Like the vast majority of you, when I write an email or a blog post, I do so on a keyboard that takes it’s name from the first 6 letters at the top left of the keyboard: QWERTY.  And probably also like most of you, I have always worked under the assumption that some great minds than mine had mathematically determined this layout as the most efficient and logical pattern to use.  However, that’s not exactly true.

The QWERTY keyboard was developed in the 1870’s by newspaper editor Christopher Sholes.  Sholes went through several trials, both with respect to the layout of the keys and the construction of the machine, in an attempt to produce a model a writing machine that would function efficiently and effectively.  The faster a person could use the machine, the more likely it would lock up, especially when more frequently used letters were too near to each other.  Sholes dedicated himself to overcoming those problems, which eventually led to the QWERTY layout we are familiar with today.

While some claim that Sholes intentionally created a layout that would force the user to type more slowly, that isn’t entirely true.  Rather, the layout was designed to avoid the problems caused by the physical design of the machine.  It worked so well that it quickly became the standard layout on all machines.  However, as technology advanced, the problems that necessitated such a layout disappeared, yet QWERTY has persisted.  It is easily argued that far more efficient and even healthy layouts available (such as the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard, whose proponents argue even reduces carpal tunnel syndrome).  Yet try as they might, no one has made any marked headway in changing the norm.

So what does keyboard layout have to do with deviant sexuality?  Bear with me a little longer as I make that connection.  First, let’s talk about deviance.  That word, especially when coupled with “sexuality” immediately conjures up ideas of moral compromise at best, perversion at worst.  However, deviance simply means things, such as actions, behaviors or ideas, that violate cultural and social norms.  That is they deviate from that which is expected.  Deviance, as a concept, is not at all about morality.  So in this case, if we came across a keyboard that used a different layout than QWERTY, it would be a deviant example in our context.  Of course, few people would have a moral outcry about such an example, but inform them that their workplace will be requiring them to make the switch and people begin to behave badly.  Why?

There obvious argument is that the change is unnecessary.  If it’s not broke, why fix it?  The inevitable delays of relearning the system would seem to over shadow the potential efficiency improvement promised, at least in the short term.  And yet, even with convincing evidence in the long term benefit, most people wouldn’t bother.  In fact, the vast majority of QWERTY users, if they give it any thought at all, just accept their own assumption that someone who knows better has created the best possible layout.  Why rock the boat?

These same dynamic are often at play with respect to sexuality and gender identity, yet with obviously much bigger stakes.  So many characteristics that we associate with what it means to be masculine or feminine have formed through incredibly complex histories, shaped by culture, climate, the arts, economics, politics, etc.  And biological factors, such as body chemistry and physiology, play significant roles in developing them.  Looking throughout history and across cultures, we find an endless (and increasing) diversity in how these factors play out- sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad, sometimes with no apparent good or bad either way.

We become familiar with what we know, what we were raised to see, experience and participate in.  As the world continues to get smaller and more interconnected, those cultural ghettos increasingly bump into each other.  For many, this can feel disconcerting and even threatening.  Their very fundamental assumptions about certain realities are being challenged by examples that contradict their norm.  This leads to groups circling the wagon to defend those fundamentals, reinforcing their belief that their norms are universal absolutes and that any that are different are flawed and, essentially, deviant.

As a Christian, I believe that there are absolute truths.  So it is not a matter (or an option) for to simply dismiss everyone who responds as described above.  After all, what if the fundamental they are defending is an absolute truth?  That is a fair question, but one that is not easy to answer.  Thus, we need to be willing to hold our beliefs with the tempered conviction- a chastened certainty- willing to explore the possibility that what we reject as immoral might simply be different.

I recently asked Scot McKnight the question, “Are there universal (and/or biblical) characteristics that are gender specific?”.  After acknowledging the complexity of the issue, Scot responded:

“My reading in the past leads me to think this is a question for which the answers are just more questions.”

