John Mark Reynolds

On Christmas Morning

John Mark Reynolds — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 10:27:02 -0800

In the piles of wrapping paper, the pine needles, and the smell of my wife Hope's cinnamon rolls, my family will delight in a King so generous that He commands us to throw ourselves a party to celebrate His birth.

Christmas is the birth our King, but results in the elevation of mankind to royalty.

Earthly monarchs are installed in great coronation ceremonies. The feast of Christmas is a coronation for the rest of us.

The Christ humbled Himself, emptied Himself of His monarchial power, so that we could be elevated into the family of the Cosmic Emperor. No earthly title can match it.

You might think that if all Christians are now sons and daughters of Gods that the honors would be a bit diluted, but the Divine possessions are very vast. Every possible world is His and so we are heirs to a Kingdom where there is wealth enough for everyone to have what would make them happiest. In this life physical possessions carry the risk of idolatry, covetousness, and injustice.

In the life to come they will simply be gifts of the Christ to His brothers and sisters.

This is not the end of the good news. King Jesus is immortal so we shall never have the hard work of kingship, but will gain all the pleasure of the prerogatives of a prince or princess marked for power.

What did we do to deserve all this largesse? No more than Prince Charles did to become the Prince of Wales. We were simply born into the right family, even if we had to be born twice to get it right.

There are no commoners in God's Kingdom.

If you find this hard to believe, take the time to look up a movie that will make the point better than I can. Frank Capra, the director of the best Christmas film “It's A Wonderful Life,” made another fantastic holiday classic that is less well known: “Meet John Doe.” Like all Capra films the rich of this world are sent empty away and the uncommon virtues of the common man are celebrated. The central point of the film is that nobody needs to die for the sins of the world, great as they are, since that hard work was done by Someone else. Instead, we get to live to celebrate His work.

At the end of the film, when a very average man, the John Doe of the movie's title, confronts the budding dictator of America we see that there is no power in vice and no hope for the wicked.

They cannot win, because they lack any power in the world of ideas and the soul.
Some Christians feel guilty when they celebrate. There is something to worry about since a feast is no excuse for greed or conspicuous consumption for its own sake! Assuming we have ignored that happiness-destroying lie, however, we must not be tempted into the opposite error. It is a grievous breech of manners and howling ingratitude to refuse to celebrate the triumph of a friend.

The man too good to party will have a difficult time finding anything to do in heaven. If he waits to celebrate there, he may discover that his lack of practice here has made him bad company there.

We are unworthy. We should be content with some soup eaten in the servant's quarters. Given previous behavior, we would not deserve the slightest favor from King Jesus.

Jesus loved us anyway. He came down on Christmas and took on our pain. He proclaimed us his siblings and we accepted the adoption. The Father is a good parent and treats His adopted children as His own.

Blessed us!

Children often don't deserve their presents on Christmas Day. We don't get the coal we deserve in our stockings this morning, but Paradise. It is no wonder we can hardly wait for Christmas.

O! Christmas! It Shuts King’s Mouths!

John Mark Reynolds — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 23:23:56 -0800

This is the third in a series on the Christian prayers for the end of Advent. Each of these prayers begins in “O” . . .

O Root of Jesse, which standest for an ensign of the people, at whom kings shall shut their mouths, to whom the Gentiles shall seek: Come and deliver us, and tarry not.

It wasn’t fashionable to admit need until very recently. In these times, many powerful people are being forced to admit that their own power is not enough. We cannot solve our own problems.

There is a reason for this weakness: we are weak.

The measure of our power is not that good times, but the fact that bad times, are unavoidable. The rich cannot buy off fate and the powerful cannot escape judgment. Even virtue is no protection against bad times as Job discovered to his shock.

God, who does control everything, governs for our good and not based on our beliefs about what is good. The rich, the powerful, and even the good have only uncertain knowledge about what is actually best. As a result, they make horrid miscalculations all the time. It is good to be reasonable, but not so wise to recognize no limits at all for the human ability to reason well or from adequate data.

This makes the common temptation in early life to put our trust in those rich and powerful people even sillier than most of our faults. They cannot save themselves when they are in peril, so how can they save us?

