Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions

Have you ever read a book that turned everything you had been taught about a subject upside down? That’s where I feel I’m at on the topic of cross-gender friendships after reading Dan Brennan’s Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions.

Growing up in the evangelical church, what I’ve been taught about friendships between men and women goes something like this: be careful. Stay away (mostly). Male-female relationships mostly just lead to sex. Once you’re old enough to marry, find that right person. That person then needs to be your best, closest friend, and only cross-gender close friend for the rest of your life. Beware of spending time with people of the opposite sex for fear of damaging your reputation. (Because after all, if a man and a woman develop any sort of a relationship, it’s going to lead to sex.) Take a step even further back and make sure you don’t even do much serious communicating with those of the opposite sex because you might venture into “emotional infidelity” to your spouse.

But wait, you say, there is truth in these things. Marital unfaithfulness is, sadly, not too uncommon in the church. And when it happens, it’s devastating to men, women, children, families. I know this. As a church leader I’ve seen first-hand the damage that can be caused. But I resonate with Dan Brennan when he says that the evangelical church has gone the (sadly) usual route of putting up legalistic barriers “for protection” rather than taking down the walls and allowing for the possibility that good things could run wild. This idea that male-female relationships inevitably end in sex is something we’ve gotten from Sigmund Freud, not from God. Why can’t we wait to let Galatians 3:28 soak in (“here is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”) before immediately saying “Yes, but…”?

Brennan persuasively argues that, pre-Freud, it was not uncommon for the language of friendship (both in same-gender and cross-gender friendships) to be personal and intimate in ways that make our modern minds squirm with Freud-inferred sexual tension. Yet, Brennan says, these friendships often chastely existed, and indeed co-existed alongside the healthy marriages of one or both of the friends. He quotes liberally from the early and medieval church, and cites three Biblical examples: David and Jonathan, Ruth and Naomi, and Jesus and Mary Magdalene. In each case these relationships were intense, deep, intimate friendships; and yet in each case, no matter what Freud would tell us, these friendships were good and right and appropriate. While Brennan is arguing at times based on what he (reasonably) infers from the text, I believe the burden of proof is on those who would say “no” to this type of relationships rather than on he who is saying “yes”.

If I had one gripe with Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions while reading, it was that I wanted more practical advice or examples of what these friendships would look like when worked out in real life. Brennan provides some examples from his own cross-gender friendships; he touches briefly on things like prayer and conversation, recreation, and physical affection. But as I reflect on it, I realize I’m thinking wrongly about it. I don’t really need a book to tell me what friendships should look like. But though I agreed with Brennan that we’ve set legalistic fences in the wrong places, in expecting more concrete examples what I was really asking was “OK, where do we move the fences to?”. And if that’s all I’m asking, I’ve missed Brennan’s point. He’s saying, instead, “take down the fences.”

I’m not sure that the church is really ready to deal with Dan Brennan’s book. His ideas require buy-in from a lot of people if they are going to work. And yet, if the church were to truly buy into it, we would be a powerful example to the world of how God’s redemptive work truly makes all things new… even relationships between men and women.

Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions is worth reading and chewing on for a while. You can get it from Amazon.

The hazards of church music...

…aren’t necessarily what you think. My left ankle and leg has been very sore for the last two days. Why? Because I had an hour of music practice on Saturday, followed by an hour of practice and then two church services on Sunday morning. And because I play the keyboard while standing up, and I pedal with the right foot, which means I end up doing a lot of standing and flexing on my left leg.

Do they have special workouts so I can prepare better for this type of strain? This is not the way I thought a commitment to playing in the worship band would wear me down.

Books in my reading queue

My reading queue has been backed up for a while now, and I’ll admit that I only make things worse by buying books and regularly hitting the library. I’ve been entertaining myself with some light popular spy thrillers lately, but it’s time to put those down and work through some better stuff. Here are a few that are in my pile:

Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions: Engaging the Mystery of Friendship Between Men and Women by Dan Brennan.

I had this one on my Amazon wishlist for a while after John Armstrong wrote about it. Becky bought it for me for Valentine’s Day and it’s been sitting in the pile ever since. The author’s premise is that there is a meaningful place in the Christian life for close friendships between members of the opposite sex who are not married to each other. Typically this has been something that Christians have advised against, usually on the basis of wanting to protect marriage… but I’m interested in what the author has to say.

Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace by Robert Farrar Capon

I got this one for Christmas and have already read it once, but it really merits a re-read and perhaps a blog post or two or three. This is a fascinating little book on grace, and there were two or three particular places in it that caught me square on and have gripped my thinking ever since. Definitely time for a re-read.

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi.

I don’t even remember what blog I was reading that recommended this sci-fi novel, but the review was good, and the summary looked good, and the library had it… so it’s in my queue. I do love me some sci-fi.

Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture by Adam McHugh.

This goes into the re-read category as well. I read things too quickly sometimes, and this was one that I buzzed through on the way to some other book. It deserves a more thoughtful re-read; there’s a lot in it that could be very helpful to me and other introverts out there.

Well, enough for now. Any recommendations on other books I should add to the queue?

Rain, Rain, Go Away

I know, if you ask me, that we’ve only gotten water in our basement due to rain twice, and those times were both before we installed a sump pump and after getting 8+ inches of rain inside of a week.

Even still, when the gentle early spring rain starts to fall tonight, my stomach tightens up and I start listening extra-close to try to hear if the water alarms are going off in the basement.

Sometimes I hate my brain.

Whom then shall I fear?

I could tell you exactly the point I was going to choke up even the day before. I had been hanging out at worship team practice, saw that this song was on the roster for Sunday, and knew that when we hit the middle of the second verse I was going to have tears on my face and a lump in my throat. Here are the words:

And I can see a light that is coming for the heart that holds on
A glorious light beyond all compare
And there will be an end to these troubles
But until that day comes We’ll live to know You here on the earth

And I will fear no evil
For my God is with me
And if my God is with me
Whom then shall I fear?
Whom then shall I fear?
-- “You Never Let Go”, by Matt Redman

Now, when we do that song and I’m playing keys in the worship band, I can hold it together. But when I’m in the congregation, and I see the faces of my brothers and sisters singing and playing, and know the stories behind those faces, I just about can’t take it. There’s the woman who’s wrestled with difficult family issues for her whole life and who is just finding freedom. There’s the man who is dealing with layoffs at work. There’s the woman who has chosen to stay married to a man who will be in prison for the next decade. There’s the guy who’s dealing with children with substance abuse issues. When we sing with hope about the “end of these troubles”, these people know something about troubles. And yet they sing with a hope and joy that is unquenchable. That’s not natural. That comes from God.

As soon as I get past that, the pre-chorus comes and smacks me in the face - precisely because I am so often a fearful man. And I’m not even sure that I’m so afraid of “evil” - probably because I don’t encounter it so much. But too often I have either this unnecessary fear of other people, of what they will think and whether or not I’ll look stupid in front of them. And too often I have fears about the future, about my family and providing for them, fears that display my need to trust more fully in God and to turn my worries and fears over to Him. So when I sing the words “If my God is with me, whom then shall I fear?”, the Holy Spirit is preaching right into my heart in the way I need it most.

Jared Wilson had a tweet months ago that stuck with me - wish I could find it to link to it directly, but I’ll have to paraphrase. He asked: Why are we so afraid? Jesus is comfortable and confident walking on the streets of the town, because He’s the king. As representatives of the king, we should walk with that same confidence. Dear God, let it be so.

Some resolutions

In a week I’ll turn 34, and begin my 35th year of life. That seems momentous somehow. For this 35th year, it’s time to do a couple of blog-related things.

First: I’m abandoning the Tumblr blog. Not enough value to me to keep it. I’ll make the effort to post links, pictures, and quotes in this space instead.

Second: I’m going to pick up Kari’s habit of keeping track of good things from every day of the month and doing a monthly post to capture them. They’re great as a retrospective and should encourage gratefulness.

Third: I’m going to try to blog at least something every week day. Need to get into the habit of writing more. We’ll see how it goes.

A Good Customer Service story featuring U. S. Cellular

I’ve used this space in the past to gripe about bad service, so when truly good service comes my way, it seems prudent to write it up here, too.

The week before Christmas (December 20, to be precise) my wife and I took advantage of our long-expired Verizon contract and a sweet deal from US Cellular (‘USC’ hereafter) and made the switch to become USC customers. I took a long lunch on a snowy Monday afternoon and we headed over to the location nearest our house to get hooked up. US Cellular was offering “any phone free after rebate” and service credits for switching lines from a competitor over to USC.

