An Unnecessary Division between Narrative and Literary Theology

The word theology comes from two Greek words: “theos”, meaning “God”, and “logos”, meaning “word”. So theology is "Words about God." When we put to words what we believe about God, we discover that God has been writing a story of hope and redemption for all the world. This story is a movement from creation to new creation, and God has given us a role to play in that story, in the restoration of our relationships with God, each other, ourselves, and creation. Since story is central to our belief about God, our words about God—our theology—exists in the form of a narrative.

- Mars Hill Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan, http://marshill.org/believe/

The Evangelical magazine, Christianity Today, is running an article on Narrative Theology as an Evangelical response against its popular usage when retelling the stories of the Bible from an emergent, contemporary theology focused on telling God's story, and the story of man, in as clear a manner as possible. When compared to the plethora of divisive systematic doctrines held by any number of Christian traditions, churches, denominations and associations, each fearing loss of their distinctive brand of dogmas, one cannot help but wonder why this synthesization of Christianity and the usage of narrative theology wasn't employed many years earlier.

Upon review I found CT's article unnecessarily nit-picky but in all fairness wanted to include it into our blog so that we might have an appreciation for some of the criticisms Narrative Theology bears by those unfavorably set against it. The main thrust of the article is to recast Narrative Theology as a sub-category of a larger categorical description called Literary Theology. But when done simply dodges the central point by purposely misunderstanding the category of Narrative Theology itself as Field's immediately did in her pithy observation:

"God gave us stories indeed, but he also gave us proverbs, poetry, law,

exhortation, prophesy, lament, riddle, letters, visions, genealogies, and prayers."

Now this is all well-and-good as a safe evangelical statement but a narrative theologian will include these genre classifications as part of the description of Narrative Theology. Meaning, that narratives are more than just stories, but stories that will include all forms of communication between people and events in the Bible (as noted above) just as they do today. So to not observe those distinctions is not the intent of Narrative Theology but rather to include these genres as an overall part of narrative story telling. Hence, I find Leslie Field's observations unfairly critical to her imposed imagination and fears of Narrative Theology.

In fact, the art of speech itself must use all of the above qualities and even more, should it desire to communicate the various ideas and expressions humans wish to present to one another. We are not machines speaking in binary code to one another, but emotional human beings using the full range of ourselves to express ideas to one another whether it is through music, poetry, silence, physical motion, the arts, and so forth. Narrative Theology taps into the polyphonic uniqueness of diverse and multicultural societies to derive meaning from literary ambiguity and metaphorical expressions to create clearer (amazingly!) communication and understanding between such diverse populations regionally, nationally and globally. This is Narrative Theology's strength. It is not intended as a mathematical expression of language and ideological restatement between communities and people, as was predominantly expressed in the later 19th and 20th Enlightened and Modernistic societies of Western Civilization. But nor does Narrative Theology ignore the many genres of mankind. Rather it utilizes it to the full and insists upon its recognition and employment. Which is why I find Field's observation to be unfairly critical and simply an expression of Evangelical theology's religious concerns and fears.

Consequently, I do not see the need to re-specify an inclusive narrative story into its literary parts (much like a grammarian would unnecessarily parse a sentence into grammatical diagrams when speaking conversationally). No, there is a time and place for this sort of narrative de-construction. However, generally a narrative theologian will include all parts of that story's genre when wishing to avoid de-limiting the biblical story unnecessarily by under-describing it. In other instances that theologian may forego those efforts by incorporating all literary elements into the narrative storyline without distinction. It depends upon the focus and the intent of discussion. For myself, I've seen it used both ways, and by the same person (the infamous Rob Bell), and done successfully. For example, if we're reading through the Psalms of David it is not uncommon to hear exhortation in one set of stanzas, prayers in another section, and perhaps a quotation of the law or a proverb in yet a third. Is it necessary for the theologian to stop to describe each classification of genre or may s/he bind all together into a story form that can speak of each and still carry the larger meaning forward? I think we can.

Which then gets around Leslie Field's complaints about Narrative Theology and more about her refusal to adopt the Emergent Christian practice of postmodernistic communication in contemporary theology than it does about the usage of narrative itself. A criticism which we've noted time-and-again by Evangelical Theology as a major sub-branch of Christianity wishing to exclude any other competing theological schools-of-thought from questioning its ascendancy and dominant brand of biblical interpretation. However, those "other" non-evangelic schools of thought are beginning to compete quite effectively with that of Evangelicalism's more traditional schools of dogma as Leslie Fields has noted in her many references. Which is not something an evangelic would like to admit to, and yet, if they are honest, would find these newer fields of study and interpretation helpful and revolutionary to Evangelical doctrine as it sits right now. Especially if it would help the Christian message be better heard and understood.

Consequently, I noted criticism thrown at Rob Bell and Brian McLaren along with a few other Emergents so that Narrative Theology is placed into a negative light rather than the helpful light that it presents itself as to those of us searching for a biblical wholism unreduced by the statism of revered systematic doctrines of yesteryear. The Christian message has become lost in a wilderness of its own making that many postmodern, narrative theologians now seek to reclaim by narrating the major themes of the Bible for general public consumption. Rather than quoting chapter-and-verse in modernistic reductionisms the Emergent Christian movement focuses on describing God's revelation to the world through the telling of stories using main character development, plot lines, protagonists, conflict, and resolution. As such, many of the older dogmatic views of the church become lost by this methodology to the irritation of the old-guard. But, I think, if done well, actually will present a much broader, more interesting response to God's revelation that has conversely become lost in the many conflicting words and dogmatic statements being preached from today's Evangelical pulpits.

And so, please read Leslie's well-written article below. But bear in mind that she has an end purpose in view. And that purpose seems to me to hold on to the past and not releasing us unto the future beauty-and-promise of today's postmodernistic, Emergent theologies. Theologies which seek to earnestly reach out to today's societies searching for God but having become too easily entangled in the dogmatic and doctrinal baggage of the past imperiling the message of the Gospel for today's audiences. Emergents, however, are learning to speak this message better (and I submit, more biblically!) by re-reading the Scripture's tone and import. Something Jesus did quite well in His day. And something that caused the religious theologians of His day consternation and anxiety to the point of cruelly misjudging the early Christians as godless unbelievers because they followed Jesus' teachings and not their own private misinterpretations. Let us not repeat their grievous mistake. Let us be better hearers of the Word, and better followers of God, by joining together in a unified front allowing for the rapidly expanding multipluralism within the Church, and the conscious latency of multivocality found within the many passages of the Bible's narratives.

Truly, Narrative Theology does then indeed represent the "plurivocal, polyphonic, multilinear anthologies of so magnificent and irreducible a book" we call the Bible. A book that wishes to reveal God and His gracious revelation to mankind. And it is with solidarity that all narrative theologians would stand with Leslie Field in her apprisal that we no less diminish the Word of God by speaking of it simplistically when saying to her that we no longer wish to restrict it either by reducing it into systematized statements (described below as "the traditional formulations of the Christian faith: apologetics, doctrine, systematic theology, propositional truths.")  But together encourage the utilization of Narrative Theology along with Biblical Theology in its many forms to effectively create a balanced apology for the dissemination of the fullness of God's revelation coursing through the fluidity of humanity's grander story. This is the hope of a true, Emergent, postmodernistic, Christianity.

R.E. Slater

July 24, 2012

The Gospel Is More Than a Story: Rethinking Narrative and Testimony

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/july-august/the-gospel-is-more-than-a-story.html?paging=off

Story is all the rage. Everyone pants to tell their personal narrative

or to give the Bible a simpler and more relevant plot.

Maybe all this isn't such a good idea.

Leslie Leyland Fields

posted 7/16/2012 12:00AM

I am halfway through a new version of the Bible, a much-hyped story version that's streamlined to highlight the overall plot: God's story of redemption. I'm so busy trying to follow the narrative, I hardly miss the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and all the non-narrative books that have been largely excised.

