JOHN FOOTE

“If there’s magic in the world, it’s the understanding of something that someone’s trying to share.” - from Before Sunrise (via S. Henderson) I’ve completed two parts of the response I’m drafting to Kate Bolick’s article on marriage and singleness from the November issue of the Atlantic, and I have one post yet to write.  Faced with a shortage of time before and during the holidays, I decided to take a breather in this post to crank out a little meta-response (you know, a self-styled response about my response, and a response about the response to my response), and leave the true “third part” of my response to Kate’s piece until after the New Year. I began Part I of my response by making the case that Christians are notoriously bad at listening to thoughtful non-Christian commentary, and that I regard this as a bit of an embarrassment.  One reader of this weblog recently offered up a bit of criticism, agreeing that Christians are "notoriously bad at listening to what people like Ms. Bolick have to say about issues like gender, marriage, etc.," but defending Christians’ distaste for listening in two ways:

“1) We know we can’t allow them to change our views. (Frankly, you’re right – I’m not interested in anything they have to say about marriage and gender roles.) I have settled that for myself without their help. 2) We know they don’t want a response from us. Just as you accuse Christians of doing, these people don’t think that we could possibly have anything to add to the conversation. They don’t ask us to join in a conversation. They just want to tell us we’re wrong.”

I’d like to offer my sincere thanks to “Traditional Mom” for sharing exactly what she thinks.  I’ve been inviting readers to leave comments, and I’m grateful for her contribution. Even if this comment represents a minority view, she’s not the only one to hold it, and it provides a great chance to continue the conversation.

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If you do a little spelunking to unearth Christianity’s prime elements, right next to the Scriptures, and the ethics of love, charity and hospitality, you’ll recognize a few nearly forgotten items: evangelism and apologetics.  Figuring out how to articulate and give away what we’ve seen, received and understood has always been at the heart of the Christian faith.  This is a truth so basic and axiomatic that it barely bears mentioning.  In fact, it wouldn’t be worth mentioning at all, except that the term evangelism has fallen so far out of favor that it’s met with considerable revulsion by many both inside and outside the church. A lot has been written addressing the shortcomings of the popular evangelistic techniques of the last 20 years, so I’ll limit myself to a succinct critique.  Evangelism is distasteful and ineffective for everyone involved when it consists of one person compelling another person to listen to speech that is not native to either of them.  This is why I personally found the concept so off-putting for so many years.  I could never bring myself to take an account of the gospel written by someone else and compel a stranger into conversation about it.  The speech would be an awkward fit for me, would seem like a foreign language to the other person, and it would become immediately apparent to both of us that we’d each rather be doing something different. Like so many things in life, evangelism is a conversation, and all conversations begin with the ability to hear, and the capacity to speak.  You simply cannot evangelize if you cannot hear, because you won’t know how to articulate what you want to say.  Just ask any Bible translator or missionary or church planter: comprehending the language of the people group you wish to reach is a prerequisite to sharing with them. Contrary to popular belief, we cannot complete the Great Commission by speaking the Gospel in our native tongue slowly and loudly enough. Suppose you’re on Jim Elliot’s team when he arrives in Ecuador in 1955 to evangelize the Waodani people. You’re hiding in the bush with Jim, when you spy a tribe of Waodani speaking to one another in Waodanicean. You look at Jim, and Jim looks at you, and then he whispers anxiously, "Try not to listen to what they’re saying! We can’t allow them to change our views!" And you pause for a moment to survey the scene and then whisper back, "Yeah, I don’t think they want to hear from us. I can tell by the look on that warrior over there that he doesn’t want to join us in a conversation, he just wants to tell us we’re wrong."  Of course, Jim Elliot’s actual approach would be the same as any missionary: start sharing by learning the language.  People like Jim Elliot and me are obsessed with listening, because we have so much to say. I suppose that once you compare yourself to Jim Elliot, there’s no hiding it any longer: I’m writing this weblog to evangelize.  Perhaps that is reassuring to some of you (Traditional Mom, I’m looking at you!  (I hope.)).  But for other readers, you no doubt see in this confession all you need to write me off completely.  But wait!  Our culture is brimming with evangelists.  Don’t hate just because I’m candid about it. You see, as much as I have in common with a missionary like Jim Elliot, I have in common with Mad Men.  (Well, minus the alcoholism, sex-crazed workaholism, and neglectful parenting, that is.)  You see, virtually every realm of modern life is saturated with evangelism.  We’re daily blitzed with sales pitches from ad campaigns, political parties, candidates, television personalities, and bloggers!  From the best restaurants to eat at, to the best ideologies, to the best cars, to the best of youtube, the best of the web, the best of the best of the best.  Setting aside people who sell things for no purpose other than to profit, and the occasional person who will, in the words of Tommy Boy,  “take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed,” you’re left with the only real reason to evangelize: when you’ve found something too good not to share. Even if you somehow avoided ever consuming advertising---you never watch TV, you never look at a billboard or subway ad on your commute, and you use a web browser with built in ad-blocker, as long as you have friends, you’ll never escape being evangelized.  You see, friends are really the worst.  They’ll come after you with so much charm and personal appeal that they’re nearly impossible to resist.  Friends are like little toxic orbs of evangelising.  They always have political opinions they have to share.  And they’ve always read something that we have to read too.  They always know someone that they really want to set us up on a date with.  They’ll never stop trying to persuade us that Radiohead is the greatest band of our day, and why cancelling Community was the worst decision NBC has made in 5 years.  They’ll explain what type of electronics we should be purchasing, and all the great ways they’ve found to use them and make their lives better.  Friends are a never ending stream of restaurant picks, bargain shopping tips, and your neighborhood’s best kept secrets.  This is what I am.  And if you’re honest, it’s probably what you are too. Which brings me back to listening.  Three weeks ago, I became an early adopter of an iPhone 4---my first ever Apple purchase.  (I use the term “early adopter” loosely.)  In the years leading up to this event, I had countless friends eager to evangelise me on the merits of Apple design and technology.  But you know which friends were the most convincing?  The ones who listened to me rant and rave about my priorities---about the way I wanted technology to serve me, and not the other way around.  About my concerns about the costs of a data plan.  About my obsession with efficiency and my suspicion of trends.  About my doubts that I’d find much of use in the app store, and that the whole “intuitive user interface” bit was a hoax.  The friends who heard me out, who took the time to appreciate my own little quirks and oddities before explaining why I was wrong made for the very best salespeople.  Those who didn’t take the time to hear me out, and who just prattled endlessly about the glories of what I saw as a glorified PDA, I regarded as brainwashed and ignored (or teased, to that effect). But what if what you’re selling isn’t just an iPhone or a new record, but is something far more important---like insight on the best way to live, or wisdom on relationships, or good news about how to harness human appetites for enjoyable but potentially destructive things.  The more important what you have to sell, the more critical listening becomes.  Being ignored or disregarded is sad when you’re selling Girl Scout cookies; it’s nothing short of tragic when what you have to share is unimaginably important.  This is why church planters furiously study the cultures of the people they want to reach.  They look for pockets where the grace of God has been revealed, and then attempt to contextualize those pockets in light of the gospel.  But no matter whether you’re evangelizing for Jesus Christ or Proctor & Gamble, the process remains the same.  You start by listening, and trying to discern the language and mindset of your intended audience.  You seek to discern their convictions, concerns, needs and conclusions.  And then, in light of all that, you figure out how to say what you have to say.  The only difference between selling the Gospel and a bar of soap is how active a role is played by the Spirit of God One final point.  Even if you agree that listening is an important first step of evangelism, it can be difficult to put into practice.  A good friend of mine read Kate’s article, and commented that he was exhausted by reading it.  To him, it read “like one long Sex in the City episode, as if it were written by the woman who wrote Eat, Pray, Love.”  He found it “even more frustrating that its banal sensibilities are so popular and celebrated."  I think his comment helpfully illustrates how everyone can hear and respond to different things.  We all speak different languages.  My friend, for instance, is remarkably gifted at listening to film and theater, and has enormously insightful things to say in response to what he hears.  The world consists of a diversity peoples, many of which I couldn’t hope to understand or speak to, no matter what effort I put forth. Whom have you heard lately?  You should probably try to engage them in conversation.  I’m sure you have some evangelising to do.