We had our eye on the Samsung Mesmerize (the USC version of the Galaxy S), but when we made it in to the store, they were already sold out. They called around and told us that there were a few left at the store across town, but the wait time there was almost 2 hours. Besides, the saleswoman told us, the HTC Desire is also a good phone, and you have a 30-day window where if you’re not happy, you can switch, and you just have to pay the difference in price between the phones. This seemed reasonable to me. The Desire was normally $230, the Mesmerize, $280, so if I didn’t like the Desire, I wait until they come back in stock, pay the $50 upper, and still get the phone I want. Sold.

Three weeks later we were less than happy with the Desires. (That’s fodder for another blog post, I suppose.) So, once USC got the Mesmerizes back in stock, I went down to the store and asked about the upgrade. Sure, they’d be happy to help me switch. I only had to pay the difference in price. Then the saleswoman (a different one from when we bought the phones in the first place) told me that the difference I’d have to pay was $200.

I was stunned. $200? How did they arrive on that number? Well, she told me, you paid $80 for the Desire originally. Now, the current price on the Mesmerize is $280. So, you have to pay the difference between the two, which is $200. I told her that it hadn’t been represented to me that way, but she just gave me a fake-sympathy smile face and said sorry, but it’d be $200.

I suppose I should’ve stopped to ask for a manager right there and then, but I’m lousy with that sort of confrontation. So, I paid the $200, got the new phone, and went home to consider my strategy. (Step 1: figure out how to keep my wife from killing me for paying $200 for a new phone.) Shortly thereafter, made my first complaint via Twitter.

Switched my phone from the Desire to the Mesmerize. Love the phone, very unhappy with @uscellular. Emailing customer service now.

Shortly thereafter I did a quick check and realized that US Cellular somehow doesn’t have an official Twitter account. They’ve done the Facebook thing (badly, IMO), but they have no official customer service representation on Twitter.

Hmmm, looks like USCellular doesn’t do Twitter. Guess I’ll have to complain through other social channels.

So, I went off to the uscellular.com website. I wrote up a few paragraphs to explain that I was an unhappy new US Cellular customer, concisely describe the issue, and explain what I thought a fair resolution would be. I’ll publish the thing here in its entirety. Feel free to skip it.

Dear sirs, My name is Chris Hubbs, and I am a new US Cellular customer. My cell phone number is XXX-XXX-XXXX. My wife and I switched two lines of service from Verizon on December 20, 2010, and added a data plan for both lines.

At the time of purchasing the phones, the Samsung Mesmerize (the phone we wanted to buy) was out of stock at the Cedar Rapids River Run store. Our sales associate called around to the other Cedar Rapids stores and let us know that there were just a few left in stock, and that the wait time at the other stores was almost 2 hours. She also assured us that we had a 30-day window to switch phones, and that we would simply need to “pay the difference in price” between the two phones. Since the posted price for the phones was $199 (with contract and data plan) for the Mesmerize and $149 (with contract and data plan) for the HTC Desire, we ended up going with two Desires, and concluded that the $50 per phone difference would be reasonable if we wanted to switch once the Mesmerize was back in stock.

Today when I went back to the River Run location to switch my line to the Mesmerize, I was told that rather than the $50 difference between the two phones, I was required to pay $200 to switch - the difference between the $80 promotional price I paid on December 20 and the full price of the Mesmerize. This was, to say the least, a shock. This was clearly not the “difference in price” between the two phones. The difference in the posted price between the Mesmerize and the Desire continues to be $50. While I went ahead and paid to get the phone today, I firmly believe that the upgrade price should have been only $50, not $200.

At $200 to upgrade, my wife, who was quite looking forward to switching to the Mesmerize, will not be able to afford the upgrade of her phone, and we are both left quite disappointed with US Cellular while not even into our first month of service. To set things right with our account, I am asking that you credit my account $150 (the difference between the $200 I paid and the $50 I should have paid) and then allow my wife to switch to the Mesmerize for that same $50. Those actions would fulfill the understanding that we were given when we originally signed our contract, and would restore some confidence in US Cellular’s reputation.

Kind regards, Chris Hubbs

Not seeing a lot of other options, I sent the note off to USC via their online form, and sat, less than hopeful, for a response.

Within 30 minutes, I had an email from Sharif Renno, who is a US Ceullar store manager in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. He had no connection with my form submittal, but he had seen my complaint on Twitter, had followed my Twitter account back to my blog, found my email address, and contacted me directly to see if he could help. I sent him a copy of my complaint email and expressed my appreciation for his help. Then I headed off to play rec league basketball and missed a voice mail from him just a couple of hours later. He told me that he thought he had a solution worked out, but that he was working with a manager somewhere in Iowa, and that the other manager would contact me in the morning.

