Why Progressive Christians Should Care About Abortion

I knew what abortion was before I knew where babies came from. 

Growing up in the evangelical subculture of the 80s and 90s, I was well versed in the language of the pro-life cause, as familiar with Roe vs. Wade and the silhouette of a tiny fetus as I was with Disney princesses and contemporary Christian music. My young mind grasped the essence of the pro-life argument—that all of life is valuable, no matter how small or vulnerable—but mistakenly reduced the solution to abortion to a single step—vote for a pro-life president, and abortion will go away. A Republican president meant no more dead babies. It was as simple as that. 

…Until it wasn’t. 

The first president I voted for was George W. Bush. My dad dropped me off at the polling station and I marched into the Rhea County Courthouse to cast my vote for life.  While President Bush endorsed the 2005 Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, which I supported, he also championed a pre-emptive war in Iraq that costs hundreds of thousands of lives.  His presidency did not make much of a dent in the abortion rate, and even though he appointed conservative judges, Roe vs. Wade remained intact.  By the time W finished his second term, I had graduated from college, come to terms with the fact that the criminalization of abortion is highly unlikely no matter the party in power, expanded my definition of “pro-life” to include Iraqi children and prisoners of war, and experienced first-hand some of the major problems with America’s healthcare system, which along with poverty and education issues, contributes to the troubling abortion rate in the U.S. I remained pro-life idealistically, but for the first time, voted for a pro-choice president, hoping that the reforms I wanted to see in the healthcare, the economy, immigration, education, and for the socioeconomically disadvantaged would function pragmatically to reduce abortions. A couple of my conservative friends called me a baby killer. Several questioned my salvation. 

As I advocated for the election (and re-election) of President Obama, I confess I grew somewhat embarrassed by the pro-life cause. I hated those cars that boasted a “Choose Life” sticker on one bumper and a “You’ll Have to Pry My Gun From My Cold, Dead Hands” on the other. The stubborn commitment to abstinence-only education among many evangelicals struck me as counterproductive to the cause, and those awful statements about how a raped woman has a “way of shutting that whole thing down” to prevent pregnancy were shameful and ignorant. Plus, sometimes it seemed like abortion was the only social justice issue my evangelical friends cared about, so they turned a blind eye to the ways in which Republican politics might hurt other disadvantaged groups, or turned my advocacy on behalf of other causes (like gender equality, trafficking, peace, healthcare reform, gun control, etc.) as an opportunity to make a statement about the horrors of abortion in comparison.  It was all picket signs and prayer walks. But I wanted more conversations, and action, around poverty, adoption, and healthcare. 

For a lot of pro-lifers, it seemed, abortion was all about the baby.

The woman, and the factors that might contribute to her decision to terminate her pregnancy, didn’t seem to matter much.

But how can we end abortion if we don’t examine why women seek out abortions in the first place? Making it illegal won’t stop it from happening, and yet so many of our efforts are directed toward that end. Aren’t we wasting our time and money by simply throwing it at politicians who wave the pro-life banner, but then do little, practically, to address the underlying issues related to abortion? And why on earth oppose access to birth control and reforms in the health care system when those will likely make the biggest difference in actually curbing abortions in this country? 

(For an interesting look at the problem of categorizing the pill as an abortifacient, check out Libby Anne’s piece on the topic, where she notes that “if your goal is to save ‘unborn babies,’ and if you truly believe that a zygote – a fertilized egg – has the same value and worth as you or I – the only responsible thing to do is to put every sexually active woman on the pill,” because the pill actually reduces the number of zygotes naturally rejected by a woman’s body. Also, this month's Christianity Today includes a short article on how the morning-after pill does not inhibit implantation, but rather blocks fertilization.)

Furthermore, as I became more involved in the feminist conversation (some feminists are pro-life, of course, but many are pro-choice), I began to understand some of the arguments against the criminalization of abortion, like that banning abortion does not necessarily reduce the abortion rate, that enforcing a ban on all abortions would be impossible, and that women would likely seek out abortions through unsafe, illegal procedures anyway. 