But as a university teacher of narrative, I find the plot too slow and convoluted.

I'm disappointed until I remember: Oh yes! There are already novelized versions! Many of their narratives are better!

Just 18 years ago, Robert Weathers noted that most evangelicals were "baffled" by the growing literary interest in the Bible. The bafflement is over. Journals are abuzz with narrative theology. Church mission statements are increasingly presented as "narratives."

In the past ten years, especially in the past five, dozens of authors have called for readers to see the Scriptures as narrative and particularly to read the Bible as a single story. Their books include The Story, The Heart of the Story, The Bible in Brief: The Story from Adam to Armageddon, The True Story of the Whole World: Finding Your Place in the Biblical Drama, The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible's Grand Narrative, and many others. A growing number of pastors and theologians attack doctrinal and propositional readings of Scripture. Derek Flood, in his 2011 Huffington Post article "Why Faith Is a Story, Not Doctrine," sums up for many the new slant on Christianity: "Christian faith is not primarily about arguing over right beliefs and doctrines, it is about letting the story of God's grace become our story and shape our lives."

How have we traveled so far and so fast into narrative, from bafflement to bestsellers, to urgent call, and to replacing doctrine? What's behind the sudden and unprecedented swoon into narrative? And, most important: Will the church survive it?

A Baptized Imagination

I will not retract my enthusiasm for narrative entirely. It is about time that Christians value "Once upon a time …." For generations, many Christians viewed story and its various forms—fairy tale, novel, myth, legend—as contrivance at best, products of the fallen imagination at worst. In our recent past, Lewis, Tolkien, and Chesterton among others have rescued the church from its suspicion of "pagan" stories. They have dissolved the great divide between sacred and secular narratives. All our human stories of heroes, monsters, journeys, and sacrifice give voice to our universal quest for identity, purpose, and deliverance. Instead of competing with God's story, these stories gesture toward it. Writer Frederick Buechner presents the gospel story itself as fairy tale, comedy, tragedy, as "a tale that is too good not to be true." Or, in Lewis's words, "In the story of Christ … all the other stories have somehow come true."

We are story creatures who live in a God-made "story-shaped world" that itself began with the words, "In the beginning." Thus, writing narrative—and reading it—is an act of faith that places us in time and space, locating us in a chronology that suggests by its very order both the cause and meaning of our lives. Narrative affirms that the felt randomness of our lives is not the final word. Instead, beneath and among it all is a coherence, a unity, a "mattering."

I've watched people write stories from their lives where they discover patterns and designs and meanings they had not seen in living them. "Like so many characters, we are lost in a dark wood, a labyrinth, a swamp, and we need a trail of stories to show us the way back to our true home," writes Scott Russell Sanders in his essay "The Most Human Art." We in the church have done this for generations: We stand and give our testimonies, narratives of God's presence in our lives. And in the telling, we are safely placed within God's and our own story.

But the evangelical church's discovery of narrative has a more direct and immediate source: our narrative age. Our culture is saturated with "the power of story." The phrase and approach have penetrated nearly every discipline and discourse, from architecture to zoology. In the book The Triumph of Narrative, journalist Robert Fulford says storytelling stands at the very heart of civilized life. Narrative, he says, is how we explain, teach, and entertain ourselves (and often how we do all three at once). Story has unquestionably become the dominant means of understanding our world, ourselves, and each other. When neighbors and strangers meet today, they often ask not, "What do you do?" but "What is your story?"

And why not? In the broadest terms, narrative—specifically personal narrative, "this-is-my-story" that is its prime expression—restores the value of the personal in the face of impersonal science and technology, as well as the gods of our age, which privilege reason and fact over the personal and experiential. Narrative is quintessentially democratic. It insists that everyone has a story and that all are valued.

Who will Narrate the World?

Yet the rise of narrative in our culture and our churches, for all its good, has a dark understory.

At the risk of oversimplifying what is both familiar and hopelessly complex, here's a thumbnail: Our culture's love affair with story corresponds to its dismissal of the One Story. Western society has rejected both the God of the Scriptures and his master narrative. In the absence of a universal storyline, we must make one up. No, we must make many up, because no single story can contain all that is real and true for all people, or so it's believed. Language and narrative now are used not to discover meaning imbedded in creation by an omnipotent Creator. Instead, they are used to create personal and subjective meanings in the face of non-meaning.

The church, then, is faced with a plethora of narratives that oppose and compete with God's story. Which story or stories will believers choose and follow? Too many believers are choosing the wrong one, say theologians Stanley Hauerwas, Michael Goheen, and Edith Humphrey, among others. Christians are increasingly accommodating the culture's counterstories, its plots of consumerism, idolatry, and self-fulfillment. And they're doing it largely because they don't know God's master story.

Hauerwas recalls asking a classroom of theology students, most of whom had grown up in the church, "What is the story of the Bible?" He was met by blank stares. Goheen, professor of religious studies at Trinity Western University, found his students could neither relate the story of the Bible nor explain why it was important. Goheen has become one of the most vocal and urgent advocates of "reading the Bible as One Story." Robert Webber, a pioneer in narrative, continued his wake-up call to the church with the book Who Gets to Narrate the World?: Contending for the Christian Story in a Age of Rivals.

Apologists have issued the same warning. Lesslie Newbigin, one of the most prominent missiologists of the 20th century, argued that Christians cannot effectively speak the gospel to our culture without "a sense of the Scriptures as a canonical whole, as the story which provides the true context for our understanding of the meaning of our lives."

These are serious charges, yet they ring true. How have believers failed to grasp and articulate the overarching story of Scripture, God's redemptive plan from Eden to the New Jerusalem? Some throw stones at the Sunday school movement, which teaches kids the Bible piecemeal, rarely attempting to contextualize baby Moses in the Nile, brave Daniel in the lions' den, and the annual parade of other fragmented and fatigued Bible characters into the whole gospel story. Others blame a catechetical and moralistic approach, which turns real characters and stories into abstract, lifeless doctrine or ethical "lessons."

These practices are part of a deeper tension identified in Hans Frei's groundbreaking book, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in 18th and 19th Century Hermeneutics (1980), generally considered to signal the narrative turn in theology. Frei argues that our willingness to read texts out of context goes back to the Enlightenment and Newtonian science, which sought knowledge by breaking everything into its smallest pieces. The historical-critical method, the grammatical method, higher criticism, and systematic theology became the dominant means of interpreting Scripture. All of these methods intellectualized and subdivided the texts, and located their meaning outside the text. Frei contends that any interpretation of the Scriptures that discounts the realistic, historical narrative will result in distortion.

Since Frei's book, others, such as literary scholars Leland Ryken and Robert Alter, have awakened us to the significance and artistry of the biblical narratives as well as the other genres present. One of the exciting gains of narrative theology is its potential to heal the divide between doctrine and application—how we actually live our lives. Critics of the doctrinal approach to Christianity charge it with cultural irrelevance and a disembodied intellectualism, and embrace the return to biblical narratives of flawed blood-and-flesh men and women like us. As we identify with their stories, reading them holistically with our minds, hearts, and spirits, we are encouraged to live out God's story in our own.

Many theologians have celebrated this turn. The Promise of Narrative Theology was not only a book but also a phrase spoken by many. Its influence upon the church can hardly be overstated. But narrative—even a larger literary approach—cannot right all ills. It's past time to identify what narrative cannot and should not do. This enterprise, still new, is already in danger. The camel that will carry us across the desert is overloaded and stumbling.

Losing the Story in Narrative

Back to my own Bible reading: I never made it through that one-story version of the Bible, despite the removal and/or abridgment of Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and all those other non-story parts, such as the lists of genealogies and laws. I confess to impatience—whether with God or the editors, I am not sure. If this is Story, why is it so long and convoluted? Why is the plot so twisted?

Others, apparently, have had the same response. The two editors of this version created their own spinoffs (both using the word story in the title). Both paperbacks condense the Scripture's story yet further and rely on the authors' own stories to illustrate the Bible's stories.

