My Year Off Facebook

About this time last year I wrote about one of two New Year’s resolutions for 2011: To deactivate my Facebook account for one year.

Below are THE GOALS I HAD HOPED TO ACHIEVE AFTER MY FACEBOOK-LESS EXPERIMENT / the actual result:

-FREE UP TIME TO DO THINGS LIKE READ BOOKS THAT HAVE BEEN STARING AT ME FROM MY BOOKSHELF FOR MONTHS / I did finally read a few of those : Everything Is Illuminated (Jonathan Safran Foer), The Feast of the Goat (Mario Vargas Llosa) and started Midnight’s Children (Salman Rushdie)–all novels that I’ve owned for years and finally picked up because my nightly Facebook visit was no longer allowed.

-KEEP ME LESS INFORMED ABOUT PEOPLE I DON’T EVEN KNOW / And people I do know, for that matter. I could no longer participate in the I-saw-on-Facebook-that conversations, and I was always the last to know who was engaged, who was married and who was pregnant. It was nice. It was like the olden days, before college, when I discovered that type of news by word-of-mouth or a save-the-date or shower invitation. I felt like I no longer knew things I wasn’t supposed to and only knew things people wanted me to know. I was respecting others’ privacy and mine was in turn being respected.

-FORCE ME TO COMMUNICATE WITH FRIENDS VIA MORE DIRECT AND INTENTIONAL MODES OF COMMUNICATION LIKE EMAIL AND PHONE CALLS / I wish I could say I became really awesome at calling my long-distance friends regularly and having actual conversation with them, but I didn’t. I did text them more and follow them more closely on Twitter. Are either of those any more personal than Facebook? Probably not.

Overall, I did not feel socially deprived while off Facebook. What I missed most was seeing friends’ wedding pictures, which was my first order of business when I signed back on on January 1 (around 3am). But other than that, I realized I’m not meant to keep up with 1,100+ people’s lives. Being back on, I’m overwhelmed by all I missed: pregnancies, babies born, new relationships–I can’t handle absorbing all of that information like I used to and I don’t crave that information like I used to. That craving, I’m really glad it’s gone. And it took a full year of purging for it to go away.

Ok, let’s get real, it’s not COMPLETELY gone, but I have a much healthier dose of it. And I’m more inclined to keep up with my friends outside their Facebook walls and inside their real lives.

What Do I Know for Sure? (After One Year of Asking Difficult Questions)

I believe in questions. I say this a lot; I’ll say it again: a life unquestioned is not a life worth living for me. Even the hard the questions. The one your mind reactionally tried to discard so you can’t think about this. Those. Those are the questions I tried to ask myself this year in my Mondays of posing difficult questions series.

My final question of the year goes back to the one I began with: What do you know for sure? I’ve realized this is what I was getting at all along. I wanted to figure out if we, as Christians, could know certain things for sure and if so, what were those things?

One thing I knew already but am now strangely more comfortable with: When it comes to faith, there are aspects I’ll never know for sure. All of this questioning, wondering, guessing, making up answers that ultimately aren’t satisfying and I have to delete and start over. All of that has made me more OK with not knowing everything. When I asked if we were humans or dancers, for example, that’s one I really want the answer to but I don’t have it yet. Also, the praying for your future spouse thing that many had an opinion on–still gets me.  But I’m not up in a wad about these questions like I was before this series. Why not? Because I finally asked them. The effect of simply taking a difficult question out of my head and finally placing it on the table has spurred conversations, some on this blog and a lot in my real life, that made me see others are asking the same thing. And, better yet, they have completely different perspectives than I that shed light on at least a corner of the answer to these questions. I’ve learned to relax and breathe easy about the hard questions that don’t have answers because I’m not the only one searching for them. The quest is not up to just me.

Quenching my need to succeed and make good grades, I am walking away from this series with a specific list of things I do know for sure. For example, as sobering as this is, I am certain most people settle in some way or another in their lives and I am certain this is OK and even a necessity. (As a commenter pointed out to me, settling is very much a first-world word and “problem” anyways.) The other stuff I became certain of this year falls under one sentence: God is sovereign. I am certain of his sovereignty in areas I can’t say I was certain before. He was sovereign in the garden. He is sovereign in poverty. He is sovereign in our weakness and inability to accurately portray who He is during our stints on earth. I don’t use His sovereignty as a blanket response to some of these difficult questions but as a genuine explanation I hadn’t understood before.

