Category: Theology

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Paris Hilton, Feminism, and Carry-on Luggage

By Amy Spiegel

In response to my recent post regarding gender differences, a former student asked for an elaboration on my position on feminism. I was surprised by the difficulty I had in teasing out just what I did believe. Feminism is one of those terms with so much baggage attached that it looks like Paris Hilton headed to the airport for a week in Maui. Thrown about by so many people who mean so many different things by it, I almost want to come up with my own word rather than deal with checking all those unnecessary bags. If I were to come up with a word to describe my view, it would be “femaleness.” (Highly creative, right?) Still, when I think of what it means to be a woman in this fallen world, I think of the verse in Genesis 1: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God, he created him; male and female he created them.” As Matthew Henry says in his commentary, God created one human and out of that oneness drew the other, whereas with animals He made them the male and female separately. There is a sameness in substance between male and female that is undeniable, just as there is a sameness in substance in the Holy Trinity which we have the great honor to reflect.

However, just as in the Trinity, there are distinctions, in both duties and personality. Man and woman were created with different purposes and characters in mind and attempting to deny this is like saying that God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not just one but the same. This, however interesting (at least to me), is all pre-fall stuff and terribly difficult to translate into this distorted world we live in where each sex attempts to rule over the other. For the most part, men have been more successful at the ruling than women. No one can deny that there has been a great deal of abuse and discrimination against women over the centuries. I would certainly never attempt to brush that aside as if it meant nothing. However, when modern feminists attempt to define just what that abuse and oppression has been, too often, they include roles and responsibilities that are, in my opinion, basic to what it is to female. Being subjected to the whims of an unfeeling husband, having your rights and voice unrecognized by the legal system and so on is truly inexcusable. But so is being expected to not just be equal to men but the same as men. To close yourself to the possibility of having children, raising a family, and serving that family through the sacrifice of your time, hard work and often your dignity is to close yourself off to part, not all, of your very essence. (Obviously, there are many cases where these options aren’t available to women. Single women or those who cannot have children are no less feminine. They can look for other ways to express the character that makes women so well-equipped for the duties of mother and wife, and these roles are by no means limited to baking cookies and teaching Sunday School.)

Do women have the right to pursue careers in all fields and have opportunities in education, etc? Absolutely! But they have to recognize that in order to do so, they must be willing to make certain sacrifices. Once you make the choice to get married and have a family, certain compromises have to be made. “Fair” or not, for thousands of years women have committed a great portion of their lives to raising families. Feminists too often seem to think that this great gift (that is given to and given by women) is slavery. Yes, there is a lot about being a mom that is mind-numbingly dull but I think that raising responsible little people is actually pretty important and well worth the effort. Moms aren’t super-human. We are most definitely fallen creatures (just ask my kids) but to suggest that we are mindless zombies marching to the beat of someone else’s drum isn’t a truthful depiction either. For me, I have found a great outlet for expressing my gifts through staying at home with my kids. That doesn’t mean I think everyone has to make that choice. If I am willing to acknowledge the legitimacy of their choice, I will ask for the same respect in kind. I don’t want to align myself with anyone who thinks I am wasting my time. Just as God created male and female with their own unique gifts to contribute, so, I think, He created a great diversity within the genders. Trying to define female in one particular way is like trying to pack all Paris Hilton’s clothes in one carry-on. Better to get a luggage cart and bring everyone along for the ride. I hear Maui is beautiful this time of year.

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The Tug of the Gender War

By Amy Spiegel

Despite the fact that I am a self-professed non-feminist, gender and the role it plays in relationships is discussed quite frequently at the Spiegels. This is in part due to fact that we have three boys and one girl. Watching them develop and relate to one another in such different ways generates a lot of conversations between Jim and me both on how to help our kids understand one another and how their differences translate to the larger scale of men and women in general. But obviously Jim and I, too, have the gender gap to overcome and find plenty of fodder in our own interactions as well.

