Free to Be...

I see a woman in a head covering, and, suddenly....
I'm hyperventilating.
She has a head covering. He must be a command man.
If he is a command man, he must be a hyper-patriarch.
If he is a hyper-patriarch, he is a mysogynist.
If he is a mysogynist, she must be in a lot of pain.
Yes, in one nanosecond, my eyes see headcovering, and my brain thinks 'tyranny.'

I find myself praying silently with Tevye of Fiddler on the Roof:
"God bless the family-with-head-coverings and keep them FAAAAAAAAR away from us!"

Then I remember my own time off in the weeds, and I do my best to back the condemnation truck up.

But I admit I'm still inching my way to the opposite corner of the room.

At the other end of the standards spectrum, I recall sitting in the back of a class of 'homeschoolers' where I got waaaay too much of an eyeful from a young woman's choice of jeans. This wasn't a church gathering in the sense that God's Word would be preached, and there would be worship and prayer. BUT...it was a church gathering in the sense that most of the folks congregated there would make some claim to Jesus as Lord. And, frankly, that young lady's style was unbecoming for a Christian.

We need standards. The case of the young lady above makes that obvious.
We need standards in the home because our children are too young to know prudence.
We need standards so that when we remove the scaffolding from these children we are building, they will understand what prudence looks like and how to set standards of their own.

Standards are tricky business.
Some believers have a tendency towards rules.
Some believers have a tendency towards no rules.
Standards are family business, too.
We can't hold other people to our standards. House rules, after all, are just that, and not God's Law.
But that does not mean we are free to have no standards.

"I will set no unclean thing before my eyes."
The implication is that there are unclean things, that I can choose to look at them, and that the godly man will choose not to. The application, though, is for the Holy Spirit to make.
So maybe I can watch Pirates of the Caribbean. And you can't.
Maybe you can read Harry Potter. And I can't.
But we should both agree that anything that strikes us as unclean should not be entertaining to us.

"Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence or anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things."
The implication is that the man of God must make a conscious decision to take out the garbage.
The application is that we must define within our own households that what qualifies as true/honorable/right/pure/lovely and what qualifies as false/dishonorable/unrighteous/impure/ugly.

Having no standard is a standard. Don't fall for the idea that no standard is freedom. It is not. With every book, every movie, every song, every thought, we have to weigh its worth.
And we have to remind ourselves that the standard is not:
"Whatever is a classic, whatever is new, whatever is popular, whatever is a box-office smash, whatever has a cool soundtrack, whatever is cinematic genius..."
We're not called to be relevant; we're called to be holy.

We are a free people. Christ died to set us free. And Christian liberty is a wonderful thing.
My family is a free family. It isn't often that people toss the label 'legalist' at us. I am in no way advocating that we start searching for lines to draw.
No way. I am of the firm belief that we should start by assuming all things are permissible and have a reason--a very good reason--for determining something is not permissible.
But perhaps it would be more helpful to ask ourselves, "Where would I draw the line?"
"What would a movie look like that I would not watch?"
"At what point would I decide a book is not worthy of my time?"

A few years back, we had a hair crisis in our household.
The men all liked women's hair to be long, the longer the better.
The women liked our hair to be short and chic.
And suddenly, we had a need for a standard.
Brett wanted a standard that would be glorifying to God without writing a new law. After days of weighing our appeals and his tastes with God's Word, he came up with this: Be feminine. If you look like a female and like you appreciate being a female, wear it. If you look masculine or like you wish you were masculine, it's off-limits.

And with that one standard, the winds of freedom were blowing once again.
I think that's what good standards do.
They set a boundary that makes us at once achieve love and liberty.

Sometimes, standards can be too dogmatic.

There are scriptural principles that tell us that...
iron sharpens iron...
and don't let anyone despise your youth...
and spur one another on to love and good deeds.
But...
our concerns regarding the youth group movement (and they are valid concerns) can cause us to reject these scripture and set an extra-scriptural, overly-dogmatic standard.
So we let our kids discuss everything...but Truth.
That's just weird.
Not only that, but for this mama who prays that her children will have a hunger for spiritual things and that their friends will have a hunger for spiritual things...
it's puzzling.
We end up forfeiting koinonia in favor of dogmatism.

