Role-- Reversal

I love my Old Testament professor to death. Dr. William Lyons. He’s an amazing guy; brilliant, hilarious, and infinitely knowledgeable and passionate about the Old Testament. A few weeks ago we were talking after class, and I was telling him how I found it fascinating that in Genesis, God saw the people building the Tower of Babel and quickly and decisively put a stop to it, whereas in the Babylonian Creation story, Enuma Elish, the gods actually commissioned the building of the tower for themselves. He seemed impressed that I caught that, and then he told me he had something else that would fascinate me. It is this:

Within my circle of acquaintances, there are many who take the English Bible at face value. They use verses from the Bible to support a male supremacist viewpoint, and by far a favorite is Genesis 2:18, “The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."” Men like to point to the English translation, saying, “women are to be HELPERS, not in actual authority.”

However, the interesting facts are these: men and women both are created in the image of God. Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.”
In the next verse, he gives them joint rulership over the earth. “God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." (Genesis 1:28)” Notice that this rulership was not given to Adam over Eve and the rest of the world, but to both equally over the entire earth.

Now here’s where the riot starts. Brace yourselves.

The word that translates to “helper”, the word that so many men parade around to prove the inferiority and secondary position of females, is not a word that in the original language evokes images of lowly interns rushing around making coffee in a busy law office. Instead, the word that translates to “helper” is a word that is used in the rest of the Old Testament to refer to God, the quintessential helper. The implication of this word is that the one who helps is stronger than the one who needs the help.

Pretty appalling, huh?

Women were not created to be these weak little things, sitting wringing their hands and their dishrags on the sidelines. Women were created to pull men up by their bootstraps, to be the strength when the man’s runs out. To help, not as a subordinate, but at the very, very least, as an equal.

Check it out: Hamilton, Victor P. Handbook on the Pentateuch. 2nd Ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. 2005. 28-29

Deep Thought For the Day: On Being In Love

I’m in love.

I know it’s cliche, but I am. I can’t stop thinking about the guy for more than a little while. The sound of his voice makes me smile. Spending even one minute with him (even on the telephone) lifts my spirit and makes me happy for the rest of the day. Thinking about him makes my heart flutter and my cheeks and forehead flush. I talk about him all the time even though nobody wants to hear it. I get such delight in him.

And I was thinking, because of a song or something I read, I don’t know. But the fact is, this is not so different from the love we are to have for our Creator. Ted Dekker doesn’t call the relationship between us and God and God and us “The Great Romance” for nothing. This is how He loves us! Talking to us for a minute makes his day. He can hardly contain his joy at seeing us. And this is how we are to love him, thinking of him often, being absolutely thrilled and excited to converse with him or read what he has to tell us in his letters. Looking forward to spending time with him.

Can you imagine how grand life would be then? My temporal love for an earthly person who may or may not return that love has broadened my world and deepened my happiness. How much more if I love the One who CREATED love? The one who I know loves me back? The one who will, CAN never leave me or forsake me? I think that would be like a fountain of joy, never ever running dry.

And that would be fantastic.

Book Review: Fearless by Max Lucado

What are you afraid of? No, seriously. What makes you tremble, what makes you worry? That's what Max Lucado asks in his newest book, Fearless.

This book is very personal for me. I have spent the past two years focusing on overcoming my fears, everything from shooting a gun and riding a bicycle over a curb to speaking in public and moving away from home. So when I picked this book up I knew it would connect with me very deeply.

Each chapter in the book focuses on a certain fear. Fear of not mattering, fear that God may not really exist, fear that you may not be able to protect your kids, fear of global calamity... the list goes on. No matter who you are, you'll be able to identify with at least one of them. Max addresses each fear, giving examples of and reasons for our fear. Then, he shows us the solution. And always, that solution is Jesus. Max points out specific scriptures and stories in the Bible that reassure us that God is in control. I can't think of anything more reassuring than that.

Do you want to be Fearless? Let God and Max show you how.

Here I am, Not to Worship

"And would it set me free
If I dared to let you see
The truth behind the person
You imagine me to be?
Would your arms be open
Or would you run away?
Would the love of Jesus
Be enough to make you stay?"-- Casting Crowns, 'Stained Glass Masquerade'



One of the bad things about being at a Christian university is that you begin to see how messed up you really are.

Now people may judge me for this, but I've been to church probably 3 dozen times in the past 13 years. My family just doesn't do church. Until I was about 15 we read the Bible together every day, but eventually we stopped doing that. So my church experience is very, very limited. I've been content with that, and I didn't know why.