We assume, of course, that though the rich, powerful, and worldly wise did not know enough to save themselves, that we do know enough, but simply lack the means to do it. If, we think, we could simply combine our keen insight into our needs with their ability, then all would be well.

We forget how dubious is the notion that we know something Socrates did not: ourselves.

We mistake our felt needs for our real needs. We feel the need for money, for possessions, or for immediate deliverance from our pain. Our real needs are often quite different from what we perceive and so even when we are “lucky” enough to get what we think we need, it does not satisfy us.

Instead of learning the obvious lesson that we don’t know ourselves very well and that patrons cannot deliver us, instead we become cynical about all rule and about all chances of happiness. Our expectations have been disappointed so many times that it seems reasonable to be bitter.

The Scrooge of the early parts of the Christmas Carol is our hero if he just lost his foolish optimism in money. Having been let down by wealth, we have learned to hate that as well.

We are not hopeful enough to be misers. We have been betrayed by riches, reason, and rulers.

The prayer for this day points to a better way. We could put our trust in a better flag. This flag will never be stained by ordering evil deeds in its name. It stands for a Kingdom that is powerful, but also loving and just. It is the flag of King Jesus.

King Jesus is under no delusions about the powerful of this age. They talk a great deal, but they have nothing to say. He shuts their mouths. He also invites those outside of His family, the Gentiles, to His Kingdom.

You don’t have to be born His child the first time, because He will allow you to be born a second time into Israel. We were unlucky in our first parents, hapless Adam and Eve, but we can choose our adopted Father.

Children know that Christmas is good. They very wisely cannot wait for the great day. In the same way, sensible Christians long for the full manifestation of the rule of King Jesus. It is so close now!

We long for justice. We hope for righteousness. We want the entire world to be made whole and happy. We know He is coming with power and the character needed to do it.

We know He will do it at just the right moment . . . in the fullness of time, but we still cannot wait!

Come quickly Christmas King!

O Root of Jesse, which standest for an ensign of the people, at whom kings shall shut their mouths, to whom the Gentiles shall seek: Come and deliver us, and tarry not.

O! Christmas! Redeem Your People!

John Mark Reynolds — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 11:21:54 -0800

Christians have long prayed “O” prayers just before Christmas. This post is the second in a series of reflections on the prayer for the day.

O Adonai, and Leader of the house of Israel, who appearedst in the Bush to Moses in a flame of fire, and gavest him the Law on Sinai: Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.

Christmas is coming! We are getting near to it, but from where did we start?

We know we are going to Jesus’ Bethlehem, but we must not forget that first it was David’s.

We must not forget our roots, and this includes our incalculable debt to the Jewish people. This is not just polite, not merely wise, but a religious necessity.

Our own lives show the importance of acknowledging where we came from as part of celebrating where we are going.

As a college professor, I see young adults decide on how they will relate to family heritage. The temptation, a very strong temptation, is confuse the need to become yourself with cutting off the roots that make the self possible.

If home was bad, this is understandable, but still unwise. We have to account for our heritage whether good or bad. If home was, for the most part, good, then breaking away is an ugly thing.

Ingratitude is a sickening evil that can quietly corrupt us. I should know.

It is no excuse, but ingratitude is an easy error in these times.

We are a pretty demanding people.

Most things we get in the United States we label “rights” and think of the government, parents, and church that give us so much as merely unprofitable servants. We deserve to be served. As a people we pretend that England, Africa, Spain, Russia, Greece, indeed all of the Old World made possible the American experiment.

As a nation we are newborn, but not without parents.

Even Adam had a father and we are many generations from Adam.

We have nothing that we do not owe to God, but also to those that God used in the past to bring us to where we are. There are no self-made men and women.

As I grow older, I can look at pictures of my great-grandfather and recognize myself in his features. What seems most mine, my body, is a gift from those who shaped the future by marrying and raising children. If they had bought stock, but not made babies, then there would have been no Reynolds to spend the wealth they created!

No thankful child grows tired of learning from the lives of his ancestors. Reynolds, Combs, Lanham, Walls, Wines, Canterbury, Radford . . . so many names that were once living men and women whose choices made any choice I make possible.

