. It isn’t a self-help manual. It isn’t a flat, perspicuous list of rules and regulations that we can interpret objectively and apply unilaterally to our lives. The Bible is a sacred collection of letters and laws, poetry and proverbs, philosophy and prophecies, written and assembled over thousands of years in cultures and contexts very different from our own, that tells the complex, ever-unfolding story of God’s interaction with humanity.

When we turn the Bible into an adjective and stick it in front of another loaded word (like manhood, womanhood, politics, economics, marriage, and even equality), we tend to ignore or downplay the parts of the Bible that don’t fit our tastes. In an attempt to simplify, we try to force the Bible’s cacophony of voices into a single tone, to turn a complicated and at times troubling holy text into a list of bullet points we can put in a manifesto or creed. More often than not, we end up more committed to what we want the Bible to say than what it actually says. . . .

If you are looking for Bible verses with which to support slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to abolish slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to oppress women, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to liberate and honor women, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to wage war, you will find them. If you are looking for reasons to promote peace, you will find them. If you are looking for an outdated and irrelevant ancient text, you will find it. If you are looking for truth, believe me, you will find it.

Cyberbullying and Parental Acquiescence

Look out. The soapbox has been pulled out of the closet, and I’m about to hop on.

A series of articles in my local newspaper today has got me all riled up. The topic was cyberbullying. The point was that this is the new issue in schools today, and administrators and law enforcement officials are struggling to keep up with it.

And here I thought it was the job of school administrators to educate children and police officers to track down criminals. But who does that leave to parent our children?

Oh, yeah. Parents. The ones who bought the phones and computers in the first place. The ones who pay the monthly fees. The ones who are supposed to be in charge. The ones responsible for teaching respect and kindness and that all actions have consequences.

My local newspaper did feature one of these parents in a sidebar article. Finally, I thought, we’re going to get to the heart of the matter. Here was a mother of four who tracks her kids’ internet use, limits their screen time, and keeps them off of Facebook and other social media sites. “I let them make other choices, so it feels very independent, but I’m watching them without them knowing,” she said. Laudable, right? Except that this woman’s children range in age from two to eight! The next line in the article states, “Such vigilance is not common.”

Seriously? Is it “vigilant” to monitor your 8-year-old’s internet use? To keep him off Facebook? Wouldn’t that fall into the category of simple “good common sense”? And isn’t that equally true for your 15-year-old? 

And what about the mother who made national headlines over Christmas when she gave her 13-year-old son a cell phone with a list of rules? I completely agree with every one of her rules but am stunned that they got so much attention. Why are rules and consequences for breaking them a novel idea? We teach our children to make good food choices, to make their beds, to not get in the car with strangers, to make their own mac and cheese, to drive moving vehicles. Why on earth wouldn’t we teach them how to appropriately use technology? And why oh why do we assume that once it’s in their hands, we’ve lost all control and there’s nothing more we can do? Why are 12-year-olds sending texts at 2 a.m. while their parents sleep? Why do I hear parents say, “Oh, I don’t know what my son’s password is; he won’t tell me”? Why do we rely on overworked, underpaid officials to police our children’s online presence instead of doing it ourselves? Someone tell me why!

Last year, my 10-year-old daughter wrote a note to a friend—a very tame note—that was confiscated by her teacher. She came home and sobbed her eyes out, horrified that her teacher had read it and terrified that it would make its way to the principal’s office. Of course it didn’t, but I let her think it might for a good long while. We talked about how she should just assume that anything she writes, draws, photographs, texts, or types WILL, in fact, be seen by her teacher, her classmates, her classmates’ parents, her own parents, the principal, the governor, and the U.S. president. Assume your words and photos will be broadcast to the world, Addison, and plan accordingly. Hard lesson, but how thankful I was for the opportunity to teach it. I’ll do it again and again and again. I don't mean to imply that I've got all the answers or I'm doing a perfect job, but at least I know I have a job and I'm taking it seriously. 

One final comment. I know a family whose three teenage daughters didn’t get cell phones until they were able to drive alone in a car, which was close to 17 years old. They got Facebook accounts about that same time, with their access limited to an hour a week, just enough time to check out what time the graduation party began and get directions to a friend’s dance recital. Were there social consequences to being so unplugged? Sure. But I’ve heard them all say it was worth it. They are mature, responsible, kind, attentive, and oh-so articulate. And if they were the victims of cyberbullying, they didn’t know about it. Because really, if a tree falls in the forest and you're not there to hear it, does it make a sound?

Lessons Learned from Less Food

Things I’ve learned after 33 days of eating less and eating wiser:

1. When you feel like something’s out of whack in your life, it probably is. If you think you’re eating too much, or thinking about food too much, you probably are.
2. I heard recently that a size 4 woman who is consumed with eating every calorie perfectly and who’s terribly upset when she misses a workout has her food priorities just as messed up as the obese person who binges all day long. I couldn’t agree more.
3. Sharing food journals—a written record of every bite that goes in your mouth in a given day—is highly motivating and leads to much more intentional eating, but it can also become an idol as easily as anything else.
4. I’m only interested in sustainable changes. I’m not a person who’s ever going to be into extreme eating, like banning whole food groups from my diet. Balance, self-control, and mature eating are what I’m after. If I lose some pounds in the process, great.
5. Amazingly, at the age of 42, I’m realizing it’s time to start eating like a grown up and not a 6-year-old. Salad can be really good. Vegetables grow on you if you eat enough of them. You really don’t need a cookie every day, even when you’re good.
6. An Andes Mint, when savored over a 15-minute period, is more fulfilling than a bowl of mint-chocolate chip ice cream wolfed down in five minutes. 
7. I am not a trash can. My kids’ toast crusts go in the trash, not in my mouth. What can be gained by eating every leftover mound of chicken enchiladas on their plates? Not the money I spent on the ingredients. Not the time I spent preparing them. Only unneeded calories. I am not a trash can.
8. Superbowls happen. Valentine’s Days happen. Kids have birthdays with cake. Spontaneous pizza parties break out. I need to be flexible. Intentional. Self-controlled. Smart. And what I am or am not eating should not be a buzzkill for everyone else.  
9. This is such a first-world problem. I’ve heard that people in third-world countries are astounded by the fact that Americans pay money, every month, to go into an air-conditioned building to burn calories. Probably they’d be equally astounded by writing down every bite of food to avoid overeating. A little perspective is a good thing.
10. No matter what I call it or how subtle I try to keep it, my kids will still tell everyone and their dog that their mom is on a diet.