I went on to read the 100 Minute Bible, written for "people who want an easy access into the central Christian story." (Shockingly, Joseph's portion, a page and a half, omits the theme of forgiveness and God's sovereignty.) I tried a novelized form of the Bible and a few other books named earlier. Some enterprising people have even condensed the Bible's story into a three-minute video. Astoundingly, in all but the most cryptic and badly written versions, I am still moved by God's audacious love for humankind. But I do not mistake much of this storytelling for God's words.

It's depressingly ironic. Though the larger narrative theology movement revives a deep respect for the Bible's language and literature, many of the commercial products show little respect for Story. Story, as all high-school English students know, relies not simply on what happened but also on the language and literary devices used to tell it: metaphor, description, analogy, repetition, parable, image. Nor does this larger narrative movement pay heed to the other literary genres God chose to speak his words through—poetry, lament, epistle, proclamation, prophecy.

Writing a 'Better Story'

Despite what I hope are good intentions, some of the one-story Bibles are in danger of committing the same reductionistic error mentioned above. Using Peter Leithart's metaphor, many of these story versions treat the language of Scripture as simply a "husk" that can be disposed of to access the "kernel" of meaning. Whether the kernel is a point of theology, a poetic image of God, or an event that does indeed advance the narrative, the language and figures of speech God inspired appear to be dispensable. In his brilliant book Deep Exegesis, Leithart warns that "Scripture once transformed the world precisely because Bible students clung to the letter. Once the letter is reduced to a malleable vehicle, Scripture loses its potency."

Somehow, in pursuit of the larger story, we've empowered ourselves to reorganize, distill, edit, and rewrite the actual Scriptures. We have failed to recognize that each of these activities not only interprets but also reduces Scripture.

In pursuit of Story, we've abridged the Bible. We've edited out the non-narrative parts. We've reworded the text. We in the church have been committing such acts of revision comfortably for some time. And for postmodern churches and pastors who are calling for a "new kind of Christianity," this is not enough. Some high-profile pastors are forming a Christianity defined purely by Story. "Story" is a near-exclusive category that rejects traditional formulations of the Christian faith: apologetics, doctrine, systematic theology, propositional truths. The Christian faith is first, last, and always a story. And we've not been telling the story right, say Rob Bell, Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, and other leaders in the emergent church. All are looking to tell a "better story" than the one they accuse evangelicals of telling.

"[T]elling a story about a God who inflicts unrelenting punishment on people because they didn't do, or say, or believe the correct things in a brief window of time called life isn't a very good story," Bell complains in Love Wins. Bell defines even hell in terms of story: "Hell is our refusal to trust God's retelling of our story." McLaren calls the church's message "the six-line Greco-Roman narrative (Eden, Fall, condemnation, salvation, heaven, hell)," which is rooted in Plato and Aristotle rather than Jesus, he claims. Reading McLaren's three-book fable series fleshing out his new vision of the Christian life, many complain that original sin, creation-fall-redemption, the deity of Christ, God's holiness, God's sovereignty, the offense of the Cross, worship, justification, and divine inspiration of the Bible—among other elements—are nowhere to be found. The worst enemy in these stories, as in every creative writing class, is dogma, moralizing, and certainty.

McLaren's and Bell's stories end appealingly without wrath, judgment, or any unpleasant inequality, with "everyone enjoying God's good world together with no disgrace or shame, justice being served, and all the wrongs being made right." This is "a better story," says Bell, not because it is more biblically accurate, but because it is "bigger, more loving, more expansive, more extraordinary, beautiful, and inspiring than any other story about the ultimate course history takes."

And why wouldn't we choose the better story? In the postmodern view, stories are not fixed or absolute. They are fluid, changing shape and form with each teller, shifting in the mind of each listener. Pagitt, pastor of Solomon's Porch in Minneapolis, writes, "What we [Christians] believe is not 'timeless.'" Theology will be "ever-changing," thus "complex understandings meant for all people, in all places, for all times, are simply not possible."

Fascinated with Ourselves

Even among evangelicals, unfortunately, we find unsettling parallels in our embrace of Story. The emphasis on understanding God's meta-narrative and placing our story within God's story has so affirmed our own stories, we've begun to displace the scriptural narratives with our own "better stories." Christianity has always had a taste for sensational testimonies. But a recent string of books from Christian publishers, all best-selling—Heaven Is For Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back; 90 Minutes in Heaven: A True Story of Death and Life; 23 Minutes in Hell; and, a more recent addition to the new genre of children-going-to-heaven stories, The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven—should give us pause. The heaven books, two of which sold more than 1.5 million in less than a year, have launched ministries and speaking careers in conservative, Bible-proclaiming churches where the authors share their "testimonies." Yet each book makes claims that conflict, often significantly, with the Bible's account of death, judgment, heaven, and hell. [Here previously reviewed - Piper's "90 Minutes in Heaven?" or Wiese's "23 Minutes in Hell?" True or Not? - res]

Nor do we require stories about God and the afterlife to be true. The Shack, which has sold more than 15 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling books of all time, is a fictional narrative that doesn't claim experiential truth—"this happened to me"—but does claim to teach truth about God and the Christian life. Numerous churches and Christians have embraced William Paul Young's portrait of God as a chuckling African American woman and Jesus as a perky, flannel-clad carpenter. One Christian television interviewer gushed to the author, "God has used you to shatter the preconceptions a lot of us have about God." [The Shack is a personal favorite of mine! - res]

Many of our "preconceptions," of course, are formed by God's Word itself. When pastor Todd Putney convened an enthusiastic community discussion of The Shack, it didn't go as he had hoped. "I thought that book would be a bridge to the God of the Scriptures, but it wasn't. No one wanted to go there. They preferred the story and the god of The Shack over the God of the Scriptures."

The group, A Call to an Ancient Evangelical Future, wisely recognized in its fifth tenet that "spirituality, made independent from God's story, is often characterized by … an overly therapeutic culture … and a narcissistic preoccupation with one's own experience." As Eugene Peterson has observed, "the 'text' that seems to be most in favor on the American landscape today is the sovereign self."

As a writer and creative-writing teacher, I see a parallel movement in the halls of memoir, a genre plagued by scandals. As writers recount events from their lives, they hear the siren call to craft a "better story" than the one actually lived. Many answer the call. Some of the most egregious deceptions (he wasn't a Native American orphan but a middle-aged white guy; she wasn't raised by a gang in L.A., and so forth) are explained by a thirst for fame and fortune. But some are undoubtedly the consequence of the postmodern shrug toward truth. The text, and truth itself, is forever malleable by the supreme authorial self. Narcissism and solipsism abound in our literature. Patricia Hampl, one of the seminal contemporary writers and critics of memoir, advises writers to overcome their egocentrism. The purpose of memoir, she reminds us, is not "the fulfillment of the self, or its aggrandizing, but the deft insertion of the self into an over-whelming design." But in a time when the possibility of objective truth is a fiction, the writer-storyteller sees the self as the overwhelming design. We don't submit to a larger story because we are the larger story.

Literary Theology

Before we knew the terms "narrative theology" or "emergent church" or "postmodernism," we knew the stories and events: "In the beginning was the Word …"; "Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah …"; "A farmer went out in his field …"; "The rich man died and was there in Abraham's bosom …"; "There was a man who had two sons …"; "So they took Jesus, and he went out, bearing his own cross …"; "And then I saw a new heaven and a new earth …."

We must return to these stories and events to remember not just the Bible stories, but the story that contains them all—the One Story of God's incomprehensible, outrageous acts of redemption, the stories of a God gathering a people for his name. Here in its pages appear fierce and unlikely heroes, terrifying battles, pilloried prophets, resistant saints, miraculous healings, a foot-washing King, a bloodied God on a cross, a hollow tomb, the final wrath and glory judgment, and a denouement that ends more miraculously than anything we could imagine: the coming of a new city with open gates and a purified people now called sons and daughters who, needing no other light, will enter and walk by the light of the Lamb.

