A Rant About the Church on Marriage and Divorce, Etc.

Maybe I'm bitter - but I can't stop thinking about this, the bill of goods we've been sold as women. I just finished reading Vinegar Hill and the priest describes to the young woman about to be married her role as the "hearth" and the "home". What if the hearth has no one to stoke the fires? What if the home is more of a house, empty and fractured? What then?
I have been told throughout the years by well-meaning (and much loved) Christian friends that they couldn't condone divorce. They would support me through a separation - hold my hand, help me financially, even give the kids and I a place to live - but that divorce was never going to be an option. I have been in circles before where women who were divorced were whispered about when they left the room, tongue in cheek as one person would lean over and say, "this is her second marriage". Like I needed to know, be warned.
I am in a crisis so perhaps I will look back on this years later and come down on a completely different side of the issue - but for right now I am really struggling. Please filter whatever you read here through that fact. Right now I am angry. The "church" as an institution that would hold to this belief that I am less of a woman if I divorce my husband, that even through all of the hell I've lived and how I've tried to love in spite of it, I have failed. That I am a failure.
God hates divorce. It is true - but I know He sees what my kids and I have endured, and hates it as well.

Hopping Mad Mama

I picked Kendra up from work today around 5. She had texted me saying that it was time to pick her up, and that it was the worst day ever in the history of waitressing. When I picked her up, she proceeded to tell me about the busy-ness of her day, and the pressure she was under, and with a sigh said, "I hate working on Sundays!" Oh my. I've heard this before.
Kendra said that people flooded into the restaurant after church, hungry and demanding. She was also feeling bad with some pretty severe cramps and said she was so busy she didn't have a chance to stop and take anything for it. At one point, she had half a dozen full tables going, and a woman at one of her tables had asked for coffee that she hadn't had a chance to get, and she grabbed my daughter by the arm and said, "Get my coffee. Go get it RIGHT NOW!" Excuse me? I have had all kinds of bad service at restaurants, and I have never felt that it would be appropriate to physically get the attention of my waiter or waitress.
Here's the thing - that "Sunday crowd" often cause the biggest rush of the week. They are hungry and often demanding. They expect magic from the people who are working hard to take care of all of the customers. They are often even the lowest tippers. I even heard a story once of a preacher who would leave a tract as a tip. What message did this leave the waitress who was working hard to earn a living? If you feel it necessary to leave a tract, leave it with a tip, not instead of a tip. People that work in service positions work hard and make a meager income.
Here is a repeat plea - those of you calling yourself by the name of Christ, please remember Who you represent. And if you touch my daughter again, you can deal with me!

"Christian" or "Secular"

I found myself in a mini-discussion with someone last night wherein they were making a judgmental statement about another woman who listened to secular music. It led me to dust off my copy of Addicted to Mediocrity where Franky Schaeffer writes:

In the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, something happened within the church which constitutes the first theological point I mentioned. A strange truncated unscriptural view of spirituality grew up. First spirituality was seen as something separate from the rest of real life. It was above ordinary things; it was cut off and not part of the eerday working out of our lives. Spirituality became something religious and had a great deal less to do with truth, daily life, applying Christian principles through that life. It became something in itself, both the means to an end and the end in itself. Spirituality became a thing separated from the rest of life. Thus, certain things increasingly were regarded as spiritual and other things as secular.
The true division in the Christian life between one group of activities in life and another is that line we call sin. Those things which are specifically sinful are indeed cut off and separate from the rest of life for Christians and to be avoided, but everything else comes under the heading of our Christian life, if it is to be a true and full Christian life in the real sense. Either Christ has redeemed the whole man, including every part of him (except those things that are sinful), or he has redeemed none of them. Either our whole life comes under the Lordship of Christ or no part can effectively come under it.

