7th Sunday: Woman

What does it mean to be a woman? What are the things that all women have in common, the things that bind them together as one creation? What are the things that, if missing, makes one less than a woman, or not all together whole?

Is it wrong of me to not want to wear make-up, to submit to the forces of societal standards of beauty? Sure, they influence my opinions, I feel their influence at work when I look at my reflection and judge myself based on what I’ve seen on TV and magazines, but I don’t let it influence my actions, the way I live my life and treat my appearance. I don’t waste my money, time and energy on make-up just to be unsatisfied with my lack of comparable beauty; I can feel that way without losing those things. Or, I can work on rejecting those standards instilled in my mind and free myself from the oppressive urge and expectations for physical beauty and focus more on loving myself through God’s eyes. Once I am comfortable in the skin God made for me and can look at my appearance without “needing” to change it to be happy, then I can consider playing with make-up a healthy thing. But then, when I feel that way, why would I bother with make-up anyway? It all seems evil and pointless, to use biased and strong words for my biased and strong opinions.

So does it mean there is something wrong, or something missing in me, something I have lost or given up that is essential to my being if I don’t like or desire to play the game society has set up for women to play? If I don’t want to get caught up in the race for stopping time, to find the cure for aging and ugliness? I personally don’t see it as healthy for women to be obsessed with make-up, hair, clothes and fashion, shoes, glamour, and so on. What use is that? What good does it do for the world? What does it accomplish? No, I prefer to break away from all that—sorry—garbage and try to find myself. I am God’s creation, and yes, being a woman is part of that for me, but being concerned for my appearance shouldn’t have to be part of being a woman, and I am against this notion that it is. Everything is about making a woman look and feel beautiful, but why? So we can be trophies? So we can tempt men? So we can make them involuntarily moan and dream of us? How ridiculous. There’s no meaning in that. Why should I care how many people think I am beautiful? Why should I care how many guys wish they could screw me? What the heck does it matter?

And yet, why is it such a powerful influence? Why is it such a struggle for women to reject the desire to be perfect, flawless, beautiful, desirable? Some might say, because that’s what it is to be a woman, that women are built to want to be lovely, feminine beauties, that that’s the heart God gave us. Perhaps. Or, maybe the world has been telling us that’s what it means for so long that we’ve internalized it so deeply that it only seems natural. I would venture to say that it is more natural to want reliability, something a woman can depend on unconditionally, something, you know, like love. And we’ve figured out that the best way to attract a guy to even find out if he has that kind of love that we are looking for is to get his attention with beauty. We don’t care about it, we just know that’s what guys care about, and we want to find a guy who will have what we care about. So it’s this cycle that leads us to the conclusion that the only way to have a guy who will give us the long-lasting love we crave is if we provide the long-lasting beauty he wants, and that’s where our insecurities come in, because we are afraid that his love will only last as long as our beauty, that he doesn’t really have the unconditional love we desire, so we play the game and feed the monster that has been created by buying make-up, pushup bras, and high-heels; getting our hair and nails done; buying more clothes than a small village needs; starving ourselves and then paying extra for diet foods; and hating ourselves all along the way. We hate what we do and we hate what we see because IT ISN’T GOOD. Our bad emotions are telling us something that we are ignoring. They are a sign that this whole experience of being a woman in a beauty-obsessed society is NOT HEALTHY, and NOT NATURAL. It is NOT meant to be this way for women! We are NOT supposed to hate ourselves no matter how hard we try, and we are not meant to be conceited the way the women who love what they see in the mirror are. Caring about appearances is not good on either side of the spectrum: the point should be to be healthy, to take care of yourself, to feed yourself nourishing foods and feed your soul with godly activities and satisfying work and study. I truly believe that if the world’s focus was on the spirit and on bodily health instead of appearance, that everyone would be healthy since no one would be trying to control their appearance and having that control backfire into unhealthy habits and disorders, and there wouldn’t be any obsessions with food, and a healthy world would not come up with abominations like the artery-clogging horrors seen in fast food restaurants and websites like This Is Why You’re Fat.

All in all, I am fed up with women and femininity being associated with beauty, and with feeling like being a woman is condemnation to an oppressed existence with expectations to fulfill as regards my relationship with my body and with men. I am my own person, whole without a man as long as my heart belongs to God. I don’t need sex or marriage, or to waste 25% of my waking hours “getting ready.” I have better things to do and more important things to meditate on. And I believe what makes a woman truly beautiful is her attitude and soul.

