Category: Culture

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Wordcraft and Warcraft

Rasmussen Reports published a poll on June 27 that got some wide reportage: apparently, 31% of Americans believe civil war is likely within the next 5 years.  But 60% said, “Nah, don’t worry about it.”  Almost that many pointed to opposition to Donald Trump’s policies as the spark to violence.  That’s interesting—not the President’s policies themselves, but opposition to.  I do have to wonder: when does overheated rhetoric become war?

The campus free-speech battles going on now are based on a premise that speech is violence: sticks, speech, and stones break my bones.  I think it’s interesting that those more sensitive to verbal violence use the most violent words: Nazi, Fascist, bigot, racist, and much worse.  In the infamous Charles Murray incident on the Middlebury campus last year, intemperate speech did lead to violence, but it wasn’t Charles Murray’s.  He didn’t speak.  They shouted him down.

The shouters do have a point, even though they misapply it: speech can be violence.  Speech can also be love, temperance, pain, incentive, construction, inspiration, peace, and war.  Words come so easily to most of us we forget where they come from and what they can do.

Where they come from is God.  What they can do it create.

It’s no mere metaphor that Genesis 1 shows a Creator who creates by speaking.  “Let there be” introduces a host of articulations that spin off untold quadrillions of particles, elements, classes, phyla, and species.  That’s him–but for us it’s not all that different.  Words are puffs of air—sounds shaped by breath and spit that ride on invisible waves to reach someone’s ear, where tiny bones and membranes convey them to nerves and synapses.  This is a common-as-dirt example of the spiritual becoming material, as it did when “Let there be light” produced energy waves.

We see the same thing happen when Jerk! or Racist pig! or much more graphic terms produce a punch in the nose.

It’s easy to destroy with words; that’s why sins of the tongue get much more coverage in the Bible than any other kind.  James 3 is only one example; you can open up the Psalms anywhere and find

The rules take counsel together, saying . .

He will speak to them in his wrath . . .

How long will you love vain words and seek after lies?

Give ear to my words O Lord

You destroy those who speak lies

For there is no truth in their mouths;

They flatter with their tongues . . .

(A random selection from Psalms 1-5)

And why does Jesus say we’ll be held accountable for every word we speak?  We act as though he didn’t really mean it.  Though if anyone would mean what he says, Jesus would.

Destructive words are easy, quick, and effective.  Constructive words are not as easy or quick, but can be just as effective.  Back to the Bible:

Your sins are forgiven.  

How great is the Father’s love, that we should be called the children of God.  And so we are!  (I John 3:1)

Those who were not my people I will call “my people.” (Hosea 1:10)

He called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. (I Peter 2:9)

Words create—on legal contracts, peace negotiations, architectural blueprints, declarations and speeches.  Families begin with them, cities rise on them, churches are sustained by them, peace returns with them, hope rises on them.

Words are always on our tongues to say, hurtful and helpful.  Enough of them can cause a shooting war; it’s happened before.  But enough of the right words can restore peace.

People are walking toward you every day; whether on the street or in your home or even in your head.  What words do you have for them?

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Big Data, Big Tyranny

In the future, people will be controlled by data accumulated by the ruling class.

Citizens will be assigned a social credit number at the age of maturity—or perhaps even at birth.  Every purchase, business transaction, and social media post will be tracked and valued according to government notions of virtue.

Actions like taking care of an elderly parent, speaking well of an official or a law, and volunteering at an approved charity, will raise an individual credit score.  Unworthy actions and attitudes will lower it. The higher the score, the greater the privilege: discounts on utilities, preferential treatment for housing or school, even a wider pool of potential marriage partners.  The lower the score—well, go low enough and you may not even be able to buy an airline ticket.

Does that sound scary to you?  Then this will sound even scarier: in China, the future is two years away.

2020 is the target year for instituting a nation-wide social credit system.  In one sense, it’s a dream come true: throughout human history, unruly citizens have been controlled by threats.  It’s not very efficient and it breeds resentment.  But if a nation’s citizens could be controlled by rewards, they would voluntarily act in the public interest, whatever the government determines the public interest to be.

The program has been test-running in selected Chinese cities.  In Rongcheng, a city on the northeastern coast with a population of almost 700k, residents have willingly embraced it.  Pictures of so-called “civic heroes” are displayed on electronic bulletin boards.  Citizens have even taken it on themselves to police each other, debiting their neighbors for “illegally spreading religion,” for instance.  Writing in the online magazine Wired last October, Rachel Botsman compared China’s social credit system to a vast rewards program or video game: “It’s gamified obedience.”