My debt to them, but especially to my parents, is great.

We are as indebted to others for our ideas as for physical being. My debt to other thinkers is nearly complete. In my entire lifetime, I will be fortunate if I can say just one thing, or half of one thing, that adds to the sum of human wisdom. Of course with painstaking effort many can add to the sum of human knowledge, no small feat for the great scientists, historians, and scholars of our time, but knowledge is not wisdom.

We could know every fact there was to know and still not have advanced one step toward true wisdom.

I owe C.S. Lewis, Dayton Reynolds, Plato, Al Geier, Trollope, Deborah Modrak, Isaac Asimov, Phillip Johnson, J.P. Moreland, Sheldon Vanauken, and Aristotle so much! Some taught me directly and others through their books. No good student ever grows tired of thanking his excellent teachers. Often these teachers are unknown to others, but wield great influence in the lives of their students. Men and women with names like DeMint, Larkin, and Balentine worked hard in junior high and high school to make me a better person and scholar.

All this makes the base ingratitude and wickedness that some Christians have practiced against the Jewish people all the more sickening. Persecution is bad enough in itself, but to come from those who owe a debt of gratitude is even worse.

Even some robbers will pay a debt of gratitude to the children of benefactors. Before God came to the womb of Mary, He came to Moses in the fire on Mount Sinai. There would be no Calvary if there were no Sinai. He was Adonai before He was Christ. The Old Testament is the foundation of the New.

Mary was a Jewish women when the Angel appeared to her and a Jewish woman when he left. The God who redeems us by the blood of the Cross at Easter, first redeemed Israel from Egyptian bondage by the blood of Passover.

The star of Christmas was over the City of David.

We must not forget any of this for a moment this Advent.

O Adonai, and Leader of the house of Israel, who appearedst in the Bush to Moses in a flame of fire, and gavest him the Law n Sinai: Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.

O! Christmas! O! Jesus!

John Mark Reynolds — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 09:18:07 -0800

O Jesus! O Wisdom!

Christians in the West welcome the coming of the Christ with a series of prayers that being with the exclamation: “O!”

What else could we say?

The child who sees the long awaited present on Christmas morning says, “O!”

Playtime has begun.

The student at terms end who sees that he has passed, actually passed, the dreaded final says, “O!”

The Christmas break has begun.

At the end of labor my long-suffering wife saw her baby and said, “O!”

Snuggle time had begun.

Christians know what will come to them during the service on Christmas Eve and we cannot wait to say, “O!”

Our life in Christ has already begun, but will be renewed.

One of the “O!” prayers is:

O Wisdom which camest out of the mouth of the Most High and reachest from one end to another mightily and sweetly ordering all things: come and teach us the way of prudence.

The Most High speaks Wisdom.

Now.

Are we listening?

Our imprudent and fearful souls would drown out the voice of the Most High if would could. We commercialize, consume, and cut out even the slightest reference to Christ from Christmas.

But even the X we use to hide the Christ in Christmas, speaks His Wisdom in an ancient tongue. The cruciform X is the shape of the first letter of Christ in the language of the New Testament. It becomes a hidden icon on even the most secular of signs sounding out the Wisdom that will not be silenced.

That Wisdom reaches from one end to another. It is heard from one end to another of the cosmos, of the nation, and of my soul. The might of it makes it inescapable, but the sweetness makes it utterly desirable.

It is the curse of unredeemed humanity that we reject becoming wise because we demand to be Wisdom. Wisdom comes to make us like Himself, but we demand that He cease to be Himself and give us His throne. Fallen humanity wishes to possess the Divine nature and so misses the awesome gift of His Divine energies.

We are imprudent and so unhappy. Like children who spoil Christmas Day by demanding inappropriate gifts, we miss the best by demanding the impossible.

Wisdom would teach us prudence, the virtue that guides us to the maximization of happiness and pleasure, so we try to block our ears with impudence.

O! Good news! Despite our impudence and imprudence, Wisdom speaks! Jesus speaks lovingly to us and brings better order to our souls. We hear event if it is only an echo of His Christmas carol and everything else is revealed to be a cheap and hollow sham.

He brings Christmas and holidays and we can never be satisfied with a mere day off again.