A few Sundays back, we were riding home from the church with the kids and while I didn’t exactly have Jim’s full attention (I was competing with ESPN radio and the cacophony coming from the backseat), I took a moment or two to “remind” him of some projects around the house I thought needed his attention. This was the impetus of yet another discussion between us regarding the differences between the masculine and feminine approaches to life. He would say I was nagging and he would probably be right. Let’s face it girls, we nag. We take every opportunity we possibly can find to remind them of all the things they should be doing, could be doing, need to be doing. We cannot hold our tongues and let them do it in their own time. I can’t count the times when I have asked Jim to do something, probably more than once, and am getting ready to remind him again when he goes and does it of his own accord. And frankly when he does it on his own, when I come home and he has unclogged the toilet or cleaned up the garage, I don’t really find it as satisfying because I didn’t tell him to do it! If that isn’t a symptom of the fall of man (and woman) and the complete and total infiltration of sin into every crevice of our being, I don’t know what is.   

But here’s the thing. Even in the way that He caused our natures to be cursed and fallen, God has shown mercy. Eve overstepped her place in reaching to be like God, and Adam abdicated his role in not intervening and, instead, participating with her. So God said, “Okay Eve, you want to be in charge? Then I will pair you with a man who would rather sit on the Lazy Boy or act like he doesn’t hear the kids pulling one another’s eyes from their sockets.” And He says “Okay Adam, you don’t want to step up and be irresponsible? Then I will pair you with a woman who will nag you about cutting the grass and ask you completely unimportant questions when there are 30 seconds to go in the last quarter with the score tied and your team on the 10-yard line.” But it could be worse. God, in His wisdom, has allowed even our weaknesses to compliment one another.

Men struggle with irresponsibility when it comes to their duties at home and spending time with their families.  (I am making a generalization here. Please don’t e-mail me about how you are married to the perfect man who washes the dishes every night before he rubs your feet while you tell him about your day with the kids, okay? I get it. These are generalizations that are true to some extent in most cases. Is that a good enough disclaimer for you? Ditto for all those who think I am oversimplifying the follies of women). So God gives men women who are, generally speaking, good at organizing stuff at home and who love their husbands so much they are willing to force their spouse to spend time with them. Women struggle with keeping their emotions in check and overstepping the boundaries of their spouses. So God gives them men who are, generally speaking, much more steady in their mood swings and who are laid back enough to handle encroachment in the small areas and strong enough to repel encroachment in the big ones. I love that Jim is strong where I am weak and vice versa. It’s like spooning—you fit where your partner is lacking. So rather than belittling one another for the areas where we differ, let’s appreciate these as opportunities for grace and hope the other guy (or gal) will do the same. Otherwise we are back in the garden, once again trying to assign blame, locked in an eternal tug of war in which no one wins. So the next time the wife gives you the stink eye (again) for not putting your socks in the hamper (again) or the hubby drifts in and out of listening to the minute details of your day, just take a deep breath and move on. After all, it could be a lot worse.

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Drinking from the Cup of Ritual

By Amy Spiegel

In these politically divisive times, there are lots of ways we see our nation divided and categorized: by political party, race, religion, occupation, beverage of choice. Okay, so maybe this last category doesn’t cut as deep a divide as the others, but nonetheless, I think you can tell a lot about a person by what they choose to imbibe. Now there is the classic divide of coffee or tea. People of both persuasions take the process of brewing or steeping, whatever the case might be, pretty seriously. I have seen people approach their coffeemakers, if they are hard core, like priests approaching the altar, especially if they have a French press.

Jim switched from coffee to tea a few years back, due to his battle with gastric reflux. While this was a great disappointment to the kids who had become accustomed to begging a swig or two from his coffee mug each morning, I think he is now in the correct camp for his disposition, not to mention his digestion. I see the coffee drinker as high energy/intense. This is not Jim, who relates much better to the methodical and slower pace of tea drinking.