So last week at orientation we had chapel, and in that meeting I began to notice something about myself that has been confirmed time after time, in chapel twice and in the church I went to today. It explains why I've been content to be an unchurched Christian all these years. And that is, I'm almost ashamed to admit--

I'm afraid to worship.

Afraid. To worship.

Worship chips at my barriers. I've got these walls inside, blocking my heart in and keeping all the pain and the tears inside where nobody will ever see. Once in awhile, a weak point in the wall allows something to leak out, like in this post, but in minutes I'm right there with the cement, patching up the crack. But once I step foot into a worship service, it's like God takes a pick and starts hammering at my wall, taking chunks away, trying to reach me but at the same time exposing my hurt. So I draw back. I want to let him in... oh, how I want to let him in. But I've got people around me. I can't curl up on the floor and sob and sob, like I want to. I can't even let a tear out, because then they'll see how broken I am. So I slap on another coat of cement and think about anything and everything but how much He loves me, because if I think about it too much my walls will shatter. And I don't know that even I want to see what's inside there.

Deep Thought For The Day

From The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 8th Edition, introduction to the Anglo-Saxon literary work, "The Dream of the Rood". (Rood= Cross)

"Christ and the Cross both act, paradoxically, in keeping with, and diametrically opposed to, a code of heroic action: Christ is heroic and passive, while the Cross is loyal to its lord, yet must participate in his death." (Bolding my own.)

That is so like us. We may be loyal to our Lord, yet we still participated in his death. Kind of sobering.

Awake

First, we were Comatose. Now, we're Awake.


Skillet's singles "Hero" and "Monster" were already hits before the album arrived, giving the album a lot to live up to. I'm sure my skepticism can be pardoned, but I was not expecting so much from the rest of the album. So you can imagine my delight when the rest of the album turned out almost as well as the pre-released singles. In fact, the first five tracks on Awake all received five stars on my iTunes rating list on the first listen, a distinction not even achieved by what is arguably my favorite album this year, Red's Innocence and Instinct. Like every album, Awake contains a few less-stellar tracks, but that doesn't take away from the journey.

And that's just what I noticed about Awake; it seems the story of a journey. It begins with our "Hero", a troubled, questioning man, who realizes that his secret side, his "Monster", has pushed away the one he loves. "Don't Wake Me" he cries as he despairs over her, but deep inside he knows he has to be "Awake and Alive", realizing the darkness he is in and determining to get himself out. But it's "One Day Too Late" as his depression deepens, which he turns outward in "It's Not Me It's You". His bitterness reaches a pinnacle when he tells her that she "Should've When You Could've". But somewhere along the line he begins to soften and see things in a different light, and to "Believe" again. When he realizes he's been "Forgiven" he starts anew, but not everything is fun and games because he still struggles "Sometimes". But he is determined that he will "Never Surrender".

The final track, "Lucy", doesn't seem to fit anywhere in this narrative, and as such feels like it's been randomly tacked on, like a footnote at the bottom of a page.

While other artists' works are filled with random songs with a similar sound, or songs that follow a common theme, I rarely see an album with such narrative as Skillet has, intentionally or not, worked into Awake.

Why Do I Love It?

I found this on my hard drive today. I wrote it a few months ago, but for some reason I decided it wasn't good enough to post. A few months later and it looks much better than it did at the time, so here you go.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There's a question I've been asked quite a few times by various people, and my standard answer has always been a shrug and an answer of, “I just… do.” But lately I’ve been pondering the question, and decided that I could do much better at answering it than a simple shrug. The epic question?

“Why do you like Doctor Who so much?”

You saw it coming, didn’t you?

As anybody who knows me (well, who knows me online or is in my immediate family) knows, I am an absolute Doctor Who fanatic. But what draws me to the show? Why do I like it so much? Why can’t I quit watching it? To answer that question, we must first go back to the beginning. No, not the show’s beginning in 1963, nor my beginning in 1988, nor the beginning of the new incarnation of the show in 2005. My beginning in the Doctor Who world was in 2006, though I credit late 2007 with really getting me into the show.

One evening in 2006, I was rather reluctantly sitting in the living room at my grandmother’s house, attempting to not feel so awkward and conspicuous with several relatives all sitting around talking. My uncle had the TV on the Sci-Fi channel, and a show called Doctor Who (what a silly name, I thought) was on. Though I knew nothing about the show, I found myself watching it covertly to give me something to focus on rather than the awkward gathering of relatives I’ve seen 3 times in my life. The episode was titled “Fear Her”, and from what I could gather, there was a guy called the Doctor and a girl called Rose, and they faced aliens. Now I love science fiction, and I thought the episode was pretty good. But I thought little of the show after that, and went along my business.