I also began listening to heartbreaking stories—from women like Cecily and Tamara who had to terminated wanted pregnancies for their health.   

And when I was honest with myself, I had to admit that I don’t know exactly when life begins (at fertilization? at the first heartbeat? at the existence of brain waves?). Does the Bible, or Christian tradition, really make this abundantly clear? There is even disagreement among Christians about this, (and historically, even among evangelicals), so was it really my place to deny a woman who has been raped, for example, access to a morning-after pill? 

And so I remained pro-life in my personal conviction, but I began to question my position that all abortions should be criminalized. I could be against abortion personally, but ambivalent about its legality, right?  I could have my own convictions about this issue without making a scene. It was as simple as that. 

….Until it wasn’t.

Under President Obama’s presidency, the overall abortion rate has indeed seen a decline, but he overturned some of Bush’s restrictions on late-term abortions, and there are these drones in the sky that don’t seem very pro-life to me.  I squirmed on the couch when, during the 2012 Democratic National Convention, cheers erupted upon every mention of a woman’s “right to choose.” A lot of pro-choice folks like to say that “no one is pro-abortion,” but when celebratory concert series and festivals are organized around the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, I can’t help but question the degree to which we have desensitized ourselves to the reality that abortion means the termination of, at the very least, a potential life, something that should never be celebrated with balloons and rock concerts. 

What frustrates me about the pro-choice movement is the lengths to which advocates go to de-humanize unborn children and sanitize the abortion procedure, reducing life to nothing more than a cluster of cells and the implications of pregnancy to little more than a choice. The word “fetus” is used instead of “child.” Efforts to encourage women to receive counseling prior to an abortion are stubbornly opposed. The argument is framed around the woman’s body exclusively, as if the fetus is inconsequential, and pro-life advocates are characterized as being “against” women’s rights. (Frankly, as a woman, and a feminist, I don’t like people invoking my “rights” to unilaterally support abortion.)

For a lot of pro-choicers, it seems, abortion is all about the woman.

The unborn child, and all the complicated, terrifying, and beautiful things its life represents, don’t seem to matter much. 

So just as I grew irritated with the pro-life movement for its inconsistency and simplistic solutions, I grew irritated with the pro-choice movement for its callousness and disinterest in discussing the very real ethical concerns surrounding the termination of a pregnancy. 

And then the Kermit Gosnell story blew up. 

The story involved dead babies and dead women, the exploitation of poor and marginalized immigrants and minorities, filthy conditions, racism, and multiple governmental failures.  

"This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women,” the Grand Jury reported, “What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy - and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors. The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels - and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths… Bureaucratic inertia is not exactly news. We understand that. But we think this was something more. We think the reason no one acted is because the women in question were poor and of color, because the victims were infants without identities, and because the subject was the political football of abortion." 

In response, pro-life made the (accurate) observation that it is a mere technicality that separates the legal termination of late-term pregnancies from the illegal termination of late-term pregnancies so gruesomely exposed by the photos from Gosnell’s clinic.  Pro-choice advocates made the (accurate) observation that Gosnell is being prosecuted precisely because what he did was illegal and warned that, should abortion be criminalized, practices like his would likely flourish. I was pleased to see many pro-life advocates acknowledge that the story highlights the role poverty plays in abortion, admitting that the women in this case were marginalized and vulnerable, and that their needs ought to be talked about more often. I was pleased to see many pro-choice advocates acknowledging that the stark reminder of what happens to a fetus in a late term abortion was rightfully unsettling. (It should be noted that late tern abortions make up a very small percentage of abortions, as do cases of rape and incest…so both sides tend to appeal to rare cases in debates.) Kristen Howerton, among others, had the good sense push past all the pointless rhetoric about a supposed media conspiracy to ask why on earth the state of Pennsylvania didn’t shut this place down sooner. 

