To illustrate my point, I would to look at what I refer to the “third unit” of the Hymn:

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” -Col 1:19-20

Reconciliation in the biblical narrative speaks to a fixing that which is undone (undone relationships, undone social systems, etc).  The thing that needs the most “undoing,” of course, is the curse in Genesis.  Whether one takes a literal view of Genesis or not, the main idea of the story seems to be explaining why the world is so undone.  Men rule over women, women have painful childbirths, etc., but if Christ has “reconciled to himself all things” doesn’t this mean the end of the curse?  Obviously, we must take this with a grain of salt as there still is pain and suffering in the world (a common understanding I hear is the reality of the kingdom is an “already, but not yet” paradox).

But if we are to understand, as Christians, the curse is broken, should we not live in such a way?  I think one of the practical ways to live this out is by stopping to define everyone narrowly according to gender roles.  Why does the man have to be the breadwinner?  If the curse is broken, cannot man and wife work alongside one another in peace and harmony?  There will always be problems, but shouldn’t our “post-curse” mentality be focused on the reconciliation of those problems.  Gender should not be a primary means by which we create an “us and them” mentality in the church.

This past Sunday morning our little community of Christ followers prayed that prayer. In some profound way, as I prayed, I felt that I was praying something deeply controversial and subtly subversive of the kind of Christianity we’re often sold in American culture… “Do you know where you’re going when you die? If you were to die today do you know for certain where you would spend eternity?” is their sales pitch and these questions seem to be the mantra of American evangelicalism. Although these questions are almost incoherent to the ears of emerging culture, they are still alive and well in Christianity today because the idea that Christianity is primarily about “where you are going”, about certainty thereof, and about what happens to you when you die, is still alive and well in Christianity today. The shadow of a doubt pertaining to the destination is seen as heresy and a lack of faith. But this is not the attitude of faith, this is the attitude of spiritual arrogance with a hint of ignorance.

In response to a question about destination, a question about entering God’s kingdom, Jesus said, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). There is a beautiful uncertainty about true faith and following Jesus. Christ called his disciples to follow him without revealing any sort of destination but only by promising a sort of becoming, by inviting them on a kind of journey, “Come follow me… I will make you fishers of men” (Mark 1:17). He called them to “ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden and through perils unknown” and spoke much more of the following itself than he ever did about any kind of destination, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). Never did he talk of being certain of the destination and yet that has become the center-piece of American Christianity, even to the point where Christians often overlook actually following Jesus and taking up their cross because they’ve come to see everything on Earth as secondary to their heavenly destination. For Christ, the world and the here and now were primary, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son” NOT “for God so loved heaven that made sure that people could know they were going there.”

God calls us to follow him because of what we might become NOT because of where we are headed. The destination may indeed be uncertain, the path may well be “untrodden,” but we go with faith because the way of the cross is ironically the best possible way to live. In this uncertain path we may find life that is truly life. In these “ventures of which we cannot see the ending” where we are called to see all we have and give it to the poor we will discover “in this present age homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions” (Mark 10:30). May we live in uncertainty so that when the path takes the unexpected turn toward the cross of Christ we will not abandon him for another destination but faithfully take up our cross and follow the crucified Jesus to become resurrected people.

As I prayed that prayer I felt indescribably free and I felt a sense of new life, empowered to live today in the uncertainty of tomorrow guiltless and with the hope of God’s leading love here with me now.

Let our faith not be defined by where we are going but let it be defined by the one who is taking us there, that our destination will not become our god but that the tortured and crucified Son of God would be the One God of our wandering hearts. May God lead us on paths of justice and mercy here, now, and always.

Wesley Ellis
from Living in the Kingdom

In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, ⁴for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, ⁵because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel ⁶that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God. ⁷This you learned from Epaphras, our beloved fellow-servant.^* He is a faithful minister of Christ on your^* behalf, ⁸and he has made known to us your love in the Spirit (Colossians 1:3-8)

After introducing himself as Paul, the apostle enters into a short thanksgiving/prayer emphasizing the hope of the present (”bearing fruit and growing in the world” 1:6) and not yet (”hope laid up for you in heaven” in 1:5) aspects of “the gospel.”  For a side-note on the Pauline term gospel, please see my article here.

In this introduction, there is a three-tiered structure of the familiar Christian motifs: faith, hope, and love.  The first two, faith and love, seem to form one seamless pair in Paul’s mind.  One must have faith in Christ and love for the saints.  The term “saints” here refers to “fellow-believers” (see F.F. Bruce, 41).  The two idea of faith and hope stem from the hope “laid up for them in heaven.”