Allow me to describe the typical process of making a cup of tea in our house. First, heat the water. This is actually a great controversy in our household because Jim much prefers the microwave, while I rely on the electric kettle. Next you forget that you have heated the water (in either way previously described) and you have to start again, because by the time you remember, the water has gotten cold again. After reheating the water, you choose a tea bag and once again walk away, perhaps to wipe a bottom (always a great pre-beverage-consumption activity) or to settle a dispute. Returning to your steeping cup, you realize that once again, it’s cold. After reheating, adding half and half and honey (if you are Jim, you use more honey than Winnie the Pooh) you try to drink it. But wait, it’s too hot. So you leave the tea, and do something else only to come back too late and find that your tea is—say it with me now—cold. So you give it one more zap in the microwave (it now contains enough microwaves to scramble a pacemaker) and drink, burning your tongue with each sip, but you’ve come this far, right? Gee, I don’t’ know why I don’t do that more often. My aversion to this process obviously reveals my issues with patience and instant gratification. I applaud Jim for his perseverance but prefer my beverage consumption not to be an exercise in self-discipline.

So, you might be asking yourself, what do I drink—water? Please. I am among an elite group of drinkers whose beverage of choice is the Polar Pop. Now allow me to enlighten those of you who do not have the honor of living in Indiana. The Polar Pop is a very large, very cold fountain drink. You can only buy it in a limited number of convenient stores in our area, though it has its imitators, like all greats do. You can get a Polar Pop in either brand you prefer, but I, of course, like all distinguished connoisseurs of carbonated beverages, head directly for the Coke side of the dispenser. I quickly fill my Styrofoam (that’s right, not only am I consuming 32 oz. of liquid goodness-knows-what, but it is all contained within a large, non-biodegradable container) with ice and fill with half caf and half decaf Diet Coke. In and out in less than a minute if the line is short, which is good thing because I am usually squeezing the stop in between either dropping off or picking up one of the kids and dropping off or picking up one of the other kids. The size of the drink is definitely a plus because if the kids are present, there is usually a lot sharing going on. If the choice of coffee or tea reflects on the chooser, then what does the Polar Pop reveal about me? Besides the obvious—that I am not as environmentally or health conscious as I ought to be—I think the draw of the Polar Pop for me is the ritual of it. I love the fact that with little variation I can go through the ceremony of getting my Polar Pop in a very orderly and predictable way each time, going to the same gas station and getting the same drink. I get the same style of cup (the cup holder-friendly model) and get cranky if they don’t have the blue straws as opposed to the skinny white ones. (I also drink tea, when I can endure the process, out of the same mug, eat the same cereal for breakfast every morning, and reread books again and again. It’s a sickness, I know.)

In an attempt to pull this post out of the abyss of complete triviality it has thus far been wallowing in, I will say this. There is a natural human tendency to cling to what is visible, that which we can touch and feel and even taste. While my near-obsession with the Polar Pop seems harmless enough, there are days when I suck down Diet Coke like a prayer to heaven, seeking comfort from the familiar. But I think that even in routine, God speaks and does indeed comfort. Otherwise, why would He make the sun rise and fall each day in pretty much the same way and have the seasons follow one another in the same order? If He likes order and routine, why shouldn’t we who are created in His image? Perhaps the draw of routine is part of the Imago Dei, however dimly disguised in the contents of a Styrofoam cup.

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A Series of Deaths

By Jim Spiegel

I have a good friend who likes to say that “life is a series of deaths.”  In saying this, he is referring to the fact that our journey on this planet involves many farewells and demands of self-denial—and each of these represents some kind of permanent loss.  As you grow your childhood perishes.  With each graduation during your school years you say goodbye to friends, many of whom you will never seen again.  And the ones with whom you do stay in touch you will never know in that context again.  When you marry, much of your freedom dies, and with the birth of each child you must lay aside worthwhile projects and even some dreams.  And then come the real deaths.  You lose friends to accidents, cancers, and even suicide.  Your parents begin to fail and suddenly you find yourself having to parent them in return, perhaps nursing them into that good night—always half believing its not really happening.  It’s just one death after another.

