The Paramount Moral Challenge

This week I finished reading an excellent, thought-provoking book. Entitled Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn (who are husband and wife), the book examines the injustices and inequality women around the world face simply because they are women. The authors present a lot of data but illustrate their arguments particularly effectively through the personal stories they tell of women they have met in their global work. They do not concern themselves with issues like equality in sports in America or the "glass ceiling" in the western corporate world. They concern themselves with the life and death issues that women and girls in the majority of the world face, issues like being sold into sexual slavery, dying in childbirth, being killed to protect so-called family honor and having the opportunity to gain a basic education. In the introductory chapter they summarize their conviction:

We believe that in this century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality in the developing world.

After reading their book I would wholeheartedly agree with this statement. These are not simply "women's issues," as they are often regarded. They are human rights issues that should concern us all because God created women and endowed them with value just as great as men. The authors are not inherently anti-male. In fact they readily acknowledge that much of the injustice and mistreatment of women comes at the hands of other women. At the same time they point out that most of the power structures in the world have been dominated by men and therefore issues that affect women have tended to receive minor attention. Issues affecting poor women in developing countries suffer this neglect in particular. As the authors write:

Maternal health generally gets minimal attention because those who die or suffer injuries overwhelmingly start with three strikes against them: They are female, they are poor, and they are rural.

As I read this book I felt at times deeply saddened and at other times very angry that we allow these moral failures to persist. I believe that God's people should be at the forefront of this struggle for women's equality, not lagging behind. I do acknowledge, as do the authors, that believers are actively engaged in promoting women's welfare on many fronts. But I wonder if for some believers theology subtly affects their view of women, blaming them for the fall and therefore ascribing to them lesser value. Or maybe people are just not aware of the situation that women and girls in the developing world face and therefore do not realize the great need for changing that situation. Reading this book will certainly change that. Sometimes our strong support for one area, such as standing against abortion, inadvertently causes us to oppose activities that actually provide great assistance to women and in the end actually reduce the likelihood of them seeking abortions. The issues are complex, far more so than they often appear to us in our western cocoons.

Even prior to reading this book I felt a strong desire to do what we as a family can to promote the equality and empowerment of women. But I didn't have a clear idea what we could do, other than the ways we are already engaged in supporting some of the women we know here and our support of two girls through Compassion International. The authors helped me by presenting a list in the appendix of organizations that work to protect and promote women and girls. Even if I can't travel to Africa, Asia or other area, I can direct some of my giving specifically to support these organizations. Some sites even allow you to make direct contributions to specific women or projects. Two of these are kiva.org and globalgiving.org. Kiva allows you to loan money to specific women who are seeking to develop their businesses. The loans are distributed through various local organizations. In most cases the money is repaid to you after a period of time, allowing you to reinvest it in another woman or project. (Currently you receive no interest on your loan, but because it is a loan you cannot claim it as a charitable contribution.) Globalgiving allows you to donate to a wide range of projects including small business development, education and healthcare. Contributions through Globalgiving are tax-deductible in the United States.

These days we hear a lot about the need to fight against terrorism. Some have made this the most pressing issue of the century. I would agree with the authors of Half the Sky that fighting for the education, health and equality of women is actually more pressing and will in the long run prove more effective against terrorism than dropping bombs and waging military campaigns, even if at times those too may be necessary. I hope that this book will stimulate the growth of the currently small movement to change the situation of women and girls around the world. I for one am fully behind it.

A Small, Helpful Change

A couple of weeks ago I made a change in the way I handle my e-mail. Previously I had my e-mail program set to automatically check for and send messages every 10-15 minutes. While working on something at the computer, I would see that a message would come in and, more often than not, out of curiosity I would go read it. This often led to my focus shifting from the previous task to something new. Also, because I knew that messages could come in at any time, I often stopped to check even when I was not working at my computer but engaged in something else.

For various reasons I disabled the automatic send and receive feature in the program. Now if I want to send my messages or check for new ones, I have to consciously choose to do so. I didn't actually make this change primarily for this purpose, but I have found that it has helped me focus on my work better. No longer am I distracted by incoming messages, nor do I stop and check my inbox regularly to see if something new has arrived. I perform a send/receive two or three times a day, read through what comes in and decide how to handle the new messages. Sometimes a message will force me to change my focus and deal with something urgent, but more often than not after reading my messages I can return to whatever I was previously engaged in. My interaction with my e-mail has become more focused which has in turn helped me focus better on other tasks.