Wisdom is born in the middle of our mess. He sounds His mighty and sweet voice in the irresistible, insistent, and precious sound of a crying child.

Wisdom speaks in every cry of the Baby born this night.

O!

Thanksgiving Morning

John Mark Reynolds — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:49:49 -0800

This Thanksgiving morning fear may replace well-fed and complacent gratitude in many homes. Times are tough and seem to be getting tougher.

What is going to happen next?

Our economic experts give us mixed answers, for economics, the "dismal science," is inexact. Everybody has his own way of knowing when economic times are getting dark. Some economists watch the Wal-Mart parking lot (which is full), others monitor Starbucks' sales (which are down), but I check prayer requests.

Every Wednesday a small group of college honors students gather in my house for evening prayer and Bible study. Prayer requests for alum, parents and current students to find jobs or fears about employment are growing.

Here on the edge of the Holidays, it is hard for many to find much for which to be thankful.

Hundreds of Holiday specials tried to prepare us for this day. The Grinch could not steal Christmas... since it was in the Who's hearts. However, as we are about to discover, while "tooters to toot" are not essential for the party, a total lack of "roast beast" can make it hard for all but the most virtuous to feast.

Outside of cultural holdouts like church and Hallmark, the lesson of the Christmas specials is forgotten, and it is a hard lesson to learn quickly. Our considerations of what is important must include the transcendent as well as the material. Even some important temporal relationships, like family, are only satisfying when they are based on virtues like moderation and charity.

Having experienced the Great Depression, my strong, West Virginian grandmothers would put it this way: hard times can be good for us. Though many people curse tough economic times, my grandmothers knew to be thankful, and expected God to use them to be the tutor for deeper
internal lessons in virtue.

Merely Hallmarking about learning virtue is no good. We need a path to follow and the grace to do so, which Jesus Christ provides. Our hard times, our little crosses, are not for their own sakes, but to transform us into His image. Too much stuff, even too much food, can dull our realization of how much more we need. Knowing there will be fewer things under the tree this year has been good for my children as we seek to look forward to the abundance of Heaven.

There is never a crash in the value of faith, hope, and charity.

Consumer culture has focused the Holiday season on consumption. The Church was wiser by placing a time of fasting, Advent, before the feast.

As John the Baptist was to Jesus, so Thanksgiving is a forerunner to the greater feast to come. The suffering in the middle, Advent, makes us ready for the celebration. Feasting is best when it comes after fasting. Self-denial is not for its own sake, but for the deeper lessons of the soul that make real jollification possible.

This Thanksgiving morning, in my family, we will rejoice in each other as we prepare for the fast of Advent. After our forerunner feast, we will eat less, consume less, and prepare during Advent for the great feast at Christmas. All of this will be a reminder, if a reminder is needed in these stressed times, that after night comes dawn, after suffering comes reward, and after the moment of death comes Paradise on the real Thanksgiving morn.

Beauty and the Existence of God

John Mark Reynolds — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 15:52:21 -0800

The existence of beauty suggests that a God exists and that He is good. It is not a sufficient proof for the existence of God by itself, but a confirmation of His existence to those with other reasons and personal experiences that suggest His reality.

From Plato to C.S. Lewis, creation as a whole has been viewed as marvelously elegant.

The harmonious plan of the cosmos allows for variation and freedom for created beings. There is a fundamental pattern and order to creation, but also room for the unexpected within the design plan. Too much regularity would seem stagnant, so thankfully the created order also shows variability and the marvelously engineered capacity to adapt and change.

So delightful is the universe that elegant mathematical and scientific theories work better in explaining it than inelegant ones. It is no accident that scientists discover that more elegant theories are more useful in the “real world” than less beautiful ones.

These observations suggest an engineer, or artist, behind the cosmos. But is this just a useful natural adaptation? After all, we tend to care for beautiful things, and so it would be to our advantage to develop a liking for the ecosystem that sustains us.

But humans do not just find their local environment pleasing. They also discover that new areas of the cosmos, where humankind has never been, are beautiful. When my son first went up in a plane and saw “cloud land,” he turned to me with wonder and said, “It is so beautiful.” It was not surprising to him, because even though this land above the clouds would have been unknown to all but the most recent humans, we expect beauty when we come to new vistas and are rarely disappointed.