This year I have learned much and unlearned more. Unlearning is humbling. It’s forced me to see that my opinions are not steadfast and often not even true. If I stick to them, I’ll get in big trouble. This won’t stop me from creating them. I’m human and, therefore, need to know some things are for sure. That desire is in all of us and begging us to ask difficult, confusing and scary questions. It’s what we were made to do because somewhere, maybe not here, there are answers.

How Do You Grieve the Non-Believer?

I had this whole post ready about the role of women in the workplace. That’s what I’m supposed to be writing about right now: women’s roles and questions I have about it. But I can’t stop thinking about this: Peter Hitchens’ In Memoriam article for his brother, Christopher Hitchens, the renowned writer, thinker and atheist who died on Friday. And now the real question I’m asking is not so much about my role as a woman in the workplace and much more about how Peter is grieving his brother right now. Tonight, even as I write this, I wonder what he is thinking, what he is wondering, what type of sadness he is feeling or confusion or, even, anger.

Peter (left) and Christopher (right) as children photo taken from this article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2075133/Christopher-Hitchens-death-In-Memoriam-courageous-sibling-Peter-Hitchens.html

Peter is an evangelical Christian whose relationship with his brother has been, as he describes it, publicly complicated. He says in his In Memoriam that the correspondence between him and Christopher for the last several months was better than had been in the last 50 years. Amazing what one’s impending death can do to all parties involved: the big arguments and fights are not worth it until the end. We want to be remembered for good. We want to say goodbye on decent terms, loving terms, if possible. Once it is over, the real thoughts settle in. The real feelings you didn’t have to turn off so the one slipping away didn’t see them on your face.

I don’t want to have a discussion on the existence of hell right now. That’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking how to let go of someone you loved who did not love the Jesus you love. In the little experience I’ve had with the deaths of loved ones who were Christians and deaths of those I knew who were not, my grieving was very different. For one, I find solace in their life outside of earth. For the other, I find solace in restraining my thoughts to memories of them on earth. The types of sadness are different too, as well as the conversations you have about him/her afterwards.

I think, perhaps, we grieve them before they’re gone. I wonder if Peter did this with Christopher. Did he feel he lost his brother years ago? Though I have never used this word for it, I think I have grieved friends and family who have denied a faith they once had. And I think that grief was extremely similar to what I feel when someone physically dies.

I don’t know the right answer to this one or if there is one but I know I certainly agree with this statement of Peter Hitchens’: “Much of civilisation rests on the proper response to death, simple unalloyed kindness, the desire to show sympathy for irrecoverable loss, the understanding that a unique and irreplaceable something has been lost to us.”

What Is the Role of a Christian Woman: In Dating?

I started writing the answer to this post and before I could type a word, realized I had no idea what the answer was. So I polled women I knew and respected of various marital statuses. I asked them what they believed the role of a woman in dating is according to their experience and according to scripture. I love the richness and diversity of their responses:

Single/22 years old: The role of a Christian woman in dating is to be pursued. We are called as women to submit to the pursuit and leadership of men. Therefore, let’s let them do their job. We have a biblical call to wait, submit and be patient. Since this is a biblical instruction spoken by God, in that place we as women will have most peace. Straying away from that call (which could mean taking control, impatiently initiating yourself, etc.) can mislead, confuse or awaken love too soon.

Single, divorcee/34 years old (But that doesn’t define me! My blue eyes that have a slightly cynical outlook, my hips that are 2 sizes too big, sarcastic leanings and an extreme love for NCIS are what really defines me ): My role as a divorced single mom, I feel, is to seek healing, honest-to-goodness, soul-changing healing. This healing takes time, pain, time, trust in God, time, and patience…oh, and time. Then, I am to live my life…I mean live it. Do what I dreamed of, go on adventures, ask people all sorts of questions, reflect, seek and live! And then, always hope…hope in God and rest in His grace.