This seems like a very small and sensible change. Probably most people already work this way. Since I work at home and my personal and work e-mail is the same, I find it more difficult to separate work and personal life. This small step has helped me implement a better routine. I don't feel so distracted by the false urgency of my inbox. I am better able to choose where I want to focus my attention and manage my time more effectively. So I you write to me, don't expect an immediate response!

Don't forget the salt!

The other night I prepared the mixture to make a loaf of bread in our bread machine. I usually do this late in the evening before I go to bed so that the bread will bake during the night and be hot and fresh for breakfast. I set the timer for the bake cycle and went to sleep. When I woke up in the morning I checked on the bread and saw that it had baked a nice golden brown loaf. The smell was delicious. I removed it from the mold and left it to cool on the counter for several minutes.

After taking care of some other morning tasks I returned, sliced myself a couple pieces and put them in the toaster. Once they were toasted nicely I buttered them, added some jam and took my first bite. I was looking forward to the nice flavor of the fresh bread and jam, but the minute I bit into the bread I realized that something was not right. The bread was beautiful, but flavorless. It didn't take long to ascertain the problem. I mentally reviewed my preparation process from the previous evening and realized that I had forgotten to add the salt. The recipe calls for 3 1/2 cups of flour and only two teaspoons of salt, along with several other ingredients. You would think that in that much flour a couple teaspoons of salt wouldn't make that much difference, but it does. The bread that I baked looked nice but without the salt it lacked flavour. It is edible, but not enjoyable. It certainly wouldn't convince anyone to eat bread who had never tried it before.

Jesus compared us to salt. He said that we are the salt of the earth. Our salt is part of what draws unbelievers to his kingdom. Leave the salt out and the flavour will be ruined. No one will want to enjoy the "loaf" of his kingdom. As I think about this in terms of my own life, it reminds me that I can do lots of good things in this world and provide some benefit. But if I am not in relationship with my Saviour, I will lose my saltiness and became bland and flavourless. People will not be drawn to him through me simply because I do good things. They will be drawn because they "taste" the flavour of Christ in me. Without that salt, my life loses its purpose. Jesus spoke to this when he asked what use salt is that has lost its saltiness. It's not good for anything.

In a similar way if our churches simply become social gatherings where we come together to hear some good words, enjoy some coffee and fellowship and maybe do a few good things as a community, what value does it have? If Christ is not the center of our lives as communities of believers, then our churches are not really any different from any other community group. They may do some good, but they aren't really drawing people to the kingdom.

Next time I make bread, I'll make sure I add the salt. At the same time, I want to make sure I'm maintaining my saltiness by keeping Christ as my center.

Struggling to Worship

I have been struggling for the past couple months with the issue of worship; specifically with the issue of Sunday morning worship. I have reached a point where I don't look forward to our Sunday morning gathering most of the time and I attend primarily out of a sense of obligation or duty. I know I should go, so I do. But my heart is most often not focused and my spirit not attuned to what God might want to say through the music or the message. I recognize that this is not a good situation to be in, but I'm struggling with how to change myself and/or my situation.

Our current worship community consists of six families. All of the families have children, ranging in age from just a few months to my teenage daughter. My son and daughter are the oldest two children in the group. There are no other children in their age range, the closest one being our friend's 8-year-old daughter. So my children don't enjoy coming to worship because they really have no one to relate to. They are too old for a lesson oriented to the rest of the children, but they are not yet willing (and maybe not fully ready) to participate in an adult-oriented lesson. So in addition to my own struggle with not wanting to attend, I struggle with having two children who don't want to attend. I make them go, but I feel rather hypocritical in doing so, since I most often don't want to go myself.

In the past we have followed a format where we gathered for a time of prayer and singing, after which someone would go with the children into a different room for a lesson while the remaining adults would stay together for an adult-oriented lesson. Since the beginning of the year we have adopted a format where the children and adults stay together for the majority of the time, with the lesson being taught to include both children and adults. Lately we've modified this a bit to have a lesson for both, followed by some time when the adults can consider the lesson separately and more in-depth. This has helped, but still much of our worship time is filled with the distraction of young children who are too energetic to sit still and too young to really focus on a lesson. I find this really distracts my attention from listening as well. I feel like I should welcome the presence of the children as a gift from God, but in reality I just see them as a disruption.

