At the Well

The Link between the Inbox and the Brothel

2011-11-21T11:36:00.001-08:00

Today Iread two things that have me thinking, and at first they seem worldsapart. This morning I was alerted by afriend on Facebook to a blog post. It discusses the risks that feminist bloggerstake when they share their opinions and observations with the internet. They are subject to violent and vitriolicthreats that, frankly, ought to warrant legal attention, although they usuallydon’t. The second reading I did todaywas from the autobiographyof Somaly Mam, an incredible and courageous Cambodian womanwho not only survived being sold into sexual slavery as a child, but then hasgone on to be a heroine to thousands of other girls whom she has rescued from brothels.

Bothreadings troubled my spirit. As I say,at first, they seem worlds apart. Butwhen I reflected on it, I realized they are a part of the exact same problem. What begins with a coward spewing offal intoan email meant for an unsuspecting blogger ends with an eight-year-old girlchained to a pipe in a Cambodian brothel.

Both thehater and the john/pimp have one thing in common: they treat women as objectsof violence and scorn. As the recent “rapejoke” Facebook scandalhas revealed, so-called “humour” about violence-against-women is “just a partof culture” and therefore ought to be free of censure. But it boggles my mind that the people whomake these “jokes”—and the people whoaren’t outraged enough by them to chastise the “jokers”—cannot see theconnection between “jokes” about raping a woman and the actual act, which isbeing played out every moment somewhere in the world.

If it’sokay to joke about rape, then what is wrong with raping a virgin child in orderto “cure” yourself of AIDS?

If it’sokay to send a vicious, hateful email threatening rape and violence towards ablogger, then it must be okay to pay to have sex and beat a fifteen year-oldgirl who was sold to the brothel by her grandfather (or, unspeakably worse, herown mother) in order to pay off debts.

At the rootof this culture of violence, I must reiterate, is the belief that woman areobjects and that they can and must be used by men as men see fit. They aren’t human, so human rights don’tapply to them. They can be harassed,threatened, and assaulted because what they feel about it doesn’t matter.

If we canbe scandalized by the treatment of women and girls who are the victims of humantrafficking, then I argue that we have a moral imperative to be scandalized bythe attitudes that undergird this treatment.

Matthew5:21-22 reads (in the TNIV):

“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago,‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ ButI tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject tojudgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerableto the Sanhedrin. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of thefire of hell.

I’d like toargue that the anger-murder connection is similar to the connection between anattitude of scorn towards women and actual violence against women. If we don’t check our hearts to see how wefeel about women (i.e. do we laugh at “rape jokes”? do we think the feministblogger “deserved it”?), then it is as if we also raised our hands againstthem. For women who might share theseattitudes, we become both violator and victim, for we commit this violenceagainst ourselves.

The distancebetween a “joke” or an “idle threat” and the brutal violence against womenperpetrated in a brothel that traffics in children might seem galactic, but in theeyes of the God who physically reached out even to the least of these, there isno difference at all.

The Body and the Bride

2009-11-05T12:25:00.000-08:00

Through these sacraments, drawn from the side of the New Adam while He slept, God the Father is forming a Bride for His Son. So for Catholics the Eucharist is the sacramental means Christ established by which we participate in His holy and perfect sacrifice, and by which we receive His divine life, i.e. grace, and by which we are knitted together in charity into His one Mystical Body.
(Taken from part 5 of the interview between the iMonk, Michael Spencer, and Catholic blogger, Bryan Cross, on Nov 4.)

Here is an interesting reflection on the Eucharist, Lord's Supper, Communion, the Service of the Table or whatever you want to call it. The context of the discussion is an explanation on the part of a Catholic convert (from Protestantism) of the meaning of the Catholic doctrine of the true sacrifice in the Eucharist.

Now, my Protestant side instinctively recoils at the idea that the sacrament of the Eucharist is the means by which grace is imparted to us sinners. There is, however, a part of me that is longing for greater meaning in the practice of the Eucharist, especially in regards to the ways in which communion--notice the root word there--draws us together as believers and partakers. The Catholics get that in a way that Protestants often don't. We have drained as much "hocus pocus" out of the Eucharist as we can, and have lost a great deal of the divine mysterium in the process. But whether we believe that the Host actually becomes a literal stand-in for the bodily sacrifice of Christ or not, I think we can agree on the idea that the bread is the symbolic representation of the Body (i.e. "this is My body, given for you") that makes us all one body together (1 Cor 10:17).

To extrapolate from that further: the body of Christ is the Church (Col 1:24). The Church is the Bride of Christ (2 Cor 11:2, Rev 21:2, 21:9). Through the Lord's Supper, we partake of a part of the Body and are made into the Body, just as a fundamental part of Adam (his rib) was taken to make Eve. I don't know...maybe I'm not equipped to draw the deep theological meaning out of this idea, but what I do know is that it really scratches that itch I have to find depth and meaning in communion beyond the whole "let's remember what Christ did for us" angle.