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[This is the second in a series of posts attempting to sketch out a Christian response to Kate Bolick’s article in the November issue of the Atlantic on the modern state of marriage and singleness, All the Single Ladies.  For the first post, see here.]

Before I dive into the substance of this post, I wanted to take a moment to endorse the value of comments.  In the two months my weblog has been up and running, roughly 1 out every 50 visitors has left a comment.  Sometimes it’s great to just read and think, but if you have feedback, please don’t be shy!  I mean this even and especially if you disagree with what I’ve written.  If you can put your thoughts into a couple of constructive sentences, they can be a great catalyst for further conversation.

An excellent example is a comment left on my previous post, pushing back on whether it is appropriate for Christians to celebrate the educational and economic successes of women.  In the commenter’s view, (“Anonymous” on the previous post), the progress of the feminist movement is hardly an unmitigated good, and it cannot be easily decoupled from concomitant societal harm.  I agree that Christianity may have real points of disagreement with some of the conclusions and recommendations that Ms. Bolick has reached, and I also would not dispute that pervasive relational brokenness is one of the most tragic features of modern life.  But between listening to what Ms. Bolick had to say, and despairing over the brokenness in the world, we shouldn’t get so bent out of shape, that we forget what we know about why things are the way they are.  

The Christian Scriptures provide an account of why the world is so enormously screwed up.  Perhaps you remember it?  It started when the Serpent approached Eve in the Garden and said “go to school and get a good education so you can get a good paying job,” and sin entered the world.  An absurdism, yes, but this is essentially the message that we communicate when we say that the disarray of the modern family is owing to feminist gains in education and employment.  This is no innocuous misattribution, but rather the inaugural component of a false gospel.  A false type of original sin---legitimate female success---can only be atoned by a false kind of salvation---restoring so-called “traditional” male and female roles.  It’s a twisted gospel that the world gets one whiff of, and rejects---thinking it has rejected Christianity, when it hasn’t even seen Jesus at all.

    When I encounter a person peddling this type of gospel story, typically in a blog, a book or a pulpit, I want to quietly close the lid of the box in which I found them, and put them back in the corner and PRAY TO GOD that no one who isn’t already a Christian ever has to hear them.  If you are not a follower of Jesus, and you’re reading this post, please hear me on this.  God stands in full solidarity with women as well as men.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Christianity and Christians have no imaginable interest in educational and economic inequality.  If you’ve talked to a Christian and come away with the sense that they despise this dimension of feminist success, please forgive them; they probably just got so flummoxed at the rampant depravity in the world that they lost their orientation on where it all went wrong. Now with that out of the way, on with part 2. 2.    Observing Men, or Addressing Them

One of the most oft-quoted and clearly inflammatory sentences from Kate Bolick’s article is where she says that:

“If dating and mating is in fact a marketplace---and of course it is---today we’re contending with a new ‘dating gap,’ where marriage-minded women are increasingly confronted with either deadbeats or players.”