Roncheng proudly displays its “civilized families.”

I can see how this might work there; China is traditionally a much more ordered society than ours.  But how far-fetched is the possibility of a similar program here?  Private entities like Amazon, Google and Facebook already have vast amounts of data on everyone who makes a purchase, enters a search term, or posts a picture.  They’ve used the information to sell targeted advertising, and in the process have become fabulously rich and powerful.  They’ve also come under fire for abusing that power.  Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, testifying before Congress last April, said he would welcome government regulation of Facebook to curb exploitation of data.  Whether he realizes it or not, what he’s proposing is the marriage of big tech to big government, and the vastly-expanded capacity for exploitation.

Throughout history power has been the rule, freedom the exception.  The freedom promised by the “information highway” thirty years ago turns out to have a cost when that very information can be used to manipulate us.  The biblical call to “renew your minds” takes on a new urgency for Christians: to know what we believe, and why.  Hold fast to the truth, and it will keep us free.

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It’s the Day after Easter, and We’re Still Alive

Brad’s Status is a quiet little movie that didn’t get much attention, partly because the title does not roll trippingly off the tongue.  But not because of poor production values or mediocre script.  It wanders into places most movies don’t touch and ends up hanging between comedy and tragedy, where most plots would have made up their minds long before then.

Brad Sloan (Ben Stiller) is living a comfortable west-coast life in a spacious home with a pretty, preoccupied wife (Jenna Fischer).  He owns a nonprofit fundraising organization and she teaches at a university, and together they’ve raised a musically-talented son who will soon be leaving for college.  Cue mid-life crisis!

Sure enough, as the big 5-0 rapidly approaches, Brad can’t help thinking of his four college buddies, all of whom went on to be more successful than he: the architect, the super-rich hedge-fund manager, the political pundit, the early retiree cavorting on the beach with swimsuit models.  And Brad?  The idealism that led him into non-profits leaked out a long time ago.  His friends are showing up in magazines and on book jackets, and what’s he got?

I spend so much time inside my mind, puffing myself up . . . and tearing myself down . . .

The action takes place over a single weekend when Brad and his son Troy fly to Boston to visit colleges.  Tufts is Dad’s alma mater, but Troy is thinking about Harvard, because there’s a particular music professor he’s interested in.  Also, one of his friends from high school is going there now.  This is like a gateway of significance to Brad: his son, a Harvard man!  He charges past Troy’s vague ambitions (the kid is not sure what he wants, besides music) and starts pulling any strings he can find to score an interview with the admissions counselor.  This involves getting in touch with some of the old gang, and in the process he’ll discover that their lives (big surprise) aren’t quite the success he pictured them to be.

But what about his life?  At the same time he’s hoping to peg his future value on Troy, Brad is trying to justify the past, or accept it, or regret it.  Like a middle-school kid, he takes his cues from his peers, tearing himself down seconds after puffing himself up, envying and resenting his wife, admiring and lecturing his son, reaching for the beauty and meaning that’s just outside his grasp–until it turns and meets him.

He has ducked out of a dinner date with his political-pundit “friend,” and shows up at a concert Troy is attending.  Two college girls that Brad met during the course of the day (one of them Troy’s high school friend) are soloing on flute and violin.  For the first time all weekend, Brad isn’t scheming or regretting.  He’s listening.

I sat there and just listened, and let myself really feel the life inside me.  The music was beautiful.  The girls were beautiful.  I could love them and never possess them.  Just like I could love the world and never possess it . . .

I still did love the world.

Later that night, in their hotel room with his son asleep in the bed beside him, Brad lies awake.

I tried to imagine the future . . . I kept saying in my head, We’re still alive.  I’m still alive.

We’re still alive.  Why?  What are we doing here?  It seems so random sometimes, the choices we make and the paths we walk down, usually without a great deal of thought.  But at the center of each life is one fat wad of ballast called self: what I want, what I need, what I have to have in order to be fulfilled.

Jesus said, “I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly.  He also said that we must lose our life in order to find it.  He lived a life so big we can all find ourselves within it, if we let go.  We’re so accustomed to holding on, our fingers lock in position, but surprise can pry them loose.  That’s what happens sometimes when the world wraps its arms around us and squeezes us tight, and status updates seem like dusty little points on someone else’s timeline because we’ve found something to genuinely love.

Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it, and sometimes that starts with realizing we’re still alive.