Sounds pretty bleak, doesn’t it?  Well, it would be if that were the whole story.  And I suppose that if I thought it was, perhaps I’d have gone the way of some of my departed friends by now.  But it’s not the whole story.  Because with each of those deaths has come new life.  God has a way of replacing lost projects and dreams with even greater projects and dreams.  Far beyond the meager imaginings of my youth and even my young adulthood is the joy and satisfaction I’ve found in my wife and children as well as the broader community of which we are a part.  What calling is higher than investing your life in other souls?  Even the pains we feel in this context are, as C.S. Lewis would say, “more precious than all other gains.”

Of course, there are goodbyes ahead for all of these relationships as well.  More deaths to come in a seemingly endless train.  But it’s not really endless.  One day, we are told, all death will cease and God will wipe away every tear.  And, if Scripture is to be trusted, there are good things which emerge from our earthly trials—good things which are endless, such as the virtues we develop in persevering (cf. James 1:2-4; 1 Pet. 1:5-7).  God does not put us through this soul-grind without reason.  He does so to mold us into something wonderful, even the image of Christ.  And if that isn’t worth enduring a series of deaths, then nothing is.

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Theological Roadtrippin’

By Amy Spiegel

In picking up Ed Cyzewski’s new book Coffeehouse Theology: Reflecting on God in Everyday Life, I had many different expectations. Ed, Jim and I had exchanged several e-mails and I greatly appreciated Ed’s style and humor. I was looking forward to my first nonfiction read in a while and happily accepted Ed’s request for Wisdom & Folly to be included on his blog tour. What I didn’t expect was a cross-cultural experience.

One of my most convicting and enlightening experiences occurred immediately after I graduated from college. Why is it, by the way, those two so often road trip together? Just once I would love to have Enlightenment show up on my doorstep unexpectedly and say “Hey, I thought I would leave Conviction sleeping on the couch this time. How about some mind-blowing insights, just you and me?” Anyway, what was I saying? Ah, yes-mind-stretching and self-mortifying experience. I embarked on an overseas missions trip with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship to Ukraine. I can’t really say why I went on this trip (it certainly wasn’t for any of the reasons one should), but I definitely learned a lot from it. I had traveled overseas before, but more as a sightseer and general laborer, never in a one on one situation, day in day out. Frankly, it was exhausting. As the days stretched on and I felt myself being drained of what little spiritual energy I had at the time, I found myself clinging more and more to anything American. I drank Diet Coke at every opportunity, gobbled candy bars like there was no tomorrow and wept at the sight of the American delegation making its way into the Olympics. I didn’t want to share my precious symbols of home with anyone, which very much went against the communal mindset of the Ukrainians. I was happy to buy you your own, but keep your distance from my Snickers, okay comrade? One day two friends and I had had enough of the boiled beets and hot tea for lunch and headed to the nearby village with visions of pizza dancing before our eyes. As we neared the village, our faithful leader came thundering down the path to stop us. We had unintentionally offended our Ukrainian friends by shunning the prepared food and showing off our ability to buy an alternative. With great embarrassment and not a little righteous indignation, we returned to eat lunch with the rest of the group. (I believe humble pie was on the menu that day.) It was then that I began to reflect on just how ingrained certain values were to me as an American: independence, individualism and consumerism, to name a few. Not all bad in the proper context, but they nonetheless placed me in a certain context both culturally and economically. If I wanted to minister to these students I had traveled so far to meet, I was going to have to check some of these values like luggage at the gate, knowing I might never see them again.