Spending a little time in the viper’s den that is the comments section on her original post at the Atlantic website (yikes), it’s clear that this “deadbeats or players” characterization of men has drawn abundant ire.  (Some of my personal favorites: they guy who said  “your sexism is only surpassed by your sexism”; and another guy describing Ms. Bolick as “yet another female supremacist.”)  Even if her language had been swapped out for something a little less incendiary, though, the reality she describes confronting does not seem implausible.  

Kate devotes a significant portion of her article both to demonstrating that there really are a lot of men who are either players or deadbeats (this is why she says she investigates African American and collegiate culture), and then to putting her finger on precisely why men are behaving in such disappointing ways.  But interestingly enough, she doesn’t actually address men at any point.  While Kate is deeply frustrated by male shortcomings, she seems to accept their flawed state as a problem for rumination or reaction, but not one for rooting out.  The church is not so constrained.   

Instructing men and women on issues of gender and family life is one of Christianity’s great pastimes.  (For an intriguing look at this tradition over last 2 centuries, take a look at this blog post.)  I understand if this leaves you less than enthusiastic.  Surely, Christianity’s propensity to tell people how to live, or that what they’re doing is wrong has to be one of the most annoying aspects of the religion.  But it’s also one of the most powerful.  How you regard it all depends on how you feel about the behavior being endorsed or curtailed.  If Kate is correct that the world is passing through an unprecedented gender upheaval, the need for direction that is both timeless and timely is more apparent than ever.  The path forward lies not in attempting to undo a sea-change that has produced both bad and good, but in learning to live better in light of it.

So men, whether you are married or you hope to get married, you need to understand that the best of what you have to offer as a husband does not depend on your economic or educational or intellectual dominance over your wife.  You don’t need to have a better paying job than your wife, and you don’t need to be better educated.  (Wanna be inspired along these lines? Take a look at this guy's approach.) However personally important it may be to you to be able to provide for your wife, you should not conflate that with the most important aspiration for marriage.  To do so would be ill advised, because as the global economy continues to evolve, it’s clear that men may not always be best suited to making financial provision.  If your highest ideal for marriage can be subverted by economic impossibility, you need a better highest ideal.

        The Bible paints what I think is a pretty stunning picture of marriage, and it does so with a parallelism designed to reflect the relationship God has with the church: the husband works to make his wife more beautiful---to help her shine.  How exactly?  He does things for her, loves her, works on her behalf, and figures out how to serve her.  He ensures that she continues to have opportunities to do what she needs to do to thrive, and works to preserve those things that give her life.  He lavishes her with gifts.  The collective effect of this literal labor of love is a radiant wife, at which the rest of the world can look at and say: holy smokes, how is this woman’s life so good!?  Why is she so beautiful!?  The highest ambition you can bring to a marriage is to love and to serve in this way, and to address whatever needs your wife may have, no matter how unique.

Alright, so a confession: I’m married.  I have three kids, and to top it off, I’m white.  All of which makes me a prime candidate to pen a Christian commentary on the year’s seminal piece of journalism about single women, right?  But in the spirit of Kate Bolick, maybe I can share a few personal anecdotes to personalize and justify my thesis.  My wife has been married for 8½ years and has three kids.  For several years, she’s worked as a therapist social worker in a couple venues in NYC.  By virtue of the nature of her work, my wife has played an enormously important role in many people’s lives.  She’s beyond gifted at what she does, and inevitably her clients come to appreciate that she is a person of staggering beauty, with depth and insight and knowledge and perspective rarely seen.  Breathtaking is a word that I think describes her well.  And yet, she’s a mother of 3, she’s nursing, she helps our 6 year old practice violin every day, she’s teaching our 4 year old his letters, and she maintains a spotless house.  In other words, while Natalie’s life circumstances would seem to mandate that she be distressed and overwhelmed, her life continues to be characterized by the opposite.

So where does a husband fit into this picture?  My covenant is to love her and serve her and to do whatever it takes to enable her to be the beautiful, powerful woman that she is.  I am committed fully to the responsibility of running our home and raising our children right along with her.  I value her career as much as I value my own.  I make it my business to figure out what my wife needs to thrive, and figure out how to get it for her.  My wife’s radiant beauty is certainly not because of me; her beauty is her own.  But in the chaos of life, it is my abiding commitment to her that her beauty will not be submerged beneath the bedlam.

Which is not to say that I always succeed in doing this!  Please hear my heart; this is not an effort to arrogantly parade our success at life, but the beggar’s emphatic gesture back at the trail of crumbs leading to where I found my bread.  On those rare occasions when I catch a glimpse of my wife’s selfish, less than admirable qualities, I occasionally kick her while she’s down.  Or I’m profoundly impatient and un-accepting of her lack of maturity, however it may show itself.  But this concept of beautification is my guiding force.  The Spirit of God living within me permits me to recognize when I’ve failed to love her in this way.  The testimony of the Scriptures points me towards a model of self-giving love as my highest ideal.  The accountability of a community of like-minded individuals, actual guys that I personally know whose literal approach mirrors what I’m describing here, and, of course, the fruit of my labor, all continue to commend this course of action as the best I can aim for.  It’s self-reinforcing, because I am constantly reminded of the spine-tingling beauty of the woman of my dreams, my best friend---one of the greatest people of all time.  This is not romantic rhapsodizing; it’s poetic realism.

