Tag Archives: culture

Stop Seeing People As “They”

Posted on by
Reply

As we continue to think about what leadership as a Christian looks like in our culture today I want to talk about an idea that I think we too often seem to forget about.  That is the idea of responsibility.

We live in a culture that doesn’t like to take responsibility.  This is true both outside and inside the church.  We like to talk a lot about other things.  We talk about rights, as in my rights.  We like to talk about blame, as in blaming others for my situation.  Actually what we typically do is talk about my rights and others’ responsibilities.

But there are some key truths that we need to get ahold of if we are going to lead and make an impact.

Continue reading →

I’m Not Ok and You’re Not Ok

Posted on by
Reply

Last time we looked at the idea in the first part of this century stemming from postmodernism (which was in motion far before then) that truth was relative to the individual and that we should somehow tolerate that idea and each other’s truths.  We also looked at some of why that didn’t and doesn’t work out well.  Today I want to look at how we might lead as Christians in the current context resulting from the failure of that idea.

First as a society, Christian or not, we need to understand this.  At this point, we either have to figure out how to rescue absolute truth or we will have a continual war between the “truths”.  Those truths will battle to become the absolute truths of society.  Because that is how it works.  Always.

As Christians what we need to do is a couple of things.  Mainly we need to lead with actual Christian truth.  All of it.  Not part of it.  Not the parts that line up with my “truths” but all of it.

Continue reading →

Lead With The Truth Of Jesus (Christian Leadership In Today’s Culture Part 4)

Posted on by
4

Today I want to continue a series about what it looks like to lead as a Christian in today’s culture.  We first looked at the importance of starting with looking at our own heart and what we are really all about.  Then we looked at the importance of defining and living out of the narrative of God’s story vs. narratives dictated by current culture.  Next we took an inward turn to look at taking care of our own business first.

Today I want to look at leading with Jesus and His truth.

Now that sounds sort of obvious.  But I honestly don’t see a lot of it right now.  What I see is a lot of Christians using Jesus to back up their side.  I also see a lot of Christians saying true things about Jesus, but only the parts that they want to virtue signal with.  I also think there are a lot of Christians who are sort of fixated on a particular part of Jesus and are just trying to follow that one part.

Finally I think there are people who are trying to show that Jesus is relevant to all that is going on right now in an attempt to win particular people over, or perhaps keep particular people from leaving Christianity.

But frankly this is creating confusion and it’s all hijacking Jesus.  Now understand I’m not accusing everyone, or anyone in particular, of meaning to do that (although there are certainly people that are). It also risks splitting the body of Christ in places it just doesn’t have to be split.

What often ends up happening is that Jesus ends up being the support for a truth rather than the truth itself.

Continue reading →

What Is In Your Own Heart – What Are You Really About? (Christian Leadership in Today’s Culture Part 1)

Posted on by
4

A few months ago I wrote a series of posts about leadership.  I’m not going to link them here but if you type leadership in the search function they’ll come up.  I mentioned that it is one of the most misunderstood and overcomplicated ideas that people talk about.

Lately I’ve had some people reach out to me asking how we as Christians can lead right now in our culture and who they might look to in Christian leadership.  You might be thinking, “why are they asking you?”  Haha!  Fair question.  But in actuality I’ve been thinking a lot about this question.

The reason I’ve been thinking about it is twofold.  First, I think in terms of Western Christianity we are at a major turning point.  It’s not THE turning point for all of Christianity in history or anything.  But it’s for sure an important moment.  Secondly is that as I watch across the landscape I see very little actual leadership.  What I see is a lot posturing, reacting, and fear based “leadership”.  I see a lot of people wanting to be liked, and either trying to hold onto something that is already gone or just changing “christianity” to fit secular leadership.  Both are really bad.  I mean just awful.

Continue reading →

Is Sex With A Robot “Wrong”?

Posted on by
Reply

You may have seen in the news that a man recently “married” a hologram.  Yes you read that right.  A hologram.  Now before you get all judgmental here please listen to the man.  Akihiko Kondo points out that, “I believe that the shape of happiness and love is different for each person.”  Does this sound familiar?