Here was abortion—in all of its heartbreaking complexity, with all of its ties to life, death, poverty, exploitation, fear, loneliness, politics, and propaganda—sprawled out on the front pages of our newspapers, and no single side “won.” It was an indictment on our shared apathy, on our shared callousness, on our shared simplistic political solutions. 

“…Because the women in question were poor and of color, because the victims were infants without identities, and because the subject was the political football of abortion." 

Not surprisingly, I couldn’t think of anything worthwhile to say. I was, truly, speechless. 

My conservative friends took the opportunity to chastise and pester me, convinced my delay in writing a post on the topic revealed my participation in some vast media conspiracy and my unwarranted preoccupation with “minor” issues like gender equality in the church. When I explained on Twitter that a post about abortion isn’t simple enough to fit into 600 words, a guy tweeted back, “Sure it is. I can fit it in three: It’s always wrong.” 

Is it? 

When the life or health of the mother is at stake? 

In the case of rape or incest? 

When a woman’s body naturally disposes of a zygote? 

Meanwhile, my more liberal friends begged me not to write anything at all. It’s too complicated, they said, too controversial, too complex. 

Is it? 

When the life of the weaker is taken by the stronger? 

When one out of five pregnancies in this country end in abortion? 

When places like these fail to get shut down in part because we’ve turned abortion into such a political issue? 

I think a lot of progressive Christians like myself, eager to distance ourselves from some of the rhetoric and policies of the Republican brand of the pro-life movement, shy away from talking about abortion, when our call to do justice and love mercy demand that we speak and act to address this issue, even though it may be more complicated than we originally thought.  

In fact, I wonder if an appreciation of the nuances in the debate, and of abortion’s connection to traditionally “progressive” issues like poverty and healthcare, may actually make those of us who are “stuck in the middle” especially effective agents of change.  Let’s face it: We are unlikely to find a single party that truly represents a “culture of life,” and abortion will probably never be made illegal, so we’ll have to go about it the old fashioned way, working through the diverse channels of the Kingdom to adopt and support responsible adoption, welcome single moms into our homes and churches, reach out to the lonely and disenfranchised, address the socioeconomic issues involved, and engage in some difficult conversations about the many factors that contribute to the abortion rate in this country, (especially birth control). It seems to me that Christians who are more conservative and Christians who are more liberal, Christians who are politically pro-life and Christians who are politically pro-choice,  should be able to come together on this and advocate for life in a way that takes seriously the complexities involved and that honors both women and their unborn children. 

In other words, instead of focusing all of our efforts on making “supply” illegal, perhaps we should work on decreasing demand.  And instead of pretending like this is just an issue of women’s rights, perhaps we should acknowledge the very real and very troubling moral questions surrounding a voluntarily terminated pregnancy. 

I am still unsure of exactly how to do this. I don’t even know where to start, really. The more I learn, the more complex this issue becomes. But the Gosnell case does in fact point to something simple: that we are failing to care for the most marginalized and helpless among us, be they unborn children or women whose desperation sent them to Gosnell’s clinic. And we won’t be able to promote a “culture of life” until we are willing to advocate on behalf of both. 

Perhaps God has called those of us who feel “stuck in the middle” to do exactly that. 

###

What do you think?

How has your thinking on abortion changed and evolved through the years? What was your response to the Gosnell story?

And what sort of PRACTICAL steps can Christians take to to both address the complexities of abortion and actually curb the abortion rate?

Note: I'm closing the comment thread, just because once you reach 600+ comments, it's a bit too much to manage. Most were civil and thoughtful, so thank you for engaging!

Why I Don’t Witness to People on Airplanes (A Post in 3 Acts)

1. 

Mark spoke in chapel every other year, usually in the spring, which was about the time I’d accumulated too many absences to cut. A former college basketball player with an imposing six-foot-seven frame, bald head, and booming voice, Mark travelled the country telling Christian college students about his evangelistic exploits, challenging us to “wake up from our apathy” and start witnessing to people before they died and went to hell. 

