A famous prayer from Teresa Avila that I regularly return to:

Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing away:
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things
Whoever has God lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.

What has happened to sex as a result of the sexual revolution? 

According to Louise Perry in The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, sex has become "disenchanted," stripped of its special, sacred character. Sex is "no big deal." So don't get hung up about it. It's "just sex," after all.

As Perry will argue, the disenchantment of sex has a relational and emotional price, a cost mostly paid by women. Perry making this argument:

It is in their interest [the Hugh Hefners of the world, and playboys like him] to push a particularly radical idea about sex that has come out of the sexual revolution and has proved remarkably influential, despite its harms. This is the idea that sex is nothing more than a leisure activity, invested with meaning only if the participants choose to give it meaning. Proponents of this idea argue that sex has no intrinsic specialness, that it is not innately different from any other kind of social interaction, and that it can therefore be commodified without any trouble. The sociologist Max Weber described the 'disenchantment' of the natural world that resulted from the Enlightenment, as the ascendence of rationality stripped away the sense of magic...In much the same way, sex has been disenchanted in the post-1960s West, leaving us with a society that (ostensibly) believes sex means nothing.

Sexual disenchantment is a natural consequence of the liberal privileging of freedom over all other values, because, if you want to be utterly free, you have to take aim at any kind of social restrictions that limit you, particularly the belief that sex has some unique, intangible value--some specialness that is difficult to rationalise...But when we attempt to disenchant sex, and so pretend that this particular act is neither uniquely wonderful nor uniquely violating, then there is another kind of cost.

That cost falls disproportionately on women...

Why that cost falls disproportionately upon women, according to Perry, is something we will soon get to in this series. Today just a comment about the enchantment and disenchantment of sex.

As you might expect, as the author of Hunting Magic Eels: Recovering an Enchanted Faith in a Skeptical Age, I sat up and took notice when Perry described modern sex as "disenchanted." What is interesting in Perry's argument is that disenchantment is typically described as resulting from reason and the advance of science. But Perry makes the point that liberalism, in its quest for freedom, has also been a source of disenchantment. And we see this perhaps most especially in the area of sex. Sexual "emancipation" has to disregard any notion that sex is special or sacred. 

The word "holy" means "to set apart." Anything we experience as sacred or special requires some form of "set apartness." It's a simple idea. If, say, you have a special set of dishes you only pull them out for Thanksgiving. And you only get a birthday cake one day of the year. For something to be "special" it needs some separation from the everyday. This "set apartness" is what separates the sacred from the profane, the special from the ordinary, and the enchanted from the disenchanted.

Perry's point is that when sex is stripped of its sacred, special and enchanted "set apartness" there are some relational and emotional costs. To be "liberated" sex has to become meaningless. So if you want sex to be "more," as emotionally and relationally meaning-full, well, you're just going to have to eat those feelings. As Perry will describe, women are the ones generally eating those emotional and relational feelings, carrying the costs of meaningless sex. Men, by contrast, benefit from the disenchantment of sex. Meaningless sex facilitates a transactional approach to sex that suits men much more than women.

So, yes, the sexual revolution has knocked down taboos and liberated us. But at a cost. Which raises a natural question: Who is paying that price?

A long-running meditation on this blog and in my most recent book Hunting Magic Eels is the issue of perception in beholding the kingdom of God. Given that interest, I was stuck in my daily Bible reading today how Jesus frames his use of parables in deeply perceptual terms.

For example, after sharing the Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13, Jesus' disciples ask about why Jesus uses parables in his teaching. In answer, Jesus says the following. Note the perceptual themes:

He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. This is why I speak to them in parables:

'Though seeing, they do not see;
though hearing, they do not hear or understand.'

In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:

'You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
For this people’s heart has become calloused;
they hardly hear with their ears,
and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.’

But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it."

The kingdom is right in front of us but we fail to see it. A message is being spoken and we fail to hear it. In fact, the Parable of the Sower itself is a parable about perception. The seed of the kingdom falls upon the heart, but the heart, like the rocky soil, can fail to discern its presence. 

If you've read  Hunting Magic Eels this is the point about "attention blindness," God being the "dancing gorilla" like in the research of the psychologist Daniel Simons. The kingdom can be directly in front of us, clear as day, yet we fail to see it. 

The reason I keep returning to these insights is twofold. First, as I describe in  Hunting Magic Eels we tend to think that crises of faith are about belief. We have troubling believing in God. But the deeper issue might rather be a problem of perception, having eyes to see and ears to hear. If so, as I describe in Hunting Magic Eels, perception can be shaped by practices of attention. We can spend less time trying to get people to believe in God and more in helping them see God.

Secondly, we also tend to think of Christianity as a moral drama, an effort in moral self-improvement. But what if faith is primarily perceptual? That is, if we could see clearly might moral fruits, like the good soil, follow naturally, of a course? Might our moral struggles be less the outcome of a depraved "sin nature" than in cloudy perception? Basically, I think if we could see ourselves and each other clearly our ability to love would flow more naturally. That we have to "force" love suggests that we might not be seeing things very clearly.

One final reflection about my time at Taizé that I couldn't squeeze into my prior posts.

I've described how music is, perhaps, the singular charism of the Taizé community. As I've shared, the simple, repetitive songs of Taizé, often sung in Latin, bring the experience of ancient chant into the modern world. 

Another example of this is how some Taizé songs employ drone notes. Drone notes, vocal or instrumental, were a feature of ancient Christian chant. 

An example of this at Taizé occurred each day when prayer requests were offered with the singing of "Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison" ("Lord, have mercy, Christ, have mercy."). After singing the words "Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison" a drone note would be held while a petition was chanted by one of the brothers. You can listen to an example of this here. Notice how the drone notes are held between the chanted petitions. 

Holding this drone note was new to me. And experiencing a drone note with hundreds of voices in the room was a physical experience. You could feel the drone in your chest, like your body was a cave being filled with a vibration. With drone notes your body becomes incorporated into the harmony. 

I don't have the best musical ear, so I often would have to "find" the drone notes after each singing of "Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison." And this seeking and finding of the drone note became a sort of parable for me during the week.

Specifically, as I said, as the harmony droned you could feel it in your chest. Feeling as much as listening, I would hum to myself to find the harmony, musically locating the resonance. Eventually, sometimes sooner sometimes not, I would find the note and settle into it. The experience of "finding" the drone note was like stepping into the flow of a moving river. The drone was a both location and momentum. You "found" the note, like a wayward prodigal returning home, and were picked up and carried along, like a raft slipping into the current of a river. 

