Prevailing Winds "For the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom . . ." 2 Cor. 3:17, TNIV

And they said it wouldn’t last . . .

I want to take this moment to publicly thank the Lord Jesus for the privilege of having been married 24 years tomorrow to the best man I know, Jeff Mix.

September 8, 1984, was the start of our Christian, egalitarian, loving, passionate, sometimes rough, more often smooth, partnership — and I’d marry him all over again in an instant. My husband is a Godly man who lovingly walks with the Lord, who lovingly walks alongside me, and who is the kind of father every woman would want for her children, teaching them to walk in the way of Peace. Jesus Christ is the “head” of each of us and of our marriage. We’ve never had a problem with submission, because we love each other; nor have we had problems with trying to figure out a “chain of command,” because gender hierarchy is of the curse, and we walk as free children of God, committed to mutuality, growth, and service. I’m not always easy to live with — imagine that! — and he’s not perfect, either, but I count every hour I’m with him a great gift from our loving God, and I pray we have many, many more years together.

I love him!

A reader identified as Kartographer attempts, in the comments section, to hold Sarah Palin’s resume as an example of the kind of smart leadership we need in Washington — while at the same time denigrating Obama’s experience. You can read his post and my response in “comments,” but I’d just like to repeat that watching GOP pundits fall all over themselves to declare Sarah Palin a solid, experienced, rational choice for VP, while at the same time declaring Obama and Biden to be “not as experienced” as she, is getting funnier all the time. In a poignant way, though — not unlike listening to my inebriated uncle, now deceased, dig himself deeper and deeper into an argument that started with little merit and ended up confirming not only the absurdity of his initial position, but his tenuous grasp of logic, reason, and common sense as well. Kudos to the GOP pundit and McCain supporter — I don’t remember his name — who said on MSNBC that the Palin choice was “an unbelievable disaster.” He won’t go far, of course, but it was refreshing to hear someone not laboring to sound as though, really, for sure, they TOTALLY mean what they were saying, absolutely, no matter what . . .

I don’t imagine anyone would think that GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and I have a whole lot in common. True, we’re both Christians, we’re both mothers and wives, and it seems that she and I both are former members of Feminists for Life, a progressive, feminist, anti-abortion group. Beyond that, I don’t think there’s much we would bond over at a Pampered Chef party, coffee hour at church, or a political rally.

Except for one thing that I wish I could share with Ms. Palin: We both are bright, articulate women with sharp tongues and rapier wit. I know that she was on fire and in a groove Tuesday night during her convention speech — the barbs and sarcasm flowed freely, the crowd applauded, and for a brief moment, she made people forget her utter lack of experience and the naked pandering her selection represents. I was impressed; women that attractive and smart generally don’t have to develop the art of the insult, and most people, period, don’t do it well. That there’s a guidebook on the market telling Christians of their responsibility to wield the serrated edge in public discourse is unfortunate, but Sarah Palin seems to have mastered the craft well without any help from Canon Press. She dished, she preened, she parried and thrusted and had ’em in stitches, and if her job that night was to play pitbull, with or without lipstick, she did it well.

But I’ve learned over the years, and I have just a few on Ms. Palin, that people love a biting wit and delight in a well-shot arrow of invective. It becomes easier and easier to go just a bit further with the sarcasm, just a touch sharper on the insults, and to linger in the bright lights long after you’ve said what needs to be said — if, in fact, you say it at all. Smart chicks with crackling wit and a way with words often find themselves called upon to lead the charge against an opponent — with experience and background if they’ve got it, without if they don’t. Men love sass, especially if the sassy one looks like a hot school marm and yet worships the same God they do. Christians in particular love “cool,” and we’ll appropriate just about anyone who speaks well, looks good, and says what we want to hear — which is to say, just about anything, as long as there’s a veneer of “Jesus talk” slapped over it.

Looks aside — I’m afraid no one will ever mistake me for a hot school marm, just a traditional one — I do this well and so does she, and in the next six weeks she’ll find a wildly appreciative audience for her performance. And performance it is; she has no policy experience nor any particular contribution to offer in the national socio-political dialogue, and she was booked to warm up a crowd not entirely enamored of McCain, and to do it looking good and sounding sharp. It’s not sexism to point out that she was chosen because she’s a woman, by the way. Christine Todd Whitman, Carly Fiorina, Kay Bailey Hutchison and Elizabeth Dole are women I’d never vote for, but they would have represented a VP choice made on the basis of experience. Sarah Palin is a trick pony, and that she’s having the time of her life doesn’t mean that her tenure in the ring isn’t without risk.

And so this is what I’d say to my sister in Christ: Be careful. Your audience, even your Christian audience, will applaud whenever you toss off a zinger — but will Christ? You may be smart as hell and look great, and you might even prove to be an excellent governor in all the ways that matter — but what will your performance reveal about your heart? Your ride on the GOP ticket will take you across the country and make you one of the most famous women in the first half of the 21st century, but where will you walk in victory? In defeat? What will it all bring about in your Christian journey? You may be one of only a handful of nationally-known politicos who trumpets her conservative Christian faith. At the end, will it be proved genuine — like that of the statesman and humanitarian Jimmy Carter? Or will you be shown to be lacking in both competence, piety, and depth, like George W. Bush? Will people remember just that Sarah Palin was all-out funny in her pitbull role, or will they know enough of you to discern what the true measure of your character and faith is?