When we elevate our standard so that it is equal to a biblical principle,
we harm the parties involved and breed disillusionment.
Surely, we sola scriptura types are aiming for a more excellent way than that!

Or sometimes, in our quest to have Godly standards, we let others set the standards for us. Then one day we wake up and realize we've been too rigid, too wooden. I was visiting a few weeks ago with some friends in another town. I was sharing what we were learning about having adult daughters, contrary to the more popular family-integrated standards in this area. Our friend smiled lightly and remarked, "Yeah, we can get a little dogmatic about that, can't we? We've been talking about that, too." It was nice to know we weren't the only ones re-evaluating.

So, setting standards is delicate.
The road to setting them has ditches of legalism on one side and lawlessness on the other.
The road is pock-marked with needless wounding and pointed fingers.

But, as with everything else in the Christian life, we aren't off the hook just because it's difficult.
We are a chosen nation, a holy people, a royal priesthood.
We must aim to have standards that reflect the Lord we serve and our identity with Him.

Wouldn't It Be Great if Everyone Was Just Like Us?

We have some old friends who are the kind of friends you let your hair down with. We share a glass of wine and share our hearts. We laugh and enjoy each other's company. The conversation will inevitably turn to the Kingdom, and often, in moments of shared exasperation over some Church issue ("Church" as in the worldwide Body of Christ, not a specific local church), we roll our eyes and lament, "Wouldn't it be great if everyone was just like us?!"

I know. It sounds arrogant, doesn't it? But what we really mean is that day-to-day Body life can range from purely joyous to neutrally peaceful to mildly irritating to downright toe-stepped-on offensive. And if everyone was just like us, we could avoid those more uncomfortable moments. We'd share the same convictions. We'd have the same rules. Life would be a piece of cake.

But, noooooooo.
God made it more complicated than that.
We have to put on compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.
We have to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things.
We have to count it all joy when we encounter various trials.

Sigh.
Body life is good; I don't mean to imply it is not.
The rich friendships I have been blessed with in the Body are priceless.
But Body life is hard.
And that's a fact.

Matters of conscience.
They are frequently the vehicle which transports us from the neutrally peaceful to the mildly irritating...or worse.

The Word of God,
The Counsel of the Holy,
is endless in its depths of wisdom.
We can mine it our whole lives and never exhaust it,
never reach the end of our learning curve.

But it is a Sword.
And we could all use a little weapons' training before we start swingin' that Thang around...
It is possible to hurt someone by improperly using the Word of God.

I admit it.
When I set standards regarding media (books, movies, music)
or style (hair, clothing, makeup)
or food (alcohol, pork, whole foods)
or health (homeopathy, birth control)
or more serious things (remarriage, baptism)...

...I have a strong tendency to make my conviction a universal law.
I am, after all, a black and white girl living in a gray world...

Ironically, I really don't like being held to someone else's standards.
However, I can't think of one single time when someone got in my face for enjoying a beer or wearing pants or cutting my hair.

So, the corollary issue regarding matters of conscience is that while I can't force my standards on someone else,
I also can't flippantly charge them with legalism.
Oh, they might be legalistic.
In their hearts, they might be trying to be right with God by their own virtue.
And that's a private form of legalism, for the Holy Spirit to judge in them.
Nevertheless, I can't say they're being outwardly legalistic if they are quietly living lives of conviction and are letting me also live a quiet life of conviction.
Oh my goodness. I can't even begin to count the times I have done that.

But HOLY HEAD COVERINGS, BATMAN!
We do need standards.

...which brings me to my next point...
Stay tuned.

The Lawgiver

"Mom, who did the Pharisees believe in?" Jacob asked from the backseat of the car.
"Themselves," I answered. "They believed in themselves, in their ability to keep the law." And it was one of those moments when teacher and student were learning together because as the answer was coming out of my mouth, I was having a God moment. It was like a word of wisdom, and the words were not mine.