_______________________________________________

Note: Brad’s Status is rated R for language

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Ladies, Let’s Get Our Act Together

When it comes to sexual harassment, reform begins with us.

On my other blog I offered some thoughts on the recent expose of sexual harassment in the world of children’s publishing.  Several well-known, best-selling authors, and a few publishing executives—all of them male—have been called out by name for inappropriate sexual comments and unwanted advances, such as ogling, groping, and hounding women for dates (“My wife is totally fine with it”).

Exposures of harassment in any sector begins with a spark, and in children’s publishing the spark was a piece published on Medium.com by children’s author Anne Ursu.  Straightforwardly titled, “Sexual Harassment in the Children’s Book Industry,” the article reported the results of an online survey Ms. Ursu ran from December to January.  She received almost 90 responses, all reporting some form of uninvited sexual attention.  Her report is well-written and well-thought-out, carefully defining terms (like “sexual harassment,” which could use some defining) and steering clear of sensationalism.  She lets the personal experiences of her respondents speak for themselves, and I don’t doubt any of them.

These men should be called out and dealt with.  But as #MeToo reels from one cultural corner to another, I’d like to signal time-out for a little woman-to-woman talk.

What’s going through her head right now?

Many of the plaintiffs framed their reactions to unwanted sexual advances or comments this way: “I felt small.”  “I was humiliated.”  Even, “He broke me.”  There were no reports of rape or violent assault; this rhetoric is in response to juvenile behavior.  Stupid remarks.  Unfunny jokes.  Silly innuendo.  Conversational gambits they should have grown out of in junior high.

Let’s think about that: certain men are acting like pigs, and we feel small?

Certain men are acting like pigs, and women feel small?

The smallness, the helplessness emerges over and over.  “Society has taught us to gaslight ourselves,” wrote one respondent.  From another: “a culture of toxic masculinity and misogyny” is stacked against them.  Anne Ursu herself summarizes an unwelcome encounter this way: “He sees you as an object, and thus you feel like an object.  He treats you as fungible, thus you feel fungible.  And ashamed for ever thinking you were anything else in the first place.”

Whoa.  I mean, whoa.  “An object”? “Fungible”? “Ashamed”?  Again, a few men are stomping around in the barnyard, and this is how we feel?

Don’t get me wrong; I understand the feeling, especially for a pretty, sparkly twenty-something hoping to make her mark in the business.  I’ve felt that way myself—up until age 30 or so.  Then I started to toughen up.  Not to excuse the jerks, but if a jerk is making you feel small after a certain age, you need to work on your feelings.  More importantly, work on your feelings before that certain age.

The standard solutions for sexual harassment have to do with protocols, guidelines, and consequences.  Those are practical steps that can do some good.  When it comes to underlying principles, though, they get a bit unreal.  “We need to upend the way we think about sexual harassment,” Anne Ursu says, meaning: “We need to put the harassed first.”  “Zero tolerance,” writes one of her respondents.  “There needs to be a top-down prioritization of people’s safety and basic humanity over the prioritization of profit.”

In person-to-person interactions, we are the first responders.

Here are 13 Reasons Why that’s not going to happen, in any way beyond lip service.  When has it happened?  Ever?  In some religious and charitable organizations, yes, but not in any business, or not for any length of time.  Because if profit is not prioritized, the business fails.  Corporate culture can still be humane, but safety and basic humanity are not why publishers—or anyone—are in business.  Nothing will really change until the reforms come from the ground level as well as the top.  Otherwise, it’s like expecting FEMA to show up before the first responders do.

In person-to-person interactions, we are the first responders.

In addition to teaching young women about balance sheets, networking, negotiating, and time management, we can teach them to stand up for themselves.  There’s no need to be shocked or humiliated at boorish behavior—some men (a minority) are boors.  A woman in the professional world needs to recognize this.  She needs to expect decent behavior from her male peers (and superiors), but not be devastated by indecent behavior.  A woman in the work world needs to settle this with herself:

I am a person of worth; I have abilities and something to contribute, and I will not let anyone convince me otherwise.  I will gladly accept constructive criticism; I will not accept diminishing comments.  I will look people in the eye.  When a man complements my appearance, I will smile, say thank you, and change the subject.  If he complements my breasts or derriere, I will stare at him coldly and change the subject.  If a clever put-down is called for, I’ll think up a few and have them ready.  If push comes to shove, I’ll shove.  Maybe even literally.  I can’t, in the end, make anyone respect me.  But no one will keep me from respecting myself.