In a relationship/25 years old: I think I now have a much more refined and actually fairly simple view of the role of Christian women in dating, and it’s this: The role of a Christian woman in dating is, at it’s core, the same as that of a man: be prayerful, honest, open, and ultimately, be genuinely yourself. I think if we, as women, do those things, then the right men will join us in the right relationships by taking on that role as well. This is not to say that “being ourselves” means not being open to change and growth, but it just means that we don’t try to be someone we aren’t. It has been a struggle of mine before, which is perhaps why one of my favorites verses is Romans 12:9 – Love must be sincere.

Married/26 years old: To guard your heart, seek God’s will for the future of your relationship, be open to God’s leading (it doesn’t have to end in marriage), and build your significant other with love and respect. Keep in mind flashing red lights in dating can destroy a marriage. Marriage is the second most important decision in your life and you’ll want to listen closely and tread lightly before you head down the road. Marriage is the greatest blessing when you’re with the right person! Date with purpose and grow in the process.

Single/27 years old: The bible teaches that marriage is a picture of the gospel. It is to illustarte the pursuit of Christ to his church and in return her submission to his love and authority. While the bible doesn’t teach a lot about “dating” as we know (and love) it, I do believe that dating should be a preview of that picture of marriage. While we aren’t called to submit to the man we are dating as we are to our husbands, nor are we to engage in all the activites marriage allows, we still mimic those roles of Christ and the church to a certain degree. In dating the girl gets the chance to sit back and relax (if she can allow herself to see it that way). The man initiates and pursues her as God turns his heart to do so and the girl responds and affirms his pursuit. Plain and simple. One of my favorite things to see is a man of God who is pursuing a woman. That woman is freed and covered by his pursuit. She is freed to affirm his masculinity being manifested by his pursuit of her and in turn she is not put in a position to be solely vulnerable or manipulative to get his affections.

What Is the Role of a Christian Woman: In Church Leadership?

In the early church, women were allowed to attend. This was big news for women then. They were so excited to go to church where they could worship the recently risen Christ that they chatted a lot amongst themselves and were a bit of a disruption. Sounds familiar. Women were chatty then; we’re chatty now. The apostle Paul told them to be quiet once in a letter and now we get all offended. I was offended until my mom explained that context to me just a few weeks ago. Incredible what a bit of context can do. And what the lack of it can do.

But context isn’t really my point. This is my blog; not my biblical studies thesis. (I never wrote one those and I’m sure it’s obvious.) The point is I have a pattern of subconsciously choosing to ignore the parts of the Bible I felt told me I could’t lead or speak out because I am a woman. And then often I was, at some point by some wise teacher along the way, proven that my interpretation of that scripture was wrong, like that one in 1 Peter about wives and maybe some others I can’t remember right now.

So I don’t think the Bible tells us to be quiet, but growing up I went to a church led mostly by men and saw other churches led mostly by men so I superimposed my cultural experience into my scripture. I’m very good at this. Then I went to church in England and noticed that the quietest I was in church–my mind, my heart, everything was so quiet–was when our pastor’s wife spoke. And she spoke, it seemed, almost as often as he did. And when she prayed, the air was thick with anticipation and quiet as stone because her voice practically melted into us in a way that made us all certain everything she prayed was going to be, at that instant.

 

What Is the Role of a Christian Woman: In Feminist Society (Part II)

As I’ve asked myself this question over the past few days, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Mary. As in Mary-and-Martha Mary. When Jesus went to Mary and Martha’s house and Martha was all frantic and nervous about dinner getting on the table and the candles being lit just right, or the oil lamp, or whatever, Mary was sitting at Jesus’s feet, literally. Like he was her teacher, and students were only male then, mind you. She was sitting by his feet, listening to him while chaos was occurring in the next room. Then Jesus said, “Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:42). The best reward. And she was a woman. She was not praised for her work, for her social status or ability to rise above female oppression and be highlighted in the most important literary work of all time.

What was she praised for? Her ability to be oblivious to all but Jesus.