God is the Lawgiver.
He has created this world and set it in motion.
In Him we live and breathe and have our being.
And from this incredible, eternal Mind comes Law which sustains His creation.
He wrote scientific laws, like gravity.
He wrote economic laws, like supply and demand.
And He wrote moral law, which He originally entrusted to Israel.

His Law cannot be broken without serious consequence.
And therein lies the irony...
because break it we do.
Daily.
Hourly.
Minute by minute.

In short, He wrote a Law we cannot keep.

This Law that is impossible to keep demonstrates to us what is right and what is wrong.
The Law reveals to us our sin,
which reveals our dead-ness,
which reveals our need for a Savior...
someone who can keep the Law,
and pay our penalty,
and make us right with God.

That is the function of the Law.
And in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, He interprets the Law to implicate us all.
If there was any doubt as to our ability to achieve right standing with God through the Law,
it was all cleared up then.
"Think you've kept the whole law? Let's talk about calling your brother 'Raca.'"

No wonder the Pharisees were mad.
They thought that Jesus was making the Law impossible to fulfill.
But He wasn't adding new requirements.
He was acting the Judge, interpreting for the people what the Law had always meant to the Lawgiver.
The Law had always been impossible to fulfill!

Being the Lawgiver is serious business.
And it is a job reserved for God Himself.

But over the last few years, the Lord has been showing me how much I like to play Lawgiver.
I write new laws
and hold others to them
and make judgments based on whether they 'keep' them.

What is 'sin' but the failure to keep the Law,
literally 'missing the mark?'
So when I write a new Law, and others fail to keep my law...
I'm really saying they are sinning, because they're missing my mark.

I can think of laws I've written regarding all kinds of issues of conscience:
homeschooling
birth control
youth groups and children's church
nose rings and tattoos
women working outside the home.

(We need to have standards. 
Christians are notorious for feeling, rather than praying and thinking, their way through life.
We need to be in the Word, applying the Word...
and I'll get to that.)

I can have a value on homeschooling and commit to it, come hell or highwater.
I can define what I think it is and what I think it's not.
I can even assess, based on my definition, "I don't think X is homeschooling."
But I cannot say that not homeschooling is sin.
I cannot say that because God does not say that.
Ever.

I don't want to write any more Law.
I am a worm.
I am but dust.
I am not qualified to write Law.

God is holy.
God is perfect.
God is the author of Creation
and the source of all knowledge
and the source of all wisdom.
He alone is qualified to be the Lawgiver.

"Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen."  (I Timothy 1:17)


Lord, help me to remember that You alone are the Lawgiver.
And I am the sinner--saved by grace.

(Up next, what I'm learning abut issues of conscience and setting standards...)

Worship in Truth

I am a wounded soldier

But I will not leave the fight

Because the great physician is healing me.

I am loved; I am accepted

By the savior of my soul.

Yuck.

----------------------

How many songs do we sing in church which do little to magnify the love and glory of the One who loved us and gave Himself for us while, at the same time, going to great lengths to remind ourselves how special we are?

How many refrains fail to humble us before a Holy God by minimizing the death sentence we so richly deserve and the One who absorbed it for us?

The Church is flimsy these days,

preaching a flimsy gospel

and engaging in flimsy worship.

In short, we're telling a tale of humanism.

In short, we're lying about the work of the Cross.

In God's eyes, we're not the victims.

We're the perpetrators.

And our sin--not our pain--separated us from a Holy God.

It would be more accurate to sing a song like this:

I was an AWOL soldier

'Cause I had left the fight,

And the Good Creator's wrath was on me.

I was treasonous. I was in rebellion

to the authority of the King.

Jesus' death satisfied God's wrath,

Not His pity.

And Jesus went to His death for me while I was still a teeth-gnashing traitor against Heaven.

How many of our worship songs lie about that Truth?

Happily, there is a rich, true theology found in the old hymns.

They told the Truth about us

(probably because they were written back when the Church preached the True Gospel).

"Now to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be.

Let your goodness like a fetter bind my wandering heart to Thee."

"My sin, o the bliss of this glorious thought,

My sin, not in part, but the whole,

Was nailed to the Cross and I bear it no more,

Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, o my soul."

"Bearing shame and scoffing rude

In my place condemned He stood.

