Longing to Connect

29 10 2010

‘The Social Network’ has recently been released in cinemas worldwide. I watched the film with Ana, my wife. I must tell you I was really surprised that at the end… (I’m joking; I won’t spoil the movie for you, in case you still haven’t watched it.) The film displays the peculiar story behind the creation of the largest and most popular social network web site today, Facebook. Though launched in 2004, Facebook already has over 500 million active users, which is approximately one in every 14 people in the world (if Facebook were a country, it’d be the third most populous country in the planet). All users together spend over 700 billion minutes on Facebook every month.[1]

The American psychiatrist William Glasser has argued, in his ‘choice theory’, that one of the five basic needs of every person is to relate to other people.[2] Though his theory is not unanimously accepted, this assertion seems to describe a universal human experience. The enormous success of Facebook, and other social networks, surely lies on our deep desire to connect to others.

Christians believe in a God who also desires to connect to people. Though we long for relationships as a result of a need, God longs for relationships as a result of his fulfilment – God is complete in his perfect triune connexion (God the Father, Son and Spirit). Jesus’ death and resurrection, Christians affirm, is God’s unparalleled demonstration of his desire to connect. He’s connecting us to himself; connecting us to each other; connecting us with ourselves; connecting us with the creation around us.

Simone Weil was born in Paris in 1909. She has been recognized as one of the greatest spiritual and also political thinkers of her time. As a young woman and as a student in Sorbonne she rejected the idea of a personal God. Her perspective changed, nonetheless, as a consequence of a few unexpected occurrences in her adult life. When describing one of those experiences she affirmed: “I felt, while completely unprepared for it [...] a presence more personal, more certain, and more real than that of a human being.”[3] And she added: “Christ himself came down [...].”[4]

To use a Facebook language, God was adding Simone Weil as a friend. I believe he has sent the same invitation to us. The question is therefore: will we accept his invitation?

Hélder Favarin

[2] Glasser, William, Choice Theory – A New Psychology of Personal Freedom

[3] Guiness, Os, Long Journey Home, 186.

[4] Ibid.


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Categories : The Heart of Faith

On the Meaning of Freedom?

27 10 2010

Much gets said these days about liberty and freedom across the political spectrum. At the heart of talk about “inalienable rights” is usually the notion of freedom, and in the contemporary context, we find political systems often construed as protectors of personal rights. Yet when the foundation for the notion of justice and right is personal liberty, or “freedom,” problems arise.

Let me give an example. Freedoms can often be pitted against one another: the exercise of one person’s right to free speech can enable the defamation of another person, impinging upon their right to maintain an accurate depiction of their character and reputation. Similarly, my right to affordable food can impinge upon the right of another person to just working conditions in a distant land. Amidst these sorts of troubles, it remains unpopular to suggest that religious faith might offer some sort of a solution, and while this sentiment is deeply rooted in Western history, it is not necessarily productive.

With the rise of Protestantism, the medieval notion of authority came under threat. Long-held convictions regarding the subject of moral authority were questioned, leaving people wondering whether they owed allegiance to the pope, the prince, or neither. After over a century of bloody wars and conflict across Europe over the subject of religion, a treaty was struck and Christian doctrine was sidelined as a unifying factor for the political identities of the emerging European states, at the Peace of Westphalia. Leaders concluded that it would be best to sideline religion for the sake of social stability. Following a few generations after this legacy, the philosopher Immanuel Kant developed a new way of moral thinking that could respect the need for social order but leave faith conviction on the sidelines. The system he imagined has become one of the more enduring philosophical legacies for the succeeding centuries!

Fast-forward to the present day, and it has become clear that, though Kant offered a new sort of “objectivity,” there were losses as well. In order to grant coherence to the concept of duty in this newly secular modern world, objectivity became the new focal point of moral deliberation. And this objectivity comes at a cost, as Plato suggests: “If we are to have clear knowledge of anything, we must get rid of the body” (Phaedo). Old theological notions such as justice, were replaced with new secular ones like ”fairness” and “equality.” But this brave new world can be bleak at times, as the secular vision for the good life, which was to be achieved through science and engineering, has been frustrated in a wide variety of circumstances, including new wars, Nazi projects in human engineering, and fascist experiments in social engineering. To be fair, this new Scientific society has also brought us refrigeration and disposable toilet cleaners, but one is often left wondering… where is the idea of the “good life”?