Fast forward to 2007. One day I walked into the living room from cleaning my bedroom, to find my dad watching Doctor Who. Remembering that I had seen that one episode and liked it, I stuck around to watch even though the episode was half over. The episode was “The Sound of Drums” (found that out later) and I watched as the Doctor was tormented and the world enslaved by the person I gathered was the Doctor’s worst enemy, the Master. I decided to tune in the next week because I hate leaving stories half finished on an evil cliffhanger, and it was that episode that solidified Doctor Who as “my kind of show.” The main thing that I saw that endeared me to the show was the kind of man the Doctor was. After all the atrocities, after how awfully he’d been treated during that year (and during his entire existence, from what I could gather) by the Master, the first thing he did when he was free was pull the Master into a hug and tell him, “I forgive you.” I didn’t understand much of the episodes, but I did understand that much, and I knew that I loved the Doctor for that.

About a month later, the first season from episode 3 on was aired in a marathon, which we taped and watched as a family. It didn’t take me long to realize that I really, truly loved this show. Since then, I’ve seen every episode (except for “Blink”, which was so wonderfully terrifying the first time that I don’t want to watch it again and spoil it) at least 3 times, and one episode a whopping 15 times. So, that is my history… but you don’t want history, you want answers.

Now is the time to admit that I don’t really have anything concrete.

I’ve been thinking on this subject heavily for about a month. In order to find an answer, I set out to write a “literary analysis” of sorts about each episode, thinking that I would, in that process, figure out exactly what it is about Doctor Who that attracts me so.

That worked really well… not. In my pursuit, I found that there is nothing, literally nothing, stylistically or creatively that makes the show more worthy of my devotion than any other show of the same genre. I did note an attention to little details, but that is hardly unique. The premise, people and aliens traveling together to explore the galaxy, has little originality. Even the time travel aspect has been done before. There is nothing stylistically unique about this show. So, since an analysis is out, we have to turn to other, less concrete aspects to find our answers. And in explaining the less concrete aspects, I have to delve into the inner recesses of myself, and lay bare that which I am loathe to admit.

The big connection for me when I began to watch the first season, was the fact that Rose was 19 years old. I was 19 at the time, and I envied her, wishing like any silly fangirl that it was me dashing about London hand in hand with an alien, saving the world. But it wasn’t until an episode titled “World War III” that I began do realize something, and the season closer, “Parting of the Ways” completely solidified it in my mind. In that episode, a tearful Rose exclaims that, “It was a better life. And I don't mean all the travelling, seeing aliens and spaceships and things, that don't matter. The Doctor showed me a better way of living your life. You know, he showed you too. You don't just give up. You don't just let things happen. You make a stand. You say no! You have the guts to do what's right when everyone else just runs away!” And I knew… that was right. That it was a better life, and that I never would have fit into it. I was too scared.

I spent 19 years of my life being safe. I’m still safe. I’m afraid of things. But it took an alien in a blue box to show me how to live. And no, I don’t mean living as in do this, don’t do that, or morality; I take those from the law and God, respectively. I mean living as in whether you hide away scared, or get out there and do it. In the past year, I’ve tried my best to try things that scare me, or that I never would have considered doing despite the fact that others are doing it quite safely in front of me. I’ve walked on a log suspended 10 feet above the ground. I’ve ridden a bicycle down stairs. I’ve slid down a 30-foot fireman’s pole. I’ve stood up to be voted vice president of my region for Explorers. I wanted to go parasailing (it was canceled due to weather). All small things that you may scoff at me for being afraid of, but I was, I was terrified. And I did every one of them, because of what I learned from the Doctor.

So whatever else Doctor Who may be, as entertaining as it is, as deeply as I get engrossed in the Doctor’s story, it’s that little lesson that I learned in season 1 that I feel has really endeared it to me. That, and the sheer exuberance with which the Doctor views the universe, the way he loves it when he finds something he didn’t know before. The way he cares for people, his declaration that ordinary humans are the most important beings in the universe, the way he can forgive his oldest enemies and offer them second chances, the way he, as his name suggests, makes people better.

He made me better. And when a fictional character can do that to you... I dunno. I guess that makes them a bit special.