Gender norms: violence and domesticity

This excellent article was posted today regarding "Violent Men, Working Women, and Evangelical Gender Norms." I have recently given significant thought to the issue of 'stay-at-home' moms. As a hot-button topic for American Christianity for so many years, this discussion seems to have lost much biblical and historic perspective.  This aforementioned article addresses some of those issues.

I would add a couple of thoughts regarding why it is not true that 'the ideal Christian wife is a stay-at-home mom.'  Until about two generations ago, both parents were stay-at-home parents, in most settings.  The world was far more rural which meant that family life centered on the home.  The father and mother were both at home raising the kids.  As my grandmother described her family growing up on a farm in Virginia, she said the boys grew up doing the outside farm work with her dad who worked full-time (and more), while she and her sisters grew up doing the domestic farm work with her mom who worked full-time (and more).  All this work happened to be at home.

However, at some point, many fathers not only began working outside the home, but they also began to abandon their responsibility to raise their children in godliness and responsibility.  Thus, the mothers often covered this neglect as best they could.  When mothers needed to leave the house as well in order to support their families, many homes went into free-fall.  Somehow Christian fathers and mothers must both give serious attention to raising godly and mature children, neither ceding the responsibility to the other (Deut 6; Tit 2; etc).  As the above article urges, we must give serious attention to being Biblical in our culture, not simply to defending tradition or culture or the perceived past.  Two generations have shown us that this will not be easy, but the Word of God and the Spirit of God will not fail to enable God's children to follow His path.

Jesus and the Imprecatory Psalms

 The 'Christo-centric' (RHM) preaching approach is absolutely the only way to preach or make sense of the (many!) imprecatory Psalms and passages in the Psalms. On the one hand, the 'imprecations' are simply cries for justice, and such a passion is surely right. So for example, despite the troubling, shocking ending to Psalm 137, the writer is appealing to simple justice. If any fair-minded observer is asked the question: 'what do the perpetrators deserve?' the answer would be 'the degree of suffering they imposed on others.' [...] If we 'tone down' the cry against injustice as something 'primitive' we cannot appreciate the cross--because there we see that the punishment for such cruelty is exactly what the Psalmist has called for. We see God's 'little one' being dashed to pieces. Yes, the punishment that human injustice and evil deserves is just as bad as the imprecation stated! But what the Psalmist could not see is that when God's Messiah came the first time, he came to bear the judgement on human evil, not mete it out. And the Psalmist could not see that he deserves to be condemned as well for his own life-record. At the Psalmist's 'stage in Redemptive-History' he was stating truth as far as he could see it. But we now have been both humbled by the cross (so we cannot cry for vengeance in the same way) and we have been given enormous hope by the cross. We see that God will do justice in the earth. He is so passionately against it that he experienced it himself so that he could some day end all evil without ending us. This keeps me from having to put myself in his place and become sucked up into the endless cycle of vengeance and retaliation.

  So the Imprecatory Psalms are taken very seriously by the cross--they point to the drastic action God took on the cross. Yet because of the cross, we do not cry for vengeance in the same way. We can seek out justice in society without any blood-lust (or indeed even ill-will).

  In short, there is no way to preach the imprecatory Psalms without pointing to Christ. A non- Christological reading of these Psalms will only lead to Christians being led into an anachronistic 'holy war' mentality.

~from Tim Keller's "Preaching Syllabus" (underlining mine)

a simple thought on loving God and each other

And now I ask you, dear lady—not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning—that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it.

Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected.

(2 Jn 5-6; 1 Jn 2:4-5a - ESV)

The essence of loving one another is to walk in God's commands. The proof of our love for Him is our obedience, and the essence of our love for each other is in that same obedience.

The Religion of Consumerism

If you care to consider this, kindly read the whole thing and think about it before commenting.  The context is the question of what do we see as the Kingdom of God which we are to desire upon this earth and, particularly, how does our consumerist model match up.  The entire section in the book is worth considering.

   In particular, they don't want us to ask, "Where does all this stuff come from?" Instead, they encourage us to accept a certain magic, the myth that the garments and equipment that circulate from the mall through our homes and into the landfill simply emerged in shops as if dropped by aliens. The processes of production and transport remain hidden and invisible, like the entrances and exits for the characters at Disney World. This invisibility is not accidental; it is necessary in order for us not to see that this way of life is unsustainable and selfishly lives off of the backs of the majority of the world. What the liturgy of the mall trains us to desire as the good life and "the American way" requires such massive consumption of natural resources and cheap (exploitive) labor that there is no possible way for this way of life to be universalized. (Though the United States comprises only 5 percent of the world's population, we consume somewhere between 23 and 26 percent of the world's energy.) The liturgy of consumption births in us a desire for a way of life that is destructive of creation itself; moreover, it births in us a desire for a way of life that we can't feasibly extend to others, creating a system of privilege and exploitation.

- James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, pg 101. (emphasis mine)