Part of the beauty of this vision for marriage is that it satisfies the dual test of timelessness and timeliness referenced earlier.  It works as well in antiquity as it does in medieval Europe as it does in 1960s New York as it does in 21st century Kenya.  It does not require that your wife be educated, or that she be uneducated.  It has application whether she has a career outside the home or will be a pillar of service and volunteerism in the community.  It works whether she is self-assured and confident in her strengths, or self-conscious and uncertain of her worth.  All it requires is that you have a deep understanding of your bride---her past, her present state and context and her future---and that you vow never to circumscribe what is beyond the scope of your service and love.  Because if you really understand her, and can commit to doing whatever it takes for her to thrive, you’re at least half way to the marriage of your dreams.  Which brings me to my next point...

3.    Knowing Love     If the language of a husband working to beautify his wife offended your feminist sensibilities, I understand.  I use that language because I speak to men, and the men I know are generally into beautiful women; in other words, I seek to speak in the language of the male soul.  But I can strip away any subtle objectification or lingering sexualized/romanticized overtones, and simply speak of love.  Marriage presents the unique privilege that is working to enable another person to become something even more good and beautiful that they could become without your presence, commitment, labor and love.  This is a two-way street, with little if anything, to distinguish a wife’s approach to her husband from what I’ve already described.  Even when we return to the esteemed Biblical simile, you can actually see the same thing at work.  Just as Jesus works to beautify his church, and raise it up into maturity, so to the church labors relentlessly in defense of the image and understanding that the world has of Jesus---insistent that when the world is dismissing him, it’s only because they haven’t gotten a good look at him.  He’s way more beautiful than you ever thought!  This reciprocity makes marriage is an unmatched privilege.

What I can’t strip away from my lithograph of marriage, though, is the disturbing level of humility that it demands from both parties  Obviously, serving and being devoted to the well-being of another human being requires tremendous humility.  It’s hard; this is true.  But arguably harder is accepting that there is a someone you can become, only by the enabling and empowerment of your spouse.  The arrogance of the human heart would clench its teeth in disgust, but pride is the mortal enemy of true love.  It makes you too good to serve, as well as too good to be served: an irony that would be comedic if it wasn’t so pathetic.

Which brings me back to Ms. Bolick and her article, and perhaps my chief disagreement with all that she wrote.  She evinces, in my estimation, a woefully inadequate---but entirely common---understanding of love.  You see, love is unlike the other topics of her piece.  It isn’t best known through statistics or research or even consultation with an expert as highly esteemed as the “biological anthropologist and perhaps this country’s leading scholar of love,” from whom Kate sought a love definition.  Love is best known by lovers!!!  What a facepalm statement of truth!  Dr. Helen Fisher’s suggestion that “love comes from the motor of the mind, the wanting part that craves that piece of chocolate or a work promotion,” couldn’t be more misguided. (I confess to not having read any of Dr. Fisher's work, and recognize she may well have more insight than this quote indicates.)  To equate love with what we want to consume is to be far more wrong than right.

So let us consult some great lovers.  Consider the eminently quotable Jesus, who said of love, “greater love has no one than this, to lay down your life for your friends.”  Love, also, must be received---the lesson learned by ex-fisherman Peter who was too-cool-for-school when Jesus asked to serve him and wash his feet.  But if looking at Jesus for pointers makes you feel awkward, just consider the best non-divine lovers you’ve ever known.  Or if you’ve never personally known an inspiring lover; perhaps you could uncover some in literature (may I nominate : A Severe Mercy, by Sheldon Vaunaken).  The testimony of such lovers, I humbly predict, will speak in concert.  What permits love to blaze evermore is both becoming and enabling the other to become something more beautiful than you each could have been on your own.  I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t really describe my relationship with chocolate at all.

If you still think the academy is the best place for empirically verifying relationship truths, then consider the research referenced in this New York Times article; it’s absolutely worth a read.  A couple psychology professors designed a study to look at relationships themselves (see, love is best known by looking at lovers!), to see what made for the best long term relationships.  Their conclusion is that the most powerfully bonded marriages are the ones in which each partner experiences self-expansion---the realization of goals, dreams and possibilities with instrumental assistance from the other.  According to one professor, “[p]eople have a fundamental motivation to improve the self and add to who they are as a person . . . . If your partner is helping you become a better person, you become happier and more satisfied in the relationship.”  I have almost nothing to add, except to say that in a successful loving relationship, your orientation is not on yourself.  You don’t spend your days and nights contemplating the self-expansion that your spouse has enabled in you---you just know it and delight in it.  Rather, you spend your days and nights contemplating your spouse’s self-expansion, and whether you’re laying down your life in every way you can to enable it.

Love can be mysterious, but it’s not all that complicated.  We see it played out so tangibly each year at Christmas.  Every December we try and persuade our children that the joy of Christmas is in giving, not receiving.  And they look at us, as children are apt to do, studying our eyes to try and see if we’re joking.  Because they know, for sure, how much fun it is to get.  Over time, they eventually start to figure it out; it is fun to give.  It’s fun to give because it’s fun to get.  Then, consumed with the joy of getting, they need a reminder to think about giving again.  And on it goes, around and around, back and forth---the joy of Christmas and the pleasure of love.  So there you have it: built on love thus understood, marriage is like Christmas every fucking day of the year.

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Still to come in my next (and final) post:

A married guy vamps on the single life

Some thoughts for Kate Bolick

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Kate Bolick’s cover article on the present state of singleness and marriage for the November issue of The Atlantic Monthly has made quite a splash.  Not only has All The Single Ladies reverberated throughout the blogosphere, and landed its author on the Today Show, but it is rumored to be forming the basis of a new scripted television series.  To date, the article has generated over 1600 comments, and been shared on Facebook no fewer than 36,000 times.  This makes it the second most popular Atlantic article this year, following only Lori Gottlieb’s July/August article on parenting: How To Land Your Kid In Therapy (shared 84,000 times).  