Kudos to to US Cellular manager @SharifRenno who saw my tweet and took the initiative to pass my contact info along to someone who can help.

That next morning I got a call from Matt Murray, who manages a USC store in Marshalltown, Iowa - still 90 minutes’ drive from my house. Matt outlined a solution that would end up with me getting exactly what I asked for - the two Mesmerize upgrades for $50 each, per my original expectation. He apologized for the confusion and made it clear that he wanted to do whatever was necessary to ensure I was happy with US Cellular. The solution was easy enough; I would go to a local store and upgrade the other phone (paying the $200), then he would log in and credit my account to make it come out right.

One trip to a USC store, one email back to Matt, and 24 hours later, he had done just as he promised. My account had been credited, we had the phones we wanted, and our initial impression of US Cellular had gone from lousy to excellent. I asked both Matt and Sharif for their supervisors’ contact info, and immediately sent glowing notes of commendation for each of them. I hope their supervisors pay attention. These are clearly guys who take customer service seriously.

So, chalk this one up as a win for social media. Not that US Cellular corporate handles it very well. (I finally got an email response back from my web form submittal about a week later: “It looks like this situation has already been handled…”) It’s sad that they totally miss that social media path. Big kudos go to Sharif and others like him who take it upon themselves to keep an eye on Twitter for mentions of their company, and who then take the initiative to serve customers whether those customers live near them or not.

Homeschooling as "normal"

When our oldest daughter turned 6 and we finally had to make a decision about school, we decided we’d try our hand at homeschooling. She was already ahead of the game in many academic areas, our local elementary school is, sadly, near the bottom of the heap for Iowa elementary schools, and, frankly, I didn’t see a lot of value that could come from sending her off to school for seven hours a day every day, so it was a fairly easy decision. (I should say it seemed easy for me - my wife may have wrestled with it more, though to my perspective it was more trepidation on her part than resistance.)

I have a bit of a history with homeschooling; I attended a public kindergarten (well, two of them, actually, since we moved mid-year), but after that I was homeschooled from first grade through twelfth. Homeschooling was not exactly legal in Nebraska when we started back in the early 80’s; there was much legislative wrangling and several parents were in jail. Even after the laws were changed, there was a strong defensive mindset that was pervasive in the homeschool community, and probably rightfully so. My memory of it now, 25 years later, is that we were afraid. Afraid of the school truant officer who might show up at our door. Afraid that having a kid running around in the backyard during the school day would prompt an anonymous tip from a neighbor to social services. Afraid that something, somewhere, would go wrong, and that we’d be in legal limbo, with parents in trouble and kids in protective custody.

That feeling of fear was encouraged to an extent by those well-meaning organizations who were out there to help protect us. Organizations like the Home School Legal Defense Association did good, useful legal work; their newsletters, though, were full of horror stories of parents who’d run into legal trouble with homeschooling, and it seemed that only the families that were HSLDA members had happy endings to their stories. There were pages of helpful tips on protecting your family (“don’t open the door if they knock! Only talk through the locked screen door or step out onto the porch!”), and while they may have been useful to certain people in certain cases, to me they only seemed to add to the fear and to, of course, prompt us to renew our yearly membership in the protection plan.

Homeschoolers in those days, even through the late 80’s - early 90’s when I was a teenager, remained largely a fringe element. For every “normal” family who homeschooled, there were a half-dozen “weird” homeschoolers. Some parents were motivated to homeschool because they believed it was their God-given responsibility, and that they could do a better job than the public schools; some others, I’m sure, just used the freedom to homeschool as an excuse to keep their kids under their thumb in whatever twisted home life they had. (I remember one homeschool family who kept their kitchen cabinets locked… to keep their teenaged children out of them. Yikes.) My family teetered on the edge of “weird-homeschooler-ness” from time to time; in retrospect I believe that dalliance was driven not by an attraction to the weirdness but simply by the desire to have fellowship with people who shared some key beliefs about family.

Since starting homeschooling this year we have been very pleasantly surprised at the amount of support we get from all directions. Neighbors and people we meet around town don’t even blink when we say we’re homeschooling. The homeschooling oversight (required by law in Iowa) is provided by a homeschool assistance program that is funded by state tax dollars and run out of the basement of a local elementary school. (That sentence right there is probably enough to make any 1980’s homeschooling parent’s head explode.) The teachers who provide the oversight are full-time dedicated to helping homeschooling parents succeed in educating their children. Our daughter “goes to school” for 5 hours, one day a week, to do science and art and music and be with friends. It’s a really excellent arrangement all the way around.