6th Sunday Body Image

If I was given the opportunity to change my appearance, I would take it in an instant without hesitation. It doesn’t matter how much faith I have in God or how much love I have for Jesus, I still hate how much body hair I have, how terrible my skin is; I hate my body fat and big-boned frame, my thick wrists and stubby limbs. I even sometimes get angry enough about it to blame God, since He did, after all, make me this way. He could have made me beautiful by the world’s standards (He does it with so many other people), and He could have even made everyone that beautiful, but instead, He chose to let me be ugly, and I hate myself and His choice enough to wish every day that I was different, that I had the power to morph myself, or the money to pay for a surgeon to do it for me.

None of my precious Bible verses change the fact that I would change myself if I could. All they do is put balm on the bleeding sore that is my low self-esteem, and remind me that even though I am ugly in my own eyes, God loves me the way I am. Sometimes that’s enough to get me through the day, sometimes it’s not. I know I should appreciate myself more, be thankful for what I have, care more about my heart than my appearance, but I still end up wishing for beauty, even if it is stupid, superficial, and temporary. Beauty doesn’t last, and it doesn’t make you a good person or save your soul, so why should I care so much? Especially since I don’t want to get married or date?

I can’t explain it, except that I guess advertising and movies have brainwashed me with an indelible desire to be beautiful, whether it’s attainable or not, whether it’s real or not. I’ve tried so hard and so often to dig it out, to convince myself to think and believe otherwise, but it always comes back, like a disease: even if it goes into hibernation for a while, or if I think I’ve finally gotten it all out, if even just a tiny speck of it is left behind it will grow back to full-fledged self-loathing.

I would even wish for beauty rather than wish for a society that doesn’t care about beauty. I would change myself rather than the world. At least I feel that I would. I can’t believe how selfish this obsession has made me, and I hate it for it. Every time I see a girl who is beautiful, or skinnier than me, I ask God, “Why did you bless her, but not me? Why did she deserve it more than me?” And I figure, if I had grown up beautiful, I might have actually wanted to date, to waste my time and money on make-up and shopping and other beauty enhancers and obsessed over my appearance even more and wished for boys to like me and gotten distracted from school by going on dates. I saw it happen with other girls all the time, and I’m afraid it might have happened to me if I had been beautiful and confident in my appearance. But I was (am) not either, and so I am content to be alone. I expect and prefer it. And I don’t waste my time or effort trying to enhance a beauty that does not exist.

But even though I am comfortable, I still have anger toward my body and face that flames up sometimes. Often, lately, I have been able to believe that I don’t care about my appearance or how ugly I am, and be happy the way I am. But as I said, the jealous anger always comes back. Like today. And I guess this is when I need to get down on my face and pray to God for strength, wisdom, peace, and a change of heart. Because apparently God’s not in the business of outer cosmetic surgery: He just does an inside job.

(And of course this is going to lead to a post about wanting to eat right and nourish my body—taking care of the inside—rather than obsessing over the physical features that I can’t change and hating myself.)

5th Sunday: First Faith & Food

I think today I’ll make a first entry about the relationship between food and faith. First of all, I want to say I saw a book at Sam’s the caught my attention: Women Food and God. I didn’t buy it, but the title spoke to me, so I read the back summary, and it’s apparently about the relationship between how you eat and what you believe, because if you say you believe one thing about your body, your appearance, your health, and God’s intention for your body and what is beautiful, you will eat in a way consistent with those beliefs. If I say I believe I am the way God wants me to be and that I am beautiful to him no matter my weight, height, BMI or whatever, then I will eat in a way consistent with that belief, meaning I won’t worry about whether the food will make me gain weight but will eat with the concern of if it is good for my body, if it honors God’s creation, and if it will give me pleasure—if I will enjoy God’s gift of food and the senses of taste, touch, and smell.

That is the first step I think: to believe that everything is God’s creation, and if we love God, we will honor His creation, including our own bodies, the lives of other creatures and the environment. Being a conscious vegan can do that: consuming plants avoids all the unhealthy junk found in animal products, and besides, the idea of eating the fat, muscle, and bloody carcass of animals is just sickening. I could never eat mean again without feeling like I was eating my own arm. And dairy and eggs are no better: they still have all sorts of icky bodily junk in them. Then there is the argument that humans are the only being that tries to consume the milk of another species. I don’t want to get into the biology of it all, for me it’s enough to just think about carving up the body of a dead animal to make me want to throw up, without getting into any of the ethical issues of how animals are treated while they’re alive in order to supply these “luxuries.” And I also won’t get into the statistics of how converting the whole world to veganism could solve world hunger, because those numbers are out there and I will leave it to experts to argue their claim.