Not everyone will be there. It is not a safe or simple story. Yet the story is for all of us to hear and to heed. We are invited into these pages, not as editors with red pens in hand, but as supplicants seeking understanding and truth. We are invited to live into this narrative, but not to rewrite it, either to gut it of its offense or to reshape it for short attention spans and better sales.

When we read the Bible through the lens of any single genre, agenda, or need, distortion will result. It is critical to grasp the Scriptures' narrative unity to resist our culture's counterstories, but we need not reduce the Scriptures to a single genre to grasp its One Story. God gave us stories indeed, but he also gave us proverbs, poetry, law, exhortation, prophesy, lament, riddle, letters, visions, genealogies, and prayers. Man lives by every word that proceeds from God's mouth. All Scripture makes us wise unto salvation. We need to say, with the apostle Paul, that "we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word" (2 Cor. 4:2, ESV).

For reasons we will likely never know, God, who could have placed in our hands any kind of book he wanted, chose to give us a plurivocal, polyphonic, multilinear anthology, a magnificently irreducible book that contains as many rhetorical forms and voices as we have temperaments and experience. God knew—of course!—that we need them all. It's time, then, to replace the term "narrative theology" with "literary theology" to include all the literary genres God chose to speak through.

Clearly, God's truths are both propositional and incarnational, both theological and experiential. Each is necessary to the other. Each interprets the other. In Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind, Mark Noll reminds us that doctrinal creeds are needed now more than ever because they "concentrate with fearsome energy on the themes that define the heart of Christianity." Doctrine can do what Bible stories alone cannot: take us beyond the time-and-place limits of human events to encompass the full scope of God's magnificent redemption.

Finally, following the concern of Edith Humphrey, professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary: All of us must examine ourselves, that our human love for God's story does not obscure the God of the Story, that our love for the written word does not displace our love for the Word of God himself. We can be so distracted and dazzled by narrative theology that we neglect the living, indwelling presence within and beyond the story. "We don't participate in a story," she writes, "we participate in him."

It is not the story but the living Christ who saves us.


Leslie Leyland Fields has taught creative nonfiction in Seattle Pacific University's Master of Fine Arts Program, and she'll be returning to Covenant College this fall as writer-in-residence. Her memoir is titled Surviving the Island of Grace: Life on the Wild Edge of America.

Go to ChristianBibleStudies.com for "The Gospel Is More Than a Story," a Bible study based on this article.

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For further inquiry on this topic -

What Is Narrative Theology?

It is the "Grander Story of God and Creation"

see also -

The Why of Narrative Theology, Its Necessity, and Usefulness

The Mission of God

In a past article on "The Origin of Sin, Hell and Universalism" I worked through some foundational matters that were pertinent to grasping who and what we are through God himself. Matters and events that so moved God to do what He had done in relationship to His first actions. And what He now must do in relationship to those first actions. Actions that involve our being. Our future. Our planet's future. Our cosmos' future. At the time a lot of this material seemed pretty heady and after re-reading that article several times (and on several different occasions through the "eyes and ears" of various readers), I kept hearing overtones of this discussion in unrelated articles like the one I'm providing today. Overtones that at least seem to be moving me in some fundamentally directional path towards understanding the magnitude of God's person. His purposes. His intentions. His resolve. His Being.

Why do I say this? Because I sometimes think to myself that we as Christians get so busy with "studying" Scripture, and quoting it to ourselves, and to each other, in our systematic discussions and debates, that we get lost as to its permeable core meanings and over-arching overtones. Especially when we try to answer those age old questions of why sin came into the world when it was made by a perfect, holy, God. And why this God ever created the world in the first place. Especially man in the quixotic state of his turmoils and constitution. What caused God even to do what He did? What causes Him now to do what He is doing? And just where is it that all His expended energy is moving us towards? To what end? To remove sin, death, and devil? To show us His Glory? To expand the fellowship of His Trinity beyond itself? To establish holiness and righteousness within His creation? ...The answers are as endless as the questions, I suppose.

And yet, to these many questions we've all responded with our pablum answers and ready Scripture quotes. Some of us have taken very long, very intensive Bible courses, to come up with these ready answers and quotes. But if you're like me I'm still not satisfied. And part of that is because I wasn't aware of the "system" that existed around me at that time in my life. Mostly because I was willfully ignoring it. And secondly, because I didn't appreciate the rigorousness of that Christian stream in which I was becoming the by-product of its "public/theological consciousness". Of that institute. Or Christian branch or movement. Or church. Denomination. Or association. Each teaching me its values and core structures so that I could go out and re-enforce those same structures upon others with my "ready answers". Moreover, I wasn't aware of the appeal of the philosophy-of-the-day that pandered to the culture I was raised and taught within. That reshaped my raging emotions. My searching mindset. My deepest existential needs. Or even my perplexed humanity as it looked into the finite void of a whithering mortality and sought some kind of answer that could satisfy its immediate yearnings and fears despite the noise around me demanding I do this or that. That or this.

Consequently, when I wrote "The Origin of Sin, Hell and Universalism" I was simply re-asking those age-old questions to the best of my ability from outside of mine own "skin" as best as I could. But still I felt as if I was going nowhere. And yet, I feel even now, as I did then, that at least I am learning to ask better questions that are more open-ended, less demanding of pat answers, and more aware of my post-enlightened, modernistic upbringing. That might be more skeptical of the "easy answers" carried to my ears through the institutional and cultural winds sent by friend-and-foe alike. And perhaps become more discriminating of the surreptitious philosophies flowing around me like the many violent streams of merging tributary rivers pouring over my heart and mind refusing to release me from its grip of perfunctory answers. Wishing I only hear arrogant cynicisms from the mouths of critics so sure of themselves in the ignorance of their hearts and minds. And yet, so very unhealthy for theologians who would seek after God through the fog of our own words, and actions, and feeble aspirations.

So then, rather than try to write a daily blog, I have been trying to build up an index of thematic subjects that might release us from our backgrounds (or at least from the kind of benevolently-constructed background I had been raised within owning to good intentions, moral acclivity, and social responsibility). Perhaps giving to us a kind of direction that might be more discriminating. And may provide to us enough tools to be able to rightly criticise both ourselves and others when hearing less-than-satisfactory responses that oftentimes would stop us from our spiritual journeys and simply bade us to sit at ease under the nearest shade tree to blithely watch the world go by within our gilded birdcages. Curiously, I had this very same temptation again today from a well-meaning soul, as I did last week, even as I did the week before that. Each voice meant for my ears only to cease personal exploration and expression, through threats and warnings, fears and fancy, condemnation and judgments. Seemingly every time I have sought to express my inner desires I have had it as quickly shut down by those fearing to hear any more; or, have been personally moved to incoherently speak "ready answers" that would prevent my searching heart and soul (and I think, theirs as well!) from further discovery. But I don't believe any searching theologian, much less a questioning/feeling poet, wishes to be told to shut up and be still. To be content with this life as it is. As it is thought to be. And to accept our lot in life for what it is (or is contrived to be). However benevolent. However kind and well-intentioned.

Jesus was God's theologian-and-poet all wrapped up in one. But the world could not hear Him. Indeed, did not want to hear Him. Yet burned within itself to hear Him. Why? Because Jesus' mission began IN God. And WITH God. Even as the Church's mission does now. For without God there is no empyreal Triune personage. No inexpressible fellowship. No ineffable being. No unutterable essence. No indescribable Godhead. No transcendent mission. It is this God who is the Great I AM that personally motivates me. Who expresses life by expressing Himself as the Great I AM. Who meets my human needs and wants as the Great I AM. Who wants me to want more from this life than I can ever hope to see (or even understand) by being to me the Great I AM. Who is LIFE. Who is LOVE. Who is DESTINY. Who is HOPE. Who is my PEACE.... Who simply IS.... And in Him there is no more. And none else. And naught else. And none other.... For in the Great I AM there is no other life. No other LOVE. No other DESTINY. No other HOPE. No other PEACE. But in the God alone who tells us "I AM who I AM". To trust it. To believe it. To seek it. To rely on it. To become it. And because of all of these promises, perturbations, and provisionings, I now realize that God simply IS and IS BECOMING. Who is the same God who allows me to "be and become" because HE "IS and IS BECOMING."  So that who I am IN God and WITH God makes me more than myself in God's mission through Jesus' His Son. To this realization we can only say, "Praise God" for demanding that His reality becomes our reality and naught else until all be resolved in His time and grace. Praise God.