All of this stems from the thoughts I had at the last communion service I attended (this past Sunday, to be exact). I had already been reading iMonk's discussion of how to make the Eucharist significant in Evangelical contexts, so some of these ideas were floating around in my head. The church I attend (a Baptist church of the Canadian Baptists of Western Canada variety), usually celebrates the Lord's Supper once a month, which I think is not nearly often enough. I prefer the practice of weekly communion since I think it is an intrinsic part of Christian worship...but maybe that's another discussion. Now, this first Sunday of the month was very special (I thought) given that it was All Saints' Day according to the traditional Church calendar. But there was no mention of that fact AT ALL during the service, despite the fact that we were having communion. The service of the Table was instead very focused on individual repentance of sin and a reminder of Christ's sacrifice. Don't get me wrong: those are important parts of the Christian service as well, but so much of the idea of being One Body is lost in the individual emphasis. Maybe it was just where I was at and the significance of the day that had me disappointed at the individual emphasis this time around, I don't know. But I think that generally speaking, as Evangelicals, we miss out on the community element of communion all the time. We forget that we, as the saints, as the Body, are joined together as the bride (and the bride-to-come) of Christ. We are saved, not only as individuals who do need a "personal relationship with Jesus," but also as a community, a family, a unity. We are blessed together as the body so that we might be a blessing to the world. Communion, the act of, yes, remembering Christ's sacrifice is also an act of bodily (literally physical, somatic, corporeal) worship as we enact with our own flesh a memorial of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.

So, I might not be ready to make the leap to Catholicism any time soon (ever), but I have to give honour to the wisdom and beauty in this thought about communion. May it be for His glory!

Thanks for the compliment...or not

2009-10-22T12:42:00.000-07:00

"to say something nice may be worse than saying nothing at all when the content of the comments is about the appearance of women’s weight or shape."*

This is the conclusion of a study done recently by psychologists at the University of Kent and the University of South Florida. They were studying the effects of compliments and negative comments about appearance and weight on women, testing such factors as varying levels of self-objectification, varying levels of appearance monitoring (thinking about the way you look to other people), and the degree of importance subjects gave to their appearance vs. their competence. The results of the study suggest that even women who don't regularly self-objectify have higher levels of body consciousness and a more negative sense of body image after receiving not an insult about their size/weight, but a compliment (i.e. "Have you lost weight?" or "I wish I had your body.")

The reason, the researchers suggest, is likely that a compliment draws attention to the fact that a woman is being assessed for her physical appearance and not for her competence, and raises her awareness that her body is on display and available for evaluation by others.

This is something that I've thought about before, though under different terms. It is a popular way of expressing a compliment to someone to say, "Have you lost weight?" or "Have you been working out?" but it raises a lot of questions about what one values about the other person. Do we truly value a persons weight or appearance above their competence or, to be more theological, the fact that they are children of God and made in God's image? Should we even be assessing how heavy or light a person is and commenting on it? (as an aside, I think that if a friend is showing signs of hurting themselves by being terribly underweight or overweight, then it might be important to intervene in their lives, but not by making body-related comments)

Women are exposed every day to images that proclaim society's idolization of the "perfect" female body. We have to cope all the time with ads, television programs, movies, music videos, video games, and magazines that make the point that a woman is her body and that certain bodies are more valuable than others. So even receiving a compliment that suggests that we have "made it" closer to the thin ideal turns on the switch in our brains that makes us aware that we too are on display, just like an ad, just like a tv show.

I'm not saying we shouldn't compliment one another. I am suggesting that we should try some creativity in our compliments, and work towards finding things we value in other people that aren't expressly appearance related. Examples might be: "You are really happy today; it's very inspiring" or "I just love the way you laugh!" or "Your friendship is really important to me."

It's a popular notion, even (especially?) among Christians that a woman's essence is "beauty." I think that putting emphasis on something that, by nature, calls to mind physical beauty (I think most people, when asked to define beauty would start with things they could see, like trees and mountains and art and then move on to the other senses before finally coming to the more esoteric notions of truth, etc) is a way that we continue to buy (literally) into a culture that wants women to think about physical beauty above all.

I think that because our culture poisonously focuses on a woman's physical beauty (or lack thereof as defined by rigid and unrealistic standards), Christians should be very circumspect about how much we value physical beauty. Do we as Christian women strive to fit culture's perfect thin, youthful, white ideal? Do we then (even subconsciously) apply those standards to others? Who are the lepers amongst us in a world that raises up fitness and thinness to a moral duty? How can we love each other as daughters of God who are made in His image, regardless of whether we have a perfect BMI?

I think that the results of this study suggest that we should start by focusing on the good things about the women in our lives that have nothing to do with how they look. Although well-meaning, a compliment about weight or shape or beauty might be more hurtful than loving.

* from Rachel Calogero, Syliva Herbozo, and Kevin Thompson, "Complimentary Weightism: The Potential Costs of Appearance Related Commentary for Women's Self-Objectification," Psychology of Women Quarterly 33 (2009), pp. 120-132.

Ads that Objectify: As Dangerous as Smoking

2009-10-15T13:47:00.000-07:00

On page 198 of their seminal article "Objectification Theory," authors Fredrickson and Roberts write:

"Because advertisers may have no incentive to regulate their use of objectifying ads, federal restrictions and warning on advertisements--similar to those that govern the tobacco and alcohol industries--should be explored as a means to protect public health."

This is after they have explored, in depth, the effects that the widespread objectification of women has on women's psyches, relationships, and bodies. Their conclusion is that the health of women is at stake when we are routinely treated not as persons, but as bodies that serve a function.

There is most definitely not room in a weblog to reiterate what Fredrickson and Roberts take over 30 pages to describe, but suffice it to say that this article forms the foundation of 12 years of further psychological and sociological study of the effects of objectification on women. Effects include the obvious, such as eating disorders, and the less obvious, such as the interruption of "peak motivational states" (described as those moments in which we apply ourselves, body and/or mind, so completely to a task that we lose direct consciousness of ourselves, feel like we are no longer being controlled by other people, and are actually very happy). Women have trouble experiencing peak motivational states because we are socialized to constantly attend to what our bodies look like to other people.