Personally, having been vegan for what seems like forever, I see no reason to not be vegan. It’s easy to have delicious, satisfying foods that don’t hurt animals or the environment and that happen to nourish your body and give it the good nutrition it needs to be healthy, the way God designed it. It just makes sense to be vegan since I love God and want to honor Him. Veganism is just another sign of love and compassion, just like donating to charity, volunteering, offering a ride to someone who needs it, and just daily acts of kindness. It fits into a Christian life so seamlessly. When God gave Noah animals to eat, it wasn’t a command. We are not forced to eat meat or dairy, it is an option that we can refuse for the greater good, with the original peaceful, pain-free Eden in mind and heart.

“Giving up” meat and dairy doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy the things you eat, just like “giving up” sin doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy your life anymore. When you live a life dedicated to Jesus Christ you realize that sin only causes problems, and when you go vegan you realize that eating a diet with animal products only causes problems. Sin and animal products only seem natural to human life because it’s been going on for so long and the nasty nature of humanity enjoys it, but the better soul of humans find true joy in godly life and a healthy diet. It may take some work or effort to break away from the nature a person is used to, mired in sin, meat and junk food, but the results from the effort are priceless.

4th Sunday: God and Country

Well, I think today is a good time to talk about the relationship between God and country. I think it’s pretty safe to say that no country is perfect: no country has perfect laws or perfect government (the system or the people who run and work the system), or perfect schools or courts, or perfect social justice, wealth distribution, or godly culture. Not one. And certainly not America with its inefficient government, horrible education system, ridiculously skewed wealth, and a cultural mindset revolving around individualism, greed, and comfort. So why do Americans feel like they and their country are something special in God’s eyes? Why do they feel they have been uniquely blessed and tasked with spreading their influence to the whole world? By material standards, America has a lot to be grateful for, or at least the ones who can afford anything, but by spiritual standards and social standards, America seems to lack anything substantial.

I say all of this to make my point that I don’t see any reason for me to be patriotic in any amount that’s anywhere close to my association with Jesus Christ. God and country are not equal to me, and going to war in the name of your country is sad to me. Not that I don’t think it’s noble or courageous for someone (notice I speak of the individual and not the army or country as a whole) to choose to fight for something they believe in, but don’t fight for the country, fight to protect your family, your loved ones, your home, things meaningful to you. The country alone is so big, abstract, and full of ugly and hateful injustices that it would be criminal to fight for. Fight for what you know and love that happen to be in the country.

A country is not alive, it is not a living organism, it has no character of its own. It is made up of living people who are all very different, even opposite and contradictory, and broken systems that benefit the rich and hurt the poor. But the country itself has no morals, no conscience, no soul, and it is such an amalgam that it can’t even really embody any one thing or ideal entirely. It is a dream and a harsh reality. It is both nothing and everything. Is that something worth celebrating? Worth dying for?

And along the same idea, because it has no mind or soul of its own, America is not Christian. Even if the people who had started it were Christian, the country certainly is not. Nothing about America is godly or righteous, let alone Christian, for all the reasons I’ve mentioned before, and lately so many people have been attacking any mention of God in public places that the deluded “godliness” of the country is slowly whittling away. All the more reason, I believe, for me to cling to Jesus more desperately, proudly and openly than ever before, to prove that He can be loved genuinely in this place, this country.

And I don’t mean to say that if a country isn’t worth fighting for then God surely is. Absolutely not. Personally I don’t think anything is worth fighting for, but that’s another story. I’m trying to say that there is no reason to think that America has a divine right to spread its gospel globally, by any means, whether war or peaceful intervention, because the system isn’t working here so why should it work anywhere else? How can we be so arrogant?

And besides, God does not need a mascot. America is not God’s frontman or partner. By now, with the way things are, I can just imagine God cringing at the insinuation that America is His nation, along with all the atheists. “God and Country” just doesn’t work, and it won’t until Jesus comes again as King and unites the world with His authority.

3rd Sunday: Prayer

Well, I just finished reading a book a good friend of mine let me borrow: Too Busy Not To Pray. I have to say, I loved it, and I would recommend it to anyone. It's very simple, a very quick read, but it has so much good information: it walks you through the things everyone asks about prayer and encourages you to really put your whole heart and faith into a practice that seems almost insignificant in this busy, work-driven life. But the author brings up a lot of Scripture to support every point he makes, along with personal anecdotes that prove the value and power of prayer, why it is so important and what it takes to do it "right" without any barriers between you and God.