This experience became for me a metaphor for the spiritual life. God is a drone note, ever-present, location and momentum, running through all of life. A harmony holding all things. Everyday I search for that drone note. Some days I find it sooner, some days not. All my spiritual practices are about finding and dropping into that resonance. And when I find it, it is like pushing off from the shore to join the gentle flow of the river. It is like a wayward prodigal returning home. 

Last post in this series, reflecting on the spiritual gifts of the Taizé community. 

I've mentioned that Eucharist is celebrated every morning at Taizé during the morning service. And in their Eucharistic practices we find another charism of Taizé.

In an increasingly post-Christian world it seems that many churches face a choice. On the one hand, there is the move to make Christianity more inclusive and welcoming by making everything in the faith mean less. Christian faith is therapeutically demythologized, so you don't have to believe anything. Christian praxis simply becomes social justice, so your ethics can remain exactly as they are. And so on.

Pushing against this trend, the other choice is to make everything mean more. Double-down on all that is the weird, supernatural, and doctrinal in the faith. Invest in the strangeness. Instead of making Christianity fit in with the reigning moral and therapeutic consensus of the world, stand apart from the world. Draw a line and make a contrast. 

In my own faith journey during the season of this blog (2007 to the present), I've made a journey from the former to the latter option. Early in the history of the blog, I was a part of the trend to make Christianity mean less so that it could be more inclusive and welcoming. Today, however, I see the pointlessness of that activity and now stand as a critic of those progressive voices still engaged in this project. This is a part of why I call myself a post-progressive Christian. 

And yet, post-progressive doesn't mean anti-progressive. I still want Christianity to be inclusive and welcoming. I just want it to accomplish that by making Christianity mean more rather than less. Trouble is, you just don't see a lot of examples of this. Making Christianity mean more often involves barriers and boundaries. This makes a lot of sociological and psychological sense. If you want something to mean more, to experience something as unique and special, you have to set it aside and protect it. Imagine a cherished heirloom like china dishes. You put those dishes in a cabinet and don't use them very often. A similar logic holds in the religious world as well. Just look at the book of Leviticus. 

So you appreciate the predicament. How do you make Christianity mean more yet keep it open and inclusive? That question brings me back to Taizé.

In my estimation, in their Eucharistic practices, Taizé pulls off the trick of making something mean more while extending an open invitation. Eucharist means more at Taizé compared to most churches. You begin each day with the celebration. And the liturgy around the ritual is rich and beautiful. At Taizé, the mystery of the Eucharist is elevated rather than diminished. 

The practices here are even more interesting. Accurate details are hard to confirm, so any knowledgable readers can clarify, but my understanding (and online research) suggest that the bread and wine offered at Taizé have been consecrated in a Catholic service that takes place prior to the morning prayer service. Blessed bread is available for the unbaptized, but almost everyone in the service--Catholic and non-Catholic, baptized an unbaptized--go to the brothers during communion. Given Taizé's call toward ecumenical reconciliation, this practice isn't discouraged. So, if I have the details right, Taizé is the one place where non-Catholics, and even the unbaptized, can receive consecrated bread and wine.

If I have these details right, and the Taizé community doesn't frown on or discourage this practice, this is another, very unique, example of making something mean more while also making it radically open. If the bread and wine at Taizé are consecrated, Eucharist can't get any "more" than that. And if Taizé is practicing an open table, then you can't get any more "open" than that.

Regardless, even the bread is not consecrated in a Catholic mass, the daily morning liturgy around Eucharist at Taizé makes the ritual mean more rather than less. You experience the "real presence" of Christ. And the welcome extended to the Table is generous and hospitable to all.

When you worship at Taizé you see how it is possible to make Christian life and practice mean more without it becoming exclusive, judgmental and insular. You don't see it very often, but more can mean open. And in my estimation, this More + Open option provides rich evangelistic opportunities in a post-Christian world. To be sure, I have some readers (you know who you are) who will push back on this, arguing that More Means Closed is the only faithful way forward. (A voice like Pope Benedict comes to mind here.) But as a post-progressive (rather than anti-progressive) Christian, I think More + Open, as you experience at Taizé, has a lot of evangelistic upside in an increasingly post-Christian world and provides better spiritual formation for churches whose insularity makes them vulnerable to dysfunctional leadership and prone to culture war capture.

Here's an image from Taizé that has stuck with me: hundreds of teenagers walking on their knees toward a candle-encircled cross on the floor. And then, upon reaching the cross, laying their head upon it for extended minutes of prayer and adoration.

The image struck me as you don't often see hundreds of teenagers in the United States walking on their knees to lay their head upon a cross. But this happens at Taizé every Friday evening, all through the year.

Which brings us to another charism of Taizé. 

In the last post I talked about how the "strategy" of Taizé is simply putting something beautiful before young people and letting that beauty pull them in. But I also hinted that something more is going on, and you see it in the Friday evening service at Taizé as the young people make their way to the cross on their knees.

That "something more" is mystery and reverence. Beauty captures your attention at Taizé, but that beauty is directing you toward something deeper, the Mystery that sits behind the liturgy. That mystery evokes a sense of reverence. And in response, we fall on our knees and prostrate ourselves.

The charism of Taizé is that they welcome young people into this experience of mystery and reverence. As you sing the lovely songs and sit in silence intimations of a deeper reality begin to pull at you and woo you. You sense that Something Holy is here, close-by. Some Hidden Reality is at hand. A Sacred Mystery hangs in the air.

When I look at young people in the United States they seem to be lacking this experience of reverence. Not the capacity for reverence, we all have the capacity, but the opportunity, season and space for reverence. Churches in the states try to do two things with young people: energy and relationship. By energy I mean contemporary worship services, with big sounds and emotional intensity. By relationships I mean trying to help young people connect with each other and with the church. Both of these things are great, and effective in their own way. Especially relationships. But young people, especially with social media, are connected relationally in all sorts of ways that makes the church just one among many opportunities to find relationships. Same goes with energy and excitement.

But what the church can do uniquely in the world is create a space to encounter mystery and reverence. There's not many spaces in our world where the holy and sacred can be experienced. Taizé understands this where most churches do not. At Taizé teens walk on their knees toward a cross. I doubt most teens in American churches have ever knelt, even once, in their life. Let alone walk on their knees for many yards toward something sacred. But that isn't because our young people lack the need, ache or hunger for the sacred. We've just never put before them something that would make them want to fall on their knees. We're too busy entertaining or "relating" to them. 

Our young people live in a reverence-impoverished and mystery-scarce world, and the church does little to fill that void. That Taizé fills this void is a part of their spiritual gift.