Apparently, at least among the Atlantic’s readership, there’s a serious hunger to explore issues of gender, sex, family life and marital status in the modern world.  In fact, when one considers the popularity of these articles against some of the Atlantic’s other recent covers, one wonders why the publication bothers to address other issues at all.  A June 2011 cover on the Arab Spring was shared fewer than 300 times, and a December 2010 article on clean coal, only a thousand.  But Hanna Rosin’s July/August 2010 article on The End of Men?  It was shared 41,000 times.  Not many topics inspire people to read, think, and talk as much as this.

It might seem funny, but extraordinary interest in these issues is something the Atlantic’s readership has in common with the modern American church.  If this surprises you, it may be because the only message you’ve heard the church communicate about marriage in recent years is that it has to be “between one man and one woman.”  Of late, the church has been sort of like a disciplined presidential candidate in a debate: when faced with challenging questions that it would not rather confront, it sticks to its talking points.  The result is that Christians have garnered a reputation for staying on message about homosexual unions, but the notion that Christians, the church, the Christian Scriptures, and, dare I say God, might have nuanced and insightful things to say about these topics is met with a completely legitimate skepticism by the rest of the world.

The church has a reputation for closed-mindedness.  While this notoriety may be partially the result of animus from the secular world, there are at least two causes that, as I see it, are completely within our control.  First, as a rule, Christians are notoriously bad listeners, especially when it comes to issues like gender, sexuality, marriage, feminism, singleness and family life.  Quite frankly, if you’re not also a Christian, we seriously doubt that you could have anything to say that we’d find valuable or insightful on these topics.  Write a carefully researched, personally seasoned account of the modern state of marriage and singleness read by tens of thousands of people?  You’re unlikely to generate so much as a nod of acknowledgement from the prominent figures in the Christian world.  For all the blog-tastic reception Ms. Bolick’s article received, I was unable to turn up a single public response to it by a Christian voice, either positive or negative (though, feel free to point me to something I’ve missed).  I kind of feel like tapping the church on the shoulder---did anyone hear what she just said?

Our difficulty listening gives rise to an unsurprising second malady: namely, we struggle to appropriately and helpfully address people that don’t already agree with us.  (Recurring theme alert: see the inside baseball discussion in my last post.)  We can regale you with diverse accounts of the meaning of  ὑποτάσσω (hupotasso - “submission” (seriously, google it)), or we can introduce you to Biblically-derived gender paradigms that read like political party platforms.  If you aren’t already a member of the choir, though, you probably won’t sit through the sermon.  

Notwithstanding this reputation, I think the church has a lot to say about the topics at hand.  I’d like to help it find its voice.  This is my goal over the next series of posts.  I’d like to respond to Ms. Bolick’s account of recent changes and developments in the state of women, men, singleness and marriage, and to consider what she presents as implications for single and married life and sexuality, providing a Christian response to as much as I can.  I even hope to offer something a response to the more personal components of Ms. Bolick’s article as well.  After all, she is quite literally my neighbor (we live in adjacent neighborhoods), and she has crafted in this piece, an intensely personal narrative, worthy of a respectful and thoughtful reaction.  In sum, my hope is to articulate what amounts to a valuable Christian response, disabused, as it is, of the fear of listening.  So without further ado...

1.    The Ascent of Women and Decline of Men

Ms. Bolick wrote her essay to address changes in the state of marriage and singleness that can be traced to overlapping success in the women’s movement and declines in male status and achievement.  (I’m providing a link to an outline I put together of Ms. Bolick’s article.  It won’t serve as a substitute for reading the original thing, but it might help jog your memory.)  She cites many statistics demonstrating that growth in women’s earnings has outpaced growth in men’s earnings over the past four decades, that women out-earn men in certain demographics, and she attempts to discount those statistics that suggest women continue to lag men in compensation.  She notes more women than men attend and earn degrees from college and graduate school, while more men than women hold only a high school diploma.  Echoing the observations in Hannah Rosin’s The End of Men, she points out that men lost three-fourths of the 7.5 million jobs lost in the recent recession, and that in 2010 women comprised a majority of the American workforce for the first time ever.  

When Ms. Bolick looks at the world in the wake of these economic and educational transformations, she sees an emergent gender imbalance.  Specifically, in the highly educated and successful echelons of society, she sees quality women outnumbering quality men.  To underscore the point, she compares the virtual gender imbalance of her experience with historical instances of real gender imbalances---like the kind that followed 620,000 Civil War male deaths in the United States, and the kind that followed a decimating 3-to-1 male-to-female death ratio in 1940’s Russia.  When women outnumber men in a real gender imbalance, it generally spells bad news for marriage, monogamy, and commitment.  Fewer people marry, and those who do, do so later in life.  These effects have been studied, tested and confirmed, and found especially descriptive of life in more developed countries.  

Statistics on the contemporary state of marriage in the United States read like a textbook example of a female > male gender imbalance.  Ms. Bolick notes that while the balance of education and economic power has been shifting from men to women, the average marrying age has increased.  So too have the numbers of people who aren’t marrying at all.  She notes that women no longer feel as though they must have children, and those who still wish to, don’t need to have a husband to do so.  Single motherhood is no longer seen as a disgrace, she says.  Seeing these effects in a population evenly distributed between men and women, Ms. Bolick thus arrives at the conclusion that there is something of a virtual gender imbalance.

