This year I wrote a lot of words, most of them elsewhere. It was not the best year for getting things written or published (outside of work), but it was a very good year for thinking. And after all, there’s really no point in writing unless it’s flowing out of thoughts you took the time to think. So I fully expect to have more to say here in this coming year, not because I have any illusions about my willpower or because I made any resolutions, but because I have an enormous backlog of thoughts, and they have to go somewhere.
Anyway, here is a run-down of what I wrote (publicly) this past year, with a few comments:
Defending Children’s Worship Services
Over at Mere Orthodoxy (now behind a paywall, sorry), I wrote a defense of children’s worship services. This might have seem strange to those who take them for granted. The piece was loosely in response to an article I read at the time by a pastor or elder (I forget) who argued that it was not just preferable to have children in the church service the entire time, but it was practically morally required. I’m sympathetic to this impulse, because it comes from a desire to include children as full members of Christ’s body, rather than as “saints in training.” I could not agree with that basic principle more. However, as I argued, keeping children in a service that is “too big” for them to fully participate may not necessarily accomplish what these churches desire:
Bear with me for an extended analogy. Your family is invited to a dinner with a Senator. It is a formal affair, but the Senator has assured you that your children are welcome, and that the staff will do everything they can to help your children participate. It is an honor for your children to join you at the dinner, and you help them into their best clothes. At the table, their legs swing from the large chairs. Their hands struggle to handle the heavy silverware. They must be served all their food by the adults out of large serving dishes, and they must pretend to like it. When they squirm in their large seats or call out to a friend they are shushed. Even if there is a considerable effort by the adults to be kind to the children, to help them participate, all the trappings, items, and proceedings communicate to them that they must grow up before they can belong.
Imagine instead, your children walking into a dedicated children’s dining room. At the center is a small wooden table draped with a white linen tablecloth, a small vase with flowers, and beautiful child-size chairs. Each plate is set with a small china plate and child-size shining silverware. Several adults sit with them, their knees practically up at their chins. They are there to serve the children their meal, but also to show them how, because everything is sized down to a child scale, they can serve themselves and each other. Messes and spills are expected, but the children are taught how to handle them themselves. They are served beautifully prepared food—no baby food, but no steak either. It’s food perfectly suited to them.
I would not want to be mistaken for arguing that children’s services are always better than keeping kids in the service all morning, or that there is no value to children learning liturgical ways through osmosis. I would much rather kids be pretending to read off their bulletin and squirming in the pew than suffering through the sort of behaviorist, moralizing, entertainment-driven nonsense so many children’s ministries have on offer. But it’s worth considering that we have a precious opportunity to bring Jesus to the children in a way they can receive him.
Read the whole thing—and subscribe to Mere Orthodoxy!—here.
It’s Barbie and It’s Ken
For the one-year anniversary of the Rorschach test that was the Barbie movie, I wrote a follow-up piece to my Theopolis review on what I think the film was all about: differentiation.
Men and women were made to stand and work side by side, and cannot build anything without rapport and solidarity with one another. But in order to do that, men and women must have a sense of who they are apart from the other. Gerwig understood that women cannot discover who they are under the male gaze, any more than men can discover who they are under the female gaze. In order to be useful to each other, we must first be who we are, and refuse to be the fantasy version of ourselves that the other can often demand. No one was designed to be an accessory.
We’ve made many advances in education and work with respect to how women are treated. I am glad to have received an actual education instead of the “ladies’ education” I would have received in 19th century England, for example. But in the relentless push toward egalitarianism, we have lost any opportunity for men and women to be formed as men and women, a formation that would have been obvious and ordinary in practically every time but our own. I’m not arguing we try to import pre-modern mores. But we should become aware that the absence of space for men and women to differentiate has caused major problems, and we should be open to exploring reasonable solutions. Despite many conservatives thinking the Barbie movie was nothing but a feminist screed, I think it had some insightful things to say about this loss of differentiation and individuation.
Series: Yahweh’s Marriage
I wrote a five-part series looking at the Biblical marriage laws that help us understand the marriage and divorce metaphors used by Hosea, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah.
The basic terms for a marriage covenant were that a husband was to provide “food, clothing, and marital rights (the word was originally “oil”)” for his wife (Ex. 21:10). If he would not provide these things, it was considered grounds for divorce. A wife, in turn, took the raw materials her husband provided, and used them to make clothing and meals, and to reciprocate the love of her husband. An additional requirement for wives was sexual fidelity (this could obviously not apply to men in a polygamous society).
These requirements for a husband’s and wife’s obligations were used throughout Scripture to show how the Lord provided for his people.
There is so much more to explore here. Doing the reading and meditating for this series made me realize that there is much wisdom in these passages that can help us articulate the meaning of gender, something I hope to explore more in this coming year.
Fear and Love
I wrote this piece exploring the relationship between fear and love, and concluded that the sort of fear we have for God is precisely just what it means to love a divine, wholly other being:
If we love God, we want to know him and know about him. But God is not a creature, so our love and knowing will necessarily be different toward him. We love and attempt to know him as the complete “other” that he is. Fear of God is simply what happens when you love God for who he is. If you understand that the loved being is not a creature, but the all-seeing. all-loving, all-powerful, everywhere present, always merciful God that actually is, then you can’t help but also fear him. To viscerally, personally know these things about him is to fear him. But there’s more to it than that.
Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you in the new year!