Mark said his favorite place to witness to someone was on an airplane.  “It’s a captive audience!” he shouted from the stage. “I mean, the target is literally strapped in next to you!” 

[He probably said “person,” but all I could hear was “target.”]

Mark suggested we begin a conversation with our seatmate by asking if they knew where they would go spend eternity should there be a catastrophic failure in the plane’s hydraulic system and we all went down in flames. If that doesn’t work, he said, we should drill the person on how many of the Ten Commandments they might have broken, revealing their need for a savior—Ever committed adultery? Ever lied? Ever disobeyed your parents? Ever coveted your neighbor’s things? You know, make a little small talk about idolatry and death and then tell them about Jesus. 

At the end of chapel, Mark always announced he would be going to the local park that afternoon to evangelize. He would take a group of students with him, but he needed those students to stand up and publicly pledge their commitment to process. 

“Who’s going to live for Jesus today?” he asked. “Stand up right now if you’re ready to take the gospel seriously and live for Jesus.” 

Mark was an expert at direct-response advertising. 

As an introvert, the thought of chasing down a jogger in a public park so I could ask him if he ever committed adultery made me physically ill. So, even though I prided myself on being known on campus as “Bible Girl,” I chose not to live for Jesus on the days Mark spoke in chapel. Instead, I stared at my shoes, flush-faced and ashamed, as a few of my classmates rose reluctantly to their feet.  They always came back from those trips looking confused and tired and stressed about whatever class they’d skipped for Jesus. I gathered things didn’t go exactly as planned. 

“Well, at least we planted some seeds,” they always said. 

But we knew what that meant.  

Planted seeds are the consolation prizes of failed evangelists. 

2. 

I think of Mark every time I fly, which lately, is several times a month. 

And I have no doubt Mark would be severely disappointed in my typical airplane conversations, which involve a bit of small talk at takeoff (“where you coming from?” “where you headed?”), followed by blessed silence as soon as we reach cruising altitude and my seatmate and I indulge in our respective books or music or sleep, followed by friendly chatter during the final descent (“you going to make your connection?” “don’t you hate/love American Airlines?” “you fly a lot?”). 

Of course, sometimes things get a little more interesting. 

Like the time I sat next to a mom and her little girl, probably six or seven. It was the little girl’s first time in an airplane, so everything was exciting and breathtaking and adventurous. I switched seats with her so she could look out the window, and, for the first time in a long time, I too saw unicorns, sea monsters and peacocks in the clouds. 

Or the time I sat next to the guy from Milwaukee who needed a drink at 8:30 in the morning, and even after I’d put in headphones, opened my kindle, and scratched my face/shielded my eyes/ propped up my chin/picked my freaking nose so he could CLEARLY see my wedding ring, kept inching closer, and talking louder, and looking me over a bit too carefully. 

Or the time I sat next to a young man from Hyderabad, India, who couldn’t believe I had been to his home city and that I even knew a couple words in Telegu. He was easy to talk to, spoke warmly about his wife and kids, and made me feel all travelled and wise. When he said he and his wife had found a good temple in Charlotte, and a community of Indians that helped them preserve their culture and language for their children, I said, “Oh good! That’s so important,” knowing good and well that Mark would not approve. 

Or the time I sat next to the very friendly salesman with the very loud voice who was very committed to his work of selling hair transplant equipment, very interested in how much hair my husband had on his head, and very disappointed to see that the inflight magazine included a full-page ad for his competitor. He struck up a conversation with the middle-aged guy across the aisle and had nearly sold him, (and the rest of the plane for that matter), on follicular unit extraction by the time we landed in Charlotte. Later, I walked by a restaurant and could hear his voice booming from the bar—“strip harvesting?! Nobody does strip harvesting anymore!” 