They go on further to describe the effects of objectification on the psyche, including mental illnesses such as depression. Their conclusion is that the totality of the effects of widespread, culturally-sanctioned objectification of women is dangerous enough to require government intervention. What if there were warnings on skin cream advertisements or regulations that restricted the way that the human body was portrayed? I don't know what such regulations would look like, or what the results would look like, but I think it's important that someone is taking seriously the lived effects of these ads on real women. Perhaps regulations around airbrushing and computer modification are in order, so that we can see that real women have--gasp--pores.

Most of all, I think it's time that we as consumers of media stopped being apathetic about what we allow them to shove down our throats. Women need to stop allowing other women to be objectified so that we can see how good the latest pair of jeans will look on a hypothetical, impersonal ass. Men need to take stock of how much they love the women in their lives and whether or not they think it is worth all the "eye candy" to know that secretly their mothers, sisters, wives, girlfriends, daughters, nieces, aunts, etc are suffering from often a profound sense of dissatisfaction from their own bodies, and hence from their very selves.

We need, in short, to stop using people. It isn't good for their health and it isn't good for ours.

Reference:

Fredrickson, Barbara L., and Tomi-Ann Roberts. “Objectification theory.” Psychology of Women Quarterly 21, no. 2 (June 1997): 173-206.

iBody and "Disability"

2008-10-08T12:51:00.000-07:00

I'm working on a master's thesis right now that involves a lot of thought on human bodies, particularly the bodies of women, in relation to society and to God. In particular, I'm trying to address the two disparate thoughts that (a) all human beings are created, body+soul, in the image of God, and (b) the majority of women in Western Society have very challenging and unfriendly relationships with their bodies, because capitalistic/patriarchal culture is constantly providing "normative" "good" bodies with which to compare, none of which are actually normal or good. The young/slim/sexy body that is portrayed in the media is unattainable, especially since most bodies that we see in magazines, on TV, in movies, or on the 'net are touched up by computers.

As a part of my research, I was just reading a round-table discussion on the contribution that differently-abled women could add to feminist/womanist theology. I'm glad that I read it, even though I might not characterize myself as a feminist theologian (although I might characterize myself as a theologian and a feminist). Because the discussion involved much talk about the body and the Body, particularly putting forth the possibility of thinking of the Body as a "disabled body," I was very interested in the thoughts these women could share.

But on a note totally unrelated to my thesis, it occurred to me that virtual worlds really exclude the disabled body (or the non-normative body, for that matter, including the fat body). I play MMORPGs, games that provide the player with the opportunity to create an avatar which then goes on adventures and otherwise interacts with the persistent world of the game. Now, MMOs tend to be "adventure" based, so in some ways it is understandable that one cannot create an avatar that, for example, has one leg or no arms or is deaf. Blindness, due to the fact that computer games are visual media, is very much out of the question.

But then I thought about it further. I tried out the "game" Second Life after seeing it on CSI:NY. I was generally unimpressed since I see no need to have a "second life" (my first life is work enough as it is). But what is interested is that there still was no way to create an avatar that is differently abled (or fat/obese). Now, I know that most people want to create ideal versions of themselves, or something completely different (though still usually ideal in some way) when they re-image themselves on the Internet. But it seems to me that if a differently abled person wanted to enter into the Second Life world mirroring their first life, then they would be without opportunity to do so. I saw no option to have my avatar negotiate the world in a wheelchair or to need a cane, or any other physical form than having two legs, two arms, etc. Age and fat were also limited in the avatar creation.

I haven't done a lot of thinking about this yet; sometimes I blog more to get random ideas out of my head than to communicate well developed thoughts! I think the conclusion I've come to is simply that the iBody is probably as limited if not more limited by a normatizing force of culture than the fleshly human bodies we actually are. Sometimes this is simply a lack of imagination (i.e. World of Warcraft features a race called the Tauren which appear to be humanoid cattle; the females have human breasts. Why don't they have udders?), but often it is a detrimental and insidious normatizing of a particular image of human embodiment. "Good" or "desirable" human bodies are young and thin/fit/strong (depending on gender), sexually desirable (for men, this means being big and muscular, for women, small waisted and big breasted), and "whole." Scars (in MMOs) are seen as evidence of battle prowess and are not "disfiguring" in the truest sense of the word.

I'm probably reading more into this than I should, but as a woman and a theologian (in training) concerned with the human body, and as a "gamer" (casual, not hardcore), I found the thoughts percolating.

Feminists and Christians: Not Always as Far Apart as People Think

2008-05-29T14:30:00.000-07:00

Naomi Wolf on Why Porn Turns Men Off the Real Thing -- New York Magazine

I'm reading The Beauty Myth for the first time right now. For those who haven't heard of it, it is Naomi Wolf's first book, credited with kicking off the third wave of feminism by opening the eyes of women to the fact that we are under constant manipulation by a market-driven, politicized beauty culture. I have to admit that 17 years after the book was written, things seem to have gotten worse rather than better, but that's a post for another day.

I googled Wolf's name to get a sense of what she is up to now, and came across the above article on pornography. Porn is a hot topic (pardon the pun) in today's world, both in the secular realm and in the Christian subculture. More and more pastors are discussing porn addictions and more and more magazines, news programs, and academic settings are starting to engage the topic of pornography and its identity as art, sex slavery, or harmless fun.