I’m not here to bash Kondo today.  What I want to do with this post is discuss a couple of things.  1. We are careening off the rails as a culture and 2. What should it look like as the church to stand in the middle of it.

Continue reading →

The Church Is Fighting Yesterdays Battle

Posted on by
4

Right now there is a lot of reporting out there about the American Evangelical culture and it’s impending doom.  While I think that reports of it’s death have been greatly exaggerated, it should lead to a lot of reflection in all sorts of contexts.

As I watch it unfold and watch the church interact with the culture in several ways and in many different contexts I see a couple of things that we have to get past.  These things play out in all sorts of different ways, but of particular interest here in the space, is in relation to singleness.

Here are two major problems (not that there aren’t more – as well as many good things) that I see over and over again in different cultural exchanges.

Continue reading →

Don’t Believe The Lies

Posted on by
7

I recently read an article in which a counselor was addressing a 30 year old single woman who was feeling bad about still being single.  As I read it, I was once again blown away by how lost we are in dealing with the new reality of singleness in our culture.  Essentially we are in the midst of exchanging old lies for new ones.  Worse, the Church is spiritualizing the whole process.

The old lie (which this article said was still the lie being told in the “evil” western culture), is that if you don’t get married by about 21 then you are in trouble, and if you hit 30 you are an old maid.  Now this has never been as hard as a man. Women in general, and for sure historically, faced much more pressure to marry early.  But even as a guy, there is some pressure.  The message to the 30 year old woman was/is that you must be unwanted, and the message to the 30 year old man was/is that you must be immature.

There is no doubt that no one should be pressured into marriage.  I also don’t doubt that many people have compromised to get married by a certain point.  It was a sign of adulthood, really a sort of right of passage.

The truth is of course that many things can contribute to not being married early, and you can for sure be an adult without being married.

However, this is not the most current lie from our culture about marriage.

The new lie is this.  You can get married whenever you want and you will still get to do and experience everything the way you would if you got married earlier.  After all marriage is a huge decision and it should only happen if you are 150% sure.  This counselor literally said “the thirties are the new twenties”.   Um no.

The idea now is that you go and live you life for you during the twenties and then maybe get married later.  Secular society has totally bought in.  Now they don’t mind having sex, living together and having children, but marriage can wait. Get everything you want, then get married.

But the truth is that this is also a lie.  There are costs to getting married later.  You don’t get to start out life together.  You build a life that you don’t get to share.  You decrease your chance of having children together.  (Sorry friends, biology is still biology).  From a purely secular point of view this lie is even worse for women. Like it or not women and men age and mature differently. A 40 year old woman does not have the same chance in the “singles market” as a 40 year old man.  The truth isn’t what we want it to be no matter how much our culture wants to tell you that.

In Christian culture we have joined in the lie.  In attempt to run from pushing early “irresponsible marriage” that leads to our greatest fear – divorce, we end up telling people to wait.  We still tell men to man up and ask women to marry us, but we aren’t in a hurry about it.  And to “guard our women’s hearts” we only encourage them to marry the perfect Christian guy.  Do you see a problem here?

But even worse, because we don’t want to actually walk with people and help them navigate dating, marriage and celibacy, we tell them not to fret.  Enjoy this season of singleness, be closer to God and then God will bring you the person when and if He wants.  He is after all writing your love story.  If you are 35 and single, that isn’t your fault – it’s God’s.

You see it isn’t that our culture has gone off the rails.  It’s that God has decided that in the 21st century, as opposed to all the previous ones, people will get married 10-15 years later than ever before.

So the message ends up being – you should seek only marriage, don’t have sex, but if you aren’t married it’s not your fault – God is just asking you to wait a decade or more for it.  It’s all part of the plan!  Really?!

Now let me make a couple of huge clarifying points.  You are not less valuable single than married.  No matter your age, situation, or past, you are not disqualified from marriage. You can still have a great marriage.  I got married at 41.  I love my wife and my life with her.  There’s hope no matter what.  You are both lovable and capable of loving.