The obvious question that follows is - what is sin? Likely some have already decided what that is, compartmentalize all of their lives in these categories of Christian and secular and condemn at least in their hearts anyone coloring outside the lines on these issues. Moral relativism aside, what is sin for me may not be for someone else, and each of these things are discovered in the inner workings of a relationship with Father. If you're scratching your head wondering what I'm getting at, think of meat sacrificed to idols and how some could eat it with a clean conscience and others because of exposure, could not. I also think of my children and how other children have "rules" that their parents have set for them that we do not - let's use a curfew for example. If one child is out at 1 am but his curfew was midnight - this could be a sin of disobedience to his parents, but for my child who does not have a specific curfew, and stays out as late as we discuss and feel comfortable with in any given situation, it is not. (Feel free to blow holes all through this example but it is the best one I have at present.)
The author goes on:

Either God is the Creator of the whole man, the whole universe, and all of reality and existence or he is the Creator of none of it. If God is only the Creator of some divided platonic existence which leads to a tension between the body and soul, the real world and the spiritual world, if God is only the Creator of some spiritual little experiential "praise-the-Lord" reality, the he is not much of a God. Indeed, he is not I AM at all. If our Christian lives are allowed to become something spiritual, and religious as opposed to something real, daily, applicable, understandable, beautiful, verifiable, balanced, sensible, and above all united, whole if indeed our Christianity is allowed to become this waffling spiritual goo that nineteenth-century platonic Christianity became, then Christianity as truth disappears and instead we only have a system of vague experiential religious platitudes in its place. This indeed is what happened.
Thus people's lives became compartmentalized. This thing was spiritual, but that was not. And unfortunately in terms of this book, we see that the arts, creativity, enjoyment of beauty, even enjoyment of God's beauty, even an enjoyment of God's Word in the Bible for itself, were set aside. The arts were regarded as unspiritual, unfit and secondary to those high and spiritual goals now set forth for Christians to achieve.

Compartmentalized. We can't even see that all music, art, writing has its root in the Creator that created each of us in His image - to create. Not all that we create glorifies Him, but much does that would not pass through the "Christian" filter. The front cover of this book exemplifies this so well - we have a man in painter's overalls with a Christian fish symbol on his back pocket. He is using a paint roller to paint over the Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam masterpiece.
I won't quote the whole book here, but let me wrap up with this:

The second occurrence, which I called secular, took place during the same historical period. Something happened in the secular world which then deeply affected and infiltrated the Christian church. Following the Darwinian theory of evolution (which led to the concept of the survival of the fittest and the onward, inexorable and merciless march of society, and to nineteenth century industrial utilitarianism), people began to look at themselves and the world around them in purely utilitarian terms. So the tree which once had value, not least of which was its beauty, its shimmering leaves, the dappled shades it cast upon the mossy ground beneath, now only had value because of how many cubic feet of paper could be produced from it. So even man was measured by what he could achieve, produce, earn, contribute and so on. Not only that, all man's attributes, talents and endeavors had to be justified in some utilitarian way. No longer was it good enough to say that some human attribute was a God-given gift which should be freely enjoyed and given. now those gifts had to translate themselves into utilitarian usefulness. Either they had to contribute monetarily or in some other way to the society. They had to become propaganda tools, advertising tools or monetary earning tools, to be considered useful and therefore tolerated by the church.
The idea that individuals are worth something in themselves, because they were created in the image of God, whatever they could contribute or not contribute was abandoned. The same is true with regard to individual talents.
Unfortunately, the church itself was infiltrated by that view. The view was translated into religious terms. Now everything anyone did had to measure up somehow in utilitarian terms in the church. It had to be useful to the onward march of the church. It had to help in its efforts, in its programs, its church growth emphasis week or whatever.
This would be bad enough by itself. To make it worse, what everything had to measure up to as being useful toward was this false view of spirituality, this shriveled, truncated, narrow view which selected a few things arbitrarily and called them the Christian life, the walk with the Lord, my Christian growth, witnessing or whatever. That this was all that remained of the full Christian life we were redeemed to and that these sad standards were used to measure all Christian endeavor for its utilitarian usefulness to the church left many things in very deep water.
The arts were particularly and bitterly affected, first relegated to the basement of the church as unspiritual and now, whenever they were allowed to see the light of day, demanded to make some useful contribution to that church.