The first point that I think merits a Christian response is the overlapping phenomena of female ascent and male decline.  Ms. Bolick’s broader point---that these phenomena have created a gender imbalance with implications for marriage and singleness---is really the thesis of her entire essay.  As such, and because I have so much more to say about what remains, I’ll defer commenting on that point for now.   

The church hasn’t always been on the best of terms with the feminist movement.  Sure, some strains in the church have seen themselves as allies in female quest for equal education, equal rights, equal jobs and equal pay, but by and large, most people wouldn’t think of women’s rights advocates and the modern American evangelical church as peas in a pod.  While there may be legitimate differences between members of these two communities, I’d like to suggest that the Church’s proper response to women’s educational and economic gains over the last 40 years is hallefreakinglujah, and amen!  I can conceive of no reasonable argument to the contrary.

Christians, and Christianity at large, have no imaginable interest in educational and economic inequality.  Period.  In fact, we have quite the opposite: nothing less than a Divine calling to care about the most marginalized and disenfranchised members of society.  And caring for the disenfranchised necessarily means supporting their enfranchisement, until such time as they no longer suffer from inequality and injustice.  We’re to love and support and promote and believe in whomever might comprise “the least of these” at any given time, until such a time as referring to them as “the least of these” is inapposite, anachronistic and insulting, thank you very much.

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I think it’s prudent to maintain a sober view of the state of women’s educational end economic success, and recognizing that there is still progress to be made on various fronts of inequality.  There are plenty of people out there still sounding the alarm that leadership in government and industry remain disproportionately male.  But that wasn’t the point of Ms. Bolick’s article.  And as long as we make a mental footnote, and asknowledge that the work for equality may not be done, we need not belabor the point.

It might be argued that the gains and advances of women have come at the expense of men.  If so, one might fairly query whether such staunch support for female success is warranted.  The answer the church should give is an emphatic ‘yes,’ but perhaps not for the same reasons given by others.  A dyed-in-the-blood feminist might rationalize that female success at male expense is justified after Centuries Millenia of oppression by the bastards, who are due their comeuppance.  To the contrary, particularly through the last few years of recession, there are probably plenty of men whose experience warrants compassion.  A true Christian response would not ignore the difficulties and pain associated with so-called “male decline.”  But I think the more appropriate justification the church has for supporting female success, even if it has come at male expense, is that we know success is not a zero-sum game.  While it may seem like it is, particularly during seasons of economic contraction, if populations and economies are both growing as they should, there are always more opportunities for people to succeed.

When Jesus was asked which of God’s commands was the greatest, he answered “to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.”  And the second command is like it: “To not view success as a zero-sum game.”  Well, he put it more poetically---“love your neighbor as you love yourself”---but the point is no different.  At the heart of how to live as a Christian, lies this clarion command.  We should love our neighbor as ourselves, and support and celebrate their success as if they were our own; we have nothing to lose when we do.  So when women are succeeding in historically unprecedented ways, what is the response of a Christian who cares?  “Well done.”

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Still to come in future posts:

keeping hope when your individual experience is defined by forces beyond your control;

what to do about the prevailing male-female dynamics created by a gender imbalance;

and maybe... just maybe, a Christian defense of polygamy

As many of you may know, my previous post eulogizing Steve Jobs and reflecting on the goodness of his life’s work was the subject of a recent blog post by author and New Testament scholar, Scot McKnight.  Scot was gracious enough to include a link to my weblog in his post.  So welcome to you newer readers!  For the rest of you, if you haven’t had a chance to see what Scot had to say, you may want to give it a read before you continue here.  Having now had the chance to reflect on what he said, I’d like to offer a few thoughts in response. Let me begin with an apology to my readers for whom this discussion will come across as profoundly inside baseballish.  As you can see from the subtitle of my weblog, I intend to write in these pages certain things that I just can’t bear not to share with the world.  That’s an intentional double negative, (kind of like ‘I can’t believe it’s not butter’), but the emphasis is on ‘with the world.’  I’m not intending to write exclusively for a Christian audience, a male audience, a young audience, an audience of professionals, or quite frankly, an audience comprised of any other limited group to which I happen to belong.  That said, I am a person whose entire life has been deeply affected by Jesus Christ.  I am a Christian (and I have no fear of the label, save some concern that it’s come to be associated with a lot of things that don’t describe me).  So if you keep reading, a lot of what you’re likely to encounter in these pages in the coming months and years will be influenced by that reality.  This accounts for the thesis of my first post (about the life and work of Steve Jobs), the context out of which my second post (on sustainability) arose, and the not-so-veiled critique presented by my third post. But in my last post and this post, my faith is not only informing what I have to say, but I’m actually turning aside to directly address some group of Christians on a particular matter.  Why, if I’m writing for a broad audience, have I now done this in half of my weblog posts?  Because *digital sigh*, as a friend of mine recently put it, the church often has difficulty saying things that the rest of the world finds appropriate and helpful.  Or maybe more precisely, while the church has tons of appropriate and helpful things to say, it often just doesn’t say them, or has difficulty articulating them.  So, world, if you’re reading a given weblog post in this forum, and I turn to say something to my fellow church, know that it’s because we have something to say to you, and it’s something quite important, but first we’re just trying to get our shit together resolve a few things.  So thanks for your patience!  And, I hope you don’t feel like you’re eavesdropping on a private conversation, or feel totally bored, but I rather hope you feel like a welcome house guest, who perhaps needs to politely sip your tea while the host couple negotiates a point of domestic contention in your presence.  I hope you don’t feel awkward, and thanks for not leaving! So with those caveats out of the way, now for some inside baseball.  