The other pleasant homeschooling surprise has come as we’ve been at our church for two years now. Come in on a Sunday and you likely won’t see any families that stick out as obvious homeschoolers. But start visiting with folks and getting to know people and it seems like every time I turn around I find out that some other family is homeschooling. Sure, I knew about the one family, because their daughter goes to school on Mondays with our daughter. But that elder’s family, with the high-school-aged kid who’s always helping out somewhere? Yep, homeschoolers. The pastor with a couple of young kids? Homeschoolers. The family who keeps the kids’ club organized on Wednesday nights? Yep, homeschoolers again.

And they all seem so normal. I don’t want to go overboard on the value of “seeming normal”, because if it’s the right thing to do, it doesn’t matter whether we seem normal or not - we need to do it. But in this case it’s such a blessing to have progressed over the past twenty-five years to the point where homeschooling your children is an accepted, normal, even encouraged thing to do. I can only pray that it remains so.

What we all, as homeschooling parents in 2010, should recognize, though, is the debt that we owe to my parents and the thousands like them from the previous generation who blazed the trails for us. It was their civil disobedience, their prayers, their legislative lobbying, and their steadfastness in homeschooling when it was definitely not normal that has enabled us to come to our current state of normalcy. Thank you, Dad and Mom.

Now, friends of my generation: let’s take advantage of the opportunities we’ve been given, and not mess this up.

Imagining a different narrator for a favorite song

A couple of nights ago I had the classic Veggie Tales’ Silly Song Dance of the Cucumber pop into my head. (Don’t even bother asking why.)

And after reciting a few lines, I had a wild idea pop into my head. Imagine if Dance of the Cucumber, instead of being interpreted by Bob the Tomato, were interpreted by…

… William Shatner.

Imagine his trademark delivery of the classic lines:

“Watch the cucumber… oh, how smooth his motion… like butter… on a bald… …monkey.”

“Listen to the cucumber… hear his strong voice… like a lion.. …about to eat.”

And the closing line of the verses: “dancing cucumber… dancing cucumber… dancing cucumber… dance, dance… YEAH.”

Personally, I think it’d be awesome. The more I think about it, I wonder if Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki didn’t have Shatner in mind when they did the song… but I may just be humoring myself with that thought.

What do you think?

Another take on 'Hipster Christianity'

Back in August I linked to a piece by Brett McCracken wherein he decried what he sees as the evangelical temptation to “be cool” at the expense of real, genuine faith. My initial read resonated with the column, and I was a bit surprised when some folks I quite respect took issue with McCracken’s book.

I’ll admit that I haven’t read the book, and absent a copy finding its way into my hands for free, I probably won’t. However, I came upon an insightful review today that puts McCracken’s book in a different (and much less favorable) light.

James K. A. Smith, posting on TheOtherJournal.com, says that McCracken needs to add the word “poser” to his lexicon.

McCracken’s analysis ends up being reductionistic: he thinks anyone who looks like a “hipster” is really just trying to be “cool.” This, I think, tells us more about Mr. McCracken than it does about so-called hipster Christianity…

McCracken sets his sights on his own generation: hip millennials who are taken with incense, hemp clothing, Wendell Berry, and Amnesty International. McCracken is worried that this is just the next generation of cultural assimilation in the name of relevance.

But his analysis only works if, in fact, all hipsters are really just posers. That is, McCracken effectively reduces all hipsters to posers precisely because he can only imagine someone adopting such a lifestyle in order to be cool. Let me say it again: this tells us more about McCracken than it does about those young Christians who are spurning conservative, bourgeois values. [Emphasis in the original.]

Smith acknowledges that there are, indeed, Christians who are trying to be “cool” or “hipster” simply for the sake of being cool, but he asserts that they are the “posers” and are not representative of the “Christian hipsters” he knows:

In short, the lives of the Christian hipsters I know are a gazillion miles away from being worried about image or trendiness; they live the way they do because they are pursuing the good life characterized by well-ordered culture-making that is just and conducive to flourishing—and this requires resisting the mass-produced, mass-marketed, and mass-consumed banalities of the corporate ladder, the suburban veneer of so-called success, as well as the irresponsibility of perpetual adolescence that characterizes so many twentysomethings who imagine life as one big frat house.

I very much appreciate Smith’s review and analysis and recommend it as worthwhile reading.