Naomi Wolf says some things in this article that would shock a few Christians, mostly because they are coming from the woman who launched third wave feminism. Frankly, I think that if her name or identity was hidden from readers, this article might pass (with a very few alterations) for an article in Christianity Today.

Reading the following article, I was particularly struck by the resemblance of the following to a passage from one of the twentieth century's most celebrated apologists:

But does all this sexual imagery in the air mean that sex has been liberated—or is it the case that the relationship between the multi-billion-dollar porn industry, compulsiveness, and sexual appetite has become like the relationship between agribusiness, processed foods, supersize portions, and obesity? If your appetite is stimulated and fed by poor-quality material, it takes more junk to fill you up. People are not closer because of porn but further apart; people are not more turned on in their daily lives but less so.
- Naomi Wolf, "The Porn Myth" (click through to the second page)

Compare:
Or take it another way. You can get a large audience together for a strip-tease act -- that is, to watch a girl undress on the stage. Now suppose you come to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food? And would not anyone who had grown up in a different world think there was something equally queer [sic] about the state of the sex instinct among us?
- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 96. Originally published in 1952.

Although I shudder a little at the comparison of a young woman and a bit of bacon, I also think there is an eerie prophetic resonance between the words of Lewis written 56 years ago and the words of Wolf, writing in the 21st Century cyber-world. Our appetite for food has been debased -- we are the strange country that Lewis proposed -- and our appetite for sex is also being, or I should say, has already been, debased. The words of the young man that Wolf leaves us with at the end of the article are haunting:

“Mystery?” He looked at me blankly. And then, without hesitating, he replied: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Sex has no mystery.”

He was being asked to justify his claim that newly dating couples should have sex right away in order to get the "tension" and "awkwardness" out of the way.

Wolf gives very surprising deference to the religious folks that have already understood that the preservation of the mystery of the sexual union is valuable. A lot of my evangelical Christian sisters and brothers would be shocked beyond belief to hear such a suggestion from a feminist, whom they believe of course to be responsible for most if not all of the postmodern amorality surrounding sex.

But when it comes to porn, the similarities between feminists and Christians become striking. We both shake angry fists at the industry that enslaves, directly or indirectly, millions of women, children, and men every year. The industry that makes violence sexy, and that iconizes the casual sexual union is a common enemy for both Christians and feminists. And as someone who rather insanely likes to self-identify both as an Evangelical Christian and as a feminist, this issue has the capacity to make both parts of my mind equally livid.

I guess my point (aside from getting people to read and think about Wolf's article) is that evangelicals and feminists need to step away from some of the more popular issues that divide us (we all know what those are) and try to unite on this one issue. Aside from being rather earth-shatteringly exciting, such a union could have the power to make something happen. The reality that both groups need to address is that porn is exponentially more popular every year, and that it is becoming very acceptable to the mainstream. It is no longer considered wrong, deviant, or shameful to consume pornography. I have even heard whispers among Christians that, as long as it is viewed only by married people, together, porn is an acceptable way to stimulate sexual passion.

No. And again, NO. For all the reasons that Wolf lists and the many ethical and moral reasons that Christ would list, pornography is never good, never normal, and never acceptable to anyone, especially Christians. It is abusive (save me the "porn stars choose their lot" arguments -- I'd bet that for every woman/child/man who chooses to be in the porn industry, five more are forced to be there; and let's not even get into the relationship between porn and the sex trade), it is unbelievably degrading to the human body and soul, and it promotes deviant sexual relations. (Watch it now -- here comes the crazy evangelical part of me:) Porn is, quite simply, a work of Satan. There: I said it. Satan! It makes a cruel mockery and perversion of what God created to be a good and holy gift: the sensuality expressed in Adam's cry, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh" (Genesis 2:23), the union of woman and man in marriage. That's a pretty strong position, I know, and it's not original either. You can visit any Christian anti-pornography site and get the same message, with even more crazy fonts and bright colours.

The issue just tends to get me riled up because I am deeply concerned about the growing apathy and even acceptance of pornography in the mainstream. As a Christian, my concerns are ranted above, and as a feminist, I bewail the degradation particularly of women, who have come so far in the twentieth century only to continue to be held back by issues such as this. It concerns me both as a Christian and as a feminist that such little value is placed on the human lives involved and on the interference that porn is having on healthy human relationships. We need to be discussing the why we shouldn't's of porn in order to out-shout the why we want to's of the porn consumer. And I think that this discussion would get deafening if it was heard to be taking place, civilly and with solidarity, between Christians and feminists.

How Did I Miss This?

2008-02-28T15:38:00.000-08:00

Some things I just take for granted without thinking about them. Here is a case in point:

The Winter 2008 edition of The Priscilla Papers, the academic journal published by Christians for Biblical Equality features the article, "Women Martyrs in the Early Church: Hearing Another Side to the Story" by Andrea Lorenzo Molinari, which dropped a little fact into my lap that overturned something I had always taken for granted.

Molinari pointed out two pieces of Scripture:

Mark 1:29-31
²⁹ As soon as they left the synagogue, they went with James and John to the home of Simon and Andrew. ³⁰ Simon's mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they immediately told Jesus about her. ³¹ So he went to her, took her hand and helped her up. The fever left her and she began to wait on them.

1 Corinthians 9:5
⁵ Don't we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord's brothers and Cephas?

(for those unfamiliar with the Bible, Simon and Cephas are the same guy, more commonly known as Peter)

I've emphasized the bits that were a little paradigm shattering for me. I had always taken for granted that the apostles were all single. I'm not sure where I acquired that idea, but it seems to me that I'm not alone in believing it.