Louise Perry begins The Case Against the Sexual Revolution by comparing and contrasting the sexual histories of two American icons, Hugh Hefner and Marilyn Monroe. I don't need to recount the stories of Hefner and Monroe, you likely know enough to appreciate why Perry deploys this contrast right out the gate. Specifically, the "benefits" and "liberations" of the sexual revolution have not been shared equally between men and women. This is Perry's big overarching theme: the sexual revolution has been very, very good for men. Case in point, Hugh Hefner. But the sexual revolution has not been so good for women. Case in point, Marilyn Monroe.

As I mentioned last week, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution is not a Christian book. Perry's criticism of the sexual revolution comes from a feminist perspective, a perspective that many conservative Christians will find difficult. Perry's argument will have an asymmetrical feel for many readers given that her concern is how the sexual revolution has allowed men to hurt and exploit women, the same way that Marilyn Monroe was exploited. I expect many conservative male readers of the book will chaff at this feminist asymmetry. But like I said last week, I think this is a strength of Perry's book. If you want your criticism of the sexual revolution to be persuasive in today's culture, it has to come from within the feminist camp where the sexual revolution has been, and continues to be, marketed as "win" for women, as emancipatory. Perry's agenda to attack that marketing on its own terms. 

Here's how Perry frames her location in these debates at the start of Chapter 1 "Sex Must Be Taken Seriously":

This book is an attempt to reckon with [the changes wrought by the sexual revolution], and to do so while avoiding the accounts typically offered by liberals addicted to a narrative of progress or conservatives addicted to a narrative of decline. I don't believe that the last sixty years or so should be understood as a period of exclusive progress or exclusive decline, because the sexual revolution has not freed all of us, but it has freed some of us, and selectively, and at a price...

My complaint is focused more against liberals than against conservatives for a very personal reason: I used to believe the liberal narrative. As a younger woman, I held the same political opinions as most other millennial urban graduates in the West--in other words, I conformed to the beliefs of my class, including liberal feminist ideas about porn, BDSM, hook-up culture, evolutionary psychology, and the sex trade ... I let go of these beliefs because of my own life experiences, including the period immediately after university spent working at a rape crisis centre. If the old quip tells us that a 'conservative is just a liberal who has been mugged by reality', then I suppose, at least in my case, that a post-liberal feminist is just a liberal who has witnessed the reality of male violence up close.

So, readers of this series beware, the issue of male violence will be at the leading edge of Perry's argument throughout the book. And if that focus seems biased and asymmetrical, that is my point about Perry's feminist (or post-liberal feminist) starting point. Perry is going to argue that the sexual revolution has been very, very good for men, but very, very bad for women. (Well, stated more clearly, very, very good for a certain kind of man, the Hugh Hefners of the world and those who would emulate him. From a Christian perspective, the sexual revolution has been bad for men as well, as we’ll come to see.) As Perry will argue, the uneven outcomes of the sexual revolution have to do with the distinctive and peculiar sexual psychologies of the genders, psychologies rooted in a long adaptive and evolutionary history. As Perry goes on to describe the questions at the heart of her book:

In this book I'm going to ask--and seek to answer--some questions about freedom that liberal feminism can't or won't answer: Why do so many women desire a kind of sexual freedom that so obviously serves male interests? What if our bodies and minds aren't as malleable as we might like to think? What do we lose when we prioritise freedom above all else? And, above all, how should we act, given all this?

As I mentioned in the last post, Taizé is focused upon young people. Thousands of young people visit Taizé each year, sharing prayers, worship, and talks with the monks.

Because of this mission, the grounds and facilities of Taizé are mixture of monastery and youth camp. The countryside and village of Taizé are lovely. And on the Taizé grounds there is a lovely woods and pond.

But access to that woods and pond is only available from 2:00 to 4:30. The reason for this is obvious. If you have hundreds of teenagers on site you don't want them sneaking off into the woods at all hours of the day or night. 

Beyond controlling access to various parts of the grounds, the facilities themselves are utilitarian. The Church of Reconciliation is filled with beauty, from stained glass to icons, but the structure itself is merely functional. The true beauty of Taizé are the thrice daily worship services. The aesthetics of the liturgy is what draws you to Taizé.

Pondering this during my week at Taizé, one of the charisms of the community, in my estimation, is how they have managed to scale a contemplative retreat.

By and large, contemplative retreats tend to be small or even individual affairs. I've done retreats at monasteries, and I'm often the only visitor there, or among only a handful. Taizé, by contrast, has hundreds of people on site, sometimes thousands. And most of these people are teenagers. You'd think having a contemplative retreat with thousands of teens would be impossible. But Taizé pulls it off. A charism of Taizé is that they manage to deliver contemplative retreats for the masses.

How do they pull this off? 

It's pretty simple.

Three times a day the bells ring, calling everyone to the church. As you approach the church volunteers stand outside holding "Silence" signs. You enter the church silently. You pick up a songbook and the readings for the service and find a place to sit. Prayer stools are widely available. People sit crosslegged, on the stool as a short chair, or use the stool to kneel. (I used the stool to kneel.) As the bells ring the brothers, robbed in white, enter and take their places in the middle of the space. After a pause, the liturgy begins. Songs, prayers, and scripture readings. And most distinctively, a ten minute silence. During the final song the brothers process out of the space, and a volunteer continues to lead songs for as long as people remain to sing. 

Also, in the morning service there is Eucharist. The brothers move out into the crowd with bread and wine and the people find the nearest pair. The Friday and Saturday night services also have special elements, which I'll write about later.

And that's basically it. There is a teaching component to Taizé, where each day at 10:00 a brother gives a talk and small groups discuss it in the afternoon. But the heart of the contemplative experience at Taizé are the three daily worship services. 

The genius of Taizé, largely because of their music, is to simply have three beautiful contemplative services a day, along with morning Eucharist, and invite you to share them. That's it. You get a big enough building to allow hundreds of people to share those services and you have the ability to share contemplation with the masses. 

And a key word here is beautiful. It's the distinctive music that draws people to Taizé. The "strategy" of the Taizé community, in its appeal to youth, is to create something simple and beautiful and invite young people into that beauty, allowing it to gently draw them in over the week. 

But there's also something more than beauty. It's beauty+. Which I'll try to describe in the next post.

I've mentioned I spent a week with the Taizé community this past summer. I was on retreat there with two dear friends, Hannah and Jojo. Alert readers of Hunting Magic Eels will recognize Hannah and Jojo from the chapter on Celtic Christianity. 