I recognize that much of the issue lies within me. I have the choice of how I will respond to the situation. I have the ability to try to listen to God amidst these distractions. Perhaps I am simply not wanting to hear from God. At the same time, I would like to find a worship environment in which I and my children could engage with eagerness and desire. I would like to find a group where my children are at home because they have other children their age. Unfortunately there is no such group available to us here. This problem exists not only in our worship community but in our social life as a whole.

I know that ultimately we do not gather for worship for the sake of what we can gain from it. I realize that worship is finally and most importantly about God and not about me. But I also see that the situation in which we come to worship can and does impact our ability to turn our hearts to God in worship. I'm really struggling with this right now. I don't know what the solution will be.

Disabused

When my children were young, I swore that when they became teenagers we would not face the typical challenges parents and teenagers face. I naively believed that if I just laid the right foundation in the early years, the teen years would be smooth sailing. Foolish pride.

I would still argue that laying a good foundation in the early years will make a huge difference in the teen years. But now that I have my first teenager, I see how simplistic I was to believe that all the challenges of teenagers could be avoided by good parenting in early life. Of course, I must also admit that I could not write the book on parenting in those years. I certainly made my share of mistakes and failed more than once as a father. But I don't think I was a complete and total failure.

Now, several months into my first year parenting a teenager, I understand much better that teens really are different creatures. You have to interact with them differently. The little girl I knew is becoming someone new. It is not an easy process for her or for me. But it is a necessary process. She must grow and mature. Occasionally I still hear of parents who claim their teens are practically perfect and that their relationship with their teen is ideal and blissful. I confess that I am skeptical. I think that some parents have better relationships with their teen than others and that there are certain things we can do as parents to enhance that relationship. But I also believe that there is something in the process of a child beginning to establish his or her independent identity that creates an inherent tension and struggle between parent and child. This underlies the agony of the teen years. Of course I still have a lot to learn, since I'm only several months into this period. But my illusions of coasting blissfully through this time have certainly been shattered--and for the better.

Having said all that, I must also add that I really have much to be thankful in my teen and pre-teen. Yes, they have their weaknesses and sometimes they absolutely make me crazy. Some days I want nothing more than to disown them. But in my more rational, calm moments I realize that I could have much worse children. I don't worry about them getting involved in drugs or other activities that would seriously harm their lives. I don't spend my nights wondering where they are or what they are doing. They still enjoy spending time with me and my wife--at least occasionally! I do worry about them, but at the same time my worries are not without hope and the confident belief that their lives are in God's hands. This doesn't absolve me of my parental responsibilities, but it does give me a peace when I see my own failures and imperfections as a parent.

No, these teenage years will not be trouble-free. But I don't think they have to be completely horrible either. They will be messy, just like the rest of life. I hope and pray I can enjoy the journey, trusting in my God to bring us all through stronger, wiser and closer to one another and to him.

Dishes and God's Grace

Our children share the responsibility of washing the dishes in our house. They alternate days, because they found it too difficult to work together. They don’t like this chore and complain about it regularly. Yesterday was Teresa’s day and after much footdragging she finally went to the kitchen and did them just before Sharilyn began preparing dinner. As she worked on dinner, she needed several items that Teresa had just washed. But when she pulled them from the drying rack, she found that they were not really clean. We discussed how to deal with this. At times we have made the children rewash individual items that they didn’t wash properly. This time we decided that she should have a second day of washing dishes to help her recognize the importance of doing the job well. This morning when I put away the rest of the dishes though, I didn’t find any other poorly-washed specimens, so it seems that her failure was limited to a few specific items that are harder to wash.

This afternoon while enjoying a cup of tea in the gentle afternoon sunshine that streamed into our kitchen, I began to consider washing up some of the dishes myself. Normally washing dishes is not my job, but occasionally I will do it voluntarily as an act of kindness and to demonstrate servanthood to my children. They have a difficult time with the thought of doing any unpleasant task they are not obligated to do. So I hope by occasionally stepping in and relieving one of them of a required task, they will see an example and choose to emulate it. So far this hasn’t been highly successful.

As I contemplated whether to wash dishes for my daughter, I began to wonder whether I would be sending the right message today. After all, she was supposed to do them to help her learn to do a job correctly. Would my doing them show her gracious servanthood, or would it show her only that she could get away with being unthorough? I thought about the fact that she probably wouldn’t even receive my labor with thankfulness, because she rarely says thanks for any favor we do for her. Because of this I started to lean against doing anything for her. But then God interrupted my thoughts. He asked me to think about this in light of his love and grace. Does he stop showing grace to us simply because we fail to thank him for it? Does he stop loving us because we don’t respond the way we ought? Thankfully he doesn’t!