This is the challenge that Ed Cyzewski gently but forcefully issues in Coffehouse Theology. If we are to attempt to understand God and his inspired word, the Bible, we must understand ourselves and the context in which we live, because our biases and cultural beliefs form a lens through which we see the world and the scriptures. As Ed puts it “Once we understand where we come from and who we are, we can then step into the important task of knowing God through Christian theology.” For me, just as with my experience overseas, this book was an opportunity to be challenged by a different perspective and come to understand myself as well as others more clearly. I didn’t always agree with Ed, but I could certainly appreciate where he was coming from and also appreciate the magnanimous spirit with which he presents all sides of important debates. As Ed says, he isn’t so much interested in convincing you one way or another, but rather opening a healthy dialogue, and he does just this with a light and humble touch. (Plus, I must add, I greatly appreciated his somewhat random cultural references and the use of parentheticals.)  I would definitely recommend Coffeehouse Theology to anyone interested in theology as a way of better understanding God in everyday life and especially within our postmodern context. Within its pages, you just might find Enlightenment hanging out all by his lonesome, ready to go wherever the road might take you.

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Is Christianity the One True Religion?

By Jim Spiegel

My son, Bailey, has a friend named Conner who has been asking his parents some very challenging theological questions of late.  He is only eight years old, but Conner has been stumping his mom and dad just like my kids stump me from time to time.  Recently he asked, “How do we know that our religion (Christianity) is the true one and the others are wrong?”  Whoa.  That’s a toughy.  This is one of those cases where the kid’s question itself is as encouraging as it is challenging.  It’s encouraging because it shows that he is already thinking critically about worldviews.  And it’s challenging, of course, because, well, the question raises a whole nest of difficult issues.  It’s also worth noting that Conner’s question presupposes two important truths.  First, it assumes that there is such a thing as truth in religion and, secondly, it assumes that not all religions can be true.  So the question as to why we should believe Christianity is the one true religion is itself insightful.

So, then, how do we know that Christianity is true?  The short answer is that we know this through special revelation—the Bible.  Scripture tells us that Jesus Christ is the unique of Son of God, that he lived a sinless life, and that he died and rose from the dead to save humanity from their sins.  This is the essence of the gospel and the heart of Christianity.  It is also the essential doctrine of our faith which distinguishes it from all other religious faiths.  The great theistic traditions of Judaism and Islam, for all their many insights and true doctrines (e.g., that there is a personal God who created the world and communicates with us through special revelation, etc.), deny the divinity of Christ.  And pantheistic religions, such as Hinduism and New Age thought, deny that Jesus Christ is uniquely divine (since they affirm that all human beings are essentially divine). 

Christianity stands alone in affirming that Jesus is the unique God-man and savior of the world.  And this core Christian belief is based on the teachings of the New Testament.  So, then, the next question is whether the New Testament is trustworthy.  Without delving into technicalities, the evidence for the historicity (historical reliability) of the N.T. documents is overwhelming.  In fact, the manuscript attestation for the New Testament documents is incomparably greater than that for any other ancient documents.  For an informative—a surprisingly stimulating—book on this subject, I highly recommend F. F. Bruce’s classic The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?  And there are many other excellent resources, such as Craig Blomberg’s The Historical Reliability of the Gospels and Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, which confirm our confidence in the New Testament and, in turn, its central claim that Jesus Christ is uniquely divine.

So it all comes down to the identity of Jesus Christ.  Is he the God-man or a mere mortal?  This is not only the central question in the study of comparative religions but also the central question of human history.  Either Jesus is divine and Christianity is the one true religion, or he was a fraud and Christianity is a scandalous lie.  Neither of those alternatives is benign.  Both have profound implications for the meaning of life.  So kudos to Conner for posing such a foundational question.  He has gotten to the heart of the matter.  And all of us, not just his parents, need to be ready with an answer.

By the way, in my book Gum, Geckos, and God I tackle many questions like these posed by my own kids.  I’m interested in hearing other insightful and challenging theological questions posed by children (or adults, for that matter), so let me know if you have a good one to share.

