Recognizing the civil-religious disconnect, or, "what to do about 'gay marriage'"

I’ve been working through the whole ‘gay marriage’ issue in my head for a while now, driven in good part by the discussion over on rmfo.net (you’ve gotta be a member to read it, sorry) surrounding California’s Proposition 8. The evangelically-popular, Dobsonian position is familiar to me, but has always seemed (like most Dobsonian political positions) to be harmful to the Kingdom; focusing on divisive politics rather than loving everyone and focusing on the heart issues. Today, though, Andrew Sullivan’s piece on TheAtlantic.com really solidified things for me; in other words, he said what I’ve been thinking - only much more clearly and concisely.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Andrew Sullivan, here’s where he’s coming from: he’s a relatively conservative gay man. That in itself gives you some idea to which side of the debate he comes down on… but don’t let that bias you towards him without giving him a listen. He nails it.

[Many long for] a return to the days when civil marriage brought with it a whole bundle of collectively-shared, unchallenged, teleological, and largely Judeo-Christian, attributes. Civil marriage once reflected a great deal of cultural and religious assumptions: that women’s role was in the household, deferring to men; that marriage was about procreation, which could not be contracepted; that marriage was always and everywhere for life…

But that position, Sullivan says, is untenable.

If conservatism is to recover as a force in the modern world, the theocons and Christianists have to understand that their concept of a unified polis [(state)] with a telos [(purpose, goal)] guiding all of us to a theologically-understood social good is a non-starter. Modernity has smashed it into a million little pieces. Women will never return in their consciousness to the child-bearing subservience of the not-so-distant past. Gay people will never again internalize a sense of their own “objective disorder” to acquiesce to a civil regime where they are willingly second-class citizens. Straight men and women are never again going to avoid divorce to the degree our parents did. Nor are they going to have kids because contraception is illicit. The only way to force all these genies back into the bottle would require… [an] oppressive police state…

Exactly. My dad said much this same thing in a sermon he preached back before the election (which I still haven’t posted, sorry, Dad!) when he likened the Dobson-esque conservatives to the proverbial dog chasing a car. The problem for the dog is when it catches the car - what the heck do you do with it then?

Back to Mr. Sullivan:

That way is to agree that our civil order will mean less; that it will be a weaker set of more procedural agreements that try to avoid as much as possible deep statements about human nature. And that has a clear import for our current moment. The reason the marriage debate is so intense is because neither side seems able to accept that the word “marriage” requires a certain looseness of meaning if it is to remain as a universal, civil institution.

And then he nails it with an example that hadn’t occurred to me.

This is not that new. Catholics, for example, accept the word marriage to describe civil marriages that are second marriages, even though their own faith teaches them that those marriages don’t actually exist as such. But most Catholics are able to set theological beliefs to one side and accept a theological untruth as a civil fact. After all, a core, undebatable Catholic doctrine is that marriage is for life. Divorce is not the end of that marriage in the eyes of God. And yet Catholics can tolerate fellow citizens who are not Catholic calling their non-marriages marriages - because Catholics have already accepted a civil-religious distinction. They can wear both hats in the public square.

[Emphasis mine.]

I am convinced that this is the right position. Certainly, Christians need to be free to teach per their convictions on homosexuality, and need to be free to discriminate as to who they will marry, hire, and so on. (Sullivan argues specifically for those protections in his column.) But we need to accept, nay, support a broader, freer civil arrangement; an arrangement that allows for freedom for as many as possible to live as their conscience dictates in a way that is consistent with the peaceful, common good.

Putting that civil arrangement in place will provide a basis for the lively exchange of ideas that should be present in a free society. While it won’t look quite like what the Founders set up in the United State more than 200 years ago, it’ll be more what they intended. Let’s face it - we don’t live in 1780 anymore. We will do better if we adapt the principles of 1780 for the world of 2008 and move forward. For this topic that means embracing the civil/religious disconnect and supporting state-sanctioned civil marriage for both hetero- and homosexuals.