R.E. Slater

July 22, 2012

The Origin of Sin, Hell, and Universalism

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2012/02/origin-of-sin-hell-and-universalism.html

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The Mission of God: A Sketch

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2012/07/22/the-mission-of-god-a-sketch/#more-30529

by Scot McKnight

July 22, 2012

Comments

Here is an outline of God’s mission, mostly drawn from the Gospel of John and its use of the word “send,” I sketched in my preparations for the teaching at SommerOase in Denmark. This sketch was the theological foundation of my talks.    - Dansk Oase, July 2012

Introduction:

Theme: Who is God? (in mission)

1.0 Mission Begins IN God.

“I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).

“the Father is in me, and I in the Father” (10:38; 17:21, 23).

Now a brief sketch of a major Christian doctrine, the Trinity, and its connection to mission.

1. God has been eternally missional, is missional, and will be missional forever. (Eschatology is inherent.)

2. Why? Because the Trinity is mutual indwelling in love for the Other.

3. God is essentially and endlessly missionally engaged within the Trinty: the Father, the Son, and the Spirit engage One Another in missional union and missional love.

4. Creation is the explosion of God’s internal missionality into living, created, mortal order.

2.0 Mission Begins WITH God’s Sending.

1. God sends John: “And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me…” (1:33).

2. God sends Jesus: ““My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work….” (4:34).

3. Jesus sends us: “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (20:21).

If you are one of Jesus’ followers you are missional.

3.0 The Missional Christian, who is a follower of Jesus, Stays WITHIN God’s Mission.

Jesus provides the pattern for the Missional Christian:

1. Seeking God’s Approval: John 5:30 By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me….” and this approval is the future kingdom’s judgment becoming reality in the Now.

2. Source is God’s Truth in Jesus: John 7:16 Jesus answered, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me…. 18 Whoever speaks on their own does so to gain personal glory, but he who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about him. … 28 Then Jesus, still teaching in the temple courts, cried out, “Yes, you know me, and you know where I am from. I am not here on my own authority, but he who sent me is true.”

3. Strengthened by God’s Presence:

God is at work: John 6:44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day.

God is present: John 8:16 But if I do judge, my decisions are true, because I am not alone. I stand with the Father, who sent me.

John 8:29 The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him.”

God is present in the Holy Spirit: John 14:26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

The Spirit’s presence orients us toward Jesus: John 15:26 “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me.”

4. Speaking God’s words: John 12:49 For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken.

4.0 The Missional Christian is INSIDE / IN Christ.

1. Seeing Jesus is seeing the Father: John 12:44 Then Jesus cried out, “Whoever believes in me does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. 45 The one who looks at me is seeing the one who sent me.”

2. Accepting Us is accepting Jesus is accepting the Father: John 13:20 Very truly I tell you, whoever accepts anyone I send accepts me; and whoever accepts me accepts the one who sent me.”

3. Opposing You is opposing Jesus is opposing the Father: John 15:21 They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me.

Here is a 4 point sketch of how the Missional Christian is to see himself or herself:

1. To see yourself as deriving your mission in God.
2. To see yourself as extending God’s mission in Jesus to others.
3. To see yourself as inhabiting God’s perichoresis.
4. To see yourself participating in God’s present anticipation of the kingdom of God — the future that God’s mission now leans into.

50 Shades of Grey and Sexual Addiction

 

I began a discussion a few months ago under the category of Sex and Power that spoke to common business practices and the impoverished masses. But I've yet to speak to the actual interpersonal interactions between a man and a woman in the many of expressions of love that we find written about in poetry, novels, videos, the media and our everyday conversations. It's an interesting question that seems better left to the parties involved as to how men and women prefer the intricacies of their love making.... However, its come up once again this time in a series of books known as 50 Shades of Grey which seems to have quickly spread into the minds of men and women demanding more literature, more conversation, more air time, within the public consciousness.

And so, rather than attempt to answer that question (mostly because I suspect it involves a broader set of experiences that goes beyond the everyday normative practices of simple kissing, hand holding, and the popularly-parodied missionary position of late night TV shows) we might reframe the topic by asking the following positive set of questions: Is the freedom of both lovers primary and being fully honored? Are your sexual actions or behaviors celebrative of your partner's personal image and humanity? Are both partners equally in charge of these very interpersonal experiences? Are your experiences helpful in developing the inner person of both you and your partner towards personal expressions of liberation and freedom? Is there any form of abusive harm or damage (whether physical, emotional or unconsciously) that is occurring in your practice? Are BDSM behaviors and personal self-practices particularly healthy for you as a person, or as a couple, to participate in?

Conversely, we should also ask the important follow-up questions of whether the practiced sexual behaviors of bondage and eroticism is personally addictive to either one, or both, of the consenting partners sharing in love making and personal expression. If, however, these practices and behaviors are addictive (or are becoming addictive) then we have come to a very legitimate concern that will slip progressively downwards in terms of a person's wants and needs from merely erotic physical bondage to that of very interpersonal form(s) of spiritual bondage. And once there, is extremely difficult to be liberated from when held within the dark cages and bonds of our own self-image's poverty as we try to find healing in personally (or spiritually) regressive behaviors. And mostly, in practices that are unhealthy and personally demeaning in what we could rather call 50 Shades of Sexual Addiction that starts out benignly grey and tied with a bright bow of promise to very quickly become darker and more disorientating harming our desperate human spirit and troubled inner self seeking spiritual release unto unbounded personal expression.

And it is here I think we find the most danger for the seemingly harmless practice of erotic love-making as it escalates into a steady demand to meet our personally unbalanced emotional and spiritual needs. Kept within the positive bounds of expression mentioned above it might be developed as personal redemptive expressions that can be fun and even liberating for some. But like everything we seem to do, or think we need to experience, it can very quickly devolve into a craven need which may become sourly addictive. A personal need reducing the human soul to personally unhealthy behaviors, expectations, artificial needs and wants. Sure, every one of us would like to be swept off our feet to experience the ultimate release and freedom that a truly intimate love might offer. But very few of us really can find this through sexual manipulation unless we first learn to give of ourselves while seeking the redemptive release of our intimate partner above our own very selfish (or is it, deceptive?) needs.

In this world of ours, the only truly freeing love that we may find is the love of God spiritually for our souls. It is God's love that would release us from our sin and sin's addictions. From selfishness and our unloving behaviors and imagined needs. Teaching us self-restraint and personally responsible expression. That would cause us to hungrily seek the inner liberation of redemption's insatiable promises. And birth us towards the newness of spirituality that has been lost about us in this world of sin so adamant in its demands that we must seek our own personal needs and wants foremost above anyone else. One can yet hear the ancient serpent's hiss saying, "Hath not God said all is good and may be eaten?" (my abridged version of Gen 3). Whether we speak of our time. Our money. Our relationships. Even of our most intimate of relationships. All has come under sin's scrutiny casting its vote to doubt God's goodness and strive for our own happiness and well-being through our own actions and determinations

And yet, God's love is a mystery that would remove all other mysteries from consideration. For it is in this divine mystery that we may find its promise so vividly portrayed to us through Jesus' incarnational ministry, death, and resurrection on Calvary's cross of release from sin's bondage and our own personal torments. A redemption that henceforth opens all benighted paths to release from personally deceptive behaviors of spiritual bondage which has held us too long within its dark prisons of hell's confounded deep. Listening to its mocking lies whispering in our wayward ears, our doubting hearts, our lost souls, minds, and hearts. Hissing the rightness of our exultant needs and wants, when simply it is but God's searching love which our hearts most long for when savagely desiring the divine salve binding the mortal wounds and scars of our empty lives and hearts but refusing its ministrations by our own desperately failing pleas and efforts.