Women have their own forms of power, and I’m not talking about marching in the streets with big signs.  We are not helpless, we are not less than human, we are not without effect.  Much of the harassment will stop when we stop accepting it, or looking to other power structures to stop it for us.

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Our Happiness

Ya know what I was thinking.  No child should have to choose between parents.  No child should have 2  parents that split up and hate each other and don’t communicate properly.  No child should go a year without seeing the other parent.  No child should think it’s their fault their parents split up.  No child should see their parents suffering.  No child needs to deal with adult problems.

But lots of children do.  Sometimes it’s unavoidable; usually not.  Usually it’s unhappiness on one side or the other, a gnawing dissatisfaction fed by daily irritation until it seems unbearable.  So unbearable it can no longer be borne.

I know a young woman who recently decided it couldn’t be borne, after living with a man for over ten years and creating two children with him.  To my knowledge, the three “A’s”–addiction, abuse, and adultery–were not a factor.  I’m going to be very blunt: this mother valued her own happiness over her children’s and that is self-deception in the worst way.

I know that sounds harsh, and is harsh, but by every objective measure it’s true.  Her kids are too young to express themselves, but the young lady I quote above, age 14, couldn’t have said it any better.  She speaks for the little ones who suddenly have no home, only temporary residences first with Mommy, next week with Daddy.  She speaks for those who perpetually come second, no matter what Mom or Dad says.  She speaks for those who bear the burden of their parents’ unhappiness: No child needs to deal with adult problems.

Back in the early days of the women’s movement, when mothers who walked out on their families received magazine cover stories, the reasoning went like this: If I’m unhappy, won’t my kids be, too?  They’re better off with a mother who knows who she is, who follows her dreams.  When I’m fulfilled, they will benefit.

We had it backwards, though.  When a woman becomes a mother, her happiness is linked to her children’s, not the other way around.  They don’t need our happiness—they need our stability, our reliability, our attention, our provision, all of which a single parent has to struggle to provide.  I know it’s not impossible to raise children alone, but it’s very, very difficult.  And two single parents who are bitter or resentful toward each other make it that much more difficult.  Sometimes a divorce is truly amicable but usually it just pretends to be—or why seek a divorce in the first place?  And then the pretense slips.

All of this makes the children unhappy.  Can we blame them? By the time a mother realizes that she’s traded her happiness for theirs, it’s too late.  Their resentment, sullenness, lack of direction and focus afflict her deeply.  Add on the bills, the endless chores and details falling to her alone, the little problems she never has time to deal with until they’re big problems, and (too often) the failure to establish a stable relationship with someone else—and that was clearly a bad trade.

It might get better.  The kids might be able to work through their trauma, find something or someone to ground themselves, and launch productive lives.  But the odds are against it, because we put them at a great disadvantage when they’re too young to understand why.  All for “happiness.”  Why can’t we learn?

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Did Billy Graham Make a Difference?

The many obits testify to the millions he preached to and the thousands who walked the aisle to “Just as I Am.”  Do you know anyone who was saved at a Billy Graham crusade?  Perhaps yourself?  He was a confidante of presidents and world leaders, he counted all races and nationalities among his friends, his name consistently appeared at the top of any “Most Admired” list.  But did he make a difference?

Because, as Ross Douthat shows in Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, the postwar surge of religiosity that made Billy Graham a household name in the fifties abruptly reversed in the sixties and seventies.  Sporadic revivals since then have flamed out.  The clear, basic gospel he preached has been cherry-picked, watered down, synthesized, and syncretized to an extent that GenXers and Millennials barely know what it is.  Atheism is cool, or cooler than it used to be.  On a popularity scale, Evangelicals rank somewhere between used car salesmen and the U. S. congress—the only constituency, besides Catholics and rednecks, it is safe to mock.

So, looking around the blasted cultural landscape, you have to wonder: what long-term effect did those massive assemblies and altar calls produce?

God’s pattern is no pattern: the Holy Spirit moves where He wills.

God’s pattern is no pattern: the Holy Spirit moves where He wills.  We can get some indications from the history of the early church as recorded by Luke.  No modern “crusade” was as effective as Peter’s sermon on Pentecost: 3000 souls cut to the heart and crying out for salvation.  Afterwards, a thousand here, a thousand there: a church of almost 10,000 in a matter of months, or even weeks.  Jesus Christ and his people as highly regarded by the public as they were in the 1950s.