Or the elderly woman who clutched her rosary on takeoff and landing, or the kid who looked way too young to be wearing an army uniform, or the Latina woman who didn’t speak a word of English and cried in confusion when they made her change seats because she wasn’t allowed to sit in the exit row, or the lady from New Jersey who, upon learning that I wrote a book about following all of the Bible’s instructions for women as literally as possible for a year, declared, “Well it’s a good thing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins so we don’t have to follow any of those old rules anymore!” (Mark would most certainly approve of that.) 

But I’ve never “witnessed” to anyone on an airplane. I’ve never asked my seatmate if he’s secured his ticket to heaven, never quizzed the flight attendant on her Ten Commandments record. 

For one thing, my faith has changed so much since those days in chapel, I’m not sure I know what it means to “witness” to a person anymore. Somewhere in my mid-twenties, I drifted off the Romans Road and stumbled onto a bigger, wilder Gospel in which salvation is less about individual “sin management” and more about God’s relentless work restoring, redeeming, and remaking the whole world. Salvation isn’t some insurance policy that kicks in after death; it’s the ongoing, daily work of Jesus, who loosens the chains of anger, greed, materialism, and hate around our feet and teaches us to walk in love, joy, and peace instead. It’s good news, not bad news, and I can’t, for the life of me, believe that only evangelical Christians like myself have a monopoly on it. 

But what does sharing this good news look like? 

I don’t know for sure, but I know it doesn’t look like a sales pitch. I know it doesn’t look like forcing a stranger strapped into the seat next to me to talk about Christianity, like it’s follicular unit extraction, especially if she doesn’t want to.  

In The King Jesus Gospel, Scot McKnight wrote, “Most of evangelism today is obsessed with getting someone to make a decision; the apostles, however, were obsessed with making disciples.” 

Is it possible to make a disciple in an hour and a half, between the beverage service and final descent? Am I letting my doubts about the existence of hell make me apathetic, lazy? Or am I just a chicken? 

I don’t know, but I can’t help but feel a tiny twinge of guilt each time I step off the plane onto the jetway without having made a convert. 

“Who’s going to live for Jesus today?” 

3. 

I know several people who came to faith via some form of direct-response marketing—a televangelist, a tract, a Gideon Bible, a black-and-white billboard signed by God. They tell me this with some embarrassment, like these aren’t sophisticated way to meet Jesus…as if any of us meet Jesus on our terms. 

Their stories give me the grace to see that there is a place for people like Mark, that God often uses methods I don’t approve of. 

Still, I can’t help but roll my eyes when that guy with the megaphone and white pickup truck pulls into the parking lot at BiLo and starts yelling about the Ten Commandments and the wrath of God, like Jesus is just another product we buy to escape pain. 

I’ve never had much luck sharing the Gospel with strangers, but I’ve shared it often around my kitchen table, in the Eucharist, at baby showers, in long summer nights on the back porch talking with friends, at coffee shops, at funeral homes, in living rooms, through tears, through music, through celebrations. At the end of the day, the gospel doesn’t really fit on a billboard or a Facebook status or an elevator pitch; it has to be experienced, in community, through the day-in-and-day-out work of following Jesus. That’s what makes it different from just another product; that’s what makes it better than follicular unit extraction.

A couple of months ago, I sat next to a sixty-something woman on a flight to Newport News. She and her husband of nearly fifty years had retired to the Virginia Coast, she said, because there were so many colleges in the area. 

“We can go to a play one night, an art exhibit the next night, and a basketball game the following night,” she said. “It’s wonderful…or at least it used to be.” 

Tears gathered in her eyes as she told me about her husband’s recent stroke. His personality changed. He can’t remember words. He gets frustrated easily. 

“I’d be frustrated too, if I were him," she said. “Can you imagine? Everything that was once familiar is suddenly…difficult, strange, confusing.” 

Her husband sat in the row in front of us, staring ahead. She put her hand on his shoulder. 

I listened for a long time, moved by her love for her husband and her daily acts of faithfulness in caring for him. At one point in the conversation, she mentioned with some frustration that her daughter had become a “fundamentalist Christian” and wasn’t helping much. I decided not to venture down the Romans Road. 