But we need to stop pretending.  We need to stop blaming God and start looking at ourselves and our culture – including our church culture.  We need to stop reacting out of fear and actually help people overcome their wounds, arrogance, and fear.  We need to be proactively thinking about how we teach, encourage, and walk with people through the whole process and every stage.

Telling single people they are less because they aren’t married is wrong.  But so is offering spiritual platitudes as a way of avoiding hard conversations and putting band aids on obvious wounds.

The Sermon On Singleness You Won’t Hear

Posted on by
7

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about why married people need a singleness sermon series.  The reason I wrote that post was two fold.  First, we need married people and single people to be taught from Christian leadership the truth about the whole thing.  Single people need to learn from a marriage and married people need to learn from singleness.  It represents the whole of the story.  One without the other comes up short.

Secondly, I think that one of the reasons that more pastors and leaders are scared to preach and teach on this (besides never having thought about it) is that they don’t know how to include the married people in it.  I outlined that in that post and I’d encourage you to go back and read it if you haven’t.

Today I want to share with you the opening remarks of that sermon series.  It’s the sermon you probably won’t ever hear, but the only one with a real chance to matter.

So without further adieu – pretend I’m in your pulpit.

“Today we begin our sermon series on singleness and the gospel.  As I mentioned last week, we all need this sermon series – no matter what our marital context.  It’s important because it affects not just the unmarried in our congregation but the marrieds and our youth.  It all works together.  This is one of the most important things we’ve done here in a long time.

I want to start today by saying this.  Most of what you have heard about singleness is wrong.  On behalf of the church – our church here and the church universally – I’m sorry.

I’m sorry for all the times that we skimmed over it or mentioned it in passing including the obvious scriptures.  I’m sorry for all the times we focussed on the nuclear family instead of the family of God.  For all the platitudes and easy quick answers, I’m sorry.  For all the times that we said things without actually studying and thinking about how all this plays out in the gospel and in the lives of our people, I’m sorry.

In the fight to rescue our culture, we’ve often failed to engage all of our people.  In an effort to fight for the marriages in our church, we’ve often left out or glossed over the unmarried. To those who are unmarried and struggling, I’m sorry for where we have not taken your context seriously.  For all who are married, I’m sorry for how what we taught you about singleness (or didn’t teach you as the case may be) may have hurt your marriage.

For all the times, and there have been many, that we made it seem like the only important thing for the unmarried was not having sex – I’m sorry.  There have been times where we have treated you as less complete, less spiritual and less capable of leadership because you weren’t married.  That was wrong.

For those of you who are called to celibacy there are no words.  We have just flat screwed that up.  We haven’t talked about it or offered you any guidance, support or teaching.  Nor have we honored your calling and choice.  I ask your forgiveness.

For lumping all unmarrieds into one group, I’m truly sorry.  The truth is there are those who are single by calling, those who are single by choice, those who are single because of sin in their life or the sin of others.  There are those who don’t know how to get married but want to.  There are also those who are divorced – some biblically and others not so much and others who were divorced before they even knew Jesus.  Finally there are those who are widowed – who never expected to be unmarried again.  These are all completely different situations, and yet we’ve often treated them the same.  That was wrong.

We’ve taught you what not to do, but not what to do.  At times – too many times – we’ve made marriage and family an idol.  We repent of that here and now, in public. Jesus invites us all to be in the family of God – and so do we – no matter what.

One sermon series over the course of a few weeks cannot repair all of that.  It can’t possibly heal all the wounds or fix all the problems – for you as an individual and certainly not as a whole church.  But maybe it can be a starting point towards a different discussion – and a discussion that actually includes everyone.  The conversation won’t be easy or short, and we won’t all agree on everything.  But we have to have it – both for those inside our church and for the lost outside the church.