And then Christians started getting killed.  Stephen, who showed such brilliance and promise; James, one of Jesus’ inner circle—cut off!  Hot times in Jerusalem for the Christians, who scattered under pressure.  But seeds were planted.  Everywhere they went, they preached, making unlikely converts.  And the unlikeliest convert was made by Jesus Himself.

Saul, later called Paul, went from threatening the church to planting churches—dozens of them.  But he never conducted large outdoor meetings with massive responses.  Arguably the most consequential preacher in history, he probably never spoke to more than a hundred people at a time (except for one occasion in Acts 22, that didn’t end well) and we have no contemporary record of when, where, and how he died.

Seeds were planted, and the rest is history–though God’s history is different from ours.

But seeds were planted.  The rest is history, though God’s history is different from ours.  Revivals and Awakenings sometimes leave tracks in the human record.  But the work of the Kingdom mostly goes on in secret: the yeast working through the dough, the sprouts uncurling just below the surface, the wanderer who sees a light in the darkness guiding him home, the innumerable cups of water given in Christ’s name.

The visible church has failed spectacularly over the years.  The invisible church has not, because Christ is continually building and reforming it.  At times the visible and invisible intersect as they did at Pentecost and the Great Awakening and the Billy Graham crusades.  What difference did they make?  In the wider culture, not much.

But seeds were planted: some scattered, some eaten, some strangled.  And if you look closely you can spot the ones that took root: green shoots that push above ground and grow and mature and drop more seeds: ten- or a hundred-fold.  The news from the culture front is discouraging, but be not dismayed: by God’s grace, Billy Graham made a difference.

By God’s grace, we all do.

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The Age of Smug

“Millions of evangelicals and other Christian fundamentalists believe that the Bible was dictated by God to men who acted essentially as human transcriptionists.”  Well guess what, you millions of simpletons: “If that were the case one would have to conclude that God is a terrible writer.” Psychologist and author Valerie Tarico is here to share some important insights on why this is so.  For instance, did you know

  • That an undetermined number of writers over approximately 900 years wrote the pastiche we now call the Bible?
  • That they drew on propaganda and myths that was floating around various oral cultures, like the many versions of the flood story?
  • That the result is not a “unified book of divine guidance,” but a mix of genres, including myths, laws, poetry, court records, and mysticism?
  • That the content represents the concerns of iron-age primitives, rather than “timeless and perfect” messaging direct to us from God?
  • That there are 2 conflicting creation stories, 3 conflicting Ten Commandments, and four conflicting Easter stories?

Did you know that, evvies and fundies?  Obviously not, or you wouldn’t keep on taking the whole outmoded book literally.  And you would understand that the Bible isn’t even a good example of sacred literature because it’s so badly written:*

Mixed messages, repetition, bad fact-checking, awkward constructions, inconsistent voice, weak character development, boring tangents, contradictions, passages where nobody can tell what the heck the writer meant to convey.  This doesn’t sound like a book that was dictated by a deity.

Dang!  Why didn’t I think of that before??

In his introduction to The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis longed for an earlier day when atheists argued like men.  Excuse the sexism; he meant rationally and substantively.  Ms. Tarico, who claims some understanding of evangelicals as she used to be one (or something) argues like a teenager: You say that because paternalism.  Your conclusions are stupid and so is your book.  The Bible contains no accurate scientific information or health tips and therefore it’s worthless.  Like other critics from the high-school debate club, she

  • mischaracterizes the other side, presenting the most simplistic view of people of faith imaginable;
  • pretends, or fails to acknowledge, a world of biblical scholarship that has addressed every one of her objections over and over;
  • litters the field with straw men, such as believers who insist on taking every verse literally (when she’s actually the one who insists on taking every verse literally);
  • assumes herself to be at the pinnacle of human understanding in which every new intellectual trend invalidates every old one;
  • wraps herself in a cocoon of smugness.

Am I being smug?  It’s a temptation.  It’s also a cliche: the rolled eyeballs, the sigh, the headshake.  I’m tempted, but a serious issue lurks under the shallow reasoning of the Spirit of this Age.  We’re in danger of kicking away the ladder that got us to this enlightened age of tolerance and sanitation.  The Bible is, primarily, a book about God, starting with two major premises:

1. He made this universe and it belongs to him.  2. Humans are special to him and every one of them without distinction is made in his image.  Every moral principle that could ever be flows from those two enduring principles.  That’s what the Bible makes clear, over the centuries of its composition and the variety of its genres, and no other sacred writing come close.  Kick that away, and all things are permitted.