In Kant’s vision, created particularities had to be left on the sidelines along with the creator. In privileging our rational faculties for the sake of objectively discerning our duties, Kant also left behind the role of our emotional lives and the unique contours and needs of the social life of neighbourhoods. 

I would argue much is to be gained with a re-affirmation that at the true center of freedom lies the notion that we are created, contingent creatures. In the wake of the creeping failure of the modern orientations for the moral life – progress, science, engineering – in some cases people have finally given up on orienting our societies to any sort of purpose at all. And, without an orientation, we are prone to wander. As Augustine observed in another age of violent conflict, “our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you [God]” (inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te). I think it is no accident that Augustine puts this in the plural as well. Not only are our personal lives prone to disorientation when we have nothing by which to order them, so too is our common life prone to wander restlessly searching for an orientation which can guide our life together.

Jeremy Kidwell


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Categories : On Anything and Everything

A City-Sized Vision

25 10 2010

As we have all been noticing, the world is urbanized and globalized again. After centuries of regional economic systems, stable trade, nation state politics, and homogeneous populations, our planet is undergoing a transformation in which the interconnected city is more and more the center actor and stage of human culture. Not since the globalized world of the Roman Empire were cities so interlinked, dense, diverse, and influential. Just as how the direction of the ancient culture was set in places like Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople, Rome, today’s so-called new “global village” is groomed in the urban matrix of cities like Dubai, Singapore, New York. “Neither 19th-century balance-of-power politics nor 20th-century power blocs are useful in understanding this new world,” assessed Parag Khanna in a recent article. “Cities are the world’s experimental laboratories and thus a metaphor for an uncertain age. They are both the cancer and the foundation of our networked world, both virus and antibody. From climate change to poverty and inequality, cities are the problem — and the solution.”[1]

In recent years a sociological category has emerged to help explain this new urban social order: the global city. Defined as places which concentrate high degrees of economic production, such as multi-national companies and stock exchanges; political decision-making, like seats of governments and multi-lateral organizations; cultural influence created by a concentration of media, publishing and information sectors; and developed infrastructure, these cities virtually guide the cultural trends that inform our thinking. The last rank of global cities issued by Foreign Policy magazine notices the lasting influence of traditional heavyweights, like New York, London and Paris, while half of the ten most influential cities lie now in the Asia-Pacific region: Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul, and Sydney. At the same time, the rapid urbanization in many countries is forming gigantic centers, which may approach in future years close to 100 million inhabitants around cities like Shanghai and Mumbai.

As the city increases its profile, there is an ongoing debate on how we should relate to it. Some romantics seek to flee the city, decrying its evils of traffic, pollution, inequality and crime, and long to return to a past of homogenous villages and bucolic life. Many become afraid of the city and its diversity, and try to cocoon themselves into gated neighbourhoods, ethnic ghettoes or communities of people of the same age and lifestyle. Others become fascinated and adopt the attitude of merely using the city and its prestigious institutions to booster résumés and private projects.

But the wisest attitude to the city I have come across was crystallized a long time ago, when two Ancient cities clashed and one of them won. When Babylon condensed the height of human power and technology, and conquered Jerusalem, they brought the local population to be part of its social matrix. Yet the message God sent to the people through the prophet Jeremiah was radically different from what they expected. They were not to flee the city, or to be afraid of it, or to just use it; they were to serve Babylon and work for its prosperity. “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters … Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”[2]

To adopt an open, generous attitude to a city into which you come as a slave was surely as revolutionary then as it is now. It forms citizens instead of consumers; it generates communities that seek to promote the common good instead of promoting just their own agenda. It embraces diversity, builds bridges, and dethrones prejudices. And it makes us prosper, for when we are working for the good of others, and succeed even a tiny bit, and give the smallest of contributions, and help improve things even for a handful of folks, we’ll see that we were the greatest beneficiaries. A city flourishes, and we mature.

René Breuel

[1] Parag Khanna, Beyond City Limits (Washington DC: Foreign Policy Magazine, sep-oct 2010). http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/08/16/beyond_city_limits

 

[2] Jeremiah 29:5-7


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Girls and Women

22 10 2010

A recent New York Times piece, Cultural Studies: The Playground Gets Even Tougher, examines an increasing trend toward bullying among very young girls: kindergarteners and first-graders. The article looks at, among other examples, “Erin Munroe, a school guidance counselor in Boston… [who] sees first-graders pulling their hair out, throwing up before school and complaining of constant stomachaches” all because “It’s not cool to not have a cell phone anymore or to not wear exactly the right thing….The poor girls who have Strawberry Shortcake shirts on, forget it.”