I liked it a lot, and while some of it I already 'knew,' it never hurts to learn something so important more than once. There is very little that is more important than communicating with God, both talking and listening to Him, yet few people actually take time out of their schedules to do it. I think it reflects a kind of buried feeling that He isn't real or important. Maybe we believe in Him on one level, but part of us is so earth-based, so sensory, bound by time, space and matter, that it still thinks "I can't see or hear God, so He can't exist or have any influence my life."

I sense this feeling inside of me when I get wrapped up in the business of life, even though I have loved Jesus since elementary school. It is easy to believe in Jesus as a distant spiritual being, to believe in Heaven as an idea or ideal fantasy place, but when you truly believe to the point that you acknowledge His influence in the material world and His power over everything that exists and incorporate Him into your life, it seems ridiculous to NOT pray. And the truth is that God DOES have that kind of power and influence, even while we can't see or feel Him, He is always in control. It just takes effort on OUR part to reach out to Him, to just bridge that last little distance separating us from Him, because God has been reaching down to us since the beginning, bridging most of the space between us.

And I think that that kind of faith--the kind where you trust in God's presence and power at more than just the distant spiritual level--takes effort and conditioning, or at least it has for me. I can't expect to develop it without trying, so I have to pray even when I don't feel like it or when I don't feel connected to God at all. Just starting a prayer initiates a connection, and putting in effort to focus on the prayer, and getting used to the idea and feeling of praying, is an important step to developing a strong faith and prayer-life, because when you pray, God is listening even when you don't feel or believe that He is, and He will infuse His peace and love in you so that you have the strength and desire to pray again, because He loves his children coming to Him and wants to encourage you to come. Just make that first prayer--really give it a genuine effort--and see what happens.

There is so much more that could be said, but the book did such a great job of explaining things that it seems silly to try to repeat it.

2nd Sunday: Bibles

So, I am noticing that there could be a trend starting where Bibles are printed with a focus on a certain theme: first I saw the Green Bible, and then I heard of the Poverty and Justice Bible. I certainly approve of the intention to show scriptural support for these themes, and I can only assume that since the printers republished the entire Bible with highlighted passages that there is too much in it for just publishing a Bible study book, and that it will help to have the relevant passages in context.

I think it’s pretty cool, actually: it just goes to show that you can read the entire Bible through many different lenses and learn about different parts of life. God has a lot to say about different things in His word, and I wonder what the next focus-Bible will be. And it will probably mean some people will have a dozen Bibles each with a different theme. At least it will encourage people to read the Bible more and engage with it and apply it to their everyday life, which is the aim of these first two. They have highlighted passages that show what God has to say about stewardship and poverty & justice and how important it is based on how often He talks about it.

I am just amazed at how much is in the Bible. We all know that we can read a passage and it will give us a message the first time, and then a completely new message or insight the next time. There is so much going on, so much being said and revealed that I really think it is helpful for these theme-focused Bibles and Bible studies to tie some of the lessons together for us. We may read one passage on our own and think “Oh wow, that’s cool,” but when a person or organization takes the time to look through the whole Bible and pick out all the verses that deal with the same idea and highlights them for you, we can think, “Oh my gosh, this is incredible!”

We could all use help in studying God’s word: it’s way too deep and broad for anyone to look through it alone and hope to get a lot out of it. With the insight and guidance of others who have studied for a long time and have bundled verses together by topic, we can find lessons more easily and grow spiritually, and it never hurts to build community around Bible study!

The way I see it, there’s no need to rebuild the wheel when it comes to studying the Bible: if someone has an insight to offer about a theme they found, why not hear what they have to say (or more correctly, what they can show that the Bible has to say) rather than read the Bible alone and try to figure it out? No human has enough time in life to read the Bible so thoroughly as to learn everything it has to say and teach, so we should feed off of each other’s insights.

That’s not to say that we should never read the Bible on our own to hear what God has to say to us and that we should just trust every Bible study and explanation that we hear—of course we should be familiar with the Bible enough to be able to discern when someone is just fabricating meaning, or at least be willing to look into something ourselves if we are skeptical about someone else’s interpretations—but this is a form of engagement that encourages us to read in the first place. If you won’t read unless you have some guidance, then find guidance! Ask a friend if there is a Bible study person or plan that they particularly like or find helpful and use it. Tackling the Bible alone can be overwhelming, so much so that you may just decide it’s too much and stop completely. That is why we need help and why I think Bible studies and focus-Bibles are a good idea.

I haven’t gotten either the Green Bible or the Poverty and Justice Bible, but I hope they are able to encourage others to read thoughtfully with the intention of gaining insight into God’s desires for the way we live in this world, and that they encourage discussion, further study, and above all, application. Because we all know the Bible isn’t just about theory and theology, it’s also about action.