In short, Ms. Palin, you’re being used. It’s heady stuff, I imagine, and the insincerity in which you were chosen for this role guarantees that those around you, those applauding your every utterance, have not your best interest in mind — just their own. Please take it from another smart, funny woman: Be clever. Be brighter than most. Be “out there” and sassy. But above all, be who you are in Christ, and strive for the quiet applause of judgment day, when I pray we’ll all be declared just as we hear our Lord’s pleasure in saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

“Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.”
Patti Smith

If I were a local pastor at all interested in credibly denying that I was a racist, and if I wanted to represent myself as a wise, mature counselor on the appropriateness of a woman running her now-deceased restaurant, I would probably try to do better than couch her hypothetical admonition to a sluggish employee with “Step it up, Paco.”

But that’s just me. And he’s clearly unable to write more than a few paragraphs without some sprinkling of juvenile bigotry, for which he should be, and now is, publicly rebuked.

I will write on this only in answer to a few questions I’ve gotten this week about how I view curses and prayers for harm — not from a Biblical sense of right or wrong, but from a practical sense of their effect.

I don’t believe, not even a little bit, that words spoken against me, whether in schoolyard anger or in prayer, can affect the cosmos, the will of God, the natural course of events or anything else. God has a plan for me; I believe it’s a good plan, entirely unchanged by curses hurled against me. That someone utters a curse on me leaves absolutely no tangible effect on what happens in my life; in terms of the increased likelihood of harm coming to me, it’s as if someone yelled that I was, say, fat as a can of baked beans. Just words. That’s all.

The effect is on the one who uttered it. The hate that energizes a spoken, directed curse, and the remorse that now accompanies the one who utters it, harms him and his church community. If someone hates me, it only makes me sad. Not scared, not rattled, not angry, and certainly not ducking for cover “just in case . . . ” I wasn’t moved to tears because I was afraid bad things were now coming my way, but because bad things had clearly come the way of the one who spoke it. And so may he find peace, and may we all find blessing.

OK.

The Christ Church congregant who did write the cursing post a couple of days ago has apologized by name on the comments section, and I’ve emailed him privately to reiterate what I’ve said here before: I forgive him and I wish him well.

I believe that it is Biblically indefensible for a Christian to levy a curse on anyone. This man’s pastor believes Christians can and should pray imprecatory prayers on “enemies.” But my correspondent has apologized for his doing that, and I consider it a closed issue. I’ll continue as I have been, and I’ll handle further threats and curses only if they arise, but this man has repented and it’s over.

The offline correspondent I referred to earlier — the Christ Church congregant whose initials are similar to curse-hurling D.A.D.’s — just telephoned me to say that he is not the guy. He asked me not to name him, and so I am unable to clear his name completely, but he says he’s not the one who cursed me and that while he himself isn’t necessarily opposed to imprecatory prayer, he thinks this was inappropriate. He knows the curse-thrower, and wonders if perhaps I’m taking this the wrong way — drawing conclusions, perhaps, that aren’t accurate.

I’m not sure what other conclusion can be draw other than that he is a hateful guy who doesn’t know Jesus. That doesn’t seem to be too far off the mark, and the curser has my prayers, love, and forgiveness nonetheless.

I write this with tears in my eyes and a heavy heart.

I have received a curse, at the end of a long, angry diatribe, from a reader whose initials are “D.A.D,” and who I believe to be an offline correspondent who attends Christ Church. My correspondent’s initials are similar and I know “D.A.D.” isn’t my own loving father.

I am so sad about this, and I want D.A.D. to know that I forgive him. But I also think this needs to be brought further into the open, not just because it came up on my public “comments” site, but, more important, because it highlights the fruit of unloving, undiscerning, unwise pastoring by a man who freely defends the value of imprecatory prayers and acknowledges having used them in his worship services. I have spent five or so years writing on Vision 2020 about my faith in Christ Jesus, more than a quarter century living it, and I have a lifetime of growth in the Lord ahead of me. It’s that faith that I turn to now. I’m not rattled, I’m not scared, and I’m not dissuaded in my vow to proclaim truth. But I am deeply saddened at the hard heart evinced by this man, and I pray God’s mercy on his soul.

Blogger D.A.D said…

I have to say that I thought you were grown up enough to follow your own advice and stop posting about all things Wilson and Christ Church.

You have never talked about your own Church and what is good about it. You have never here talked about the Lord Jesus Christ and what he has done for you and your family. You have never talked about your husband’s walk with Christ or any mission trips that your sons may have gone on to further the work of the Gospel. Why is this?

I feel a need to speak to you directly. I thought the little snippets that I use might cause you to reflect on the path that you have taken. I thought that you would stop speaking put-downs about a brother in the Lord, but you must have a deeper agenda.