Sealed my pardon with His blood

Hallelujah, what a Savior!"

Unlike the old hymns, modern 'worship' has fallen far short of telling the Truth.

Fortunately, though, not every new song lacks good theology.

And for every insipid refrain of "More love, more power" and other seven/elevens like it, modern hymn writers are beginning to return to Truth in worship.

"Behold the Man upon the Cross

My sin upon His shoulders.

Ashamed I hear my barking voice

Call out among the scoffers.

It was my sin that held Him there

Until it was accomplished.

His dying breath has brought me life.

I know that it is finished."

"I beheld God's love displayed.

You suffered in my place.

You bore the wrath reserved for me.

Now all I know is grace."

"I am the thorn in Your crown

But You loved me anyway.

I am the sweat on Your brow.

But You loved me anyway.

I am the nail in Your wrist.

But you love me anyway.

I am Judas' kiss.

But You love me anyway."

True worship accurately depicts God's love.

He made the first move.

He loved us while we were sinners,

Not while we were helpless victims.

Who loves a hurting child?

Who loves a wounded puppy?

Who loves victimized woman?

We do.

Big.deal.

But who loves a criminal?

Who loves a traitor?

Who loves a snivelling, blasphemous dog?

God does.

BIG, VERY BIG, DEAL.

Preach a false gospel,

or sing a false gospel,

and we paint a lying picture of a small god and a potent humanity.

Preach and sing the True Gospel, however,

of a Holy God and a wretched, filthy humanity,

and we properly understand the Love of our very Big Redeemer.

That, my friends, is what it means to worship in Truth.

Soli Deo Gloria.

Diapers and Driving: The Perils of Parenting

There are precisely two jobs as a parent I really, really loathe...

(I mean besides teaching fractions....)

and those would be

potty training and driving lessons.

Seriously.

I'm on my tenth round of potty training.

And I have never had a child initiate this.

Some children take to it more quickly than others, but it's the same overall story.

There is some silly book that has been going around for at least a generation telling you that you can potty train in a day.

Lies.

All lies.

These are the same yahoos who tell you that breast-feeding helps you lose weight.

I beg to differ...

because breast-feeding is like carrying around two gallon jugs of milk,

all day,

every day.

Lose weight?

Right.

Uh huh.

Anyway, potty training.

Twenty-four hours, my eye.

It really means days of pointing out, again, where the porcelain throne is located.

It really means weeks of puddles and other surprises

and you just praying you find any desperadoes before guests arrive.

It really means mountains of laundry

and eau de toilet.

Literally.

But the years pass, and, to date, I haven't had a kid who wasn't potty trained by thirteen.

Yes. I loathe it entirely.

Then they turn sixteen.

And they want to drive.

Why?

Where do they want to go?

We homeschool, for crying out loud.
That means we do everything in the house,

and we don't let them socialize until they have an engagement ring.

So. I repeat.

Where do they want to go?

Parents have a "stupid gene" that quickens with the first turn of the ignition at the hands of their offspring.

And as I sit there in the driveway, mentally ticking off the important things before we pull out, I wonder who is dumb enough to ride into open traffic with a new driver.

Apparently, I am.

Buckle your seatbelt. Check.

Position rearview mirrors. Check.

Watch for small children. Check.

Okay, honey, you can back out of the driveway now.

(Whoops. Silly me. I forgot to tell him the speed limit sign only applies to forward motion.)

The speed limit sign only applies to forward motion. Check.

Don't hit that child.

Try to take the next turn with all four wheels on the ground.

These are power breaks; you don't have to attack them.

Ditto on the steering.

Are you driving with two feet? No, sir. Only one.

No, that doesn't mean you can tuck your spare foot under you.

NO! You can't hang it out the window, either.

The yellow light does not mean gun the engine.

Finally, we pull back into the drive.

My heart is beginning to find its regular rate again.

He turns off the engine.

All's quiet on the homefront.

I open my door to disembark.

And then we begin to roll...

backward...

in my fifteen passenger van.

The world moves in slow motion,

and our voices are speaking in super slo-mo.

Moo oo oom, wwhhhyyyy aaa rr eee weeeee roo llingggg???