I love visiting different faith communities and traditions. One of the things I try to discern in experiencing a new church, community, denomination, or tradition is its special charism, its distinctive spiritual gift. 

For example, when you look at the start of a monastic movement the founder and founding generation had a special gift and calling. That gift and calling is the charism of the movement, its unique anointing by the Holy Spirit to bring some particular aspect of the kingdom of God into view. 

So while I spent time with the Taizé community I pondered its charism, its unique spiritual gift. 

In this post I'll share the widely known charisms of Taizé, and in three posts to follow two gifts less talked about. 

Many people will recognize four distinctive charisms of Taizé:

1. Music
2. Ecumenism
3. Internationalism
4. Mission to young people

If people know anything about Taizé, it tends to be the music. Taizé is known for songs based upon simple phrases, often from Scripture, set to lovely, haunting melodies, repeated over and over. Taizé music brings the meditative aspects of ancient chant into the modern world. You can listen to a sample here, and the music can be found online and across all music streaming services.

Beyond music, Taizé is an ecumenical monastic movement. The vibe of Taizé is "catholic," but Brother Roger, the founder of the community, started the movement as a Reformed Presbyterian. And yet, later in life, Brother Roger received the Eucharist from two Catholic popes, and participated in the Eucharist daily at Taizé. This is a bit of a mystery, given that non-Catholics are not to participate in the Catholic Eucharist. This is just one illustration of the denominational blurring you experience at Taizé, where Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant elements intermix and faith traditions from around the world worship together. Overcoming the factionalism within Christianity was important to Brother Roger, and his ecumenical spirit is alive and well in the community.

A third spiritual gift of Taizé is its international and global embrace. Everyday at Taizé the Scripture readings and songs are shared in multiple languages. If you pick up a Taizé songbook, most of the songs won't be in English. This can be difficult for those attending Taizé. You can't just jump in and sing all the songs full voice. Most of the songs aren't in your language and it will take a few days to learn them. Some won't be mastered by the end of the week. The week we were at Taizé many Germans were visiting, so the song choices for the week leaned toward German. And while there is a bit of desolation with struggling to sing every song, Taizé is one of those places where you get to experience Revelation 7.9: "After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands."

A fourth charism of Taizé is its focus on youth. Taizé is mainly for those aged 15-29. Adults are welcome at Taizé, but only during certain weeks of the year, not in large groups, and only once a year. Taizé is mainly for the thousands of young people who come every year. I'll talk more about this in a coming post.

This list of charisms isn't exhaustive. Those who have been to Taizé will likely want to add their own observations about what they think are the distinctive spiritual gifts of the Taizé community. I have my own thoughts about what could be added to the list. I'll share three of those thoughts in the coming posts.

Yesterday I shared a poem about my first 24 hours dealing with the silences during the thrice daily prayers with the brothers of Taizé. As the poem recounts, my initial experiences were confronting a noisy mind combined with an acute self-consciousness, watching myself trying to be contemplative. 

But starting the second day, and throughout the week, I slowly grew into the silences and began to anticipate and enjoy them. 

Let me, though, rush to say this. I've heard many, many contemplative types wax on rhapsodically about their experience of silence. But I'm not a silence guy. I'm a thinker. My mind is working on a lot of stuff. Silence isn't my nature groove. So when I say that I began to anticipate and enjoy the silence that's all I mean. Nothing huge, momentous and spectacular. Just enjoyment when we reached that season in our prayers.

What did I enjoy?

It's hard to explain, but starting the second day I simply tried to relax and let my being (my heart, my mind, my spirit) reach out toward God. And eventually, I would make contact. I'd make contact with that Loving Presence. Again, this is every hard to describe. The best Biblical way I have of describing it comes from that line in the Psalms, "In your light, we see light." In the silences I began to see the Light in which we see light. 

That was the joy. This reunion each day.

The silence would begin. I would quiet my chattering mind. Stillness would come. An inner calm. I would reach out toward God. And then...the Light. Like a soft sunrise. And my soul would smile and say, "There you are."

In July I was able to make a visit I had long been wanting to make, a week of retreat with the Taizé Community in Taizé, France.

During the thrice a day prayers with the brothers of Taizé, you are invited into ten minutes of silence. I don't typically practice silence as a prayer regimen, so it took me a while to rest into it over the week. The first day, though, was a challenge. It's amazing how noisy your mind is when you stop to notice. It takes some practice to get the mind to quiet down. It took me a solid day.

Anyway, I wrote this poem after my first day at Taizé trying to capture that experience of struggling with the silence:

into the silence:

chattering noise
chasing the rattle
of skeleton thoughts
stones shaking in a rusty can

sitting as audience and actor
a drama a pious pretense
observing my holy playacting

little else
the confession
little else
than this anxious mental spiral

yet in the seams
of a restless mind
a steady Love
glimpsed and eclipsed
glimpsed and eclipsed
a field of sunflowers passing through
paneled rushing windows
along a grey motorway

Today I am starting a new Friday series blogging through Louise Perry's book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century. 

Upon reading The Case Against the Sexual Revolution my initial thought was to do a multi-part book review. But after some reflection, there was so much I wanted to share and say about the book I decided that such a series would be so long that it would be best to go slow and post these reflections on Fridays, where my very long multi-part series typically show up. 

Why spend Fridays blogging through The Case Against the Sexual Revolution?

Over the past few years, I've settled into two convictions. The first is that the sexual revolution, while liberating in many ways, has brought with it a suite of desolations. Desolations that I see in my college students and in the world at large. Given the cultural narratives regarding sex, these desolations are rarely mentioned or discussed. We just don't talk about the dark side of the sexual revolution. I'd like us to talk about that.

I'd like us to talk about this because my second conviction is that the church has failed to say anything compelling to the world about sex. To be sure, conservative Protestants and Catholics continue to preach a traditional Christian sexual ethic. But by and large, that message is not received as "Good News" by the culture at large, especially among the younger generations. The traditional Christian sexual ethic faces a very large persuasion gap. So large the gap seems to be insurmountable, to the point where many conservative Christians have just given up on the culture to become shrill and hysterical culture warriors. (Seriously, the hysteria on the Christian Right is just painful to behold.) 

Progressive Christians, by contrast, have nothing to say about sex, nothing that is different or distinctive from a liberal, humanistic perspective. As they generally do, progressive Christians default to the social justice consensus on such matters. Like many post-Christian elites, the main worry of progressive Christians about sex is shame and stigma, often originating in Christian "purity culture." Consequently, the "Good News" about sex from progressive Christianity is a sex positive message that has nothing to say about sex beyond the ethic of the sexual revolution: Get consent, and do what you will. Don't let shame or guilt get in your way. True to form, progressive Christians show up to conversations with nothing to say, nothing that hasn't been said a million times before. (Seriously, the irrelevancy of the Christian Left is just painful to behold.)