Again, the future hope is rooted in the present “word of truth.”  Words must be spoken in a particular place, with a particular people, and into a particular context. This is extremely true here when the word of truth broke through into a particular context, and as it broke through (as a tree’s roots break through the ground) we see the gospel “bearing fruit” among them.

There are two things about fruit that we must understand (and perhaps agricultural workers in the Lycus Valley may have understood better than us).  First, trees take time to grow.  The roots that one takes in the “word of truth” may, at many times and in many places, be cut off or destroyed (a la the parable of the sower).  Second, trees need the faith and love spoken of in the triad above.  One might think of the analogy of trees needing both sun and water.  We need both our faith in Christ and the love for our fellow members in our community to see the gospel bear fruit in our communities.

Finally, what does it look like for the gospel to bear fruit?  Paul does not address this specifically, but I think it has a lot to do with what I talk about in my post on the Pauline conception of Gospel.  When we see the gospel in action it breaks down the walls between “us” and “them,” the “clean” and the “unclean,” or whatever blocks us out from others.  There is no line between “rich” and “poor” (in fact, it might be good for us to stop thinking in terms of serving the poor, as Claudio Oliver has done).

These dropping of lines can seem dangerous and even heretical at times.  What would the church look like without lines?  What would the church look like without the usual boundaries of the four walls?  What would the church look like if it truly loved?

Resources for Studying Colossians
1. Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire:
2. Colossians (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries): by N.T. Wright

First, Driscoll says this about the “calling” or “courting” system of the last century:

The major downside of calling [courting during the 19th century] was the expense, which made it impossible for many people in the middle and lower classes. They simply could not afford a sitting room or parlor designated for calling, complete with a piano, along with formal attire to wear and specific food to eat (p. 181).

Driscoll then talks about how the world has “changed” so much saying:

This [the car] altered the nature of male-female pursuit so that the best men were those with the most money (symbolized by which kind of car they drove) and therefore the most able to afford the nicest dates, and the most prized women were the most outwardly beautiful and sexual who could serve as the best trophy (p. 182).

I don’t know if I’m the only one who noticed this glaring inconsistency in Driscoll’s writing.  I could understand how this might be missed in one of his fast-paced sermons (the man is a smooth-talker and he does it a million miles a minute with no notes), but in print it seems that in the courting age, those with money were given preference in the courting system, and in the automobile age those with money to buy automobiles were given prefence.  The story seems to be exactly the same: preferential treatment for the rich in our dating social systems.  Those without cars or those without money in the previous system are left out of the accepted dating or courting norms of their culture.

Driscoll – read your own words – nothing has changed.

He then talks about how cohabitation is now a huge problem in the United States jumping from 1 million cohabitators in 1978 to 5 million in 2008.  He uses this evidence to say that now the   “expectation is that they will cohabit prior to marriage.”  Let’s ACTUALLY look at the statistics: taking into account population inflation that means the percent of cohabitators in the United States has changed from 0.8% of the population to 3.3% in the last 40 YEARS.  In other words, less than 4% of the population cohabits before marriage.  This surely does not lend itself to the idea that people are “expected” to cohabitat before marriage.  The statistics, in fact, still say exactly the opposite.

He does make the point that a quarter of women 25-39 cohabitat before marriage, but this STILL means that the majority (75%) do NOT cohabitat before marriage.  Which STILL does not establish an “expectation.”

Using his expectations, he then makes the case that:

“Virtually all research on the topic has determined that the chances of divorce ending a marriage that was preceded by cohabitation are significantly greater than for a marriage that was not preceded by cohabitation.”

Again, he seems to ignore the same statistics that young [often sex-crazed Christians] couples in their early twenties [who can't wait any longer or are 'burning with passion'] are also more likely to divorced than those who get married later.

What am I trying to say?  Basically, I am asking that those like Driscoll would stop using statistics to “prove” his points.  Statistics are complicated and the general public is often duped into believing all sorts of false things based on the idea that the “statistics” prove the point.

What else am I trying to say?  Basically, that Driscoll and others should address some of the root points of our societies obsession with sexual relationships.  He bemoans the move away from the “calling” system (which, he admits, was bent towards the conveniences and the excesses of the rich with their parlors and free time).  What can Driscoll say to what we might call “the working poor” with kids who can’t have that kind of supervision because both parents work full-time?

The same issues that Driscoll talks about as “modern” are rife in the literature of former arenas.  Just read Thomas Hardy or Jane Austen to find that many of these same social problems were alive and well back then in Driscoll’s ‘good old days.’  What issues am I talking about?