Of course, the experts interviewed pointed the effect of media culture in shaping the attitudes of children, and linked the act of bullying to the pervasive materialism that characterizes Western consumer culture. And, no doubt, these are important factors in forming “mean girls.” But it is the closing remark by Debbie Rosenman, who has been teaching in a Midwestern suburban school for 31 years, that I found particularly disturbing. She observes, “The girls who are the victims tend to be raised by parents who encourage them to be more age appropriate….The mean girls are 8 but want to be 14, and their parents play along.”

Ironically, this New York Times article came at the same time the Sydney Morning Herald ran an article entitled “Cloistered Kids Make Terrible Adults,” which exults in the former freedoms of childhood to walk the dog and go to the shops without fear. It seems that as we lock our children away from the potential bogey men lurking in the neighborhood park or at the shops, we encourage our daughters to devour each other within their schools. As this juxtaposition implies, the bullying in the NYT article has a particularly sinister side. In it, Miley Cyrus and Paris Hilton are both referenced as some of the aggressive women that young girls are viewing and emulating in the early years of primary school. Such “role models” imply that the age-inappropriate behavior that parents play along with is characterized by materialism and an assertion of one’s sexuality, rather than the freedom to take the dog to the park without an adult chaperon. While the innocent adventures of childhood and the responsibilities and privileges of growing-up are deemed too dangerous, the self-centered materialism and early sexuality of teenage and young adult pop-divas and television stars is encouraged. The sexualized gaze that is dangerous in the stranger becomes a thing to flaunt, as it is unwittingly appropriated and internalized by the child.

To look on―or worse, to encourage―our daughters to demean themselves and others with them, we truly must be a society determined to destroy its women while they are still very little girls. Such a society needs a different vision of what it means to be human, one that encourages girls to see themselves as more than the things they possess or their sexual potential. The biblical narrative offers just such an alternative view, affirming that each person is created in the image of God with a particular and redemptive role to play in the world.

Sadly, though, it is not enough for individuals―and individual parents―to recognize the divine image in and purpose for their daughters, to and encourage them to live differently than their friends, since this will apparently make them likeable targets for bullying. Recognizing this, many parents commenting the NYT article express their plans to home school their children or send them to small private institutions. Yet such a step away does not solve the problem; it only encapsulates girls to face it a few years ahead. And the schools we could affect for the better are left uninfluenced.

So instead of isolating ourselves to complain about the evils of society, even of little kindergarten girls, those of us who embrace a biblical understanding of human identity must instead live that out in community, so that we and our daughters can, as a group, offer an alternative vision, one that sees innocent little girls growing into confident and graceful women.

Jessica Hughes


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Categories : On Anything and Everything

A Bit More on Christian Sex

20 10 2010

Why should Madi Simpson have all the fun?! I loved her article on sex last week, and decided to build on it by discussing another very common and completely understandable reason why people might think Christians don’t like sex: we keep saying not to do it. There’s no getting around that. We do. The question is, why? Do we ask some people to abstain from sex because we think sex is wrong, or is there another reason? 

Well, perhaps an analogy might help: imagine you just bought a $300,000 Ferrari. Believe me, there would be plenty of “don’t”! “Don’t crunch the gears.” “Don’t park there.” “Don’t even think of bringing those muddy shoes on my floor.” Now, obviously this isn’t because you think the car is evil or unseemly, but actually because you think it is precious. Well, the same with Christians and sex. That leads to a new question – why is it precious?

The answer is actually tied up in a mysterious word, sacrament. A sacrament is something that is a sign (and a little more), pointing to something greater and more beautiful than itself. Christians have long seen sex as sacramental, pointing to an amazing reality – God’s Triune nature.

A few months ago, Dave Benson wrote a great article for Wondering Fair about the idea of perichoresis, of the Trinity being in a relationship often likened to a dance. This is fine, but we could go further. The constant inter-penetrating relationship of love experienced by the Triune Source, Word and Spirit is of an intensity unparalleled in all of existence. Totally self-giving, totally trusting, ultimately fulfilled, constantly emptied, eternally beautiful. And in an astonishing mystery, God invites us to join in this intense relationship.