Instead I told her how sorry I was. I think I may have mentioned an ancient poem that describes certain women as “women of valor,” and that I thought she sounded like one. I told her I hoped I could be as good a wife to my husband as she has been to hers, and that I would pray for her. 

I worried that last bit might be pushing it, but she seemed genuinely grateful. She nodded off to sleep for the last 20 minutes of the flight and we didn’t say much to one another after that. 

As we filed out of the plane, the thought occurred to me: 

Maybe “planting seeds” is all any of us ever do. 

Maybe “witnessing” is about the choice we have to plant seeds of unkindness, hurry, hate, and greed in one another’s lives, or to plant seeds of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control. Whether it’s in our closest relationships or our brief encounters with strangers, we always have that choice—to bring life or to bring death, to bring an agenda or to bring love, to bring a product or to bring Jesus. 

The woman on the plane planted a good seed in my heart, and I hope I planted a good seed in hers. We might not get to watch as the God of rain and soil and sun makes those seeds grow, but we can trust that God is faithful, that God can take even our clumsiest attempts at witnessing and turn them into something good. 

...Or maybe I’m just chicken. 

###

I would love your input on this! As your faith has changed how have your views on evangelism changed? What does it look like to share the good news with other people? What does it mean to “witness” to someone? 

As you can see, I’m still struggling with this, and would love to hear your thoughts. 

The Absurd Legalism of Gender Roles: Exhibit C – “As long as I can’t see her…”

Exhibit A: The black belt should step aside (because she’s a girl!)

Exhibit B: Boys playing with dolls unravels the moral fabric of society

Exhibit C:  A woman can teach me as long as I can’t see her

Scot McKnight was the first person to draw my attention to the fact that “anyone who thinks it is wrong for a woman to teach in a church can be consistent with that point of view only if they refuse to learn from women scholars” (The Blue Parakeet, p. 148).  And it was Scot who, on his blog this week, pointed his readers to a podcast interview in which John Piper responds to the question, “Do you use commentaries written by women?” 

(So before anyone criticizes me as being a "shrill," "irrational" woman picking on John Piper, please remember that Scot has been discussing this for several years as well.)

Now, in the past, we’ve discussed the sort of hermeneutical gymnastics involved in John Piper’s bizarre, half-hearted affirmation of Beth Moore as a teacher, and we’ve discussed, at length, the context of 1 Timothy 2 and why it should not be used to silence women from preaching the gospel and leading in the church. 

Today I want to look at Piper’s response to this question about commentaries written by women to show just how absurd the legalism of hierarchal gender roles can become. 

Ironically, Piper’s primary measure of appropriateness is whether a man feels threatened by a woman’s teaching. This is something you will hear from time to time from this camp: when in doubt, it all comes down to the degree to which a man senses he is maintaining his authority. As long as the men still feel in control, some degree of teaching from women may be permissible. 

But what about men like my husband, or my pastor, or Scot, who are not threatened by the intelligent, thoughtful contributions of women in leadership?  What about men who enjoy and appreciate partnerships with women and whose sense of calling and security is not dependent upon my subjugation? Why enforce these roles onto them?  

As Dan has told me on many occasions, for him, it is far less insulting to be under the authority of a woman than it is to be subjected to the suggestion that his fragile ego cannot handle it. “I’m just not that insecure,” he likes to say. “Learning from a woman doesn’t make me feel like 'less of a man.' Why would it?” 

Piper argues that a woman can teach a man so long as her teaching is “impersonal,” “indirect,” and “removed”—essentially, so long as it is easy for him to forget she is a woman. 

Regarding a woman who has written a biblical commentary, he explains: “She’s not looking at me, and directing me…as woman. There is this interposition of this phenomenon called ‘book’ that puts her out of my sight and, in a sense, takes away the dimension of her female personhood, whereas if she were standing right in front of me and teaching me as my shepherd…I couldn’t make that separation" (emphasis mine).

As a woman, I find this profoundly dehumanizing.  