Rejoice then my dear brothers and sisters. God's love is the one true love we should seek and yearn for when abandoning all-that-we-are to Him alone in our own personal chains of darkness. Here, in this solitary space, there will no longer be shades of grey. Nor 50 shades darker blinding the tortured human spirit with a dithering freedom that never comes. Nor 50 shades freed bound in the final pits of our deceived hearts giving in to hell's faithless promises of discovering our own freedom apart from God's truer chains of grace, mercy, forgiveness, and hope in Christ. A darkness which would hide us deep from the sublime touch of God's unbinding glory and grace. But rather, it is in Love's many striking colours of prismatic rainbows sparkling and refracting about us that would beckon us to taste-and-see that God's love is rich. Full. Pure. Deep. That would thirstily fill and satisfy our empty souls and impoverished beings with the redoubtable goodness of God's great love. Taste then, and see, that the Lord is good. And in Him there are no shades of darkness promising a freedom that will never come. But in Jesus alone is Love's purer light freeing our bounded soul to love's truer release. Not by our own hand but by God's hand mighty of salvation. To give love. To share love. To be love. There can be no greater joy. No greater experience. No greater power when discovering God's great good redeeming love.

The LORD your God is in your midst,

a mighty One who will save;

He will rejoice over you with gladness;

He will quiet you by His love;

He will exult over you with loud singing.

- Zephaniah 3.17

R.E. Slater

July 19, 2012


For further reference

A poem I wrote called Jars of Clay -
http://reslater.blogspot.com/2011/09/can-there-be-reconciliation-that-may-be.html

Other Verses on God's Love -
http://www.whatchristianswanttoknow.com/20-inspirational-bible-verses-about-gods-love/

ps - As an introduction to the last article please note that this blogsite does not advocate the position of  complementarianism (man's dominion over women) but of egalitarianism (both sexes are equally empowered by God in mutually supportive and assisting roles). So that in the last article below Eric Reitan will take this same position as he questions Jared Wilson's diatribe for God-ordained sexism. It is in our considered opinion that the bible does not teach God-ordained sexism but God-ordained equality between the sexes in everything. And in all walks of life. And that would include equality between impoverished sects and classes of humanity so that regardless of gender, orientation, or social position, all men everywhere are equal in standing before God who judges right and true.


Negative Addictions

Sexual Addictions - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_addiction

Sexual Addictions, Causes, Symptoms, Treatment -

http://www.medicinenet.com/sexual_addiction/article.htm

Sexual Addictions Self-Assessment Test - http://www.sanjosecounseling.com/sex-addiction-test.htm

Healthymind: Sexual Addiction Awareness - http://healthymind.com/s-index.html

A List of Books on Sexual Addictions: Don't Call It Love -
http://www.amazon.com/Books-on-Sexual-Addiction/lm/R1210E7ZN8DSRD

Drug Abuse and Addiction -

http://www.helpguide.org/mental/drug_substance_abuse_addiction_signs_effects_treatment.htm

A Complete List of Addictions - http://www.addictionz.com/addictions.htm


Positive Addictions

10 Worthwhile Addictions - http://www.anwot.org/ten.html

Choosing Your Addictions Wisely -

http://s154087832.onlinehome.us/positiveaddictions/PositiveAddictions.pdf

Do women really want 50 Shades of Grey?
http://thinkchristian.net/do-women-really-want-50-shades-of-grey

Julia Stronks

05/08/12

I recently watched the “Saturday Night Live” spoof of 50 Shades of Grey, the E.L. James book that millions of women all over the world are claiming has rejuvenated their sex lives. The spoof made me laugh, but it also made me sad.

Because I teach a course on gender to hundreds of Christian college students, I pay attention to cultural phenomena like the Twilight series and other novels that shape many female fantasies of love and sexuality. Generally, my students are disdainful of romance novels, but the 50 Shades discussion is unique in the way it has captured our culture’s attention. “Ellen,” “Dr. Oz,” “SNL” and nearly every talk show on TV references women’s obsession with these novels, and they also talk about the number of married men who are looking to these books to determine the answer to the age-old question, “What do women want?” This is a frightening thing.

Some argue, “It’s only fantasy. Lighten up. If it sparks the sex life of married couples what harm can it do?” Others point out that the subtext of the books, often referred to as “mommy porn,” can be dangerous.

Should Christians read these books? I think Christians who choose to read the books should start talking openly about their responses to 50 Shades. If we believe that Christ’s redemption shapes our response to culture, we cannot be afraid of what our culture is talking about.

When students ask me questions about sexuality I emphasize to them that sex, like everything else in our world, was created by God as a gift, but then was subject to the Fall. Through Christ’s sacrifice, though, we live in the knowledge that our sexuality has been redeemed, and we are free to explore it within the bounds of what God intends for human creatures. Within this framework, there are three things that should trouble us about these books.

First, the woman in the story agrees to the man’s rules of dominance in the relationship in part because she believes she will eventually be able to reach him and heal his troubled psyche. Friends who have suffered in abusive relationships tell me that this fantasy - that with sufficient love one can heal the abuser - is more damaging than we know. It shields abusers and keeps the abused in a bad situation.

Second, the story depicts sex as something that men do to women: real men dominate and women crave it. Christians who believe that males and females both reflect God’s image have to talk more openly about what God’s design for sexual partnership might look like. Sadly, there are few scholars that have taken up this topic well, but I think Lewis Smedes’ Sex for Christians remains one of the most thoughtful commentaries available. Students tell me that his theological discussion prepares them for engaging culture better than anything else out there.

Third, the dominance fantasy is dangerous when we only understand part of the picture. A fantasy can be benign - it is not reality. But if people are reading these books to determine what women want then we have a serious problem. The submissive character in the book consents to the treatment she receives, but historically and legally the nature of consent has always been a complicated issue. When government statistics tell us that one in five American women has been or will be sexually assaulted, we do ourselves no favor by insisting that dominance fantasy and violence have no relationship to each other. We must at least explore the possibility.

Sex can be complicated. We owe it to men and women to be more honest about sexuality, desire, the nature of the Fall and the blessing of God’s redemptive power. Christians should be leading the way on this discussion, not shying away from it.

What Do You Think?

•  Is 50 Shades of Grey harmless fantasy or something more problematic?
• Should Christians spend more time discussing how sexuality relates to faith?
• How do you understand the Fall’s effect on human sexuality? 

Julia Stronks J.D. Ph.D. is the endowed Edward B. Lindaman Chair at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington. She writes on faith, law and public policy and can be reached at jstronks@whitworth.edu.

 

 

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'50 Shades Of Grey': Is Christian Grey more

Ted Bundy than Ian Somerhalder?

http://entertainment.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474981481068

by Linda Shaw

July 17, 2012 11:45 AM EDT

50 Shades of Grey may be making women everywhere excited but is the main character, Christian Grey, more like Ted Bundy than Brad Pitt or Ian Somerhalder?

While it may seem as though everyone is embracing the novels, there are quite a few people who actually hate them. With a passion [A quick review of Amazon.com's reader reviews board will show an almost universal response by the Amazon readership. - res].

The haters claim the horrible writing, repetitive sex scenes and weird language makes for a waste of time -- and money.

The Stir put together some of the most hilarious reviews of "50 Shades of Grey" for readers to check out. Here are some of the best:

"If you take out the parts where the female character is blushing or chewing her lips, the book will be down to about 50 pages. Almost on every single page, there is a whole section devoted to her blushing, chewing her lips or wondering 'Jeez' about something or another."