Considering this question further I realized that one of the main reasons we fail to receive grace as grace, be it from God or from others, is that we believe in our hearts that we deserve it. I operate as if I believe God must treat me with love and kindness, so when he doesn’t I’m put out and when he does I take it for granted. I see the same thing in my daughter. She doesn’t respond with thanksgiving to my acts of kindness toward her because she feels she deserves them anyway. She may not express appreciation for me washing the dishes in her place because she feels it was unfair for her to have to do them in the first place. Once again I see my relationship with God reflected in my relationship with my children.

I understood that my decision to wash or not wash should not be dependent on the likely response of my daughter. But I still didn’t have an answer to my original question concerning the balance between showing servanthood and teaching responsibility. I don’t know that one can make a hard and fast rule about this. I think it must depend on how the Spirit leads in each situation. Some parenting methods overemphasize discipline to the detriment of demonstrating loving service, while other methods overemphasize grace to the point of encouraging irresponsibility. I want to find a balance that displays both in healthy, proper measure. In the end I decided to wash part of the pile of waiting dishes. Our drying rack cannot hold that many dishes anyway, so to attempt to do them all would have meant stacking them in unwieldy towers on the drying rack. I left the items that Sharilyn had found unacceptable yesterday, so Teresa will still need to follow through on her responsibility to do those well. But maybe she will also see an example of undeserved kindness that will enter her mind and heart and eventually bear fruit. She hasn’t discovered my work yet, so her response remains to be seen.

Some Thoughts on Christmas Carols

Warning, this post may offend your Christmas sensibilities!

Among the Christmas songs we've been playing in our house since Thanksgiving, one of them caught my particular attention. The song, recorded by Randy Travis, presents a rather different picture than what we have come to imagine of that night in Bethlehem:

It was not a silent night

There was blood on the ground

You could hear a woman crying

In the alleyway that night

On the streets of David's town

And the stable was not clean

And the cobblestones were cold

And little Mary full of grace

with tears upon her face

had no mother's hand to hold

It was a labor of pain

It was a cold sky above

But for the girl on the ground in the dark

with every beat of her beautiful heart

it was a labor of love.

Noble Joseph by her side

calloused hands and weary eyes

No midwives to be found

on the streets of David's town

in the middle of the night

so he held her and he prayed

shafts of moonlight on his face

but the baby in her womb

he was the maker of the moon

he was the author of the faith

that can make the mountains move

I like this song because I think it more accurately reflects the events of that night. While the song "Silent Night" has become beloved by many, I seriously question whether that night was in fact so silent and whether all was really calm and bright. And despite what another favorite song tells us, did the newborn baby Jesus really not cry? Maybe, but I suspect he behaved much like any other baby, complete with crying and all.

I'm not saying we shouldn't sing all these other classic Christmas songs. I just think that in singing them we must remember that they skew our view of the Christmas event. God entered the world in the most unexpected of ways. The birth of Jesus was full of scandal (a child conceived out of wedlock--do we forget that part, or have we become numbed to the cultural shame this would have brought?) and took place in the most humble of circumstances. We want to picture the scene in such heavenly terms, probably because we have a hard time imagining God coming to earth among such dirty, ordinary conditions. The Scriptures don't give us much detail concerning the process of the birth, but I think it probably wasn't any different than any other human birth. While remaining God he became a complete human and dealt with the realities of ordinary human life. I don't think that God arranged for his birth to be a uniquely beautiful, blissful event. He didn't book him a room at the local birthing center or the Bethlehem regional hospital. Instead he chose to enter the world through the ordinary labor pains of a young woman in a dirty stable full of farm animals. And he did this because he wanted to experience our reality and identify himself with us. Yes, it was a unique event, unparalleled in the history of humanity. It was a divine moment. But it was also a very human moment. This is the amazing reality about Jesus that we must always keep in proper tension: that he was both fully God AND fully human.

I for one find it difficult to sing "Silent Night" wholeheartedly anymore. (I told you I might offend your Christmas sensibilities.) While a lovely song in its own way, I just don't find it to capture adequately the significance of the Christmas event. Of all the Christmas songs that have been written over the centuries, I find it interesting that some of the most popular present the most idyllic view of Jesus' birth. It's as if we feel a need to picture it this way. But I think we do well to stop and reflect on the fact that God's entry into our world came in the most radically humble of conditions. Otherwise we risk creating a Jesus who wasn't really human like we are.