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Scot’s critique, as I understand it, is that I’m contributing to the paunchiness of the kingdom of God.  I’m figuratively stuffing the term with empty carbs, refined sugar, and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, and he’d like to give it a workout to shed the excess pounds.  At the risk of mixing metaphors, he’s acting as a sort of spiritual referee, citing me for a technical foul, and attempting to set the record straight.   Scot is concerned that I have “abstracted the ethical ideals from Jesus’ kingdom vision, all but cut Jesus out of the picture, and then called anything that is just, peace, good and loving the ‘kingdom.’”  He vigorously disputes the notion that because “kingdom means goodness, goodness [also] means kingdom.”  Instead, he offers this definition:

[The kingdom of God] refers to a society in which God’s will is done, with Jesus as the King, where the Story of Israel finds its completion in the Story of Jesus and where that same Story of Jesus shapes everyone. Kingdom refers to that Davidic hope for the earthly world where God sets up his rule in the Messiah and where people live under that Messiah as God’s redeemed and liberated and healed and loving and peaceful and just people. . . .  [And that] refers to that special society that does good under Jesus, that society that is buried in his death and raised in his resurrection and lives that Story out in our world today.

(a vignette of contrasting gender-domestic theory) At a community group gathering with a few men from his church, Jamey, a 31-year-old newlywed, shares candidly about the challenges of early marriage.  In particular, he talks about the hazards of working through the division of domestic duties with his wife.  He loves, he tells us, a clean kitchen.  It is perhaps his highest domestic priority, which he ascribes to his father’s love of cooking.  His wife Christine, however, spends much of her day stacking boxes at work, and can think of little she’d rather avoid in the late afternoon than cleaning and stacking dishes.   He brings this up one recent evening, (over dishes, no doubt), raising the question of why the mound of plates and glasses in front of him can’t seem to be vanquished before he arrives home.  Needless to say, this does not go over well.  His wife uses the moment to bring to his attention that each day he enjoys a miraculously spotless bathroom, without ever so much as laying his hand to a toilet brush.  And she further notes that his clothing miraculously reappears in his drawers, cleaned and folded each week, similarly without effort!  She speculates that in the course of their brief married life, he may have never folded his own clothing.  To which he responds with an explosion of incredulity, which, in turn, precipitates tears, and then regret and eventually apologies, and ultimately... peace.   But Jamey shares the anecdote looking for a bit of encouragement.  This is normal, right?  Sure they’re doing fine, he says.  But fights like these aren’t fun.  And so, one of the guys from this small group, a follower in the way of Jesus turns to him and says:

(A)    “Ah, Jamey thanks for sharing!  You know, I think it’s great that you’re trying to lead your wife through this.  It’s important to recognize that what you’re working through are the practical challenges of learning to live in accordance God’s design for men and women.  God created you each with specific roles to play: you’re to be Christine’s leader, and she’s to be your helper and completer.  God gets more glory when men and women live in accordance with that design, but it can take some time to work out all the kinks in practice.  As her spiritual head and leader, what Christine needs from you is direction, encouragement and empowerment so that she can thrive within her primary sphere of engagement---which will ultimately be in the home.

As a man of God, you have an extraordinary call on your life to pursue the dreams God has given you.  In particular, I know you have great vision to accomplish important work and create beautiful art through your career as an actor.  And now that you’re married---in fact, probably a significant part of the reason why you got married---you need the support that only your wife can provide you.  This will become all the more apparent once you guys have kids.  In all the beautiful chaos of having babies, for you to continue to be successful in your work, more than anything, you’ll need to have someone who can manage things on the home front.  They say that behind every great man is a great woman, and it’s true.  As much as you need her support, she needs to support you; it’s innate in the way you were both designed.

It may take some time for Christine wrap her head around this because she spent several years in college and pursuing her career, but that’s okay.  It can be an adjustment to become fully devoted to maintaining the home, but eventually, she’ll discover the freedom in living in submission both to you and to how God created her.  She’ll find that she has purpose and meaning and value in her life by being fully devoted to supporting you, submitting to you, and enabling you to do what you’re called to do.  And even though it can be difficult to communicate to her about things like what your domestic priorities are, it’s essential that you do so.

If Christine isn’t prioritizing domestic duties in the way that you really need her to, you should patiently and lovingly lead her to an understanding of how she can best meet your needs.  Of course, it’s also important to encourage her and to express appreciation for the other household responsibilities she manages, but you need to make clear what your priorities are.  In so doing, you’ll actually be helping to ensure that both of your needs will be met: your present need to have a better kept kitchen will be satisfied, and so too will her much deeper need of embracing God’s design for her as your wife.  Just like a company can’t have two CEOs, and a dancing duo can’t have two lead dancers, someone needs to be the bottom line decision maker between you two.  And you’re marriage will be immeasurably better once you both fully embrace that this is your role.”

-OR-

(B)     “Ah, Jamey thanks for sharing!  I’m so excited for you both to be working through this stuff early in marriage.  Not only is it good for your character and your wife’s character, but working through this grit is essential to building a foundation for your relationship, your family life and your dreams.  

    Hammering out the details of domestic life is kind of funny.  On one hand, domestic arrangements are the essence of triviality.  In the scope of human life and achievement and aspiration and labor and values, deciding who’s going to keep the kitchen clean, and who’s going to keep the clothes clean are petty, inconsequential details.  But on the other hand, they constitute a slice of the inescapable in life.  The domestic details of life are something that everyone has to do something about, and that universality makes them oddly important.  