Anyone who knows Scot knows that he is not suggesting that, given this dynamic, we shouldn’t ask the questions.  Far from it!  Rather, I believe Scot is cautioning us not to be too quick to jump to conclusions and be willing to keep exploring these dynamics carefully.

In many ways, my masculinity is deviant from culture in which I live.  I’ve never enjoyed sports much.  My very competitive wife is the gifted athlete in our family.  I’ve always been drawn to theatre, poetry and music styles such as classical, opera, etc.  I’ve known for years that my part of the vocation that God has called me to is to be a stay-at-home Dad.  For some, this is not only deviant, but grounds for formal church discipline.

As a man and a father, I do not take their concerns lightly.  I do not want to violate God’s plan for me, nor do I want to risk harming my son by modeling something wrong.  So I have genuinely dedicated myself to years of study, prayer and consideration.  While I have not come to absolute conclusions on all matters, I believe with deep conviction that I am fully and wholly a man.  I am the man God wanted/wants me to be.  I will raise my son to be the man God has created him to be, even if that means my son will be rugby playing outdoors man who likes hunting moose with his teeth!

We must always remember that our visceral reaction to the deviance we encounter is not proof that such things are worthy of suspicion or condemnation.  Ignorance and unfamiliarity can fuel certainty in powerful ways.  Jesus was (and is), in so many ways, a deviant in His time- socially, religiously, politically, economically.  We must never forget that our identity and our unity as Christians is entirely and essentially bound up in that same person.

Previous Post -Gardening In Exile

Last night at Little Flowers Community small group we were discussing the kind of community of faith we hoped to become.  We started by reflecting on experiences with church in the past that were particularly negative and disappointing.  Then we reflected on experiences with church that stood out as positive or even exceptional, asking what was required for those experiences to be possible.  Finally we examined what the different examples had in common.  In the end, we were able to clearly see, not only what we hoped to become as a community together, but what it would cost each of us to get there.  Our answers were calling us to give more time, energy, consistency, priority, sacrifice- things that seemed obvious but were important to be reminded of.

At one point, it came up that people would more involved if we were doing more in the community- outreach of some kind.  After all, they said, they had been involved off and on in a number of other ministries in the city that had been great.  While they were right to affirm this direction, I found myself sighing with frustration.  This was a conversation I seemed destined to repeat over and over again.  As positively as I could, I affirmed the suggestion and asked: “So what are you waiting for?”

When push came to shove, the answer came down to this: they were waiting for someone to start the ministry so that they could join in.  And this was a problem for me on several levels.  First, “someone” almost always referred to myself or my wife.  Now, the fact that we are career missionaries with many years of experience gives the expectation some credibility.  However, our experience has also been that people also want others to lead so that their involvement could be based on their convenience.  In other words, when it wasn’t convenient, the “leaders” would be left to fill in the gap themselves.  Our small missionary team (which had planted Little Flowers Community and continues to work full time in the neighbourhood) tried this before and led the group to near-burn out.

Second, and most importantly, this pattern inevitably discipled those some-time volunteers in an experience of missional engagement that was divorced from the nitty-gritty, mundane aspects of ministry.  By allowing people too much access to missional context with requiring them to carry the cost creates the illusion of missional living that can proved dangerous to all involved.  Of course, I am well aware of how such a pattern has emerged.  While some might blame it on influences such as “short term missions” (a claim with some, but less truth than most people might imagine), it has more often been born of desperation and necessity.  Let me explain.

The ability to get people to meaningfully and sacrificially engage in lives of missional service is very, very hard.  We live in a culture of consumer Christianity where people have to be convinced (sold) on an idea or activity.  Even then, their participation and/or support is seen as their exceptional contribution rather than the base-line for required service.  However, the need for people to be involved continues to grow, especially in contexts where the needs are so severe and the resources so scarce (such as in our inner city context).  Therefore, in order to bring the needed people in, we accommodate or even compromise.  One way of doing that is to do all the “behind the scenes”, mundane work so that people can in and participate in the more dynamic aspects of ministry that interest them.