Instead, we know for sure that Peter had a wife (and Molinari's article, which is not about married apostles but about women martyrs, shares her martyrdom story), but according to Paul, not only Peter but "the other apostles" had wives as well, and their wives went with them as they travelled for their ministries.

I don't know about you, but this was a pretty radical new image of the apostles for me, and one that I should have come up with on my own. With all the arguments going on to counter Dan Brown's suggestion that Jesus was married -- i.e. that it was culturally the norm in Jesus' day for Jewish men to be married and that the radicalness of Jesus was that he wasn't, blah, blah, blah -- why did it never occur to me that twelve more guys running around single with Jesus would be even weirder! It made sense for Jesus to be single (ask me why!) but it wasn't necessary for the apostles to be single as well.

Now, this does beg a question: did the apostles' wives travel with them while they were travelling with Jesus? It's another interesting tidbit to consider...

I just can't believe I've always missed this!

Vancouver prostitutes tout co-op brothel for Olympics

2007-11-14T15:16:00.000-08:00

Vancouver prostitutes tout co-op brothel for Olympics

I saw a letter-to-the-editor in Vancouver's version of the Metro news magazine this afternoon from a former sex-trade worker decrying this proposed legal brothel. I hadn't heard anything about it, so I thought I would look something up and came across the National Post article above.

The idea that Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan would consider a legalized brothel for the 2010 Olympics to be a good idea simply turns my insides to ice. I was relieved when Const. Tim Fanning, the spokesperson for the Vancouver PD, was quoted as making the following comment:

"You can call it what you want, but prostitution is just a breath short of slavery," he said. "These women are not in it by choice. The police department would in no way support anything like a brothel."

He hits it bang-on when he calls prostitution "just a breath short of slavery." Prostitution (and, to a slightly lesser extent, pornography), I would argue, is the last bastion of slavery in the so-called developed world. The idea that human beings can be bought and sold should be fundamentally abhorrent to us as supposedly enlightened people, yet prostitution continues to flourish. In fact, sadly, in Canada prostitution isn't even technically illegal -- it is simply illegal to offer to pay someone for sexual acts or to live off the profits of prostitution.

Recently I came across this article about legalized brothels in Nevada, USA. When I saw the article about Vancouver's proposed brothel, the horrors that I read about earlier came back to my mind. Prostitution is over-glamourized in our culture; too often it is seen as an alternative form of income for women. But most often prostitution is a last-ditch effort on the parts of some women to make the money they need to live, to support their children, or to continue self-destructive habits such as drug use. If prostitution is legalized, it is, as Const. Fanning suggests, a legitimation of violence against women. People are not commodities, to be picked out based on personal preferences, paid for, and used to our own selfish ends. Any time this occurs, it is violence against the human being involved. Why would any culture seek to legitimate that kind of thing?

I know that it could be argued that people sell themselves all the time, but I'm not talking about the selling of labour (i.e. Rachel trades her labour as a cashier at Home Depot for the $10/hour that they give her). Prostitution and slavery amount to the sale of human beings, literally and completely. If I buy time with a prostitute, I am buying the prostitute. I have the right, through the transaction of money, to use this person for whatever agreed-upon end I desire, and in many cases for some not agreed-upon ends. A person who sells herself or himself as a prostitute is not selling her or his body alone. People are bodies and minds and souls, indivisibly. That's what makes prostitution so horrible in my mind.

The other aspect of this is the disturbing dark-side of the Olympic bid that it exposes. Vancouver is gearing up to present itself to the world in all its glory. Is it a part of Vancouver's glory that we offer our visitors some of our citizens (or not our citizens, as the case may be) as commodities? Should the world-wide celebration of the best of human athletic achievement include the sale of human beings for sex? Have Canadians become so amoral that we acknowledge that because men will be seeking prostitutes when they come to see the Olympics that we should make that legally available to them? Maybe we should open an opium den, too. Or a dog-fighting ring.

The sex-trade workers proposing the plan suggest that it parallels Insite, Vancouver's controversial safe injection site, where drug addicts can obtain clean needles and paraphernalia as well as a safe place to shoot up. I don't see the parallel. As far as I know, no one is selling drugs at Insite. One doesn't walk in, pick out their destructive substance of choice and retire to the back room to enjoy the manufactured bliss. Insite is intended simply to protect addicts from the dangers of HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis as well as the risks of overdosing or passing out in a dangerous place. The supporters of Insite recognize and acknowledge that addicts have an illness, and although it could be (and has been) suggested that the facility does nothing to reduce drug use, I don't believe that it promotes it.

A legal brothel, on the other hand, is a sanction from the government for prostitution. It is not a safe building in which prostitutes can transact sex without risk of being killed, though that would be the best spin that you could put on it. A visitor to a brothel comes in to see the prostitutes, to choose one, to pay for him/her, and to use him/her. This is fundamentally different than the purpose of Insite.

I will grant one more thing: the sex trade workers are proposing a "co-op" brothel. I presume that means that each person involved would be there of their own free choice, rather than under the command of a pimp or madam. Perhaps that would be true of this brothel.

But by legalizing this brothel, the door would be opened for others to seek the same special dispensations.

What about a brothel for the Pacific National Exhibition (Vancouver's "summer fair")? How about allowing a limited-time brothel for the next big dentist/legal/sales/etc convention that rolls through? Where would the line be drawn?

And with "bawdy houses" currently illegal in Canada, how would the government ensure that this brothel is being handled "properly"? How can the government protect non-consenting persons from being sold in this brothel?