When it comes to sex, the church is failing the world. Progressive Christians have nothing to say, and conservative Christians (if they can stop yelling) are unable to say anything compelling or attractive. And yet, I do think some things need to be said about sex, things that sound like "Good News" to the world. In my estimation, the most pressing evangelistic task in a post-Christian world is the church sharing a compelling and distinctive vision of human sexuality.

I want to blog slowly through Louise Perry's book The Case Against the Sexual Revolution because I think the book can help the church with this evangelistic task. Not to put too fine a point on it, but before you can get to the "Good News" about sex you have to describe the bad news, the desolations of sex in the modern world I mentioned above. Perry's book describes these desolations better than any book I've ever read as she surveys the ruin wrought by the sexual revolution. If the church wants to start a conversation with the world about sex, Perry's book is the place to start.

Before you buy a copy of the book or share this post widely, two comments.

First, Perry is writing the book as a feminist and from a secular, feminist perspective. The Case Against the Sexual Revolution is not a Christian book. To be sure, there are many things in the book that converge upon traditional Christian messages about sex (for example, Chapter 8 is entitled "Marriage is Good"), but the book isn't written by a church person for church people. But in my estimation, this makes the book all the more persuasive, and Perry's feminism helps. By and large, conservative Christians tend to reject feminism, which is a large part of why no one in the culture will ever pay attention to them. Listen, I have many dear friends who are conservative Christians, but Lord, they are the most tone deaf people in the world. If you want to start a conversation with the world about the sexual revolution you have to start with a feminist critique, because the sexual revolution was supposed to be a revolution to liberate women. So that's where the conversation has to start, not with the Bible, but with the question Perry places at the center of her book: Has the sexual revolution been good for women? And the answer to that question has to come from within feminism itself, not from men quoting Bible verses. 

The second thing to note before ordering Perry's book is that the world of contemporary sexuality is very, very dark. As I've said, there are desolations here that no one much likes to talk about. Perry takes an unflinching look into that darkness. We must look as well if we want to start a conversation with the world about sex. Perry's chapters on pornography and the sex trade make for very raw, sexually explicit, and grim reading. Sensitive readers beware. If you've not looked deep into the world of say, PornHub, you're in for a bracing wake up call. The Case Against the Sexual Revolution tells the truth, but that truth is dark, and looking into the darkness can be difficult and traumatizing. But it is well past time to drag some dark things out into the light. Too much is at stake if we say nothing. 

To conclude, again, I think the church finding its voice and message when it comes to the sexual revolution is our most pressing evangelistic task. We can say many things about the gospel to the world, but if we can't say anything compelling about sex we just won't get a hearing. Sex is our great obstacle and challenge. And help is not coming from either conservative of progressive Christians, who have been abject failures when it comes to sharing Good News about sex. 

To be sure, I do despair at times that a better message might be found. But Perry's book gives me hope that there is a way to catch the attention of the culture, which is the vital first step. When people are hurting they tend to look from some relief. In that searching a conversation about sex can be had. Getting the church to that moment is what I hope this series can help with. 

In July Jana and I went to a production of Tennessee Williams' play The Glass Menagerie. It was the first time I'd seen the show, and it sparked a lot of thoughts in my mind.

The play is a classic, but if you haven't seen it there will be some spoilers in what follows. Let me summarize as little of the plot as necessary to make a point I'd like to share.

Set in a poor, small apartment during the Great Depression, the show focuses upon the domestic situation of Amanda (Mother), Tom (son and brother to Laura), and Laura Wingfield (daughter and sister to Tom). 

The "domestic situation" I speak of centers around Laura and her needs. Laura is described as a "cripple" in the play, and she walks with a limp. She is also very, very shy. Living in her own world, Laura spends most of her time collecting glass figurines for her collection, the glass menagerie of the title.

In the vast majority of productions, Laura's shyness is played as extreme introversion. But in the production we saw Laura's social awkwardness and preoccupation with her glass collection seemed more like autism and Asperger's. As Jana observed to me about how Laura is often portrayed, Laura is generally depicted as "an ingénue with a limp." But in the production we saw, Laura was less a sweet, romantic figure and played with more disability, both physical and cognitive. That portrayal of disability matters for my reflections regarding the play. Basically, the love Laura needs shifts away from romance and more toward support and care.

Tom is carrying the family financially, but he hates his job in a factory. He longs to escape, wanting a life of "adventure." But if he leaves, there will be no one to take care of his mother or Laura. That Laura will have no one to take care of her when she is gone is Amanda's great anxiety. Amanda wants to get Laura married off to secure her future. She pushes Tom to invite a friend from work to come to dinner to met Laura in the desperate and unrealistic hope that a romance might be sparked.

Tom's invitation brings Jim, the fourth character, into play. Jim sees Laura's extreme shyness and attempts to encourage her regarding what he diagnoses as an "insecurity complex." Trying to coax her out of her shyness, Jim and Laura dance, and during the dance he breaks her favorite figurine, a glass unicorn. That broken unicorn becomes a symbol of Laura herself when Jim reveals that he's engaged, breaking her heart. 

But the broken unicorn also symbolizes how Jim couldn't see Laura as special in herself, requiring care exactly as she is. Jim thinks he can fix Laura with some tips about self-confidence and self-improvement. Laura would be "better" if she were different. But Laura is a unicorn, and in trying to make her something she is not, Jim breaks her horn,

The play ends with Tom leaving home to seek his life of adventure, abandoning Amanda and Laura to their fates. The famous final lines of the play from Tom are a meditation on regret, how he's haunted by the memory of Laura wherever he goes.

With that summary in hand, let me share my reflection. 

As I said above, it's widely understood that Laura herself is symbolized by the glass menagerie. Laura is special and beautiful, but also static, fragile and breakable. Laura's disability, as portrayed in the production we saw, highlights the degree to which Laura needs protection and care. Laura's disability makes Jim's diagnosis of an "inferiority complex" laughable. Like glass, Laura's situation is frozen, immune to any call toward self-actualization. Laura's need can't be wished away with therapeutic self-improvement. Jim describes himself as a modern man of progress who is looking toward the future, and he preaches that sermon to Laura. But what Laura needs isn't "progress" or "self-improvement." What Laura needs is love.