Do you want to play with me?

Children have ways of saying things that just cut you to the quick. They don’t realize it, but you hear the words, and, whammo, they’ve got you. Today’s example: my four-year-old daughter Laura.

Laura loves her daddy time, and loves to play. Some days it’s Candy Land or Chutes and Ladders; other days it’s playing “horsies” in her room (we each get a toy horse and have pretend conversations!); other times we play hide and seek in the house. (She always hides the same place: under the covers on our bed.) And when she wants me to play with her, she always asks the question the same way.

“Daddy, do you want to play with me?”

It’d be so much easier if she asked “Daddy, will you play with me?” or “Daddy, can you play with me?”. Because then at times I could respond “sorry, Daddy can’t right now” and just go back to whatever else I am doing. But instead she asks “Daddy, do you want to play with me?” and then I’m forced to check my motives.

Too often my first (internal) reaction is something along the lines of “but I was just checking my email” or “no, I want to finish reading this article online”. And then I’m convicted. Shouldn’t I really want to play with her?

Time moves fast. Laura is already four. Next year she’ll start school of some sort. We won’t always have time to play horsies or hide and seek or Candyland. When I stop to think about it, I really do want to spend the time with my girls that I’ve been given right now. Facebook, email, and blogs can wait. So I’m thankful that God can use even my daughter’s simple requests for Daddy time to convict me of my own selfishness. So if this blog sits dormant from time to time, or I don’t respond to your email very quickly, be patient: I might just be playing horsies.

Happiness is... another new pen.

When we were in Minneapolis last weekend I happened upon one of those dangerous places for me to go in: a pen shop.

Let me back up a bit. I have become quite a fan of fountain pens over the past couple of years. I’ve not bought any real expensive pens, but have managed to enjoy and then lose two separate Lamy Safari Al-Stars the past two years - one fell out of my pocket on an airplane, the other dropped off my lanyard undetected last summer. I’ve been resisting the urge to buy another one… but that resistance proved futile on Friday. So, I came out of the store with this:

I’ve been using it this morning at work and I had forgotten just how much fun it is to write with a fountain pen.

Officially, Becky declared that this was my Christmas present from her, so I’ll say this: thanks, Beck, for the present. It’s fantastic. I love it. :-)

A weird iPod Genius playlist bug

Discovered this one last night: when I tapped the Genius icon to create a Genius playlist out of the currently-playing song, the playlist it created began with a different version of that song. It was repeatable, happened twice.

In detail: I was playing “All the Way Home (live)” from Andrew Peterson’s Appendix M record. I hit the Genius button to create a playlist, and it generated one quite neatly. Unfortunately, rather than starting the playlist with “All the Way Home (live)” from Appendix M, it started the playlist with “All the Way Home” from AP’s Carried Along.

Don’t know quite what’s going on here, but something ain’t quite right with the Genius.

Bullet Points for a Thursday Morning #2

It’s been a crazy week so I’m reduced to one of these play-by-play lists. Sorry.

  • Note to self: eating at Texas Roadhouse only two hours before playing a rec league basketball game: not such a good idea.
  • Looking forward to getting out of town this weekend.
  • There is pretty much nothing cuter than a four-year-old excited about being invited to a friend’s birthday party.
  • Is Thanksgiving really only two weeks away? Where has the year gone?
  • I’m getting a kick out of Fake Geof Morris this morning.
  • It’s been far too long since I’ve listened to Mel Brooks’ The Producers soundtrack. Hilariously clever lyrics.
  • I’m with Kari - it’s too early for Christmas music.