I don't have to tell you that I love this book. It is likely pretty obvious. I am ready to reread it. If you want the cliffnotes - it is all God's world. There are no compartments. Some of what we do glorifies Him and some of it doesn't. It doesn't make any of it any less spiritual. But I don't think we have to be afraid that we are always sinning or always disappointing him if we don't have an evangelistic message to all that we read, if we don't throw His name into every song, or if we paint a picture that isn't of the cross. All of our lives are stories, songs and paintings that are all about Him.

"Christian Women" and CHRISTIAN Women

The topic of "Christian Women" has been a recurrent theme of late on the blogs that I frequent, or stalk as that might be. I comment often, but sometimes what I read just makes me think and I have to ruminate on it a little while.
First, my thoughts on the subject are that this is a category which is not all inclusive. There are "Christian Women" and there are Christian women. What I refer to here is the women who come to church on Sunday morning, and although they are the mother of toddlers, every hair is in place, perfect Mary-Kay make-up, and their clothes aren't mussed. In their homes, their furniture looks rarely sat upon, and we know that nobody walked on the carpet, at least not wearing shoes. Every duck is in a row. Their bills are paid on time, their cars never smell of french-fries, and their fingernails are always well manicured.
At first glance you might be envious. You might even wish you were her. But as you get a little closer, you realize that you must be cautious. This is a desperate person, and if you do anything human that might interfere with her precise system of control, her acute maintenance of her surroundings, her sense of order, be it emotionally, physically, mentally or spiritually, she.will.tear.you.up.
And let's face it, getting your life tangled up with other people is messy. People do things you don't expect, say things you aren't sure how to react to, their children are allowed to do things that shock you, and people they love die, their husbands leave them, their children are sick at totally inconvenient times. Sometimes based on where they have come from in life they have a completely different perspective, one that isn't all neat and tidy, and does not fit in a nice little box, easily opened and examined at your convenience. I have found more times than not, it is totally worth the messy tangle it requires to get to know them a little better. Cover the situation with compassion and grace, extend with open arms the love they deserve, right where they are, without trying to change them.
Years ago at a homeschool mom's meeting, I sat in a circle with a mixture of familiar "Christian Women" and Christian women and a new lady. We were planning activities for our kiddies for the month of October and the conversation turned as it always inevitably does to the evils of Halloween. The new lady spoke up enthusiastically, and said, "I love Halloween. I like to dress up as death."
Good thing, I thought cause you just put a few nails in your coffin with this crowd.
I liked her instantly.

Political Ramblings

I have been hesitant to post these thoughts, as they are not from the flow of popular opinion in what I am certain is the majority of my blog audience. Homeschoolers tend to be predominately heavy on the evangelical right of the political spectrum. I have always tended to lean in that direction myself.
I believe in the sanctity of life and marriage. I have just started to wonder if we can make laws that govern morality, and what great moral ground we gain by making laws that then drive people into back alleys and dark closets.
I know....all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
Are we really doing something when we go to the polls with our vision narrowed to these two items as our primary focus? Is it possible that the thing we are to do as good men is to impact the lives of those whose paths we cross in our daily comings and goings? Can laws really touch the heart and change the climate for good, or are we duplicating the outward cleanliness of the Pharisees, and having the depth of who we are as a culture unaffected?
When our family moved a year and a half ago to southeast Texas, I was introduced to the legalistic strivings of the Christian community to ban the sale of alcohol, and it caused me to dig deeper and think harder about such things, and of what importance they are to God. I have come to understand that God cares about the individual, and that legislation can never replace relationship which was His ultimate plan for impacting the world. (The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.) I may obey the letter of the law, but it cannot make me love an unwanted child growing in my womb, or restrain myself with sexual integrity.
Sometimes my head starts to spin, when I think of those who awaited Jesus to take His throne as an earthly King and their disappointment when they realized this was never His intention. I often feel like we are caught in that same chasm.
I have no political agenda, or easy answers, nor am I asking for any. I am just putting these thoughts out there into cyberspace. I am eagerly anticipating your (respectful) thoughts.