I could go on and on about how bad an idea this is on a number of different levels, but I seem to have finally spent my rant energy for now. If you made it this far, you get a gold star for endurance. I welcome comments and questions and encourage you to reflect further on this and related issues.

Clothe yourselves, therefore...

2007-09-14T10:24:00.000-07:00

I took a wonderful class on world religions last year that has stuck with me in a lot of ways since I finished it. There is much beauty in the world's religions, and, from a Christian perspective, much darkness as well. But one of the things that has really struck me is how some religions have distinguishing marks, most especially modes of dress, which make their adherents visibly distinguishable from the rest of our pluralistic society. This is especially notable for me because I live in British Columbia's Lower Mainland, which is somewhat unique in that it has the largest population of Sikhs outside of India, as well as a large Islamic population. Sikh men and Islamic women stand out in a crowd because of the manner of their dress, and their choices have meaning in their expression of worship of the Guru or Allah.

I have been particularly interested in the Sikh tradition, mainly because I think it has the most in common with Christianity among the Indian religions. For example, this is a quote from a Sikh describing their worship: "a good worship is when the Spirit is seen in front of you and touches your passions. Passions are touched when we dare to admit the truth, when we opt for the depth of love over the little lies (of ego) that seek not to rock the boat. Passion lets loose when ideas come together, when someone says something that you knew, but couldn't articulate, when the separate pieces fall into places. Passion lets loose when people are called to remember their truest selves, when we break out of the little boxes that define and separate us. And, of course, passion lets loose when we sing. Really sing, not reading ahead for the words sung" (L. Ungar, quoted from "Do Sikhs Worship GURU GRANTH? Yes, But!" by Harbans Lal).

Sikhs have 5 particular items or distinguishing marks that they keep about their person. I won't list them all here, but suffice it to say that each one has significant meaning for their faith and their individual commitment to that faith. In thinking about these distinguing marks, I was drawn to question why Christians don't have something similar to mark us.

It could be argued that wearing a cross is one way to mark yourself as a Christian, but I think that in this era when (a) crosses are worn as decoration by a great number of people who don't profess the Christian faith and (b) when it is widely argued that the cross is not a uniquely Christian symbol (Dan Brown is not the first person to suggest this, by the way), the cross has lost some of its currency as a Christian identifying mark.

The first important point to approach is the question of whether or not a visible Christian symbol would be appropriate. Dressing in a certain manner or wearing a symbol on one's person that says, "I am a Christian" also implies that those who do not wear that symbol are excluded from the "club," if you will. Whereas theologically it is to a certain extent correct to say that there is an us-and-them reality to the Christian message, I don't think that many Christians would like to have that message broadcast too widely at this point, since exclusivity is definitely not considered a positive characteristic in the postmodern pluralistic world. Not that I am suggesting that the Christian message should be made subservient to the whims of culture, but I think it is vitally important to keep our cultural context in mind when we are forming our message to our neighbours.

The other question, of course, would be what kind of symbol would truly be appropriate for Christians to wear. Islamic women, for example, cover their bodies or their hair because of certain beliefs about the sexually provocative nature of women's bodies. Christians (for the most part) don't have the same kind of belief; the Bible certainly doesn't command that women cover their bodies because women's bodies are sexually provocative. In fact, Jesus pretty frankly lays the responsibility for lust on the luster, not the object of lusting (Matthew 5:27-28). There is a passage (1 Cor 11:5) that some have interpreted to mean that a woman should cover her head while praying or prophesying, but that passage is difficult to translate and has had many layers of cultural interpretation laid over it in the past 1900 or so years. Even if this passage is correct, it only seems to apply to women covering their heads during worship, not all the time.

Essentially, I think, a visible expression of Christian identity would need to be something commanded by God. But I can't think of any Scriptures that give clear commans for what a Christian should or should not wear to show to the world who they are. Instead, we are given commands to clothe ourselves in Jesus Christ (Romans 13:14, Galatians 3:27), and to clothe ourselves in fruits of the Spirit, with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience (Colossians 3:12). A very different kind of clothing than a turban or a veil, perhaps, but in our culture, this clothing might be no less noticable than a visible reminder of our faith.

It could probably be argued that compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience are not exclusively Christian virtues, and I wouldn't be able to argue against that after studying world religion. Many of the world's faiths share a similar emphasis on these virtues. But I do wonder about the power of the Holy Spirit as He moves among the world's peoples and touches their hearts wherever they might be and in whatever religion they follow. I wonder about how little we truly know about how God might be bringing His Shalom to the world, preparing hearts for the Gospel. I don't know, but I do wonder.

New school year/New Creation

2007-09-11T16:22:00.000-07:00

I am hoping to manage to keep something resembling a regular blog this year. I didn't manage it last year; I think I had too many thoughts running around in my head all the time to get any of them on virtual paper. But this year I will have only two classes per semester and then maybe I'll have some time to blog the stray thoughts away.

The first Chapel of the year is always a good one: probably somewhere around 200 or 300 people all joining together in song and prayer. It's a beautiful thing. The message today was given (as it always is at first chapel) by Regent's President Rod Wilson, and this time he spoke to us from 2 Cor 5:11-6:2, exhorting us to live as new creations, not seeing people and Jesus in the old way (the "fleshly" way), but seeing them through the eyes to the eyes of heart (I'm paraphrasing liberally here). The "take home" passage, if you will, though he actually deliberately made an effort not to give us "ten easy steps to the new creation" was from 2 Cor 5:16-18, particularly the little phrase "All this is from God." He repeated it a number of times, and let it ring out and hang in the air for us. It's impossible in one of those situations not to reflect on one's surroundings. I thought : "Yes, all this is from God: this group of people all committed to growing in and glorifying Jesus, singing their hearts out, studying and laughing together. And all that surrounds us is from God: a place of natural and urban beauty seldom surpassed and a city filled with a multicultural throng that sometimes disturbs my sense that I am in Canada (and exposes the subtly racist image of "what Canada is" that lay somewhere in my subconscious)."