For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also. –James 2:26

The Green Bible

The Poverty and Justice Bible

Early Sunday: Be Open

34"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." John 13:34-35

In my Christianity & Culture class this semester, we talked a lot about tolerance, which is the highest (actually, the only) virtue of moral relativism, which is basically the mindset much of the postmodern world has adopted. I can’t help but read Jesus’ words and worry that Christian love will get lost in all the tolerance and acceptance other people show. That is why I think that, personally, I want to be explicit about my love for God and my faith in Jesus Christ. I mean, I don’t want to beat people over the head, as it were, but I want to be so open about it that it just pours out of me, not as an attack, but as a joyful confession of my beliefs. And shouldn’t it be that way anyway? Shouldn’t Christians feel such an overwhelming joy that they can’t help but talk about it?

Not that we have to be happy all the time, and not that we have to limit our conversations to only religious topics, but if we are strong in our faith, it should be something that is constantly with us, supporting us, filling us up. When we are down, we seek solace in it. When we are up, we find glory in it. When we are in doubt, we wrestle with it. We can’t escape it, and we don’t want to. We want to get deeper with it, and become so comfortable with it that expressing it—our faith and love for God—is as natural as breathing. I know it can seem awkward at times to bring up the word “God” or “Jesus” and sometimes I might stutter or pause while I work up the nerve, but I want to work past that. I want these to flow out of me so that people can hear and sense how easy it is for me to bring it up.

Talking about things tends to make them seem more concrete, so discussing something that is mainly based on faith can show that you view it as something more, as something “real” and almost physical or tangible. A lot of people view their faith as just something abstract, something separate from their real life, and they may not even think about it too seriously except for Sunday mornings, if even that. It’s just a kind of vague notion that they don’t see as really important, and it may not even occur to them to try to figure out how strongly they believe it.

But Jesus Christ is so much more than a vague notion: He is meant to be a person’s everything. He is the thing a person should drop everything for, give up their life in service for. That’s anything but a vague notion. He is very real, and His influence and power is incredibly strong. When a Christian gets to know Him at the level where they feel Him and want to know Him more, and want to do work for Him and want to share Him with others, that’s when you know He is not a religion that is just one compartment of life: He is life itself, so how can you not talk about Him? That is not meant to be an accusation, it’s an honest question. How can any Christian go one day without talking either about or to God? I do sometimes, and it’s weird to me. I feel like, for all that Christ has done for me and the rest of the world, for all that He IS, shouldn’t He come up more in my daily life?

Well, I would like Him to, so it’s my goal to kind of condition myself to be more forthcoming in my faith, because really, I do feel great joy from knowing Christ, and I feel like I’m hiding something by not letting it come out more naturally. Especially in this time where any kind act could be interpreted or motivated by simple tolerance of others, I think it is important that Christians prove we can show love and compassion to the people in our daily lives and not only in church or on a big mission trip. This life is a mission trip, and we are supposed to be identifiable be the love we show to others, the way Christians in the very beginning were. Now tolerance is just expected because of the big emphasis on individual rights, so Christians first of all need to start showing love to others rather than the radical hatred and prejudice that we have become known for, and second of all to be open about why we show such love, so that people can actually associate our actions with our faith.

That may put a high standard on us to start acting better in public—because once people know you are a Christian they will start watching you to see if you act the same loving way all the time—but is that really a bad thing? Shouldn’t we hold ourselves to a higher standard of living? We don’t have to feel like failures if we are not saints, but we should monitor ourselves so that we can catch ourselves before we do something we shouldn’t, like cheat or steal or explode with anger. If we can be more conscious of our actions and turn what we might have done into something positive and have that reputation of being a Christian, then I have a feeling people would notice that we are trying harder to live out what we preach, which would make a huge difference in others’ perceptions.

So yeah, being open about our faith might be worrisome at first because of the pressure to be better in public, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing since it will make you more aware of how you act, and if you are serious about your faith, I think you will want to live a life of love and justice.

You can have personality, I’m not trying to say we should all be little cookie-cutter angels, not at all. By all means, let your character shine! We need diversity to reach all the different types of people in the world and to prove that Christ can live in any one and that anyone can love through Christ. This is getting into the realm of the theoretical and a scope that is way too broad for my musings here, but I just believe that in order for Christians, who come in all sorts of fun flavors of personality, to be identified, we need to be loving AND open about our faith, because atheists can be good and tolerant people and a lot less worried about their reputation since they’re not trying to represent anything. But we are, and I for one want to make a good impression for Him.