For example, all adults make plans to deal with their soiled dishes and soiled clothes.  Whether you wash all your own dishes and clothes on a daily basis, or your apartment is filled with piles of dirty plates and shirts, or you outsource everything to restaurants and dry cleaners, everyone addresses these domestic responsibilities, and does so while balancing them against the truly important things of life (i.e., earning money, pursuing dreams, fulfilling responsibilities, enjoying free time, working out, hanging with friends, etc.).  However you choose to deal with your domestic responsibilities, you’re balancing it against what you regard as a more important use of your time and effort.  And what you and Christine have been working through, and what all married couples work through early on, is finding what how to balance what you both prefer to have done, what you’re good at, and the demands of your respective important obligations.  This presents an inescapable clash on some detail or another, and it can take enormous effort to find an equilibrium that will hum.  

But finding a humming equilibrium is worth it!  If and when the size of your family grows, the volume and importance of domestic responsibilities will grow exponentially.  Especially once you have children, everyone in your family will be immeasurably benefited by you choosing to view yourself as an equal partner in domestic responsibilities. .Moreover, as life goes on, whatever domestic duty you haven’t together figured out how to expel will present itself again and again for expulsion.  What lurks as a little disunity in your domestic arrangements early in marriage can mushroom catastrophically down the line.  So cheers for tackling this stuff now!  

But there is a risk that is perhaps even greater than the risk of some colossal future conflict.  Namely, there is a hazard that for one of you (and if it’s going to happen to anyone, it’s most likely to be your wife), the important things of life will eventually entirely succumb to domestic drudgery.  This danger is real and profound, and there is no better way to avoid it like having the conversation you just had.

There are a lot of things to say on this point, but I’ll limit myself to one.  God gives everyone, your wife included, dreams about work.  The dreams may be slow in unfolding, or they may be crystal clear from a young age, but the dreams are real and the work can be done by no one else.  And over the course of your marriage, the greatest threat your wife will face to possessing her dreams and accomplishing her work will be than the weight of domestic responsibilities---the ones we all face, and are all obliged to take care of.  So while it doesn’t matter one lick who does what, know that it matters enormously for you to reach an equitable division of labor.  Because in so doing, you’ll help preserve your wife’s dreams and you’ll help ensure she has the space she needs to accomplish her real work.”

Last weekend, my church played a brief video at the start of the service about a young woman in our congregation who has recently made some dramatic and admirable changes in her life. At 22 years old, “Erica” is a recent graduate of NYU who had a promising job in a lucrative industry. Although she had found professional success very early in her career (and in the middle of a recession, no less), Erica felt called to do something more with her life. Through a variety of circumstances she ended up moving to an impoverished neighborhood in the South Bronx. Here, after work and on weekends, Erica began to spend time with the kids who lived on her street. She invited them over to her house, to play and get help with homework. When they were hungry, she cooked them dinner. When they seemed stressed by the weight of their world, she talked to them about life and faith. And when they went home, she prayed for them, and found herself deeply, deeply moved. As Erica tells the story, her after-work endeavors made her professional engagements seem trivial by comparison. But as her job demanded 70 and 80 hours from her week, she found herself with less and less margin to devote to these marginalized children. And so, after much wrangling, Erica decided to quit her job, and the generous paycheck that came with it. Instead, she would ask her friends and family to chip in and help her meet her financial obligations, so that she could devote more of her time to mentoring and caring for the kids on her block. She relayed her story with the goal of soliciting volunteer mentors to help her in her work. As I watched Erica tell her story, I had some mixed feelings. On the one hand, what’s not to love about someone who becomes so intoxicated with loving and caring for poor and neglected children, that she’s willing to make enormous personal sacrifices to give them the gift of her consistent presence? But on the other hand, I found myself rather worried on her behalf. To me, Erica came across as a deep, idealistic, and intense 22. Which, if you’ve ever encountered it, is a beautiful and frightening combination. (If you can’t recall what this is like, conjure me c. 2003, and you’ll have a pretty good idea.) When she spoke, she still sounded more enamored by the prospect of living out a dream, than sobered or embittered by the difficulties and challenges presented by her ambition. And all I could do was wonder about was the sustainability of her new arrangement. I wondered how long Erica would be able to keep at this. I wondered whether it had already sunk in that she had abandoned a well paying job in an economy where finding any job is an accomplishment. I wondered whether she recognized that none of her neighbors had the luxury of “raising support” like she does. I was curious whether she was sensitive to the fact that if any of her neighbors quit their jobs, even on the pretense that they wanted to spend more time with their kids, that such a decision would probably land them on welfare, if not lead to outright homelessness. I wondered if any of her neighbors might be offended that, in order to take care of their kids, she had quit her job, and was taking donations from her friends and family to provide for herself. I wondered whether and how things might change for her over the coming months and years as her perspective and life develop. While I suspect the kids on her block will be better off with a flurry of investment in their lives for a possibly short span than they would have been with no investment at all, I did wonder about it. And I wondered how they’ll handle it if she is ever unable to continue what she’s doing. I wondered if Erica recognized how many people have dedicated their professional lives to trying to break cycles of poverty and other systemic injustice, and whether she has learned anything from those who have gone before her. I wondered, I wondered, I wondered. And so I found myself, not for the first time in my life, picking apart the seriously noble and heroic wagers of another person---in this case, a twenty two year old girl who had done absolutely nothing to me! Except to ask if I wanted to help mentor some kids in the Bronx. Come on man! What is wrong with you? Get a grip! But because I’m a weblogger now, I decided I should push past this brutal judgment (and the corresponding self-flagellation) to figure out if I can make some sense of my reaction. And I believe I have; I think I’m guilty of fetishizing sustainability.

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