The Church Search, Week 5

This morning we got up off our behinds and visited the next church on our short list: Maranatha Bible Church. Maranatha has been around for nearly 30 years in Cedar Rapids, sitting on 25th Street near Mount Mercy College. We were familiar with some of the people before we visited; we’ve known Pastor Aaron Telecky and his family for several years, Youth Pastor Thad Joyce and his family live just a few blocks up from us here in Hiawatha, and several other faces in the church were familiar from many years of church league softball. It’s a bit interesting giving my update on Maranatha this afternoon since I know Aaron reads this blog. Aaron, feel free to comment if you want to.

First Impressions

  • Maranatha is in an older church building in the middle of a residential neighborhood. There were several cars parked on the street, but we found a spot in the parking lot.
  • A couple people greeted us with “good morning!” as we walked in and found the foyer. An usher handed us bulletins and we hung up our coats. After we had stood there for another ten seconds or so, obviously looking around, the usher asked if we were visiting. When we said yes he introduced himself and welcomed us, but didn’t volunteer any info about children’s ministries even though we had both girls in tow.
  • About that time Pastor Aaron walked into the foyer, welcomed us, and introduced us to one of the men who was helping teach one of the girls’ classes this morning. That guy (whose name escapes me now) took us downstairs and helped us find the girls classes.
  • We had just time enough to sign our girls in, get back upstairs, find a seat, and just start looking at the bulletin before the service started.

Music

  • They had a six-member worship team this morning: piano, two female vocalists, leader w/ acoustic guitar, bass player, and drummer.
  • Six songs were sung throughout the service; four were relatively new songs, two were old hymns. Four of the six songs were familiar to me; Becky said she was familiar with all of them.
  • The guy running the overhead had a little trouble keeping up with the music on the first song, which was a fast one. Otherwise, everything ran quite smoothly and the group sounded pretty good. Overall the congregational singing was strong.
  • We were told afterwards that this wasn’t their usual music leader, and that things could sound quite different when she was present. I don’t know whether that’ll be good or bad, I guess we’ll find out another week.

Children’s Ministries

  • Maranatha has Sunday School at 9:00 - we didn’t make it to that this morning. Then they have age-segregated nurseries for children up through 4 years old during the service, and kids from 5 - 9 or so are dismissed to a Children’s Church during the sermon time.
  • Laura and Addie both seemed to enjoy their mornings. The rooms were big and there were several kids in each room. Haven’t heard much else from either of them about it.

Message

  • Pastor Aaron is on a sermon series through the book of Isaiah. This week was chapter 32. At a chapter a week he has another 7 or so months to go.
  • The sermon was maybe 40 - 45 minutes long, but good, solid stuff. Pastor Aaron seems to pretty much have one speed, but it’s energetic and not hard to listen to.
  • The Gospel was clearly present in the message, as was a reminder of the hope that we have in God’s kingdom that will be established for eternity.
  • After avoiding one church on our list because of their strident insistence on a particular sort of end-times views, it was good to hear from the pulpit (and I paraphrase here) that ‘a lot of Bible-believing people have come up with a lot of Bible-believing ideas about how the end times will happen, but in reality we don’t really know for certain.

People

  • The congregation was a fairly mixed age there at Maranatha; there were lots of families with young children, but there were also a bunch of teenagers and a fair number of older folks. Good to see the variety.
  • On the whole, people weren’t unfriendly, but weren’t perhaps as purposefully outgoing as the folks at Stonebridge were when we visited there. Outside of the folks we already knew (and the few people that they introduced us to), no one specifically came up to greet and welcome us. If it hadn’t been for Pastor Aaron finding us and shepherding us around, I got the feeling we would’ve had to ask a bunch of questions and more or less find our own way around to get the girls down to the children’s ministries.