Now, before you freak out, I’m not suggesting God is having sex with Himself, or that He’s having sex with us. To think that would be like looking through a telescope the wrong way. What I’m saying is that the act of sex was designed by God to be a symbol, a sign, pointing to this incredible reality of love, intimacy, trust and relationship. It is the small end of the telescope, from which the larger end becomes clearer. A healthy sexual relationship should tell you something about God’s Triune relationship, and His relationship with us.

You see this throughout the Bible: in the creation of man and woman in Genesis 1 and 2, the Bible’s “sealed section” the Song of Songs, and Paul’s description of marriage in Ephesians 5.

So what does it tell you? It tells you the Triune Person/s are/is faithful and trustworthy, and that this allows absolute honesty – a vulnerable nakedness. That God’s love is full of joy, anticipation, fulfilment, passion. That the relationship can become so intense that the separate become one – unioned. So you can’t even tell sometimes whether He’s three Persons or One, or whether a husband and wife and Him, all in relationship, are three or one. Sex is thus designed to be part of the romantic “glue” that unions two people with each other, and with Him. I see that in my relationship with my wife, and while I don’t see other couples having sex, I see the outworking of that “glue” in the way they talk to each other, laugh with each other, raise a family, live out their dreams together. When I’m amazed to see a great and loving marriage, I’m drawn to be amazed at a great and loving God.

That sounds even better than a Ferrari.

Matt Gray

 


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Fear, Power and Religion

18 10 2010

Bertrand Russell delivered a famous lecture in 1927, later expanded into a book, called Why I am not a Christian. The renowned agnostic discussed common arguments regarding God’s existence and character to his London audience at the National Secular Society, such as Aristotle’s argument for God as first cause, Newton’s reasoning from natural law and Kant’s argument from morality. Then he concluded with a tentative thesis on the origin of religion: “Religion is based, I think, mainly and first of all, in fear. It is, in part, the terror of the unknown and, in part, as I have already said, the desire to fell one has some kind of elder brother who will be at our side in all our difficulties and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing: fear of mystery, fear of defeat, fear of death.”[1]

I think Bertrand Russell is just right. Religion is indeed for many people a form of divine contract: in our fear before the world, we promise allegiance to God and virtuous living in exchange for protection against harms of society and nature. We know we can’t defend ourselves; we know humanity’s wit and technology are no match for the perils of living and dying, and we set up a system of obedience and recompenses. And out of this dreadful angst to appease God lest we suffer emerge the sins of corporate religion: sense of superiority over others, exclusion of the different, legalism, rigidity, joyless obedience. It is a form of religion which crushes people.

And that’s the kind of criticism that Jesus levelled against religion in his own day. He censured the mindless obedience to laws and regulations without understanding their true purpose. He denounced the religious status quo that oppressed the poor who could not pay for expensive animal sacrifices, the sick who were prejudiced against, the foreigner considered to be less worthy of God, the moral deviant who were forced to become social outcasts. Jesus understood that when religion springs out of fear it becomes really a religion of power. We still approach God from a self-centered perspective and diminish everyone around us, and feel superior over them.

Yet Jesus obviously did not stop at that. He had a more nuanced view of life and God to settle at Russell’s agnosticism. He dared set out an alternative to the religion of his day and, I think, to every other religious system based on fear. Jesus’ offer of salvation and eternal life was fundamentally different because of this: it was not based on how someone would perform spiritually. It is not primarily a matter of obedience, morality, blamelessness. Jesus knew that only self-centered religion would grow from a self-centered start.

Instead, Jesus told people that their salvation depended on what he would do to them. They did not have perform anything, for he would do it in their stead, as he offered himself as a sacrifice to pay for their sins and offer them salvation. Their redemption was a gift, a pure and free gift, and one cannot feel proud or superior for having received a gift with no merit. If our salvation does not depend on our performance, there is no space for fear and insecurity either. The natural motivation that flows from such an extravagant free gift is gratitude and love. One cannot wait to express his joy in selfless acts of service to others and to God.

One option, usually called religion, grows out of fear, and sets us a contract with God for protection and salvation. The motivations that result are insecurity – we never know if we are doing enough – and superiority over people who do not perform like us or do not believe in the same things. Jesus’ alternative, his gospel, springs out of gratitude, as someone receives Jesus’ free offer of salvation. The motivations that result are love and selfless service of others.