No, as a human being, I find this profoundly dehumanizing. 

Piper is essentially arguing that so long as he does not have to acknowledge my humanity, so long as I keep a safe distance so he is unaware of the pitch of my voice and the presence of my breasts, he can, perhaps, learn something about the Bible from me. So long as I am not “in-his-face” (his words) with my femaleness, it will be easier for him to treat me as someone worth learning from; it will be easier for him to treat me like a man. 

How are women to interpret this as anything other than a statement on the inherent inferiority of their natures?   What else are we to conclude when a man without any biblical training or calling from the Spirit is considered more qualified to preach the gospel by virtue of being a man than a woman with extensive training, years of practice, remarkable giftedness, and a profound sense of calling? Is this not legalism? Is it not straining a gnat and swallowing a camel? 

And what on earth is Piper to do with women like Priscilla, who the apostle Paul lauded as one of his coworkers, and whose teaching of Apollos was both direct and personal? What about Huldah, the prophet? Did King Josiah close his eyes so he would forget she was a woman as she read and interpreted Scripture in his presence, explaining, directly and personally, how that Scripture would affect Israel and its king?  And what does Piper do with Deboarah, a woman who essentially took on the role of drill sergeant he is so keen to avoid (not to mention judge, warrior, and commander-in-chief), and is celebrated in Scripture for doing so? 

This is the absurd legalism of gender roles:  Not even the Bible’s most celebrated women can fit into them. 

I’ll conclude with some words of encouragement from Dorothy Sayers. (Men who would be offended by hearing this from her in person will be happy to know she is dead and her words are safely tucked away in an essay entitled “Are Women Human?”) 

"Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man—there never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronized; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as ‘The women, God help us!’ or “The ladies, God bless them!’; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unselfconscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and Jesus that there was anything ‘funny’ about woman’s nature."  

"But we might easily deduce it from His contemporaries, and from His prophets before Him, and from His Church to this day. Women are not human; nobody shall persuade that they are human; let them say what they like, we will not believe, though One rose from the dead."

Perhaps we could push beyond these legalistic gender roles if we spent less time worrying about “acting like men” and “acting like women,” and more time acting like Jesus. 

[Latter we'll look at Exhibit D, in which women are advised not to work outside of the home, even if it's more practical for their family.]

For more on 1 Timothy 2, see:  "For the Sake of the Gospel, Let Women Speak" See also, "Is Patriarchy really God's dream for the world?"

Please keep the comments civil!

What I learned turning my hate mail into origami

For Lent this year, I wanted to learn a new creative skill that would enable me to turn something ugly into something beautiful, so I resolved on Ash Wednesday to turn some of my hate mail into origami. 

 As I wrote back in February, “it felt a little awkward at first, but as I moved my fingers across those painful words, folding them into one another to make wings, then a neck, then a crooked little beak, healing tears fell, and I let my fingers pray.”  

I’ve been making origami off and on for forty days now, letting my fingers pray out little swans and sailboats and flowers and foxes, and I’ve learned some things: about reverse folds and crimp folds, about trial and error, about patience, about retracing steps and following directions, about forgiveness, about letting go, about redirecting some of my anxious and self-focused energy into purposeful acts of creativity and healing, about building bridges, about asking for help. 

That last one—asking for help—turned out to be the most instructive part of them all. 

The consummate contemplative, I had originally imagined this Lenten practice to be a solitary one.  It would be all quiet and meditative and poetic and introspective. 

But it was my friend Melissa who mailed me the origami books. 

It was my brother-in-law Tim who helped me make my first sailboat. 

It was my friend Monika who sat at my kitchen table and made blackout poems out of the most hateful letters, spending Holy Saturday—our special day—forming crooked little pelicans, ducks, and penguins out of scraps of paper.  

It was a reader’s idea to work some beautiful, affirming words into the process too, inspiring me to scribble the prayer of Teresa of Avila and the fruit of the spirit onto the colored origami paper. 