*”Why is the Bible so badly written?” was published on the Salon website last week, but Salon received so many complaints about the poorly-written article they took it down.

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If there’s a Place You Gotta Go . . .

Is “The Map Song” boring its way into your brain right now? Ha ha–sorry!

A few days after my daughter’s wedding, I was taking my son to the airport in her car.  He had to catch a plane to Nevada from Baltimore, and I would be driving back to central Pennsylvania with my granddaughter.  It was kind of a complicated plan, but to cut a long story short: on the way to the airport I remembered my daughter kept no maps in her car and I didn’t recall exactly how to get back to her house.  No problem: my son whipped out his smartphone and painstakingly wrote down every step of the Google directions.  I remarked that it seemed more complicated than it should be.  “Google always seems like that,” he said.

So after dropping him off at the airport I wended my way out of spaghetti-bowl of freeway interchanges and turned off on the first numbered road of the route he wrote down for me.  My six-year-old granddaughter piped up from the back seat with one request: she wanted to stop at a Sheetz convenience store and order a snack on their electronic ordering board.  No problem—you can barely hurl a chocolate malted in PA without hitting a Sheetz, so I planned on making a midway stop during a drive that should last no more than two hours.

Except that, shortly after making another turn I realized we were in the country.  Had Google thoughtfully routed me around the metro areas to save my blood pressure?  Had I made a wrong turn somewhere?  I could have stopped at a convenience store and asked, but there weren’t any.  At least, not for very long stretches of road while looping around hairpin curves, straining up and coasting down hills, and barreling, ever more anxiously, through beautiful bucolic countryside.

I didn’t make any wrong turns; the roads I was on turned out to be the correct ones.  Maybe Google was having a little fun with me.  At any rate, it took a good three hours to get home, without encountering a single Sheetz, and what bothered me the most was that I had. No. Map.

I understand they’re a relic of the past—who needs ‘em when you’ve got GPS to direct your every move? or you can just punch an address into your phone and the smug presence within will call out turns and remain unfailingly polite when you miss them?  (I’d rather she would just yell, “You missed it!  Go back!”)

I get that smartphone users can zoom out whenever they want a bigger picture of the terrain, but “big picture,” on a tiny screen is a bit of an oxymoron, isn’t it?  The clumsiness of a folding map has been gist for a dozen comedy routines and cartoons, but if you’re prudent enough to pull over by the side of the road, spread out the folds and out and peruse the markings at your leisure, what a marvel of vision and precision is a road map.  The subtle county boundaries, the squiggly roads and ruler-straight highways, the towns and cities named in varying font-sizes that should give a pretty good idea of where all the Sheetz stores are . . . most of all, the BIG PICTURE.

.Are we missing that?  Maybe we spend so much time focused on a three-inch screen that our thinking is more along the lines of How to I get from point to point? rather than What’s the best route to my final destination?  There does seem to be a lot of short-term thinking out there—no doubt a human failing from the very beginning.  But how did we decide we could get along without a map?

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Chislin’ Dixie

Blue vs. Gray, twice a day!

My daughter was one of the first employees of Dolly Parton’s Dixie Stampede Dinner Theater Attraction (yes, you need all those words) when it opened in Branson—1996, as I recall.  It’s advertised as unique, and for a fact I’d never seen anything like it.  The audience sits in long rows before plank tables with a sawdust arena serving as the stage.  The two sides of the horseshoe-shaped seating area are designated North and South, and the servers dress in blue and gray uniforms.

The show, like every Branson show I’ve seen, was noisy, corny, and various: trick horse-riding, musical numbers, broad comedy, and animal acts (like ostrich races and buffalo “stampedes”).  At the beginning, the entire cast, including servers, marched out to “Dixie” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Then the servers scattered and raced to the kitchen to bring out the first course, which they slammed down on the long tables that made up their section. Audience participation took up the space between show numbers, carrying on a “friendly rivalry between north and south” with events like chicken-chasing and toilet-seat horseshoe tosses.  Servers also performed as cheerleaders, stirring up their side to cheer louder than the other.  (My daughter says it was a real workout–she was always either running or yelling.)

Chowing down up north. The food is actually pretty good.

It was dumb.  It was also really fun.