These are two very different systems of life. They may look alike from a distance, but the fruits each produce are in opposite fields. For those of us investigating Christianity, let’s us keep in mind Jesus is not offering mere religion. He criticizes and deconstructs it, and offers an alternative radically different. And if we dare follow Jesus, and call ourselves Christians, may we not forget the base of grace we stepped into and lapse into contract-based living. For then someone else would look at our unchanged lives, at our anxious fear and mistreatment of others, and maybe write another Why I am not a Christian.

René Breuel

[1] Bertrand Russell, Why I am not a Christian (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 18.


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Categories : The Heart of Faith

On Ordinary, Everyday Experience

15 10 2010

My family and I have been busy lately. (I suppose that is true for many if not most families, and now that I think about it, the word “lately” in the last sentence should be changed to “perennially.”) We moved to a new place in early September. A week later I turned in my dissertation. After that we spent most days working on our new home – washing and repairing walls, scraping off old paint, putting on new paint, weeding, weeding and more weeding in the garden. This period of work was capped off by my oral defense of the thesis at the end of the month. Of course, we were taking care of a toddler at the same time, a task all parents agree can be draining. At night I found myself beat and occasionally wondered about the ultimate significance of days of such mundane labor. (Honestly, I had the same thought about my dissertation sometimes as well…)

I am currently reading the Lord of the Rings series again (trust me, this does connect to the previous train of thought).  In the midst of the everyday-ness of my life I am reading a story that is about that small percentage of life that is not “everyday”:  adventure, life-changing experiences, great deeds, crisis, resolution, fame, and fortune.  If you think about it, most stories we tell ourselves, through books, movies, TV shows, etc., are about these big moments in life.  Some stories are more explicit about this than others, but a plot needs a climax. (Even the post-modern stories like Waiting for Godot have a sort of existential high-point.) Looking at life, though, I think that most days could be classified as “mundane” or, to use a word that captures the sheer quantity of these days, “everyday.”  I have relatively few crisis moments, adventures or fame (and even less fortune).

The combination of my daily grind with the stories of adventure that I’m reading got me thinking about the lack of everyday-ness in the narratives of Scripture too. There’s no story about Jesus coming home after a long day of work in Sepphoris. He throws his tools on the table and collapses into a chair with a cup of water. He makes small-talk with his parents.  Then he eats some dinner. Then he goes to bed. That’s it. Or, where’s the story in Acts that covers Paul’s actual journeys? You know, the part where he and Timothy are trudging along some muddy road in Greece in the winter and talking about the latest trends in leather-tanning to pass the time?  Now that’s mundane.

But those stories aren’t there.

We want great things, exciting moments and adventure, but the majority of the time we get “everyday.” Interestingly, the Church calendar has another term for such days, Ordinary Time (which, incidentally, is also the name of a great band). On this calendar there’s Advent and Christmas and then there’s Ordinary Time. There’s Lent and Easter and then more Ordinary Time. Feasts are followed by regular life. About 2/3 of the year is classified as “Ordinary.” (The term itself comes from the same root as the word “ordinal” and means “numbered” or “counted time” translating the Latin phrase tempus per annum, time through the year.)  What is so great about this yearly rhythm is that it gives place to the everyday. It is a year-long story of redemption that includes such great events as the birth of Jesus the universal Savior at Christmas, his dramatic death and even more dramatic resurrection and ascension, among others. But most of the year is still ordinary. And that’s okay.

Our stories of popular media, while great for entertainment (and I’ll be honest, I’ve read LOTR about a dozen times), often leave us feeling like our lives lack pizzaz, and they can rob us of “everyday” contentment. On the other hand, the ancient rhythm of the Church affirms the common experience of the mundane. It does not pretend that life is always fun or full of adventure, nor does it say that it should be. No. Most of our time is ordinary, and we need not kill ourselves to make it something else… because the feasts are coming at their appointed times.

Ben Edsall

 


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Religion at the Political Table

11 10 2010

Religion is not neutral to politics, nor is politics neutral to religion. Despite those who try to keep them separate, the fact is that every political stance is informed by some form of religious worldview, and every spiritual belief, if carried to its full logic, will bubble into political action. Two religiously-infused political moments of the past week illustrate this.

On one side of the South Atlantic, the Brazilian presidential election arrived at an unexpected turn. The predictable victory of Dilma Rousseff, the leading candidate, was postponed for a second round of votes, according to most analysts, because a mass segment of the electorate shifted their votes to another candidate, Green Party Marina Silva. Silva championed environmental concerns and was the only candidate not favouring the legalization of abortion in Brazil, and this last-minute, surprising twist launched a wide-spreading debate on the role of faith in politics. One columnist in Folha de S. Paulo, Brazil’s leading newspaper, seized the moment to argue against religious participation in politics.