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Mirror Images

By Amy Spiegel

One of the most embarrassing moments of my life happened several years ago when I was supposed to be meeting a friend at a local night spot. (Okay, it was a club. There are you satisfied? I used to go dancing at night clubs. Sue me.). This was at a time in my life when I was extremely conscious of my appearance and looking “cool.” I found that at least one cure for this self-consciousness is giving birth to four kids as well as going out of the house on a daily basis with vomit, snot, or poop smeared somewhere on my clothing. Anyhoo, back to the pre-vomit-stained version of myself.  I was sitting at a table waiting for my friend, when I saw him walk by. I attempted to get his attention but failed to raise my voice to the decibel level required to exceed that of the music giving me permanent hearing loss. I hopped up and bopped after him. (The pre-vomit-stained version of me often bopped along, here and there. Sadly this too is no more. Sigh.) I followed him up a ramp and encountered a back room to the club that I hadn’t realized existed. As I was heading into the room, a girl was blocking my way. I stepped to one side, as did she. I stepped to the other side and she did as well. I looked up and laughed, feeling like I was in an episode of I Love Lucy, when I noticed this girl was rather cute. Then to my horror, she stopped being cute and became my own reflection. I was standing in front of a mirror and had been attempting to side-step myself.

In a lot of ways, this experience sums up my life. I spend most of my time thinking about myself, trying to make myself happy, admiring my brilliance, etc. When I am not thus occupied, I am wallowing in disgust at my self-centered hedonism. It isn’t as though I wake up every morning in love with myself, longing to see what great deeds I will perform today. Despite appearances to the contrary, I have a fairly realistic picture of my many faults and limitations. (Dare I say I pride myself on it?)  Yet thoughts of self-interest and self-congratulations pop, seemingly unbidden, into my head continually throughout the day. It is as if I am trapped in front of that mirror, desperately trying to get out of my own way so I can move on.

It is an astonishing paradox to me that I find myself to be the most obnoxious and morally repulsive person I know, yet throughout the day I constantly think how to gratify and admire myself. When trapped in the corner of my own self-loathing and faced with the bleak landscape of my inner thought life, I become like a crazed beast, desperately seeking escape. (It’s like being trapped in a Gap fitting room wearing pants that are at least one size too small.) Cheeks burning with shame, I cast around wildly in a vain attempt to prop up my quickly wilting self-esteem. Sometimes I begin sizing up others (literally and figuratively) in some sort of warped moral version of a beauty contest: “Okay, Miss Down-the-Street is a better cook and kicks my butt in the ‘Consistent Quiet Time’ segment of the evening but I could definitely take her on in bread-making and bedtime reading. If I work out three times this week and dust of the old Bible, I think I could make it to second runner-up for sure.” Unfortunately, I know a lot of really good people and too often looking outward doesn’t do that much for building up my self-image. So then I turn inward and go for old reliable—my good intentions. Sure, I just lost it with the kids on the way out the door today, but my intention was to be on time and I did apologize and smooth it over with a slushy, so there. Or maybe not.

This is where that other old reliable comes in—the Gospel. It is in its reflection that I see with great clarity those dusty corners no one else knows. But it is also in its reflection that I see the grace and mercy that has been purchased for me—at great cost and effort but providentially, not my own. So the next time you find yourself trapped in the mirror of your discontent, look that image straight in the eye and say “Hey you’re kind of cute—in a saved but still-in-progress kind of way.”

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Everything in Its Place

By Amy Spiegel

How I clean my house is, I’m afraid to say, indicative of how I live my life. I often care less about whether things are actually clean than about whether they have the appearance of cleanliness. I love people coming to my house when the floor still smells like Pine-sol and you can make out the tracks of the vacuum cleaner. But if you happen to open the wrong closet door, beware of the avalanche of “yet to be filed” items that will shower down upon you. In the same way, more frequently than I care to admit, I find myself greeting people with all the visible surfaces wiped clean and the scent of pulled- togetherness hanging about my head. Upon such occasions, if you were to peek in the windows of my soul, you are more likely to be shocked by the resentful insecurity and anger that are lying about like dirty socks which missed the laundry basket than bedazzled by how pristine my heart is.