This needs to stop.  By doing this we are actively discipling people into a way of Christian service the affirms and entrenches the individualistic, consumer-driven impulses of our culture.  Further, it creates an illusion of what it means to be missional people that in the end is little more than a shell of the sacred vocation that God calls us to.  Of course God, in His grace, will work through these situations in spite of us.  And of course the the unique gifts of some will predispose them to certain roles and not others.  However, these points do not mitigate the danger and compromise of the approach that is all too common.

What scares me most about this is the fact that, whenever we resist this impulse, we find ourselves standing quite alone.  The Dusty Cover, the ministry that gave birth to Little Flowers Community, had to be closed due to a lack of people willing to consistently and selflessly serve.  By requiring even a little more from people, we’ve seen many move on to more accommodating ministries.  It is discouraging, disheartening and more than a little disturbing.

I am grateful that the core group of people in Little Flowers Community are beginning to see this.  It is particularly difficult for single 20-somethings (who make up the majority of our church) to realize this and adjust to it.  However, the harvest is plentiful and the workers are few.  Has the familiarity with that truth numbed us to the urgency of its message?  We need to begin to require more of ourselves and each other.  We need to resist compromising and begin to call ourselves back to the radical vocation of being the community of Christ, a community called daily to lives of sacrifice, even unto the cross.

What do you think?  Is this a problem for your community?  How do we change this?

Previous Post -Future of the Emerging Church

When I stepped out of the theatre after watching James Cameron’s record breaking film “Avatar”, I was conflicted.  Without question this movie raised the bar with respect to the experience of cinema.  It was visually stunning and engaging.  It kept my attention and, on the merits of the brilliant technology used for the 3D experience, I was drawn into the science fiction world of the Na’vi people.  If you are going to see this film at all, it should be seen on the big screen in 3D.

That being said, I also left feeling dissatisfied and, frankly, pissed off.  First, there was this nagging feeling that I had seen this film before, some scenes explicitly familiar.  It was only later when a friend mentioned “Fern Gully” that it became laughingly clear.  (If you haven’t seen “Fern Gully”, but have seen Avatar, it would worth the laugh to watch it to see the parallels).  I was also bothered by how both the “good guys” and the “bad guys” were portrayed.  The Na’vi culture seemed like a pop culture buffet of indigenous worldviews, dripping of the “noble savage” that I thought we had long since moved past.  The military men were so evil, I half expected them rub their hands together maniacally and break out in a Bela Lugosi laugh.  I had hoped for (though not expected) something of more substance in this visual masterpiece.  And I was disappointed.

Recently, the film has drawn fire from Conservatives who denounce the film for a liberal propaganda machine designed to push some nefarious agenda.  Scot McKnight points out 5 complaints about the film, asking for his readers input (for which this post is my extended reply).  Note, I’ve changed the order Scot listed them, putting “Worship of nature” directly after “Pro-environment”, as I feel they strongly inform each other:

• Pro-environment
• Worship of nature
• Anti-religious
• Liberal, left-wing agenda
• Anti-military

Pro-environment: There is no question that the current cultural interest in environmentalism is foundational in this films message.  While I am sure that Cameron believes in this cause, I’m also convinced that it was included because it is a highly marketable idea these days.  As someone who believe that we are not caring for creation in the way God mandated us to, I resonate with this theme.  However, I am not an “environmentalist” per se.  I believe that Christians need to understand and practice a relationship to creation that surpasses the activism of the environmentalism, even though I believe it is an issue of injustice that Scripture requires us to respond to.  I think people (both Christian and otherwise) are looking for something beyond the activism, which leads into the next point.