Observations

  • The church sanctuary is interesting; they have adapted what was obviously once a rather long, narrow sanctuary and turned the whole thing sideways. This makes the sanctuary very wide (4 rows of pews wide or so) but only about 6 rows deep. It works pretty well.
  • In general, the church feels like they’ve outgrown their building but don’t have a solution for what to do next. The sanctuary wasn’t overly full this morning, but I can see where it could be. The stage felt somewhat cramped with the whole worship team up there. The basement has temporary walls set up to make the children’s classrooms, and the doors are short - like 6-foot-high short. Their website tells me that they had a baptismal service last week at a church several miles away, since they don’t have the facilities at their own building.
  • It looks like there’s a lot of good stuff going on at Maranatha. There’s an emphasis on small groups, an apparent focus on missions, and a seeming dedication to qualified leadership.

As with Stonebridge a few weeks ago, it’s just impossible to get a full impression and make any sort of decision based on only attending for one Sunday. Next week we’ll be out of town, but I expect that the following week we’ll be back at Maranatha to give it another shot. Thanks to Aaron and the whole group there at Maranatha for a good Sunday morning.

Happy Birthday, Mom (2008 edition)!

It’s my mother’s birthday today, and out of respect for her (a respect that I wasn’t prone to show in my younger years, but that’s another story) I won’t mention her age.

However, I will mention that she has accomplished much in her years, raising and schooling five children, serving and caring for friends and family, consistently modeling Christ-likeness to those around her, tireless for nearly 37 years as a wife and nearly 32 as a mother.

Today, this son rises to call her blessed.

Happy Birthday, Mom.

Good friends say things like this

Good friends aren’t afraid to say hard things.

Last night I had a friend tell me: “Hey, Chris, this church search blog thing is cool, but you need to get your butt in gear and actually get to church.”

Now, he and I both understand that we’ve had good reasons for not getting to church the past two weeks, and his comment was somewhat in jest, but still, that’s the kind of thing a reliable friend will tell you. I’m blessed to have a friend like that.

Post-Election Thoughts

So much has been said by so many this morning that I don’t really have anything brilliant to add. Still, I’ll consolidate a few thoughts here.

  • The scene at Grant Park in Chicago last night was amazing. Just amazing.
  • It’s good to have an election decided decisively. No nightmare like the month of November 2000 this time.
  • To those of you who supported Obama: his presidency won’t be as awesome as most of you think.
  • To those of you who opposed Obama: his presidency won’t be as terrible as most of you think.
  • As Christians, it is our responsibility to pray for, respect, honor, and obey our leaders.
  • We owe it to President-elect Obama to put aside our cynicism for a while, to assume the best instead of the worst.
  • The kingdom we wait expectantly for is not an earthly kingdom.

Culture Warrior or Disciple?

The Internet Monk’s latest post deserves more than just a bullet in my overnight links.

Michael Spencer describes “Bob”, a man he met this past summer. Bob is “a very dedicated conservative evangelical, and a pleasant enough fellow….when he [isn’t] angry.”

Bob was your stereotypical culture war evangelical. He was a Jesus follower, but his passion was what was going on in America, particularly the issues we broadly call the culture war: atheistic advances in the public schools, restrictions on Christian practice in the public square, the aggressive agenda of homosexual rights advocates.

Bob was obviously devoted to Christian and conservative media, particularly radio. He believed what he heard. Dobson. Point of View. 700 Club.

We all know people like this. We all get multitudinous email forwards from people like this. Some of us are people like this, or have those tendencies. And here’s iMonk’s word for us:

Go live like a disciple.

It’s hard to say this, but Bob isn’t seeing the big picture. Our American culture war is not worth the demise of authentic discipleship. Trading following Christ in love, even in post-Christian times, for fighting and defensiveness, is a bad trade. Bob is frightened. Our faith says “Fear not.” Bob says prepare to fight. Our faith says prepare to love.

I am particularly impressed that these days should call us together in real community, not separate us according to Christian media audience niche. There are some helpful voices out there in the culture war, but I’d like to suggest that it’s time to listen to your pastor- assuming he’s showing you how to follow Jesus- more than James Dobson or some angrier, more paranoid manipulator of fear.

You should really go read the whole article. Good, good stuff. Amen.