"The author makes sex and eroticism as boring as mowing lawns."

"This novel (if, a bunch of childish, repetition words comprise a novel) is the biggest load of crap I've come across since visiting a dairy farm in Wisconsin when I was 7. My tabby cat could write better sex scenes than this woman."

"I found myself thinking 'Twilight, plus some spanking, minus the sparkly vampires.' Here, I'll save you all some time (SPOILER ALERT): Once upon a time... I'm Ana. I'm clumsy and naive. I like books. I dig this guy. He couldn't possibly like me. He's rich. I wonder if he's gay? His eyes are gray. Super gray. Intensely gray. Intense AND gray. Serious and gray. Super gray. Dark and gray. [insert 100+ other ways to say 'gray eyes' here] I blush. I gasp. He touches me 'down there.' I gasp again. He gasps. We both gasp. I blush some more. I gasp some more. I refer to my genitals as 'down there' a few more times. I blush some more. Sorry, I mean I 'flush' some more. I bite my lip. He gasps a lot more. More gasping. More blushing/flushing. More lip biting. Still more gasping. The end."

"This book is absolute and complete garbage in every possible sense. Try to imagine of the smell of a large crate full of month-old eggs in the dumpster behind a questionable greasy spoon diner on a muggy, sticky August morning. With a dead skunk on top. And garbage juice dripping onto the pavement. And a drunk guy urinating onto the whole thing. Now imagine rolling in that dumpster. Naked. That's how this book made me feel."

Obviously the haters are just as vocal as the lovers of "50 Shades of Grey."

These readers all have a point. Christian Grey does sound messed up and could easily be like Ted Bundy, all tall, dark and handsome but with a murderous mind.

The repetition in the novels would be annoying to anyone and the idea that this naive character named Ana would do all this with this crazy man is beyond belief.

But, (most) women love it. Some say it has even changed their lives.

Where do you stand? Are you a "50 Shades of Grey" lover or hater?

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'50 Shades of Grey' is Full of "Crap"

http://entertainment.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474981484713

by Aida Ekberg

July 19, 2012 01:15 PM EDT

There have been arguments that 50 Shades of Grey is laughable because of its portrayal of a girl's first time - virgins might walk away with extremely unrealistic expectations after reading the erotic novel about sex god Christian Grey making a very convincing argument about why an inexperienced college student should become his sex slave.

All you have to do is watch the uncomfortable show Virgin Diaries to see how awkward that first time can really be.

However, the book isn't just full of crap because it has virgin Anastasia Steele having orgasm after orgasm during her first time - the book is literally full of "crap."

The Mirror has helpfully compiled a list of every instance of Ana saying "Holy crap" in 50 Shades of Grey and the other books in E.L. James' series, which is a whopping 71 times. The newspaper editors were probably going to make a list of every time Ana's "inner goddess" is mentioned in the books but decided that they only needed a little filler, not pages of nonsense.

Here are some of the best "Holy crap" lines:

"We're talking about cheese... Holy crap."

"Holy crap. His hands are really gripping my hair. I can do this. I push even harder and, in a moment of extraordinary confidence, I bare my teeth."

"Holy crap... I need to take my pill."

"Holy crap! My inner goddess removes her iPod earbuds and starts listening with rapt attention."

"Holy crap, he's holding a cotton ball!"

And that sums the book series up fairly nicely, don't you think?

So obviously whoever plays Anastasia Steele in the 50 Shades movie is going to have to get her catchphrase down. This means that Peter Griffin from Family Guy or zombie Peter Boyle (R.I.P.) from Everybody Loves Raymond would be perfect for the part.

So can you think of any twenty-something actresses that actually use Ana's catchphrase? It might come naturally to country gal Miley Cyrus.

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"Benign" Christian Patriarchy and 50 Shades
of Grey: A Response to Jared Wilson
http://thepietythatliesbetween.blogspot.com/2012/07/benign-christian-patriarchy-and-50.html
by Eric Reitan
July 18, 2012

A few days ago at The Gospel Coalition's blog, Jared Wilson offered a critique of the bestselling erotic novel, 50 Shades of Grey--in the form of an extended quotation from Douglas Wilson's book Fidelity: What it Means to be a One-Woman Man.

 

The quoted passage, in essence, blames the "twisted" forms of domination and submission between men and women--including rape and sadomasochism--on our failure to accept the God-ordained domination/submission relationship that, supposedly, is part of the natural reality between men and women. Denying and suppressing this hierarchical relationship--the one supposedly endorsed in the Bible--leads to this hierarchy coming out in twisted and violent forms.

In other words, the pursuit of genuine equality between the sexes, the critique of fixed gender-role expectations and the requirement that men and women uniformly be shoe-horned into these roles and relationship structures regardless of the unique features of their personalities and relationships...all of this is, apparently, leading men to rape and abuse women rather than benevolently cherish and protect their precious submissive little feminine flowers.

It seems that lots of people were horrified by this message. Jared Wilson was perplexed by the horrified responses and so, today, offered a response.

His response was utterly inadequate. It certainly missed the problems that I have with his (and Douglas Wilson's) original message.

So what did Jared Wilson say? He corrected those who seemed to  think, mistakenly, that the quoted passages as in some way explicitly endorsed  violence against women. In responding to those who found something misogynistic in Douglas Wilson's claim that the male/female sexual relationship is naturally about male "conquest" and "colonization," Jared Wilson quoted the other Wilson's response, which accused everyone making this charge of possessing "a poetic ear like three feet of tinfoil." He said some other things, too, but you get the point.

Neither Wilson seems to get it. So let me try my hand at explaining why the Wilsons' message is so horrifying. And while I could spend hours on the subject, I will limit myself to two features of the message that are particularly bothersome. One I will discuss at some length. The other I will treat only briefly.

1. The message treats gender egalitarianism as the problem and gender hierarchy as the solution, but it seems clear that the reverse is far more likely to be true.

Wilson and Wilson explicitly support the idea that the pursuit of egalitarianism in heterosexual partnerships is central to the problem of distorted and aggressive sexuality. Here's the money quote from Douglas Wilson:

In other words, however we try, the sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts....But we cannot make gravity disappear just because we dislike it, and in the same way we find that our banished authority and submission comes back to us in pathological forms. This is what lies behind sexual “bondage and submission games,” along with very common rape fantasies. Men dream of being rapists, and women find themselves wistfully reading novels in which someone ravishes the “soon to be made willing” heroine. Those who deny they have any need for water at all will soon find themselves lusting after polluted water, but water nonetheless.

In other words, the Wilsons take it that the pursuit of gender equality amounts to repression of an inescapable reality, and that such repression leads, in Freudian fashion, to dysfunctional expressions of what has been repressed. Men rape because men need to have authority over their women, and when they are denied (presumably by the feminists and other supporters of gender equality) the opportunity to get this need met in the benign patriarchy of a head-of-household family, they're going to get it by fantasizing about raping women, or maybe by actually doing it.

Likewise, women who don't have the opportunity to submit to benevolent patriarchs are going to fantasize about being raped (and, dare we say, take risky actions that make themselves more vulnerable to the real thing, thus opening up the door to a whole new "Wilsonian" avenue for blaming rape victims?).

This is the message that makes me want to vomit.

Part of the problem is that this message assumes that the male desire to have authority over women is an essential part of the human condition as opposed to a culturally malleable one.

It isn't. A big part of the reason I know it isn't is because I don't personally have this desire. Somehow, being socialized by egalitarian Norwegian parents, I ended up not wanting to wield patriarchal authority, benevolent or otherwise, in my intimate relationships. I suppose the Wilsons will say I'm in denial--but that's easy to say. If I am in denial, it isn't a denial that has produced any bondage and submission games or dreams of being a rapist. It has, instead, generated a relationship with my spouse that is characterized by mutual respect and compassion and care, in which the relational dynamic isn't "authority and submission" but egalitarian partnership.