Our hope is that this series will open the door to a whole different way of seeing singleness, marriage and the Kingdom.  So, here we go. . . . ”

The serious guts it would take to say the above and pursue this series would be incredible and probably won’t happen.  But it would be awesome.  Talk about changing a room.

What would you want to see in a singleness sermon series?

 

Are You Good In Bed?

Posted on by
5

Earlier this week I shared about three questions that all men wrestle with in some way.  “Are you good looking or not?” “What is the worst thing you’ve ever done?” and “Do you have a small or big penis?” All of us have answered these questions in our head, but almost no one has answered them out loud – at least not in any meaningful way.

And yet how we answer them affects many aspects of our lives, none more so than how we interact with women.  This is because all of these answers affect the core confidence we need that in order to pursue, attract, and eventually love a woman.

These questions have to do with three areas of our life – our self image, our shame, and our sexual prowess.  I’ve written a lot about our self image, and I wrote this week about our shame.  Today I want to talk about the third question.  So buckle up men.

The issue of having confidence sexually is gigantic in how we feel about ourselves as men and therefore how we interact with women.

First, let’s just admit that this is true.  Men are about performance.  This is why everywhere you turn you see sexual enhancement drugs, workouts, and techniques.  A man’s greatest fear is failure.  As Eldrege says, every man is asking, “Do I have what it takes?”  No where is this more true, or more scary and vulnerable, than sex.  Nowhere!

Every guy is asking the question do I have what it takes to be good sexually with a woman. In simple terms – “Am I Good In Bed?”  Every Guy.  Our answers are all jacked up.

Most of us began to have the question answered when we were very young.  There are so many factors.  Do you have a father that even broaches the subject?  What happens in the boys restroom in elementary school?  What are you comparing yourself to?  The guy next to you?  The guy who developed before you?  The guy in the porn video? (Average age a male sees internet porn for the first time is now 11).  It can also be affected by our view of sex, abuse, being emasculated by peers or parents or both.

Sometimes the answer is that we are “small” and that we don’t have what it takes.  Often we get no answer at all.  Almost never do we get a positive answer in the right way.

So we of course go and try to answer it.  We might dominate women or become extremely sexual to prove our prowess.  This is the guy who lives for sex and is always out to, “get some”.  We might seek to control the answer by fantasizing or looking at porn.  But this usually just brings about shame, and can undermine the question once again.

And in the Christian culture, for the most part, we are told to bury it, kill it, or starve it.  In fact, we are told basically, “Don’t look, don’t touch, don’t explore, but don’t worry you’ll magically know what to do when you get married.”  It’s like there is supposed to be a Christian switch when it comes to sexual prowess.  Don’t have any, and then man up and have it.  Really?!

It seems to me that most Christian guys end up in one of two camps.  Be a Christian but have sex anyway which leads to the obvious problems.  Or, we go without touch, without intimacy and therefore end up freaking out when we get to it. Sex becomes this taboo thing. We end up having fear and passivity around women, especially a woman we are really attracted to.  We don’t know what to do, partly because we aren’t sure we could do it – as in literally “do it”.

We live in a culture in which the average guy gets married at  28-29 years old.  What that means is that in the Church we are asking a guy to go about 15 years of his life (during the most crucial time when he is answering all of his life’s questions – including this one – for the first time) to not have sex.  My contention is this:  We can ask him to not have sex, but we CAN NOT ask him to not have an answer to this question.  Because he WILL answer it.

While this affects how we interact with women, its much bigger than that.  This answer affects how I do other things in my life.  It affects how I relate to other men, how I relate to my own body and self image and even how I interact at work and play.  This question matters.  I would submit that even if I’m called to celibacy in the kingdom, I’d still better have an answer to this question. It’s crucial no matter what.

In my next post I’m going to take a stab at what I think the Christian community can do to help guys answer it.  But before we can get help, we need to check what our answer is to the question right now.

Do you have what it takes to be good sexually with a woman?  Where does that answer come from? How have you tried to answer it?