Seeing as how Mary has exemplified the Christian life ever since she appeared in the gospels, I think that’s what being a Christian in the midst of feminist society is supposed to look like: to be so obsessed with Jesus, we just don’t care about much else. And to be so steady at his feet that we find ourselves able to love as he did. Love ourselves, love our gender, and love men, even the ones we think should value us a little more.

One of the most destructive attitudes of feminists is anger. It weakens the argument. Who wants to listen to someone who’s mad at everybody? Their words don’t make sense. They’re self-righteous and annoying. But what if we as Christian women who believe in our ability to be educated and have careers (a simplified definition of feminism I mentioned last week) stopped letting anger or self-righteousness drive that belief and started being oblivious to our entitlements and, instead, focused on Christ, our teacher?

That’s harder to do than striving to prove ourselves—something I do often and perhaps you do too. It takes more strength to relax and get over myself and admit that in reality I am nothing. Not because I’m a woman, but because I am human.

What Is the Role of a Christian Woman in: Feminist Society? (Part I)

Last week I told you I would be tackling the tough question of what the role of a Christian woman is. I’m starting to wonder if this is what this year’s series has been leading up. If maybe this is the question I’ve been trying to get at all along. I’ve asked it to myself so many times in so many different ways. Especially this one: Where should I stand on the issue of feminism in today’s society?

My first core English class in college began to make me unafraid of the “f” word. Until then, I equated feminism with words like “anger,” “no-bra,” “self-reliance,” an overall I-don’t-need-you/don’t-mess-with-me mentality. But, before he assigned us to read extremely complex explanations by thinkers like Adrienne Rich and Gayatri Spivak, my professor gave a very simple explanation of feminism: It is the belief the women are entitled to an education and a career. Hm. This definition did not seem scripturally astray. Nor did it sound scary. It sounded like me. And probably sounds like you. We don’t burn bras; we just believe women have gifts that translate outside the home.

So it surprised me when a girl in my class chimed into the discussion complaining about feminists. Hadn’t we decided the modern definition is harmless? Not to her. She didn’t want to be in college. She didn’t want to be in class. She was only here because of the societal pressure to gain an education. When what she desired was marriage and a family. Something attainable without a degree.

I was mad at her. How could she not appreciate where she was, what she had, all that she could be? In college, the possibilities are endless: so much to learn and try and succeed and fail at. Even being an “intern” sounds like a glamorous opportunity. And after hundreds of years with this door of possibilities closed to our gender, here she was wishing it hadn’t been opened. How embarrassingly regressive of her.

Or was it just me? As soon as I got mad at her, I saw my own aggression and recoiled at it. In undergard I placed this unreasonable pressure on myself to make perfect grades, be an active member on campus and use my summers to either further my education or get job experience. I was not chill by any means. Looking back, I realize I was striving desperately to prove myself and that my gender in no way hindered my intelligence or capabilities.

I didn’t know what the right reaction to this student’s complaint was, but I knew mine was wrong and for some reason grated against my Christian nature. What does Jesus really say about this issue? I had never asked him before because I didn’t see the Bible as a place to learn about feminism.

Now, I believe scripture explains feminism better than Rich or Spivak ever could. What exactly does it say? I’ll explore that next week.

What Is the Role of a Christian Woman?

A question I began asking myself long before I began this series in January. It’s loaded. That may be one answer to it agreed upon by all. That may be the one thing I know for sure about it. It’s one I wasn’t sure I would address this year. My thoughts are scattered. They change daily. Sometimes I have it all figured out and am at peace with my gender’s role in my faith and in my culture. Then I hear or read something that returns me to square one, wondering what my role is, how much of a role I have and if my opinions are even loosely based on biblical principles. Sometimes they are but I’m seeing more and more that they often aren’t.

I’m not going to answer this question in one post. That’s impossible. I have too many specific role questions: What is my role as a female in the church? What is my role as the female in a relationship? What is my role as a female in the family setting? In work? In writing? I won’t cover all of these, unless I feel extremely compelled, but I will address some.