Gratuitous beauty, beauty that could have no survival value for humankind, exists! Both when we dive to the bottom of the ocean, and when we see distant corners of space, we find stark and weird things, never before known, but clearly lovely. At this point it would surprise us if we found a corner of the cosmos that was not beautiful.

That superabundance of beauty is a hint that a good and loving God may exist.

Ugliness also appears to us at times, but the ugly is less fundamental than beautiful. Ugliness exists as a twisting of the beautiful created order. This truth is taught in Scripture, but can also be observed in creation: every unborn child will grow to express the divine image unless their development is aborted by sin.

Viewed with the widest scope humans possess, the cosmos shows awe-inspiring beauty, and this beauty is repeated in the most focused examination of the basic elements of that massive structure. It is only in the middle, where we find humankind, at the level of choice and agency, that the pattern of beauty is twisted and marred. Yet, even there, the staggering ability of humankind to create beauty based on the common image of God within us reminds us that it is beauty that is fundamentally real.

For a Biblical Christian existence is good and goodness is beautiful. As a result nothing created can be wholly bad or utterly ugly. Even the most shattered part of creation remains part of the beautiful whole, made from the beautiful elements of creation.

Parts of creation, especially humans, require redemption. But even the image of God in fallen man, shattered though it is, retains enough beauty to remind the keen observer of God.

The Bible and Slavery

John Mark Reynolds — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:48:07 -0800

The Old Testament acknowledges the existence of economic, not racial, slavery in the ancient world and attempts to regulate it. The New Testament undermines the economic viability of slavery by calling for slaves to be treated as “brothers,” but does not call for immediate abolition.

Why not?

The Bible attacks slavery and many other social injustices indirectly. The main focus of the Bible is not human culture, but the relationship between God and humankind. The Bible prioritizes healing the dying soul over dealing with corrupt cultures.

God also recognizes that revolutionary change in human institutions often produces more harm than good.

The fallen world is full of great social evils and humans are busy thinking up new ones every day. Scripture does provide general principles that can be applied to specific cases with the potential to bring about large cultural change, but slowly and over time.

However, since God is most interested in changed hearts and eternal salvation, the Bible does not consist of regulations covering every aspect of life. Instead, God commands and forbids some very basic behaviors and begins the long process of revealing His nature and will to free will beings. The simple lesson of monotheism was difficult enough for the ancient peoples to understand.

Eventually, embracing monotheism undermines slavery: since it demands allegiance to God and the divine will, it places each individual human being on an equal footing. All people are essentially equal before God. Slavery, one person “owning” another as property, is deeply incompatible with this basic truth.

The slavery of the ancient world at the time of the writing of Scripture was economic or military. Losers ended up slaves whether in bankruptcy or defeat. Civilization, and the hope of future progress that goes with it, often depends on highly structured and, by modern standards, rigid social hierarchies. The technology simply did not exist to support a culture as free as is possible in modern times.

Economic slavery is an evil, but not the worst possible evil. The economies of the ancient world were not just and revolved around slavery. But since Greek and Roman people lacked the moral training and economic sophistication to handle a fully free civilization, immediate abolition would have led to social unrest, starvation, and a collapse in civilization. God is a good educator and teaches His lessons as quickly as He can, but He must teach the students He has and not the students we wish He had.

The Bible treats the slave as a human being capable of his or her own relationship with God. Old Testament modification of slavery demanded righteous treatment, undercutting economic justification for bad treatment. By the time Paul asked a master to treat his slave as a “brother,” there was little chance that slavery could long survive amongst Biblically consistent Christians. Over time slavery died out in Christian lands until it experienced a sickening revival with race-based slavery.

Racial slavery finds no justification in Scripture and is much worse than economic slavery. The race-based slave has his or her basic humanity called into question. As a result there was a much stronger argument for immediate abolition of race-based slavery, regardless of the cost. Slavery in the United States occurred far enough along in the Christian era that it stood as an affront to moral progress. As the results of the American Civil War proved, slavery was not necessary for sustaining nineteenth century social order. Indeed, race based slavery undermined the health of any area cursed with its evil as an institution.