The Marriage Is Hard Movement

Posted on by
14

The other day over lunch a young friend said, “I think it’s the trendy thing in the Christian world to make sure that everyone knows that marriage is hard.”  Haha – Amen.  For sure in the hipster Christian world it is.  In fact it’s so trendy that if your marriage isn’t “hard” then you aren’t cool, must not get it, and are probably heading for disaster.  Man we have over thought this thing.

To begin with it seems sort of counter productive to keep telling this to a group of people (those aged 18-29) that aren’t getting married.  Only 20% of them are married.  So if the goal is to warn people – well then – good job!  Seems to be working.  No one is rushing into marriage.  In fact they are rushing away from it.

As the divorce rate rose in the late 20th century, the Church rightly reacted to re-estabish marriage as a covenant and not just a contract.  They wanted people to make sure they knew it was permanent and that even when it’s hard you hang in there – because less and less people were.  All good so far.

But I believe as an unintended consequence we’ve now got a Christian culture that has made an agreement with the enemy by accident.  They’ve made marriage out to be harder than singleness.  The words Marriage and Hard are now interchangeable in Christian culture.

It doesn’t help that a lot of this generation’s pastors bringing this message are generally kind of joyless to begin with. (For free – one thing the New-Calvinists and Emergent Church leaders have in common – They’re both mad).  These people want to make sure that everyone gets the seriousness of marriage, which is great.  But if we let that steal the joy of marriage then both the married and unmarried are screwed.

On top of this our generation whines a lot.  I’m a part of it.  Think about it.  My job is hard, my school is hard, singleness is hard, times are hard.  Everything seems to be hard and everyone wants to make sure you know that they are suffering just as much as you. Hardness is a badge of honor.  Joy isn’t even on the radar.  I’m dead serious.  There’s a spirit of complaining that is rampant in our world. Can you picture your grandparents sitting around talking about how hard any of those things are?

We spend more time complaining than doing something about it.  How many men’s “accountability” groups are really “share your problems” groups.  “Yeah Bro, that’s tough.” is about as much help as we offer each other.  We’re all about empathy and understanding, which are important.  But at some point, it’s time to actually deal with your stuff, not just have a great premium beer while talking about it.

Marriage is hard because dealing with our sin and woundedness is hard – and marriage forces the issue more than any other relationship.  But marriage isn’t the problem.  We are.  We don’t need to be afraid of marriage – we need to deal with our crap.

Over the years I’ve walked with a lot of people in tough marital situations.  What usually happens is this.  I listen to a guy for about half an hour pour out all that is wrong with his wife.  Then I ask a couple of questions.  And the next thing you know I’m saying something to the effect of, “This is really about you.  You need to deal with . . . ”

Now sometimes a guy has been sinned against or his wife is really going through something horrible and I’m not negating that type of thing.  But about 90% of the time when a guy says to me that marriage is hard what he really means is, “I don’t want to –  face this wound, deal with this sin, make this change or grow up in this way.”

The truth is that in the long run, marriage is not “harder” than singleness.  All research I’ve ever seen (almost all secular) says that married people are happier, have more and better sex, make more money, live longer and impact society more.  It’s a societal foundation. That’s not to say that being single is “wrong”.  Some are called to celibacy and some are single for other reasons.  My point is that a whole lot of this trendy “marriage is hard” stuff is more about sounding deep than actually dealing with deep stuff.

Maybe most importantly, we need to realize that hard and bad are not synonyms – even if our comfort culture tells us they are.  In the kingdom, hardness and joy are not opposites.  That fact is part of our witness.  But we lose our witness if we leave out the joy part.  Read that again.

As singles looking to be married we need to walk a line here.  We need to realize that marriage is not sex and romance on demand and it certainly won’t solve all of our problems. But we need to not give into the lie that it’s so hard that we probably can’t do it.  Don’t resign to it being bad.  It also would be good to start dealing with our sin and woundedness now.

I’d encourage married folks to think about what you mean when you say it’s hard.  What’s the point you’re really making?  Why are you making it?  As a warning?  As an excuse? Are you dealing with what is specifically making it hard right now?