It was my sister who made the jumping frog while we waited for Easter dinner. 

It was Dan who managed to make the perfect origami crane in a matter of fifteen minutes….

…while I only managed to make this: 

It was the author of one of those letters who emailed an apology, upon learning about my Lenten practice. 

It was that email that inspired me to issue a few apologies of my own, to be just a little quicker to listen, slower to speak, and slower to get angry. 

What I learned turning my hate mail into origami is that we’re meant to remake this world together. We’re meant to hurt together, heal together, forgive together, and create together. Far from being be all quiet and meditative and poetic and introspective, this practice turned out to be full of laughter, cluttered tables, shared grumbles of frustration, and shared exclamations of delight—“That totally looks like a flamingo!” 

And in a sense, even the people who continue to hate me and call me names are a part of this beautiful process. Their words, carelessly spoken, spent the last 40 days in my home— getting creased and folded, worked over, brushed aside to make room for dinner, stepped on by a toddler, read by my sister, stained with coffee, shoved into a closet when guests arrive, blacked out, thrown away, turned into poems, and folded into sailboats and cranes and pigeons that now sit smiling at me from my office window.  

Because I am a real human being, living a very real life, with a very real capacity to be hurt, to be loved, to heal, and to forgive.  

And so are my enemies. 

And something tells me we would all be a little more careful, a little more gentle, if we knew how long our words linger in one another’s lives, if we imagined those words sitting on one another’s kitchen tables, shaped like foxes. 

Something tells me we would all be a bit slower to speak if we knew just how long it takes to work those ugly, heavy words into something beautiful, something that can float or fly away.

Holy Week for Doubters

It will bother you off and on, like a rock in your shoe, 

Or it will startle you, like the first crash of thunder in a summer storm, 

Or it will lodge itself beneath your skin like a splinter, 

Or it will show up again—the uninvited guest whose heavy footsteps you’d recognize anywhere, appearing at your front door with a suitcase in hand at the worst. possible. time. 

Or it will pull you farther out to sea like rip tide, 

Or hold your head under as you drown— 

Triggered by an image, a question, something the pastor said, something that doesn’t add up, the unlikelihood of it all, the too-good-to-be-trueness of it, the way the lady in the thick perfume behind you sings “Up from the grave he arose!” with more confidence in the single line of a song than you’ve managed to muster in the past two years. 

And you’ll be sitting there in the dress you pulled out from the back of your closet, swallowing down the bread and wine, not believing a word of it. 

Not. A. Word. 

So you’ll fumble through those back pocket prayers—“help me in my unbelief!”—while everyone around you moves on to verse two, verse three, verse four without you. 

You will feel their eyes on you, and you will recognize the concern behind their cheery greetings: “We haven’t seen you here in a while! So good to have you back.” 

And you will know they are thinking exactly what you used to think about Easter Sunday Christians: 

Nominal. 

Lukewarm. 

Indifferent. 

But you won’t know how to explain that there is nothing nominal or lukewarm or indifferent about standing in this hurricane of questions every day and staring each one down until you’ve mustered all the bravery and fortitude and trust it takes to whisper just one of them out loud on the car ride home: 

“What if we made this up because we’re afraid of death?” 

And you won’t know how to explain why, in that moment when the whisper rose out of your mouth like Jesus from the grave, you felt more alive and awake and resurrected than you have in ages because at least it was out, at least it was said, at least it wasn’t buried in your chest anymore, clawing for freedom. 

And, if you’re lucky, someone in the car will recognize the bravery of the act. If you’re lucky, there will be a moment of holy silence before someone wonders out loud if such a question might put a damper on Easter brunch. 

But if you’re not—if the question gets answered too quickly or if the silence goes on too long—please know you are not alone. 

There are other people signing words to hymns they’re not sure they believe today, other people digging out dresses from the backs of their closets today, other people ruining Easter brunch today, other people just showing up today. 

And sometimes, just showing up -  burial spices in hand -  is all it takes to witness a miracle.