Hii iitt ttthhe brreaaakkk!!!

III aa aammmm...

Did I mention that I had opened my door?

Did I further mention that this was a fifteen passenger van,

a multi-ton vehicle?

a tank to the untrained eye?

And as I was--(remember that "stupid gene")--looking at the gearshift, trying to figure out what was happening,

my open door collided with a tree.

The tree won.

(Oh. Now I know what I forgot to tell him. When he turns the engine off, he loses all power--breaks included.)

When you turn off the engine, you lose all...

oh never mind...

check.

My poor van.

My blue whale.

And now we pour in and out of her like ants coming out of an anthill.

Ten of us (only because two of us are away at school--but when those two come home next week for spring break, twelve of us) pile out of the driver's side.

I'm sitting here wondering what all the potty training fuss was about.

Sea Turtles

Sea turtles never thrilled me much.

I remember the annoying little cages on South Florida beaches where the eggs were protected.

I remember rolling my eyes and being irritated that some tree-hugger somewhere was taking all the fun out of my day at the shore.

But...

I have a new-found respect for sea turtles.

For theirs is a journey of sanctification.

Their road is hard.

It is long.

It is narrow.

The sea turtle's life is hard from the very beginning.

Three days to reach the surface of the sand from the egg.

Forty horrid meters from the place where they are hatched to the current of the Gulf Stream.

Predators.

Sand crabs.

Seagulls.

About seventy more kilometers once they find the water...

to their first rest--if they find a raft of floating seaweed providing refuge from underwater predators.

From day one of the believer's journey, the Predator is after our soul.

To kill. To destroy.

And those not called according to His purpose laugh at our journey,

mock our sovereign protection,

and accuse us of ruining their fun.

We must keep our eye on the horizon,

Put one foot in front of the other.

To go on is to face a new host of dangers.

But to stand still is to perish.

The sea turtle instinctively catches the Gulf Stream which takes it from the tropical waters off the coast of Florida...

to the frigid North Atlantic.

Along the way, it must dodge hungry blue sharks in the south

and lazy, open-mouthed basking sharks in the north.

Four thousand kilometers to its waiting place.

And there it eats and grows

And waits

and waits

and waits.

It takes the sea turtle five years to reach its waiting place,

And fifteen years for nature to give it permission to leave.

We, too, spend much of our life waiting.

But if we grow impatient and move out ahead of the Redeemer,

we do so at our peril.

We may feel like our lives our stagnating,

But all the while, God is preparing us for the road ahead.

The hard road.

The long road.

The narrow road.

Narrow.

At least half of all sea turtles fail to make the initial trek from sand to sea,

lost to their very first encounter with predators.

And only one in ten thousand of the surviving half make it to their twentieth year...

...when the fruit-bearing begins.

How many of us have known fellow sojourners whom we thought followed the Lord in earnest,

only to find that their true passion was not God's glory...

but their own.

Lost.

Not on the narrow path now--because they never were.

And then...

the sea turtles turn twenty, and they instinctively move out from their waiting place

To find a mate,

To do what the Creator put them here to do:

To bear the fruit that propagates their species.

Only now are they mature enough to bear serious fruit.

After much danger,

Much travel,

Much waiting.

Only now are they ready to head back, with that fruit,

to the land of their origin.

And all the while, their instinct has guided them through the treacherous Gulf Stream...

...where their God-given immunity has protected them.

Some predators turn out to be no predators at all.

As other sea creatures succumb to the poison of the man-o-war jellyfish,

Not only do sea turtles swim through them, immune to their sting;

They feast on them.

A table...

in the presence of their enemies.

Isn't it just like God to lead us into the valley of the shadow of death,

only to find that we need fear no evil?

Sea turtles have their jellyfish,

And Christians have their lions.

But those lions--as Bunyan pointed out--are chained.

The sea turtle finds a mate and returns with her fruit to the beach whence she came.

Alone.

There she beaches herself and deposits her fruit in the sand.

Alone.

There will be a day when we stand before our Creator-Redeemer.

Alone.

Returning to the land of our citizenship,

Just us and our fruit.