“The danger of using a spiritual logic to address politics is that it introduces moral absolutes into questions that need to be resolved from an essentially practical perspective, usually with recourse to negotiation. To sum up, the last thing we need to do is to bring the notion of sin to laws and public policies. There is of course a secular equivalent to the concept of sin, which is crime. The difference is that, while the latter has an exclusively reasonable justification on more or less utilitarian grounds and admits gradations, the first, because it is dictated by a superior and supposedly incontestable authority, arrives in non-negotiable packages. In a certain way, to think religiously is to negate politics.” [1]

Well-meant yet a bit confused, Hélio Schwartsman fails to notice is that his statements contradict one another. To defend that moral absolutes or the notion of sin are not applicable to politics is, of course, a religious view. He is also thinking religiously; he is also negating politics by excluding people who believe that moral absolutes are of relevance. He is advocating a dichotomy between morality and practical matters, as if they could be divorced, and trying to promote political debate by silencing one voice in it.

In stark contrast, the world celebrated the retirement of Archbishop Desmond Tutu last Thursday, a religiously motivated opponent of Apartheid across the South Atlantic. A Time magazine article exalted the achievements of the Nobel peace laureate who became “the world’s moral compass” and “our global guardian” because of his stance against injustice. “Tutu’s secret, then, is no secret at all. It is faith,” concludes the article, and U2 singer Bono complements saying that Tutu “ties tight faith, justice and compassionate earthiness. He takes on the most sophisticated structural wrongs and breaks them down with pure focus.”[2]

Be it in Brazilian elections or South African racial struggles, or in any other context, our beliefs do inform our political views. There can be negative influences, as well as questionable compromises between faith and power, of course, but only fully developed moral absolutes like those of Desmond Tutu have the solidness to stand unflinchingly against injustice. “God is not evenhanded,” he defends. “God is biased, horribly in favour of the weak. The minute an injustice is being perpetrated, God is going to be on the side of the one who is being clobbered.” Tutu’s is no neutral language, for sure, and it would not give in to practical matters or utilitarian negotiations, like Schwartsman would prefer. And that why it is of worth, why it gives an irreplaceable contribution to the political scene. It grows out of a worldview centered on a good God, a God committed to justice in such a fierce, adamant way that Tutu and all of us can rejoice, “the texture of our universe is one where there is no question at all but that good and laughter and justice will prevail.”[3]

René Breuel 

[1] Hélio Schwartsman, “Fé na Política” [Faith in Politics], Folha de S. Paulo, October 5, 2010. http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/colunas/helioschwartsman/810042-fe-na-eleicao.shtml.

[2] Alex Perry, “The Laughing Bishop,” Time. Vol. 176, no. 15. October 11, 2010, pg. 30.

[3] Ibid.


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Christian Sex

8 10 2010

They say there are three subjects one should never raise at a dinner party: sex, religion and politics. However, since the same social protocols have not yet made it into the blogosphere, and to spice things up a bit, I’ve decided to tackle these hot topics in my next few articles.  This month:  sex.

Timothy Winter, a leading Islamic scholar and Cambridge academic, recently spoke in an interview with The Independent (August 20th 2010) about what prompted him to convert to Islam.  Part of his conversion, he claims, was due to the different attitudes to sexuality between Christianity and Islam. “In a Christian context,” he says, “sexuality is seen as a consequence of the Fall, but for Muslims it is an anticipation of paradise.”

Is Winter right? Is this the Christian view of sexuality? No doubt there are many who share his views or impressions regarding a Christian attitude to sexual pleasure. There have been Christians in every century who, wary of indulging the flesh, have frowned upon almost every activity that induces physical pleasure: sport, music, fashion, dancing, alcohol, enjoyment of food, sex, and so on. However, while it is understandable for a Christian to abstain from any or all of the above for reasons of self control or purity, it is quite a different thing to say that these things are bad in themselves, and to suggest that such a view represents a truly Christian ethos.

Notwithstanding Winter’s expertise when it comes to Islam, I would like to suggest that his knowledge of Christianity is wanting. Christians in the 21st century, or any century for that matter, should respond to his claim that sexuality is ‘post-Fall’ with a resounding “No.” Sexuality, according to scripture, is distinctly pre- not post-Fall.