California and Thank-A-Mormon Day

John Mark Reynolds — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 11:34:08 -0800

Proposition 8 would not have passed if it had not been for LDS (Mormon) money and manpower. For their hard work as participants in the process, this small religious group received some of the worst attacks of the political season. They were demonized and stereotyped by opponents of Proposition 8 and sometimes by the mainstream media.

Within the Republican Party the areas dominated by LDS members delivered for John McCain and Sarah Palin. Though not a monolith (paging Mormon Senate Leader Reid), the LDS are some of the most consistent pro-family voters in the nation. Prop 8 did not win on their votes (that took millions of people), but one reason it won was their know how and fervor.

Despite this fact at times a plausible Mormon presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, was the subject of unfair religious scrutiny. (Some forms of scrutiny of religion are fair, but some are just bigoted. Distinctions start here.) Too often people they have supported in the past were weak in their condemnation of such bigotry.

Republicans should not ask for Mormon money and manpower and then regulate their leaders to the backrooms when leadership roles are handed out.

Of course, nobody should confuse political and social agreement with theological unity.

My theological differences with the Mormon faith are deep and important. Within the last month I have argued that the LDS view of the God is not compatible with what we know about Divine love. Those theological discussions and disagreements must continue bringing clarity with charity to the important disagreements.

They are important because they are, after all about eternal things.

In the battle for the family, however, traditional Christians have no better friends than the Mormon faithful. It would be wrong if that support were taken for granted. We are intolerant of the false attacks on Mormon faith and family. We stand with our Mormon friends in their right to express their views on the public square. We celebrate the areas, such as family values, where we agree.

A heart felt thank you may not win points from other friends who demand one hundred percent agreement from their allies, but it is the decent and proper thing to do.

Thank you to our Mormon friends and allies!

Morning in America

John Mark Reynolds — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 07:40:35 -0800

Wednesday the sun came up and I was happy. It is still morning in America. The candidate I voted for did not win, but I got to vote in a free and fair election. Power will be passed peacefully and the Constitution is intact.

We should never take that for granted.

The United States of America is still a marvelous place to live. People suffering in the Sudan would trade our worst day, economically speaking, for their best. Citizens in more prosperous China do not have the chance to throw the rascals out.

The sun is not setting on the American experiment. It is still rising, because there is still work to be done expanding the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to all citizens.

It is glorious that an African-American has been elected President of the United States. Slavery was the original sin of the Republic and racism remains the bitter experience of too many Americans. The election of Barack Obama will not end racism in the United States, but it is a positive, symbolic step forward.

Each one of these steps brings us further to Dr. King’s dream of a society where men and women are judged on the content of their character and not on race.

President-elect Obama will soon be my head of state. I will pray for him daily and for his success. He is my president and it is my duty to do so.

In our system, President-elect Obama is also the head of government. In those terms, I am part of the loyal opposition. I will support President Obama when his policies are sound and give forceful reasons to oppose them if they lurch to the left. A loyal opposition is always hopeful that the Other Party will govern better than they have promised—the real world often tempers messianic dreams, but is ready to quip and quarrel if not.

The battle for the right to life for all God’s children will continue as will our defense of the family. We should ignore the temptation to read too much into elections. Pundits get paid to pontificate, yet they lack the anointing of pontiffs let alone of prophets.

Here is a rule of thumb: a party in charge during an economic meltdown and an unpopular war is finished. It is a sign of how center right the country really is, and the risk that the Democratic Party took in nominating Obama, that the race was as close as it was for so long. The banking crisis finished McCain.

Any analysis beyond that fact is speculation. The wave of anti-Republican sentiment during the “bail out” was so strong that any other tendencies are hard to separate or measure.

I will continue to support a small government just big enough to protect our fundamental rights, but today reminds me that most of life has nothing to do with government.

My family watched the returns with me. We mourned our defeat and then enjoyed time together. My classes in Torrey Honors at Biola will continue to explore the great texts of the West and my students will continue to argue well and press me to think harder about my ideas. My parish of Saint Michael will maintain the great tradition of the Western rite liturgy and we will not change our mind on the great moral issues with each passing poll.