It’s so important to understand someone’s lenses when understanding how she might address this type of question. For me, that’s a lens of a twenty-something, single, raised in the evangelical church and encouraged to pursue my wildest dreams by both my parents. My mom was a stay-at-home once she started having us. My dad has always worked. The women in my extended family are about split: some are stay-at-home moms, others work. I never felt pressured to be one thing or the other. There was always talk about “when I had a family” and there was always talk about “when I had a job in the real world.”

Basically, I was raised in a family that spans the spectrum of what the female role in society and church can look like. I’m grateful for that diverse environment. I realize that it created the freedom I have now to even explore this question. But no matter how free that environment may have been for some of us, it could never free us from cultural stigmas or expectations. The things that make us wonder about all of this. The things that make up definitions to words and phrases like “feminism,” “sex,” “separate but equal.”

I’m not sure if a more confusing message exists than that of what role women should play. What is right? What is wrong? What is sinful? What is honoring?

I’m afraid to say this, but I feel I have to: Let’s discuss.

Why Should We Do the Right Thing?

When I have apologetics conversations with myself–tell me I’m not the only one who has these–the idea of having an innate conviction to do the right thing and knowing what the right thing is often comes up, in my conversation, with myself. This thought helps prove the existence of an absolute and ultimately the existence of God. Boom, my Christian side wins. But not exactly. More like, my monotheistic side wins.

My Christian side wins when I ask why I do the right thing. Most religions have systems of rules and rewards: follow the rules, you get the reward. Christianity represents the only world religion in which reward can not be earned: follow the rules, you get the reward. Don’t follow the rules, you get the reward. So why follow the rules? Why do the right thing?

For years my answer to this question was this: I do the right thing because it is clearly laid out in scripture how to do the right thing and that we are to do the right thing because the right thing brings us in a closer relationship with God and being in a closer relationship with God helps us make the right decisions and be just overall happier than if we were consistently doing the wrong thing.

It wasn’t that I didn’t know about grace. I knew about grace. I loved grace. It’s one of the bolded words in my memory as a preacher’s kid who spent just as much time at church as she did at home. The problem with my motive above was that I wasn’t obsessed yet. I didn’t get doing the right thing out of an overflow of my obsession with this God that could do such radical, against-human-nature type stuff.

Once that started to kick in (somewhere around the time of my first real heartbreak) and I began to let God, Jesus and the concept of the cross expand beyond my sunday-school walls, the right thing was the best way I could think of to say “I love you.” It was even better than saying, “I love you.” And I trust in that motivator much more than when I motivated myself.

God Is Self-centered. Does that Make You Uncomfortable?

Over time, we all create a painting in our heads. It’s a painting called “How Things Are.”  We are very sure of these paintings and keep them front-and-center. They are beautiful and took time to create and most importantly, they are correct. Or so we think. But as we learn and grow and mature, we reluctantly throw out the old “How Things Are” and begin painting a new one. All that work for nothing.

This is what this blog series has begun to force me to do, a lot of repainting (or flat out burning) specifically in the area of my thoughts on God’s glory and sovereignty. I shared a bit of this in the post that started this whole series here. And surprise! This topic has themed its way into my 2011.

The question of only loving God because of what He does for me rather than who He is connects to the question I and others were asked by a speaker I listened to last week: Why does the idea of God wanting to glorify himself make us squirm in our seats? As we squirmed, he continued probing, “Does God desire God’s glory more than He desires us? Why does He seek His own praise above all else? Is this bothering you? Why is this bothering you?” And the pieces of my little self-made theories began to drop to the floor. And my beautiful “How Things Are” once again appeared ridiculous.

When you read the Bible, you read the word “glory” many times and it is always God’s glory. And when you keep reading the Bible, it turns out the whole point is His glory. Sounds rudimentary, I know, but to realize God’s chief aim is to be praised and not to be sure I am ok and am successful and joyful and on the right path, well, that has been difficult for me. I squirmed as I heard about–what John Piper calls–God’s God-centeredness and realized I was squirming out of my own self-centeredness.

His chief aim is not us; his chief aim is himself. And that sounds selfish and vain, but only because we are selfish and vain.

I have an incredibly difficult task before me now: to realize once and for all that this world is not about me. This life is not about me. My life is not about me. I am not about me.