How do we know this?  We know it because Genesis 1-3 tells us that God made the material world, including food, bodies, sexual identity and function, and declared it ‘very good’ (1:31). God blessed Adam and Eve and commanded them to “Be fruitful and increase” (1:28). The picture of life that these chapters present, sees Adam and Eve in harmony with God, with all of creation, and with each other, being both naked and unashamed (2:25). Given that sex is both fundamental to procreation and, generally speaking, extremely pleasurable to the couple that willingly partakes in it, one cannot but conclude that God created the pleasure of such intimacy. It is a corollary of God’s blessing of Adam and Eve’s reproductive capacity that they should enjoy their sexuality. It is God-given.

So where does a view like Winter’s come from? As with so much faulty theology, it stems primarily from a faulty view of God’s character. If, as Christians, we view God as being fundamentally harsh, judgmental and joyless, we, being made in God’s image, will ‘image’ these qualities in our relationships with our spouses, children, colleagues, and with the natural environment. Over the years, many Christians have done just that, presenting to the world a God who is more concerned with ‘correct behaviour’ than loving action, a God who dislikes people and dislikes what they do, a God who despises pleasure in all its forms and finds greatest satisfaction when people do likewise.

A truly biblical view of sexuality, instead, is grounded in the truth that God is a good creator who loves all that he has made, and who delights when we enjoy our createdness. In this light, perversion of sexuality is not measured by the degree to which we enjoy our physical createdness, but by the degree to which we fail to celebrate everything God celebrates, enjoy what he enjoys, and live within the parameters he has given for us to thrive in all our relationships. God made sex not only for the babies that result from it, but also for the candles, dances, well, let’s leave it at that…

Madi Simpson


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Tough Friendship

4 10 2010

No one told me about it. I used to have a nice pair of black shoes, my favourite, the first gift Sarah ever gave me, but which acquired a doubtful smell over time. I had never had foot odour before, so I began to suspect the problem only gradually, but by then it was too late. I saw myself in a crowded friend’s house with no way to make things smell better, and had already been at several events and left a trail of questionable aromas and nervous comments.

To confront friends is a tough task. We all have friends who could benefit hugely if someone told them to switch deodorant brands, to dress up for job interviews, to expand the repertoire of subjects of conversation. Everybody knows these features are prejudicial, everybody knows the person is not aware of them, everybody knows he would benefit if someone pulled him aside and gave some suggestions, but no one has the guts to do it. We fear we might offend him.

The courage to confront is harder to come in more delicate cases still, like with the friend who is fixed for years on entering a specific university but who is simply not ready enough, even tough she studies day and night. Or with the buddy who dismisses great gals that come by because they are not good enough for him, not realizing he is no Brad Pitt himself. Or with the acquaintance pouring investments into a company that is bound for bankruptcy, believing that persistence will eventually turn losses into profits.

“The king is always killed by his courtesans, not by his enemies,” wrote John Lennon, about a meteoric moment of his Beatles career when no one had the courage to confront him even though success was crippling his soul. So-called friends preferred to profit from his fame than to help him navigate it with a clear head. “The king is overfed, overdrugged, overflattered, they make anything to keep him bound to his throne. The majority of people in this position never wake up. They die mentally or physically or both.”

But someone eventually saw him eye to eye. Lennon describes how Yoko Ono summoned the courage to talk to him as a man and not as a Beatle, and call forth character and realism and responsibility. “And what Yoko did for me was liberate me from that situation. She showed me what it was to be Elvis Beatles and live surrounded by fans and slaves interested just in keeping the situation as it was… She did not fall in love with the Beatle, she did not fall in love with my fame. She fell in love with me, with how I was, and this brought to the fore that there was something better in me. [I realized] ‘My God, this is different that anything that took place before. This is more than an album in the hit parades. This is more than gold.”[1]

A friends’ new awareness more than compensates the awkwardness of confronting moments. A new self-understanding can correct self-defeating habits or even launch someone in a whole new direction of life. It is the posture of “speaking the truth in love,”[2] of caring for the other person too much to let him or her persist in a negative habit or belief. The courage to confront is the measure of true friendship.

René Breuel

[1] John Lennon, quoted in Philip Norman, John Lennon: A Vida [John Lennon: A Life] (Sao Paulo, Editora Schwarcz, 2009), 546

[2] Ephesians 4:15


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Categories : Bar Conversations and Cheap Advice


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