What do the Wilsons offer in support of their essentialist view of gender differences? Metaphors about sex. But do these metaphors simply describe the reality of sexuality, or do they create and nurture a certain perception of a reality that is far more malleable? What would our culture be like if we talked about sex in terms of the woman "enveloping" while the man is "enveloped"? The woman "consuming" while the man is "consumed"? Are these metaphors any less descriptive of the reality of sex? Isn't it more the case that the metaphors we use are cultural realities that help to shape what sex becomes?

In the face of this, I suppose the Wilsons may point to biological evidence that speaks to generalizable differences between human males and females on not just the physiological level but the psychological one. But what do these differences demonstrate, if anything?

Even if there may be some psychological generalizations that can be made about the human sexes--dispositions that are more frequent in one sex than the other because of biological differences--such generalizations are not universal. There are men and women who don't fit these generalizations, and who suffer when they are culturally expected to fit.

Furthermore, psychological dispositions are subject not only to cultural accentuation but also to cultural muting. Even if there is a tendency for the more testosterone-laden sex to be more aggressive when they don't get there way, what follows? A gender-role division that instructs women to submit to their husbands and tells men that they have the authority to get their way is a recipe for a relationship in which men consistently impose their wills and their wives consistently acquiesce. In other words, a relational template of this sort, if it is paired with a biological tendency for greater male aggressiveness, is likely to lead to a situation in which women's needs and interests will be consistently suppressed in favor of their husbands' preferences.

A gender pattern that affirms male authority and female submission makes it less likely, not more likely, that husbands will respect the needs of their intimate partners. It doesn't matter if endorsing that relationship pattern is paired with an injunction for men to be benign monarchs over their wives. Yes, such an injunction may soften the harmful effects of hierarchy; but it doesn't follow that the hierarchy doesn't have harmful effects. Kings who were invested with authority to rule, unconstrained by others with equal power to impose checks on that authority, would sometimes listen to the moral message that they should use their power benignly. But not always. After all, power corrupts, as they say.

Here's another way to think about it: In a world in which male authority and female submission is the cultural norm, women are more vulnerable to exploitation by their husbands. Many men are persons of good will who'll resist the temptation to exploit their wives; but in such a culture, women will be more dependent on the good will of their husbands because of their increased cultural vulnerability to exploitation. And if there is a biological tendency for men to be more aggressive in the pursuit of their desires, there will also be a temptation on the part of many men to take advantage of their wives' vulnerability.

Conservatives insist that falling prey to such temptation would be wrong, and that men have a duty to be benevolent patriarchs rather than abusive ones. But conservatives Christians like the Wilsons also believe in original sin. And we don't realistically deal with the reality of original sin by setting up social structures and institutions that increase the temptation to sin and make it easier to get away with it. Rather, we realistically confront our human propensity to fall prey to temptation by setting up conditions which make it easier to "avoid the near occasion of sin" and harder to avoid overt negative consequences.

If we want those with a disposition towards domination and oppression not to dominate and oppress, we don't set up social institutions in which domination and oppression are made easier. We set up social institutions that discourage domination and oppression. We set up gender socialization that mutes tendencies to dominate and oppress and builds up the sense of self-worth and dignity required to stand up to oppression or walk away from oppressive situations when they arise. Getting drummed with the message, "Submit to your husbands," doesn't do that.

In other words, Wilson and Wilson have identified an important contributor to the problem of women's exploitation and oppression, and they have touted it as the solution. And they have put their finger on one of the chief remedies to women's exploitation and oppression--namely, the cultivation and nurture of a culture of gender equality that expects and encourages egalitarian intimate partnerships--and declared this to be the problem.

2. Wilson and Wilson are trying to hold everyone hostage to their view of gender relationships.

The other reason the Wilsons' message is so disturbing is that it amounts to an attempt to hold hostage everyone with views about human sexual relationships different from their own. It is one thing to demonstrate that denying a view has dangerous consequences. It is something else again to simply assert that it does, to a large extent in the teeth of evidence to the contrary, in the hope that fear of dangerous consequences will lead to conformity.

I don't know if the Wilsons were intentionally doing the latter--but they sure haven't done the former. And the effect comes much closer to the latter. Basically, the message seems to be this: "If you don't see things our way, then you are suppressing reality in a way that is magnifying the abusive exploitation of women." We'd better do things their way--resist our egalitarian impulses--or more women will be violated. If we don't toe the line and make sure we wrestle every relationship into the particular mold that they read into the Bible, then we have only ourselves to blame for the violence against women in the world.

As if rape were less common when patriarchy was the uncontested norm.

(For more about my own experience with an egalitarian relationship, see my next post.)

Love, Hell, and Trampolines: In Conversation with Rob Bell

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2012/07/05/love-hell-and-trampolines-in-conversation-with-rob-bell/

by J.R. Daniel Kirk

July 5, 2012

Comments

A couple weeks ago, I was alerted to the fact that the Rob Bell Reader for Kindle was selling for just the right price on Amazon. Which is to say, of course, that it was free (as it still is today, as it is also at Barnes and Ignoble for Nook and in the iTunes store for whatever people read on when they buy at the iTunes store).

Having never read anything Bell has written prior to this, I figured this was as good an excuse as any to see what he’s up to. The book is forthrightly offered as a teaser for the books Bell has published with HarperOne and Zondervan (both part of the same parent company). Each of the five chapters is a selection from one of Bell’s earlier books: Love Wins, Velvet Elvis, Sex God, Jesus Wants to Save Christians, and Drops Like Stars.

Here’s my bottom line: Bell offers a compelling overarching theological vision, peppered with various detailed exegetical and/or theological claims that make me wince.

The book’s selection from Love Wins is Bell’s exposition of the Prodigal Son parable. It contains some vivid, beautiful insights about our lives as they stand in relation to God:

Hell is our refusal to trust God’s retelling of our story. We all have our version of events. Who we are, who we aren’t what we’ve done, what that means for our future. Our worth, value, significance. The things we believe about ourselves that we cling to despite the pain and agony they’re causing us.

This description of the brothers, each needing the father to retell their stories as stories of beloved sons, each refusing in their own way to believe it at different points in the story, is packed with insight. The brothers both have skewed visions. And the father offers them each a new story of acceptance and love.

But one wonders whether this metaphorical description of “hell” is really to the point when reading an author who is claiming to make a point about “hell” as a potential destiny for human beings who reject the work of God on their behalf.

We believe all sorts of things about ourselves. What the gospel does is confront our version of our story with God’s version of our story.

Yes. That.

Toward the end, Bell comes around to a stronger argument about Hell. If this God we serve is the one who is constantly rewriting our stories of guilt and shame with his story of peace and grace and forgiveness and love, then how can this same God turn on a dime and cast into Hell those who refuse?

What sort of grace and forgiveness and love are those?

What kind of God is that?

This is an important question for us to wrestle with.

How one understands the gospel they claim, and the God who offers it, will inevitably impact how a person lives. Bell joins the ranks of those who call us away from a gospel that’s too small: a focus on “getting in” that does not entail a whole new life, is a truncated gospel at best.

We’re invited to trust the retelling now, so that we’re already taking part in the kind of love that can overtake the whole world.

Bell presents a captivating vision, and it is not without its challenge to us to examine our shortcomings. This is not just about “inclusion,” but calling us to repentance as well. He writes these challenging words:

The second truth, one that is much more subtle and much more toxic as well, is that the older brother is separated from his father as well, even though he’s stayed home. His problem is his “goodness.”

His rule-keeping and law-abiding confidence in his own works has actually served to distance him from his father.

The parable is, in fact, told in Luke 15 to a bunch of older brother types who are grumpy about the folks Jesus is celebrating. Bell does a great job of bringing this back around to us, the presumed insiders, to challenge how we posture ourselves toward the rest. Ok, so that was just one chapter of the reader.

But perhaps its illustrative: Bell has a penetrating theological vision that is worth learning from, even when we find ourselves disagreeing along the way.