Okay, it's a bit of hyperbole to suggest that I actually thought all that stuff, colons and all, in that moment, but hopefully you can play along with me.

Finally, our absolutely incredible worship leader, a woman with a knack for finding the best possible song or hymn to close a worship service, gave us the following hymn to leave on. It's sung to the tune of "Good King Wenceslas" so you can sing it at home if you like to get a sense of how it might have sounded being sung by a large group of worshippers heavy on the bass and tenor side (Regent is a theological graduate school sometimes mistaken for a seminary, so there are more men in the mix than is usual in most North American churches). I thought the words to this hymn were lovely and beautifully apt and something worth thinking more about, so here you go:

Text: Christopher Idle, based on Isaiah 35
Music: from Piae Cantiones, 1582
The words of this are copyrighted, so if you want to use this in a worship setting, please do so only with a CCLI license
Its CCLI number is 105540

When the King shall come again
All His power revealing,
Splendour shall announce His reign,
Life and joy and healing:
Earth no longer in decay, hope no more frustrated;
This is God's redemption day longingly awaited.

In the desert, trees take root
Fresh from His creation:
Plants and flowers and sweetest fruit
Join the celebration;
Rivers spring up from the earth, barren lands adorning;
Valleys, this is your new birth, mountains, greet the morning!

Strengthen feeble hands and knees,
Fainting hearts, be cheerful!
God who comes for such as these
Seeks and sakes the fearful:
Now the deaf can hear the dumb sing away their weeping;
Blind eyes see the injured come walking, running, leaping.

There God's highway shall be seen
Where no roaring lion,
Nothing evil or unclean
Walks the road to Zion:
Ransomed people homeward bound all your praises voicing,
See your Lord with glory crowned, share in His rejoicing!

The Offensive Christ

2006-12-01T18:05:00.000-08:00

One of the things I've always wondered about Christianity and its interaction with the postmodern Western world is why Christianity seems to be so offensive to people, as opposed to other religions. Now, one reason is likely that because the postmodern Western world owes its existence to Christianity, probably some of the offense comes from the reaction of troubled off-spring to a parent that they find odiously embarrassing (I can't claim that analogy; it springs from the mind of one of Regent's professors [also an international economist!], Paul Williams).

But another one of my professors, Craig Gay, in his book The Way of the (Modern) World Or, Why It's Tempting to Live as if God Doesn't Exist suggests the following:
"...It is not particularly surprising to find that the Christian understanding of God's personal self-revelation in Christ - particularly as expressed in the doctrine of the Trinity - has proven offensive to modern post-Christian sensibilities. After all, Christian understanding intensifies what Kierkegaard termed 'the earnestness of existence' by quite clearly placing us in a position of having to respond to God's call. We would much rather not have been placed in this position, and in an attempt to evade our 'response-ability,' modern post-Christian thought has sought to debunk the suggestion that God could possibly have gotten so close to us as to be able to call us into personal relationship with himself."

As people living in the modern post-Christian world, we generally want to be responsible for our own self-definition, and we do not want to be held, as Gay terms it, "response-able" to God's definition for us. Modern post-Christians (as we are) are suspicious of anything that looks like it is going to take from us the freedom we believe that we need and deserve for defining ourselves. This supposed freedom to self-define results, however, in a state of anxiety that is peculiar to this age of Western society. We are anxious to be able to define ourselves for we feel constantly that our self-definition is slipping away. We are terribly afraid that if we can't make our own meanings, then we will lose ourselves. Yet our ability to make our own meaning is so tenuous and ill-grounded (for if there is no ultimate meaning in which to ground personal meaning, then how does one know that one is defining oneself effectively?) that we are constantly needing to redefine and re-establish ourselves.

To all appearances, the God of Christianity looks like an autocrat who will force a definition on our selves that we would much rather not have, we think. We will have our freedoms (to choose our own behaviour, perhaps?) taken away from us. So, we attempt to reject the God of the Bible, we attempt to argue away the possibilities of the Trinity, of revelation, of the incarnation (i.e. who was Jesus, anyway? probably just a man with some good ideas).

Gay says, "For while God's call to us in Christ opens up the possibility of true personal existence, it also calls for our decision and so leaves open the possibility that we might refuse the invitation, indeed, that we might go our own way and try to establish ourselves in some other fashion."

Generally in our world, we have gone the way of establishing ourselves in some other fashion. And when the God who suggests that this fashion is unhealthy, unfulfilled (and don't we always feel that we are unfulfilled in our own self-definitions), and incomplete, asks us to respond to Him, we attempt to argue Him out of existence.

So perhaps that's why Jesus seems to be particularly offensive to the modern mind. I really have often wondered. But I think that it's because when we offer a relationship with Jesus to the modern person, we are offering a relationship that calls for response, and that is something that the modern person doesn't want to have (they think). I wish that I had some way to communicate to people that this relationship with Jesus really isn't one that will usurp your right to self-definition, or, rather, that the right to self-definition isn't something that you would want anyway.