My superficial approach doesn’t stem from a desire to impress but rather a terror of disappointing people with the reality of my inner life. This is one of the reasons I love my husband and need him so desperately, both in my housekeeping and in my spiritual life. He will spend three hours cleaning our stove and can’t stand for people to see the evidence of the frenetic cleaning which took place five minutes (sometimes less) before their arrival. He is very methodical in his cleaning, just like his approach to spiritual development—slow and steady wins the race. His substance draws me back to reality and his graciousness has helped me to feel less fearful of being a disappointment to people.

Lately I have been connecting the dots as to how my fear of discovery bleeds into every area of my life including my hobbies and interests. I love Victorian literature because of the formality and restraints of the time, not in spite of them. I love going to the movies and eating out, having an experience and leaving behind all the dirty dishes and the empty popcorn boxes. I love organizing and putting things where they belong.

One of my favorite sayings of my dad’s (though I must confess to not particularly appreciating it in my younger years) is “a place for everything and everything in its place.” As I look back, I realize that this desire to be tidy has paralleled my desire to be more spiritually mature and serious. I used to be an absolute slob. My father, a methodical cleaner just like my husband, once accused me of starting a new landfill in the backseat of my car. Soon after I got married, however, when the rubber of married life was hitting the road of my need to change my selfish ways, I began to enjoy cleaning. Now that I have four kids, my standards have lowered significantly but I can spend a good hour organizing my daughter’s bookshelf by subject, size, and age appropriateness. Of course, you could be eaten alive by the dust bunnies hidden under the bookshelf. Still, I will defend my longing for order.

When you study the Bible and see all of God’s wisdom and promises fulfilled, you see we weren’t meant for this chaotic, grey world but a world revolving in perfect harmony around the God who created it with “a place for everything and everything in its place.” My penchant for categorizing everything is my longing for heaven, an attempt to make sense out of chaos. Maybe my desire for things to be orderly isn’t a desire to appear perfect so much as a reflection of my desire to be made perfect.

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Pimples

By Amy Spiegel

I have a vivid memory from my teenage years of heading to the breakfast table with a sinking feeling, dreading the approaching humiliation. I would drop into my chair, perhaps even trying to angle my face so that my dad was not staring at me head on. But all in vain, for inevitably the time would come when he would look up from his bowl of oatmeal and be confronted with the recently popped pustule, now red and bleeding on my face. He would then utter the phrase I became so familiar with over the years: “You sure made that a lot worse.”

I tell this story not only because I seem to have a masochistic desire to rehash embarrassing tales from my past but also as an illustration of some deeper tendency on my part to refuse to leave well-enough alone. Isn’t history full of examples of people that get themselves (and often others) into a heap of trouble because they just have to stir the pot? The mess of human history began with the whole Eve and fruit incident and look how well that turned out. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when telling my children the story of the fall of man. I watch their utter bafflement at the greed of Adam and Eve. I mean, they are in the Garden of Eden for crying out loud! To let mankind off the hook a bit, we could take a look at our celestial predecessors. Sam, our six-year-old, has been questioning me of late with regards to Satan. “Mom, if the angels were with God in heaven then how could they choose to sin?” Good question, my boy. I feel like a complete boob every time I try to answer this question. How could they make that choice? And yet, there I am making the same choice every day. Staring straight into the mirror with full knowledge of the havoc I am about to reek and I find the temptation, well, too tempting. So I guess I have no one to blame but myself. Thank goodness my Father is still there, looking me full in the face, despite my attempts to avoid His gaze. “You sure made that a lot worse,” He says, sometimes with a bit of a chuckle, I am sure. But by His grace, He is always there to clean up my mess and maybe some day I will learn to leave well-enough alone.