Here are some deep-issues that need to be addressed which are not at all addressed in Driscoll’s work:

1. Automobiles: Driscoll has done a good job of noting one of the root problems that has hampered our family life in the last century, but he doesn’t flesh the point out.  Why do adolscents in our culture feel the need to have a car (sometimes taking on a level of debt that takes them years to pay back)?  Why do adolescents feel the need to buy new cars every few years?  I know of people who are 23 and have already owned four cars in since age 18.
2. Family:  How do we reunite the family in a way that they are involved in the dating system in a way that does not show prefential treatment to the rich?  How do we make sure that the ‘working poor’ are involved in the conversation?  How to we restore proper family relationships?

There are other issues here too, but I feel that Driscoll has spent too much time in his second “misconception” that he has misguided his audience into thinking there is some “problem” without ever addressing the root causes.

The Third Street Freedom Rally Parade happens today
Marching with rifles and pistols
Down along the way
Carrying the second amendment
With them to their graves
American flags wave like
beauty pageant stars

Oh, but down the way another rally meets
Yelling explevities and down with the state
Singing old Lennon songs,
just give peace a chance
Their so young and in love
With the sunset and the shades of the moon

Then the rallies met with cold words exchanged
Partisan politics always was the game
Stop yelling just listen to the river
Stop talking listen to the sound of it all

But me, I’m somewhere in the middle
But me, I just can’t understand
I’m just a poet with a heavy heart
I’m just a man, what can I do?
What can I do?

When everyone stopped yelling all around
I told in my dreams to, oh,
Just sit down
Maybe if you were just to listen
you’d be calm
Stop yelling, and looking for a way
to be right.

See that tear streaming down your cheek
Just keep crying
It’s probably what you need
Better look for roses on the
other side of spring
Scattered six feet above where you are.

But me, I’m can’t just the words
To say exactly how it hurts
The pain, another life that’s lost
The shame, but I still don’t know for
what it’s for
I don’t know what it’s for, for, for

The third street freedom rally
parade happens today
Marching with rifles and pistols
down along the way
Carrying the second amendment
like hawks to their graves
American flags burn
Like the setting of the sun
tonight.

I have also realized that I hardly know enough to be writing on the subject.  There is one main thing I have realized as I have been looking into this subject over the past few weeks.

The problems within the evangelical church with sexuality and gender are not the root problem.  The bigger problem is that Christians have no idea how to interact within modern society.  Yesterday I put up this video

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y96w6AFVi0o&hl=en&fs=1]

Christians are behind the times in the sense that they still believe there is a scientific method.  Lee Smolin, in the video above, admits that schools still teach the above model as if we can somehow prove our hypotheses right or wrong.  Smolin’s view of science is quite different when he says, “Both the scientific and the democractic processes require reasoning from shared, but incomplete, evidence to limited, but ever expanding, consensus.”  The rest of the world has moved away from the idea that there is a “right” and a “wrong.”  Christians, whether they agree with this model or not, have to engage with these types of philosophies on a regular basis.

What has this to do with sexuality?  Everything!  Teens today define sexuality based on consensus.  In the overused church metaphor, students are entering into quite serious relationships at very young ages and, oftentimes, Christian teens have been taught in church about “the one.”  These teens begin thinking (somewhat inevitably) that this other person they have met is “the one” because they have been taught, mostly by the tradition of their faith communities, that they will “just know” when the right person comes along.  All this speech of “the one” and “just knowing” provide horrible advice for teenagers who are often more prone to make decisions based on feelings.  Knowing someone is “the one” or “feeling right” about the person or “just knowing” are often based on subjective feelings of rationalization.

Because these students live in a society of consensus, they and their partner move further and further down sexual lines until it becomes normal for them both to consent to sex on a regular basis.  Our culture of consensus has led to sex becoming something that is defined first within ourselves and then in negotiation with our partner.  Our larger communities have no say in our sex life.  Our parents are left out of the picture, as are the leaders in our churches, and it becomes something individualistic between the two in the relationship.

What then is the key?

Perhaps it is the rebuilding of Christian community so that teens do not enter into an island of individualistic love which often ends for them in heartache.

I sat at a light on the way to work and a group of five stood on the corner.

Another sign said, honk if you support prop. 9. Prop 9 is a proposed law that would make it illegal for homosexuals to be married in California.

Coming into work I say hi to one of the girls.

“Did you see the people on the corner?” I ask.

“No,” she said. “What is going on?”

“There are all these people protesting prop. 9. You know the one about homosexuality and legalizing it.”

“Oh. I think it’s dumb,” she said.

“What?”

“That people are so upset about it.  I mean, homosexuals are people too.  You can’t legislate morality.  They are going to be together whether the law says so or not.”

“Who are you going to vote for?” I ask not really responding to what she said.

“Probably Obama,” she said. “I like Obama.”

(UPDATED): Want more on this subject?  An interesting line of logic is used here.