We will look back on this journey called life...

This hard, long, narrow journey,

A journey our Creator-Redeemer has intricately ordained for us from the beginning.

I wonder if we parents are setting the right expectation for our children.

Do they know they road is hard?

Do they know the road is long?

Do they know the road is narrow?

They need to know;

We need to tell them.

Tell them that 'sanctification' is spelled "l-o-n-g-h-a-r-d-n-a-r-r-o-w."

Tell them that "longhardnarrow" is what conforms us to His image.

Tell them that "longhardnarrow" produces fruit in keeping with repentance.

Tell them, as Spurgeon did, that everything is right on schedule.

And tell them that those who persevere on the "longhardnarrow" meet their Creator-Redeemer on the beach once again, this time with their fruit, to hear Him say,

"Well done, good and faithful servant."

Diapers and Driving: The Perils of Parenting

There are precisely two jobs as a parent I really, really loathe...

(I mean besides teaching fractions....)

and those would be

potty training and driving lessons.

Seriously.

I'm on my tenth round of potty training.

And I have never had a child initiate this.

Some children take to it more quickly than others, but it's the same overall story.

There is some silly book that has been going around for at least a generation telling you that you can potty train in a day.

Lies.

All lies.

These are the same yahoos who tell you that breast-feeding helps you lose weight.

I beg to differ...

because breast-feeding is like carrying around two gallon jugs of milk,

all day,

every day.

Lose weight?

Right.

Uh huh.

Anyway, potty training.

Twenty-four hours, my eye.

It really means days of pointing out, again, where the porcelain throne is located.

It really means weeks of puddles and other surprises

and you just praying you find any desperadoes before guests arrive.

It really means mountains of laundry

and eau de toilet.

Literally.

But the years pass, and, to date, I haven't had a kid who wasn't potty trained by thirteen.

Yes. I loathe it entirely.

Then they turn sixteen.

And they want to drive.

Why?

Where do they want to go?

We homeschool, for crying out loud.
That means we do everything in the house,

and we don't let them socialize until they have an engagement ring.

So. I repeat.

Where do they want to go?

Parents have a "stupid gene" that quickens with the first turn of the ignition at the hands of their offspring.

And as I sit there in the driveway, mentally ticking off the important things before we pull out, I wonder who is dumb enough to ride into open traffic with a new driver.

Apparently, I am.

Buckle your seatbelt. Check.

Position rearview mirrors. Check.

Watch for small children. Check.

Okay, honey, you can back out of the driveway now.

(Whoops. Silly me. I forgot to tell him the speed limit sign only applies to forward motion.)

The speed limit sign only applies to forward motion. Check.

Don't hit that child.

Try to take the next turn with all four wheels on the ground.

These are power breaks; you don't have to attack them.

Ditto on the steering.

Are you driving with two feet? No, sir. Only one.

No, that doesn't mean you can tuck your spare foot under you.

NO! You can't hang it out the window, either.

The yellow light does not mean gun the engine.

Finally, we pull back into the drive.

My heart is beginning to find its regular rate again.

He turns off the engine.

All's quiet on the homefront.

I open my door to disembark.

And then we begin to roll...

backward...

in my fifteen passenger van.

The world moves in slow motion,

and our voices are speaking in super slo-mo.

Moo oo oom, wwhhhyyyy aaa rr eee weeeee roo llingggg???

Hii iitt ttthhe brreaaakkk!!!

III aa aammmm...

Did I mention that I had opened my door?

Did I further mention that this was a fifteen passenger van,

a multi-ton vehicle?

a tank to the untrained eye?

And as I was--(remember that "stupid gene")--looking at the gearshift, trying to figure out what was happening,

my open door collided with a tree.

The tree won.

(Oh. Now I know what I forgot to tell him. When he turns the engine off, he loses all power--breaks included.)

When you turn off the engine, you lose all...

oh never mind...

check.

My poor van.

My blue whale.

And now we pour in and out of her like ants coming out of an anthill.

Ten of us (only because two of us are away at school--but when those two come home next week for spring break, twelve of us) pile out of the driver's side.

I'm sitting here wondering what all the potty training fuss was about.