You are so obsessed with your own “Keely-Centric” view point that you refuse to just leave it alone and talk about the Jesus of the Bible. You have to make everything in your twisted little world revolve around what YOU think about Doug Wilson and Christ Church. Have you nothing better to do with your time and energy? You wrangle about words and you preach nothing but phlegm and bile. I feel sorry for you, your family and your faith.

I will no longer pause here to read what you continue to spew. The cest (sic)-pool you dwell in is little more that the dung heap of Gehenna. You cheer when a Godly one stumbles and you lift up on high and praise those that see nothing wrong with destroying human life. You call good evil and evil good. Those you offer support believe that human life can be aborted. And that life younger than 24 weeks is not a human person and doesn’t have a human soul. Shame on you and a curse be upon you, your family, your house hold and all that you put your hand to.

The swirl of media attention focused on Sarah Palin’s pregnant teenage daughter, Bristol, has thus far been reasonably free of vitriol and condemnation — except locally, where familial-dysfunction diagnoses have been pronounced and fault has been duly assigned by someone whose counsel now extends to people he’s never met and people who’ve never sought him out. The content of his condemnation wasn’t a surprise, just the arrogance accompanying it, although I’m less and less able to be surprised these days by bad pastoral behavior.

Generally, though, the evangelical response to the Palin family’s situation has been measured and supportive, and it should be. Shame on those inside the church who line up against these parents, and these young parents-to-be, when prayer and kindness should be their only response. And I condemn any fellow Democrats who take pleasure in the troubles of a teenage girl, using her situation for political gain or personal smugness. Barack Obama was right when he said yesterday that families should be off-limits in politics and children especially so.

That said, how should a pastor respond to a similar situation in his or her own congregation? What should parents of children who stray, who disappoint us, who sin, be able to expect of the person who shepherds them in the name of Christ? All of us who have children know that this is a true, if all the more public, example of “there but for the grace of God go I,” and it’s in these times of upheaval and vulnerability that a wise, compassionate pastor can be either a healing balm from the Spirit, or a blistering toxin from the Pit.

I think three principles apply here. First, it is not necessary to thunder from the pulpit, the blogosphere, or across the pastoral desk the reality that sin was committed by the couple involved. The Palins know that Bristol and her boyfriend missed the mark of God’s sexual ethic, and so does Bristol. Wisdom acknowledges in silent commiseration what arrogance parades in judgment, and a starting point of agreement that sin was involved needn’t be a detour from grace. A young girl found herself in trouble; a young boy found himself in trouble as well. Pastoral wisdom lingers not on the sin, but on the desire for restoration and support of a new family that Christ delights in and has great plans for.

Second, the convicting work of the Holy Spirit and his grace are sufficient for anyone struggling with difficult times. If there is anything the Palins need to repent of, if there’s anything they might do differently next time, and if there’s need for confession and forgiveness within the family, the wise pastor trusts that God himself will spur that, and seeks only to offer the encouragement and hope that can open hearts and close wounds. Under no circumstance, ever, should a pastor presume to diagnose a familial problem and assign blame simply from a perspective of general experience, theology, or rumor. Further, true pastoral involvement in the life of his or her flock guards against hasty judgment; it doesn’t stimulate it. This is not to suggest that there’s no need for a pastor to avoid calling sin when he sees it — but that sin evidences itself in specific, sinful actions, like spousal abuse, and not in peripheral, removed observations about what may or may not have caused it. Bristol and Levi sinned; “why” is not obvious, perhaps not even germane, and certainly isn’t up for diagnosis by the one unfamiliar to her.

Third, the redemptive movement of the Spirit in the New Testament is a movement, in all circumstances, toward repentance, reconciliation, and restoration, and that for the Glory of Christ. The family can decide, with pastoral counsel, how best to proceed; the fact of the pregnancy becomes only the starting point as parents and parents-to-be go before the Lord who loves them to see how best to make this new family whole and healthy. Presuming that Bristol and Levi have genuine relationships with the Lord Jesus — and I will presume so — we know that the grace and power of the Spirit accompanies them as they build their family. And if they are just non-believing kids from believing homes, they and their baby are no less deeply loved, deeply wanted, and deeply protected by the One who describes himself in Scripture in images of the maternal and the paternal. The church family, aware of its own failings — failings that tend not to announce themselves as obviously as pregnancy — comes alongside, following the example of the compassionate, wise pastor, who presumes not the moral superiority of his or her flock, but the Perfect Love of the Shepherd of their souls.

I suspect that if every sin possible to commit announced its presence in the life of a believer with the certainty that unmarried pregnancy does, certain pastors would refrain from unknowing diagnoses and unmerited judgment. The virgin teenager sitting next to Bristol Palin on a Sunday morning ought never take comfort in the relative hiddenness, say, of excessive materialism, a gossiping tongue, prejudice, and hard-heartedness toward others, and the young man faithful to his wearing of a purity ring is no less able to displease the Lord with his wallet, his words, or his ways around women. Let’s assume that what the Bible says is true: We all are sinners, we all can be cleansed by the blood of Jesus, and we all need each other’s love and support, never more than when we fall.