Most of life is not government and most Americans put little trust in our “princes.”

“It is morning in America,” Reagan’s commercials famously ran… and for me it is still true. The land has not changed, our history is more glorious than not, and the election of the first African-American to the White House is good.

Besides, the imp and political junkie in me suggests, 2012 is not so far away…

Healing Before Empowering

John Mark Reynolds — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:56:09 -0700

Christianity is good for both men and women, even when it does not empower us. Americans often carry the illusion that empowering a person is always a good thing, but a moment of reflection clears up that optimistic fantasy. Bad people should not be empowered and good people already are.

Jesus Christ provides a way for men and women to become what they were created to be. His followers, Christians, are not so much empowered as healed. The healed soul of a Christian man or woman will grow, but out of adoration for God and not as the result of some religious form of pep talk or from a church service selling self-esteem.

Sadly humans as they are today are not what they should be. We are marred—and this applies to every area of human personhood. Humanity needs to hear women’s voices and men’s voices, but before empowering these voices to speak, both men and women need to be restored.

Doing so includes both encouraging difference and equality.

In traditional Christian belief both men and women were created in the image of God. We are both the same sort of being: human beings. Within that class of being men and women are different from each other. Both sexes reflect different aspects of God’s character and the differences are delightful.

Stressing fundamental equality while allowing for diversity is difficult, but Christianity does it.

The traditional Christian belief that men and women are both in God’s image helped produce equality before the law in Western cultures. Most of the time, the relevant feature of any person in civil society is not his or her sex, but his or her common humanity.

Christian societies consistently moved in the direction of giving equal civil rights to men and women.

Simultaneously, Christians recognize the pressure to homogenize and become intolerant of different voices. Treating everyone as if they are the same, when they are not can sometimes be used as an excuse to stifle different voices. This is especially true when there is a failure at creating space in which differences can flourish.

When people are different, then treating them as if they are the same can destroy valuable diversity.

The Church administers the same medicine to our broken humanity, but for different treatment where humans are different. Christianity allows both for spiritual mothers and fathers. Persons from either sex speak into the life of the Church, but the Church refuses to confuse the roles, in part because we wish to hear different voices.

Wisely, Roman Catholics, the Orthodox, and many (if not most) Protestants reserve some roles in the family and the Church for women and some for men. This allows space for each sex to cultivate and speak powerfully in a different voice.

Saint Nina is venerated as equal to the apostles, but she is not an apostle. Christians are able to honor Saint Nina as equal to apostles, because her ministry has common features to their ministry. But by allowing her to act out of her own experience of humanity and not shoe horning her ministry into male categories, the Church is also able to hear her woman’s voice.

Treating humans the same where they are the same, but different where they are different is very difficult. Simple-minded societies and religions do not even try. Some particularly wicked cultures attempt to silence the voice of one sex or the other, sometimes in the name of religion.

In other cultures normative differences in roles and functions are not tolerated and so healthy diversity is lost. Some fading Protestant groups in the United States demand men and women are treated interchangeably in all functions. Experience shows a massive loss of many voices as a result.

In this area, like any other, Christians have not always understood their own ideas correctly. Bad people have used the slow development of Christian self-understanding as an opportunity for harm. Christians have been inconsistent in their views on these issues. Christianity is always good for men and women, but particular Christians often are not.

Christianity has reconciled Christian women and men to God by Jesus’ work. Salvation is, however, both general (for all humankind) and particular (for me). In general each Christian can sing Amazing Grace, but the individual applies this gift from God to his or her particular sins.

Another important piece of what makes each person what he or she would be is his or her nature as a man or a woman. The Church allows each woman and each man a unique voice and the opportunities to cultivate that voice.

When made right with God, humans gain the power to be what they were made to be. We flourish not just as humans, but as individuals. Before we can flourish, or even be empowered, we must first become good so that more power does not harm us or others. God often provides tough medicine for our problems . . . and this can feel exhausting and difficult for a time. When it empowers, Christianity wants to empower souls for Paradise. The great choir of heaven will be made of the beautiful harmony of many different voices . . . and not of the flat homogeneity so loved by the modern critic.