I don't know how organised all these thoughts were, but there they are. Please respond! :-)

Maybe those Daoists were on to something...

2006-11-17T17:49:00.000-08:00

Ah, I am very far behind in my world religions study. It is the only reading-based course that doesn't require some kind of written response or summary, so its readings are sacrificed for the greater good. Or something.

I am currently playing catch-up, which isn't easy when the subject matter is the writings of the Daoists of China. China is far too ancient a nation. Their people had way too much time to come up with complicated ideas that I need to read in a hurry. They also contradict themselves too often. Can somebody pass me the Daoism for Dummies? What do you mean that would be a contradiction in terms??

Anyway, one of Daoisms major tenets is the idea of non-action (wu-wei). Non-action is not what it sounds like in that poor English translation. It's more like...doing by not doing. Haha, that clarified things for you, didn't it? Feel my pain.

The point is that striving to get what you want is only going to make life harder than it needs to be for you. To quote the Tao Te Ching, "He who stands on tiptoe is not steady; he who strides cannot maintain the pace." So, maybe in pushing myself to read 40 pages of Daoist writings today, I am "striding" instead of...strolling? Maybe a stroll through the writings is what I need. Dang, I should have thought of that before I skipped the world religions reading to put more time into my iconoclasm paper...

So, that's my life today. Interspersed with abstract Chinese thought (not just Daoism...I also read 40 pages of Confucianism as well...) was an attempt to figure out how and when we are getting to Galiano Island next week (yay!) and how to get rid of the infuriating little flies in my house plant.

10 things I learned today

The flies in my plant are not flies, but fungus gnats.
Galiano Island is between Vancouver Island and the mainland.
Houseplants should not be potted in plastic pots, especially if you live in a ridiculously moist climate like this one (people from the southern US are now allowed to laugh at that comment about the moist climate).
John Duns Scotus was, despite being the source of the word "dunce," actually a very smart man.
My father just completed his convocation from Royal Military College after nearly 40 years of military service and an undisclosed amount of life experience. Go Dad!
Most people over-water their house plants (so I don't have to feel bad that I sometimes forget to water them...)
The Chinese are an ancient and utterly mesmerizing people.
I would make a better Confucianist than I would a Daoist (let's face it: I try too hard to be a good Daoist, and I actually LIKE set social roles).
Some people cure their plants of fungus gnats by introducing carnivorous plants into the household.
The real Dracula's daddy was an illustrious member of the Order of the Dragon, an order of holy knights dedicated to keeping Islam out of Eastern Europe. Vlad the Impaler's father was called Dracul, which means dragon. Dracula means "little dragon."

Have a great weekend (but don't try too hard...)

Violence Against Women

2006-10-19T15:58:00.000-07:00

It might be something of a cop-out to post a link to someone else's blog as my own blog, but I was so struck with the insight of this particular posting that I needed to pass it on to as many people as possible.

What's in a name?

2006-10-18T10:56:00.000-07:00

Why did I choose the name "At the Well" for my blog? Well, it's not a particularly deep story, to begin with. The simple fact is that the original name I was going to choose, "At His Feet," was already taken. I had intended to use that name to reference Luke 10:38-42, the story of Mary and Martha. In this story, Martha invites Jesus into her home where she lives with her sister. While Martha is making (dinner?) preparations, Mary sits at the feet of Jesus and listens to him teach. Martha gets a little annoyed at Mary's seeming indolence and calls out to Jesus, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!" (Luke 10:40, TNIV). Jesus replies, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed -- or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her." (Luke 10:41, TNIV). It will not be taken away from her.

Although this Scripture has often been taken as juxtaposing the active life of service against the contemplative life of meditation, I prefer to take the interpretation that many scholars have been suggesting in recent years, that this story of Mary and Martha is a way for the Lord to communicate the new place for women in the Kingdom -- at His feet. That is, women have been accepted as disciples, students, of the Lord, and it will not be taken away from them. So, as a theological student, these are words of great hope for me.

Okay, but that wasn't the name that I was able to choose for my blog. So, I looked for another story of a woman coming in contact with Jesus. This story I found in John 4:1-42, and it is the story of the Samaritan woman. In this story, Jesus is travelling through Samaria (a pretty big deal, since Jews didn't really have anything to do with the Samaritans most of the time), when he stops at Jacob's well. A woman comes along, and Jesus asks for a drink. Now, there's a lot of stuff I could tell you about the situation here, about how the woman was not nice and how we know that not only from what Jesus says to her but also because she's coming to get water in the middle of the day instead of first thing in the morning with all the nice ladies. But I'll save that detail for another day. For me, the key verse is this: "Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, 'What do you want?' or 'Why are you talking with her?' " (John 4:27 TNIV) I guess the disciples were catching on by now...sort of.

But I think it's important to note that the disciples were surprised to find Jesus talking with a woman. I think a lot of Jesus' disciples today are surprised to find Jesus talking with a woman! It is in this context that I am entering into theological studies...a woman, maybe not with the sordid past that the Samaritan woman had, but a woman nonetheless.

I'll pick apart this passage some more from time to time on here, when I can't think of anything else to post (like that's going to happen...I am at Regent College, after all).

The other amazing thing about the name of this blog is this: I chose this name quite a long time ago. It was before I had applied to Regent, while I was still in the midst of my third and final audio correspondence course with them. But when I finally got to Regent, I made a very wonderful discovery. In the Regent bookstore is a little coffeeshop. The name of this coffeeshop is...The Well.

How perfect is that?

Let this Scripture close my blog for today:
Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life." (John 4:13-14 TNIV)