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I’ve Got Friends in Low Places

By Amy Spiegel

In our kitchen we have a large set of windows overlooking our quiet (when the motorcycles aren’t in season) tree-lined street. I spend a great deal of the day standing, looking out these windows, as I make the kids’ lunches, fix dinner, and do a hundred other small daily tasks. It’s strange that such a beautiful view, at least in the summer, causes me such vexation. You see, two of my good friends (and their swarm of kids with whom my swarm of kids greatly enjoy playing) live almost directly across from these windows and right next to each other. Between us is a church parking lot that functions as a demilitarized zone for the swarm and their roller blades, bikes and tricycles. It is rare that a day passes without me watching one of the kids dash across the street to see if someone can play.

What a blessing, right? Funny how human beings have a talent for taking every blessing and twisting it into a curse. Because while I often smile as I watch my kid’s mad dash toward friendship, there are other times, more often that I care to admit, that I stand on tiptoe to make sure I’m not being left out of anything fun. A recent phone conversation with a friend proved the absolute absurdity of my paranoia. The conversation began innocently enough, as we were discussing carpooling for school. Yet despite the relative unimportance of the topic, I could tell both of us were tense and a bit defensive. You see, carpooling is a very political subject, demanding a great deal of diplomacy and tact, a bit like joining NATO. You are either in and therefore recognized as a “player,” one of the inner circle and worthy of being entrusted with someone else’s offspring, or you are out and left to fend for yourself among the lesser alliances with lesser known acronyms like the IBSA Dialogue Forum or the International Black Sea Club. Finally, I confessed to feeling a bit like a middle schooler and admitted that I was afraid of presuming too much and being left out of the loop in my friend’s plans. She quickly affirmed my value as a friend, and I suddenly felt like I had someone to sit beside me at lunch for the rest of my life. (What is a more likely place for humiliation than a large room full of adolescences balancing trays of food and desperately trying not to look desperate?)

What followed was an honest and refreshing tête-à-tête about how often we feel isolated and excluded from the social circles revolving around us in a seemingly endless chain of play dates and sleepovers. The irony was that I felt this way about this very friend. As she expressed her longing for true community and a sense of belonging, I heard my own voice (only I normally just talk to myself or Jim, if he is unlucky enough to answer his office phone at the wrong time). The more I listened, the more I felt something click in my head about my own views on community. I realized that however I try to disguise it by dressing it up in language about the “body of Christ,” what I really mean when I talk about community is a place where I feel completely comfortable. Though I talk about wanting to serve others and support and encourage them, what I am really looking for is others who will serve and support me. And if they think I am fun, like my cooking, and greatly admire my parenting skills, that’s great too. I am not looking for community; I am looking for an entourage. And as I sat there looking out my windows, my mind came to rest on Jesus. What an entourage He had! The disciples were not exactly prestige friends, and I feel quite certain they weren’t in the elite carpool. Christ had something to offer them, not the other way around. He chose friends who needed friends.

I suddenly saw the vicious cycle I was in.  Thinking only of myself just magnified each perceived slight, which made me think about myself more, and so on. The irony is that when I die to self and let go of my firm grim on self-interest, it is in that moment I find peace. When I am only looking out for myself, I am all I see. (This experience is a bit like looking too closely at one’s reflection in the glare of the dressing room mirror. Absolutely no good can come of it.) I have been standing at the window looking out for myself when all the while I should have been looking out for opportunities to serve. The contentment that I feel in the presence of others does not come from thinking about myself. It’s when I look to the needs of others that I cure my loneliness. The isolation Jesus experienced every day of His life on earth and especially on the cross wasn’t cured by gathering to Himself the best and the brightest. It was through His ultimate sacrifice for our sake that He restored fellowship with His Father, for Himself as well as for ourselves. The community of heaven awaits me if I am willing to lay down my life. God placed me in front of a window looking out, not in front of a mirror looking in.