And that's also what Tom, tragically, fails to provide her. Laura's disability presents a trap for Tom, given his dream for a heroic life of adventure. The Glass Menagerie ends on its note of regret because Tom leaves Laura, unwilling to pay the price of love.

Basically, both Tom and Jim fail Laura. Jim, because sermons about self-improvement are no substitute for love. And Tom because he chooses himself over Laura.

So here's my reflection about Laura and these failures of love:

Simply put: The entire world is a glass menagerie. The world is full of beautiful but fragile people. There's no "fix" for this fragility, as Jim preaches to Laura. Nor does the modern world want to slow down enough, in its pursuit of progress, to care for these people. 

But most importantly, as we see with Tom, few of us are willing to make the sacrifices that love demands. Like Tom, we'd rather have our adventures. That's the key insight. A good and fulfilled life, our culture tells us, is a life of self-actualization (Jim) and adventure (Tom). But that vision of happiness has no room for the love Laura requires. As Dostoevsky described in The Brother's Karamazov, love is a harsh and dreadful thing.

How many of us, I wonder, are willing to love the unicorns in the glass menagerie?

Last post in this series. 

Recapping, the posts of this series aren't offering any sort of answer or solution to the many failures of the church. I've just been collecting some thoughts I had that helped me during a moment of despair.

This last reflection comes from Karl Barth's The Epistle to the Romans. 

I was reading The Epistle to the Romans during my season of reflection regarding the church, and I got to Barth's chapter on Romans 7. In this chapter of Romans Paul is describing the impact of the law upon sinful humanity. Paul says, "I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law." The law makes sin visible in history. When the law enters history it brings the reality of sin into our lives. As Paul says, "when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died."

Barth uses these reflections from Romans to make the observation that religion is exactly that place where sin becomes visible. Religion is where "sin abounds." Not that sin doesn't exist everywhere in humanity and history. Only that, outside of religion, sin is invisible as sin. By bringing humanity and God into contact, religion does nothing more than to highlight the contrast between God's holiness and human sinfulness. Religion is no solution to the sin problem. Religion just makes the sin problem visible.

If so, then it's no surprise that when we look at the church what we see is sin. Religion makes sin salient and obvious.

For Barth, as mentioned, religion has this effect because it brings humans and God into close contact, and that contact highlights the "infinite qualitative distinction" between God and humanity. And while I agree with this formulation, you really don't need to bring out all that heavy metaphysical firepower. From a purely human perspective, the church is a group of people who espouse and preach ridiculously high moral aspirations: "We love everyone" and "All are welcome here." Christians say they exist to love everyone in sacrificial ways. Morally, the church is shooting for the moon. Christians claim for themselves impossible standards of conduct. But all those aspirations do is highlight how Christian's don't live up to their lofty ideals. Moral ambition makes moral failure more obvious and visible. No one cares all that much if some random bloke is unkind. But when you're a Christian people notice your unkindness. They mark it. They hold you to your standards. In the words of Paul, sin is being "reckoned" to you. All you've done in declaring yourself a Christian is to make the sin in your life publicly visible as sin. And the worse your sin, the more visible your failure before the world. 

So, why would anyone want to claim the name Christian or join the church? Well, because when the reality of sin becomes visible we have the opportunity to encounter grace. By making sin visible Christian life points beyond itself toward the grace of God. The church is, thus, paradox and burden. Burden because we make sin visible in our own lives. Paradox because in our sin we point to the saving grace of God. Church is both failure and hope. 

Here is Barth making some of these points:

Religion is aware that it is in no wise the crown and fulfillment of true humanity; it knows itself to be a questionable, disturbing, dangerous thing...

Religion must beware lest it tone down in any degree the unconverted man's judgment. Conflict and distress, sin and death, the devil and hell, make up the reality of religion. So far from releasing men from guilt and destiny, it brings men under their sway. Religion possesses no solution of the problem of life; rather it makes the problem a wholly insoluble enigma. Religion neither discovers the problem nor solves it: what it does is to disclose the truth that cannot be solved. Religion is neither a thing to be enjoyed nor a thing to be celebrated: it must be borne as a yoke which cannot be removed...Religion is the misfortune which every human being has to endure, though it is, in the majority of cases, a hidden suffering.

You might not find this very comforting, but I do. When I enter the church I enter that space where humans try to make contact with God. But in the event of that contact, all that comes into view is utter failure and ruin. All I see is our sin. Now visible for all the world to see. And yet, the "burden" and "misfortune" of that exposure becomes the very gateway to grace. Our need and dependency come into view. Our nakedness and helplessness are exposed. And in that exposure Grace can now have its say.

As Paul says in Romans, where sin abounds grace abounds even more. 

In the wasteland that was the German church after the rise of Hitler and WW2, Dietrich Bonhoeffer sat in prison reflecting upon the future of the Christian witness in Germany. 

The most tantalizing reflection from Bonhoeffer's letters and papers from prison concerned what he called a "religionless Christianity." Ever since, speculation has swirled about what Bonhoeffer meant by "religionless Christianity," and I've written a lot about it over the years.

Let me suggest that what Bonhoeffer was struggling with in prison is precisely our own despair regarding the church: its moral failures and corruption. Given all the things that have gone on in the church in recent decades and years, what is the future of the Christian witness in the world? 

This was precisely Bonhoeffer's concern. Given how the German church supported Hitler, after the war who would listen to the church ever again? The German church had lost its moral authority. The German church had lost its right to speak.

Many of us feel the same way about the modern church, or at least sectors of the modern church. Given all the abuses and scandals, the church has lost its right to speak with any moral authority. 

Pondering this situation, the compromised moral position of the church, Bonhoeffer suggested that, going forward, the church must become "religionless" in the world. This was the only way the church could rehabilitate itself and regain the confidence of the world. What does a "religionless" witness in the world look like? I think a key passage from Bonhoeffer's letters and papers is this one:

The primary confession of the Christian before the world is the deed which interprets itself. If this deed is to have become a force, then the world will long to confess the Word. This is not the same as loudly shrieking out propaganda. This Word must be preserved as the most sacred possession of the community. This is a matter between God and the community, not between the community and the world. It is a word of recognition between friends, not a word to use against enemies. This attitude was first learned at baptism. The deed alone is our confession of faith before the world.

When the church loses its moral authority its speech must become "religionless." More sharply, when the church has failed, as it had in Germany, the church should just shut up. You've lost your right to speak. Rather than speech, the church is called to righteous action in the world. After losing its moral authority, the only sermon the church should preach is "the deed which interprets itself." Going forward, actions alone will suffice. Words are empty. As they say, put up or shut up.