Last summer Alysha Harris, culture writer for Slate, visited the original Dixie Stampede in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, and was appalled.  Two considerations: Ms. Harris is black, and the week she attended the show was right around the time of the fracas in Charlottesville.  That said, her review was harsh.  She actually bought two tickets, to experience both sides, and noted that the Southern side was definitely more boisterous.  Though there were very few African Americans in the audience, everyone she talked to was friendly and cheerful.  Meanwhile a bizarre retelling of history played out before them, based on the “lost cause” myth of the gracious southern way of life that’s Gone with the.Wind.  Her review ended this way:

 Dolly’s Dixie Stampede has been a success not just because people love Dolly Parton, but because the South has always been afforded the chance to rewrite its own history—not just through its own efforts, but through the rest of the country turning a blind eye. Even though the South is built upon the foundation of slavery, a campy show produced by a well-meaning country superstar can make-believe it’s not. We’d prefer to pretend, to let our deepest sins be transmuted into gauzy kitsch—and no one blinks an eye because that’s what they truly want.

And don’t forget, “Birth of a Nation was once the biggest box-office hit of all time, and Gone with the Wind still is.”  Ms. Harris published her review in August and requested comment from Dolly Parton’s corporate office.  The PR department replied that they were considering, and this week they announced the removal of “Dixie” from the name of the attraction.  Ms. Harris sees the chiseling of Dixie as a start, but notes that the friendly rivalry theme is still offensive, even more the “fantasy of the Lost Cause.”

I have no investment in “Dixie Stampede” and whether they keep the name is of no concern to me.  I appreciate that Alysha Harris’s perspective is far more weighted than mine—even though the ol’ plantation part of the show felt squirrely to me, too—and would just put forward a few points.  For the sake of conversation, not rivalry, friendly or otherwise.

  • The south is not built on the foundation of slavery.  I’ll grant that it was (even though the vast majority of southerners in 1861 did not own slaves), but it is not now.  The bloodiest war in our history destroyed it, and the southern economy, at a cost of half a million lives at least.  Unfortunately the war did not end racial oppression, but those old roots have shriveled and though racist attitudes sadly remain, times have changed.
  • Likewise, Birth of a Nation can’t be mentioned without being in the same breath condemned.  Once it won Oscars.  Now 12 Years a Slave wins Oscars.  Times have changed.
  • The slap-happy ending of the Stampede show, that we’re all friends now, is kitschy but true.  We are all friends now, even if the political rhetoric is superheated at the moment.
  • Does the typical ticket-buyer to Dolly Parton’s Stampede still buy the Lost Cause myth?  I doubt it.  If a few die-hards remain in the audience, they won’t remain long.  Old myths are dying out and new ones taking their place, like the environmental spiritualism of native Americans and the innate wisdom of every ethnic group but white Europeans.  Real history is complicated and tangled, and myths don’t help us sort it out on any side.
  • Finally, the audience isn’t there to see their deepest sins transmuted in gauzy kitsch.  They are there to have a good time.

What I truly want is reconciliation, desperately, for the sake of “my people” and “your people.”  That won’t happen unless we give each other a little grace.  Slavery was indeed our deepest sin and the Civil War was a great tragedy.  It also occurred 150 years ago.  There may be a time and place to not take it so seriously–or something like it may happen again.

All friends now?
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Anywhere with Jesus: a Christian View of a Squirmy Subject

Several years ago I had a preacher friend who provided interesting insights into the pulpit life.  During the years of our acquaintance, in spite of normal frustrations with his flock, he could usually count on at least a few encouraging words after each sermon.  Except for the time he preached about the temptations of Christ.  His text was not the famous showdown in the wilderness, but Hebrews 4:15: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who in every way has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”  The sermon emphasized that the text means what it says; in every way means every way.  Including sexual temptation.

That made the pew contingent very uncomfortable.  It wasn’t hard to tell.  As my friend recalled it, “Usually I get a pat on the back when the folks line up to shake my hand at the door.  Like, ‘Good message, brother,’ or, “That one really hit me where I live.’  But for that sermon I got a Hi or a Nice day or something completely irrelevant, like, ‘Uh . . . I like those pants.’”  (Note: this was in the 70s, when pants were more interesting than they are now.)

What does this anecdote have to do with the subject of masturbation?  And why am I writing about masturbation?  To the second question, I’m writing because I was asked about it, and my initial reluctance was overcome as I thought (and read other Christians’ thoughts) about it.Image result for loneliness images

As to the first question: Jesus has everything to do with everything.

The following is written with Christians in mind; I recognize it will make no sense to anyone else.