This righteous action in the world is "religionless" because we don't verbally say who we are or preach around our actions. We just keep our mouths shut and silently go about the the work of loving our neighbors. Our actions alone become the witness. 

This was how Bonhoeffer felt the church could regain its voice after Hitler. After the war was over, the church should stop talking and start acting. Let our actions speak louder than our sermons. Maybe, after a season, the world might start caring again about what we have to say. But that right has to be earned. Trust has to be regained.

I think that is a good word for the church today. Given all the abuses and scandals, perhaps it is time for the church to go silent. Trust with the world needs to be reestablished. After a season where the world observes our faithful care and love for them it might ask what we think about this or that issue. Until then, no sermons. No propaganda. No words. Just silent righteous action. 

Silent. Righteous. Action. 

When the church loses its right to speak the only sermon it has left is the deed which interprets itself.

There's a phrase I've encountered in The Liturgy of the Hours which describes the church as "the sacrament of salvation."

I know in Catholic thought this likely means extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, that "there is no salvation outside the church." Salvation is mediated only through the sacraments of the church.

But in my despairing about the church, my thoughts wandered in a different direction. 

Generally, we expect the church to be a moral witness. That is, we expect Christians should be "better" than non-Christians. And when Christians are not any better than most people, we despair and chuck the whole business. Our metric of success is wholly moral.

But let me simply observe, as a regular church goer, that the people gathered on a typical Sunday morning are just normal people. Church people have the same sorts of problems as everyone else. And they are sinners just like everyone else.

We know this about ourselves, that we are sinners, yet we keep getting disappointed. What should be expected--our moral failures--keeps surprising us. Over and over. Why? I think it's our stubborn moral framing of the church, that church people should be "better." 

But if we're not any better than other folks what then is church all about?

The church, to borrow that line from the Catholics, is "a sacrament of salvation." Yet I mean this differently than extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. What I mean by "a sacrament of salvation" is that the gathered church makes salvation visible. 

The gathered church isn't a moral witness--How could it be?--but a sacramental witness. We gather to make visible the salvation of God in our midst. This is how a depraved, broken, and lost people can gather together on a Sunday and be called "the church." These gathered sinners simply point to the reality of grace. Our moral portfolio is abysmal, but in our worship, prayers, liturgies, and testimonies we make visible the love of God, in our lives and in the midst of the world. "Grace exists," our presence declares. And we make this declaration not only for ourselves, but for the world as well. 

If this is so, "the church" simply is this sacramental witness. Which means "the church" doesn't point to the moral performance of human beings. Rather, the "the church" is a gathered group of sinners who come together to point toward the grace of God. We sinners gather to bear witness to grace, and it's toward grace where we must direct our gaze.

After forty-two installments, this is our final week blogging through Jordan Peterson's Maps of Meaning.

As we've noted over the last few weeks, and throughout this entire series, Jordan Peterson's big point is that meaning making is central to human adaptation and flourishing. Peterson's project is deeply existential. Some selections from Peterson's final paragraphs underlining that theme:

...Life without meaning is mortal limitation, subjection to pain and suffering without recourse. Life without meaning is tragedy, without hope of redemption.

The abandonment of meaning ensures the adoption of a demonic mode of adaptation, because the individual hates pointless pain and frustration and will work toward its destruction. This work constitutes revenge against existence, rendered unbearable by pride...

The human purpose, if such a thing can be considered, is to pursue meaning--to extend the domain of light, of consciousness--despite limitation. A meaningful event exists on the boundary between order and chaos. The pursuit of meaning exposes the individual to the unknown in gradual fashion, allowing him to develop strength and adaptive ability in proportion to the seriousness of his pursuit. It is during contact with the unknown that the human power grows, individually and then historically. Meaning is the subjective experience associated with that contact, in sufficient proportion. The great religious myths state that continued pursuit of meaning, adopted voluntarily and without self-deception, will lead the individual to discover his identity with God. This "revealed identity" will make him capable of withstanding the tragedy of life. Abandonment of meaning, by contrast, reduces man to his mortal weakness.

...Meaning is the instinct that makes life possible. When it is abandoned, individuality loses its redeeming power...When meaning is denied, hatred for life and the wish for its destruction inevitably rules...The lie is the central act in this drama of corruption...

Many of Peterson's big themes are on display here. Consciousness reveals "the tragedy of life." Facing that predicament, cultures with their "great religious myths" train us to confront the unknown, which allows "human power" to grow and develop, individually and historically. We mature and step into our power as we walk the border between order and chaos, resisting temptations to one side and the other. For too much order stultifies, and too much chaos overwhelms. This process of forging meaning at the border of order and chaos reveals the sacred character of humanity, our "identity with God" who spoke order into chaos in the opening lines of Genesis. We follow the example of the heroic Jesus--the prototypical "son of god"--who shoulders the tragedy and absurdity of existence to redeem, renew and remake the world.  

Finally, this entire process is haunted by the demonic--the abandonment of meaning, giving into the lie, refusing to use your redeeming power. Hell is the hatred of life.

Psychologically speaking, I've never had many complaints with any of this. Peterson is right, life requires meaning making, and if you give up on meaning you quickly fall into dysfunction. 

My disagreements with Jordan Peterson concern ontology and metaphysics. And that disagreement comes into view in the final moments of Maps of Meaning. Specifically, there is a gnostic aspect to the gospel according to Jordan Peterson. For Peterson, like the ancient Gnostics, existence is devastation, full of pain and suffering. We escape the tragedy of existence by becoming "divine." We save ourselves through consciousness and will. 

Given this soteriology, it is no surprise that Peterson ends Maps of Meaning with this quote from the gnostic Gospel of Thomas:

These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down.

And he said, "Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death."

Jesus said, "Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the all."

Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."

Jesus said, "The man old in days will not hesitate to ask a small child seven days old about the place of life, and he will live. For many who are first will become last, and they will become one and the same."

Jesus said, "Recognize what is in your sight, and that which is hidden from you will become plain to you . For there is nothing hidden which will not become manifest."

His disciples questioned him and said to him, "Do you want us to fast? How shall we pray? Shall we give alms? What diet shall we observe?"

Jesus said, "Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate, for all things are plain in the sight of heaven. For nothing hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain without being uncovered."

Stated negatively, this is the gospel according to Jordan Peterson: Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate. 

Stated positively, making meaning is the "antidote to chaos." For in making meaning you become like Christ--the redeemer, the son of god, the hero who slays the dragon.

There's a famous quote about the impact of "hidden lives" upon history from George Eliot:

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

More than anything, hidden lives are what gives me hope when I despair about the church. 

Specifically, the stories about church that hit your news and social media feeds are the stories of high profile disasters. For obvious reasons. Those negative stories get a lot of traffic, exactly what the monetized algorithms of social media need to make money manipulating our attention. 

Beyond capturing our attention, this filtering of the news also creates a cognitive bias called "selection bias," where we lose track of the true baseline of reality and begin to assume what we see on the news is the statistical norm. By only highlighting disasters we come to think all of life is a disaster. This is what is behind that common refrain, "Twitter is not real life." Being too online can distort your perceptions, including your perceptions of church.

What never trends on Twitter are the hidden lives that you find everywhere in local churches. Visit any church and ask about who the quiet, faithful saints are within that community. People of heroic kindness, generosity, service, and fidelity. You will be flooded and overwhelmed by the stories you will hear. And none of this will ever be seen on social media. No one will ever make a podcast about any of this.

And this, I keep reminding myself, is what church is. Church isn't found in what I'm seeing on social media. Church is found in the hidden lives the world will never see.

When I was despairing over the church a parable of Jesus came to mind:

He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. 

So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ 

He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ 

So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ 

But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'" (Matthew 13.24-43)

This is a parable, so interpretations may vary, but here are some things I think Jesus is suggesting. Two things in particular.

First, the kingdom is granular rather than an aggregate. The kingdom doesn't exist at scale. You can't point to a group and say, "There is the kingdom of God." Inside that group the kingdom might be found, but not at the level of the group. The group is a mixture of wheat and tares. 

Second, this means that the kingdom at the group level will always have a mixed, ambiguous nature. Wheat and tares sit side by side in the pews. To be sure, as Jesus points out, it's not our job to sort this out on earth. Trying to locate and purge the tares is a surefire way to become a tare yourself. Only God will able to sort the situation out. 

Perhaps these interpretations are not what Jesus intended. But it does seems clear in the parable that Jesus is suggesting that the kingdom of God is difficult to locate in the world, given that wheat and tares "grow together" side by side. If so, when we look at "the church" we never can see it clearly. "The church" never presents a uniform virtuous face. Rather, "the church" always appears as a mixture of good and bad, as morally ambiguous. That doesn't mean the kingdom doesn't exist. The kingdom exists, rather, on a case by case basis. 

Is a healthy, sane and faithful Christian life exceptional and rare? Jesus seemed to think so, at least in some of his statements. I think about this saying of Jesus a lot:

“Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it."

Narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it. 

There is something both frightful and consoling about the line "and few find it." Frightful for obvious reasons. We'd like the path toward the kingdom of God to be a large, obvious, and easy onramp. But perhaps the way to the kingdom isn't so accommodating and accessible. I recall a quote from Flannery O'Connor:

What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. 

And yet, there is a consoling spin to "and few find it," at least for me as I look out with despair upon all that labels itself "Christian." Maybe much of what is "Christian" in the world is actually going through that wide gate and down that broad road on the way toward destruction. Many days it sure seems that way. As Jesus also said in the Sermon on the Mount, "Not everyone who says unto me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven." Not every Christian is a Christian. 

The consolation here, if one can call it that, is the blessing of low expectations. Disappointments are due to our expectations not being met. So perhaps our despair over "the church" might be due to having too high of expectations for what passes as Christian. Perhaps we've been assuming that Christianity is widespread and common when, in fact, it is precious and rare. Perhaps we should hear the words "Christian" and "church" with a lot more skepticism. If Jesus is correct, there are only a few Christians in the world. And if that's true, maybe the train wreck that is "the church" isn't a disappointment but something quite expected.

There are many prominent progressive Christian voices who have just completely abandoned the church. They are writers, speakers, and podcasters, and they make a living that way, but they are not in any serious way involved in the daily life of a local faith community. 

For my part, as you know, if you've read my books or followed this blog, I have consistently pointed people toward the church. And I, myself, am deeply involved with and committed to my own church. But I have to admit, being a cheerleader for the church has been hard to do. I know I'm preaching a message to a deeply skeptical, cynical and wounded audience.

For the most part, I've remained an optimistic Pied Piper about local churches. I've been able to maintain this positivity because of my own close involvement with a church. I know the difference between Twitter and real life. Specifically, the conversation about "the church" on social media is nothing like what I see on a Sunday morning. What gets elevated and amplified on social media are the disasters. And those disasters are real. But 99.9% of all the good and lovely things that happen in local churches during the week are too boring to ever warrant a post, tweet, mention, news article, or podcast. When I defend the church I'm not defending the visible disasters, but the 99.9% of the church no one ever sees. And you only get to see this stuff if you show up regularly. I'll say this clearly: Perception is a matter of involvement. You can't see the church clearly if you aren't regularly involved with a local faith community.

That said, I recently had a bit of an existential crisis regarding the church. I had a (pretty long) moment of despair. 

What precipitated this crisis? I think it was just all the accumulated disasters, surveying the vast wreckage that is the Christian witness in the world. The Catholic child abuse crisis. The Russian Orthodox church supporting the invasion and war with Ukraine. The Southern Baptist Convention report on sexual abuse. Story after story of high profile pastors engaged in sexual misconduct. The #ChurchToo moment. Evangelicals embracing QAnon and Stop the Steal conspiracy theories. It all just added up.

It's not that I hadn't despaired about any of this before. I had. Each bit of bad news about the church like a punch in the gut. But like I said above, I've tended to see these catastrophes as exceptions rather than the rule. My crisis was precipitated, however, by seriously considering if the reverse might not be true. What if a sane and healthy Christianity is pretty exceptional and rare? And if it is exceptional and rare, what are the implications of that?

For example, if a sane and healthy Christianity is exceptional and rare, is it wise to recommend the faith to others? Statistically speaking, will the new convert be able to find and hit that small bullseye? When you recommend the church to others are they able to find that exceptional community where all is healthy, sane, and safe? Or will they, given the small odds of success, be pulled into a vortex of chaos and dysfunction? 

Phrased differently, I have been able to make it across the treacherous rapids to find safe harbor. I'm downstream of the danger. But how confident am I, if I invite someone into the waters upstream of the rapids, that they'll make it safely to where I'm standing now?

This was the origin of my existential crisis. If a sane and healthy Christianity is a narrow path, a needle in a haystack, an easy target to miss, and the navigation of dangerous rapids, how can I confidently ask people step into this journey?

You might be asking such questions yourself. This series will be sharing all the random thoughts that my existential crisis kicked off in my head.