The Bible, as so many observers point out, has nothing directly to say about masturbation, good or bad.  But of course the Bible speaks to a wide range of issues indirectly and it’s up to us to do the hard work of rightly discerning the word of truth.  Not to mention searching out what pleases the Lord (Eph. 5:10).

One reason the Bible is silent on this issue is that it might not have been a big problem in that time and place.  People tended to marry young, and when they weren’t enjoying marital bliss, or sleep, they were pouring their energies into hard physical labor, religious festivals, or intense partying (think of those week-long wedding celebrations).  And considering the housing options of the time, privacy was not an easy thing to come by.

In the law, sexuality was treated matter-of-factly when it came to physical consequences like monthly periods and male discharges (at least some of which had to be nocturnal emissions).  Leviticus gives detailed instructions for purification after each one.  Why be purified after a natural function that the Lord himself created?  I had some thoughts about that here, but for now it strikes me that these laws concern men and women in isolation from each other.  There are no purification rites for married sex (unless it occurs during a woman’s time of “uncleanness”), because that is exactly what those bodily functions facilitated .  Lawful sexual intercourse is already pure, and it points beyond itself.  It’s about relationship at its most intense, intimate, and productive level, and it reflects something of the intense, intimate, and productive relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit.

Our experience on earth, even in lawful matrimony, often falls well short of this ideal.  And turning from these Gates of Splendor to the squirmy subject of masturbation is a big step down: awkward and fraught with guilt.  We don’t want to go there.  We don’t want the Holy Trinity in our walk-in closets or under our sneaky sheets–and really, can’t we have a little privacy here?  Surely there’s a place we can carve out for ourselves alone.  There must be a place, not just in our homes but in our heads, where we can retreat for a few minutes and relieve a little pressure, purge of those disturbing fantasies, take a quick dip in mindless therapeutic pleasure and emerge clearheaded and ready to take hold of a straight untangled mission.  Just wait here, Lord—I’ll be right back.

But . . . seriously?

We know better.  “Know ye not that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit?”  That he goes where we go?  That we can’t retreat to our inner sanctum and lock him out?

Nobody knew this better than Jesus did.  Nobody was indwelt like he was.  Still . . . he was tempted in all ways as we are.  All ways means all ways.

Don’t we tend to think that it was really kind of easy for him to resist temptation?  Except for that last, of going to the cross—of course that was hard.  And maybe the one about turning stones to bread when he was hungry.  After a 40-day fast, of course he was hungry!  So sure, that was probably a tough one too, but the rest of the temptations he was subject to must not have been that difficult for the man-who-was-God.  Or so we tend to think.

And that’s how we underestimate Satan, to our great disadvantage.  His most potent temptation is this: Take the fast lane.  The lure for Christ was to shortcut the process of “learning obedience through suffering” (Heb. 5:8), to reach across the grand redemption plan, to seize the crown that was rightfully his.  Isn’t that the heart of temptation for us–to forgo process and go straight for satisfaction in whatever form it appears?  Jesus faced this too, in all ways.  He knows our every weakness in the biblical sense of experiencing it, not just mentally acknowledging it, Yet without sin.  No shortcuts.  He took the long hard way of the cross—meaning that, when it was time to claim his rightful crown, he would not be alone.  He would take us with him.

Now . . . all this will likely seem hopelessly abstract to the teenage boy or the frustrated single woman.  Christian counselors and doctors make good-faith efforts to reconcile biological drives with biblical principles, a tension stretched further by an oversexed culture and delayed marriage.  Some grant that masturbation may be a useful therapeutic tool as long as it doesn’t become obsessive, has no pornographic connections, and is divorced as far as possible from erotic thought (like a good deep-tissue massage).  I can’t judge the wisdom of that for any one person.  Just a few contrasts to keep in mind:

  • Sex is intended for relationship. Masturbation is solitary.
  • Relationships take work. Masturbation is easy.
  • We are intended for perfect union with Christ. Masturbation is the last place we want him.
  • This union isn’t sexual, but is better than sex.  Masturbation, while it lasts, whispers that there’s nothing better.

My best attempt at practical application is this.  If you’ve already given in to this temptation, more times than you care to count, remember that Christ was tempted in all respects as we are.  That’s your comfort.  Yet without sin—that’s your salvation.  You won’t be able to pull him down to your level but he will, in time, bring you up to his.  Temptation is a trial but it’s also an opportunity to work on that relationship and begin laying up what will be treasure in heaven: that satisfaction you longed for all your life, fully met and never ending.