Worship of nature: Cameron’s generous blending of shallowly appropriated indigenous culture/belief with popular environmentalism is quite apparent from the get go.  There is no question that the Na’vi people of Pandora hold to a pantheistic belief system that is informed by Gaia-type worship.  This connects well with the environmentalist theme, as the Gaia hypothesis has been a notable influence in the movement.  From a Christian standpoint, there are beliefs put forth that are clearly contrary to what we believe.  While this should makes us more intentional about talking about such differences, I don’t see that they should be viewed as a threat.

However, we should make note of this synthesis of environmentalism and spirituality.  As mentioned above, there is a clear longing in our culture for something deeper to inform our environmental convictions.  I believe this is borne from an undefinable conviction that we are connected to creation on a spiritual level.  Not in a Gaian, new age sort of way.  Rather, our connection to creation as laid out in Scripture has been lost to the often gnostic leanings of Western Christianity.  If Cameron’s film is a threat, it is because we have failed to offer a meaningful alternative.  So much more could be said about this one, but for the sake of space, I’ll move on.

Anti-religious: After the last point, this one seems even more ridiculous.  At best, this critique comes from an understanding of religion as highly formalized institutions (which makes the integrative spirituality of the Na’vi suspect).  At it worst, this critique is borne from a fear of any idea or belief that is not explicitly Christian- and by Christian, I mean Western, modern Christianity.  In an increasingly pluralistic world, Christians need to learn to better relate to people with differing beliefs.  This is not to say we should not argue convincingly for our own convictions, but rather recognize and address the posture of suspicion and fear that informs our responses.

Again, Cameron shallowly picks and chooses from indigenous beliefs here, offering a romanticized mishmash of spirituality.  This, in itself, is a greater threat to people than the actual beliefs themselves.  I would rather people explore a spiritual belief system in depth than to be lured into something through romantic and shallow appropriation of ideas.  I suspect that many people have embraced Christianity for the same reasons, usually to ultimately ill effects for the larger Church.

Liberal, left-wing agenda: This complaint has two parts.  To the first, that the film is liberal, there is no question.  By this I mean that there are values that are championed in the film that are more commonly (though no exclusively) championed on the political left.  Cameron doesn’t strike me as a man whose politics would be too hard to pin down.  However, as someone who doesn’t fall clearly into either the so-called “right” or “left”, there is not threat here.  If you equate Christian belief with a predominantly right-wing political stance, then we disagree strongly and this point is moot (as it is if you equate Christianity with the left).  Let us also not forget the marketability of left leaning ideas in films, clearly influencing the direction the film would take.

As for it having a “left-wing agenda”, I can only roll my eyes.  Whenever we want to demonize something, all we have to do is accuse them of having an “agenda”, colouring the whole thing in a questionable, conspiratorial light.  If Cameron had an agenda with this film, I suspect it would be for it to be commercially and popularly successful.  Would he be happy if the film made people more mindful of environmental issues or military policy?  Of course, but I hardly think that was at the top of his list nor worthy of accusations of subversion.  Like other religious beliefs, we have to learn to live alongside other political ideologies as well, careful not to demonize (or venerate) any one perspective.

Anti-military: As a Christian with strong Franciscan and Anabaptist leanings, I hold a strong critique of military powers and of violence in particular.  That being said, I did feel that the characterization of the military in the film was over the top.  While Cameron says he was not trying to parallel the US military, I cannot see how it would be possible for any viewer to NOT come to that conclusion.  In addition to the disrespect it shows to honest soldiers, it allows us the scapegoat of identifying “sin” in only extreme categories, thus freeing us from responsibility.  Further, as someone who advocates non-violence, any caricatures undermine meaningful discussion about the myth of redemptive violence.  While this film takes advantage of the publics disillusionment with military involvement in Iraq, it is by no means anti-war.  Though not unexpected, it was still disappointing.

Much more could be said about this film, such as the white man still being the ultimate hero, identifying with the indigenous people in well-intentioned, but incredibly condescending ways.  As I said earlier, it was a visually stunning epic that kept my attention like few other films have.  Should we uncritically embrace its message?  Of course not.  In all things we need to be discerning and careful.  Should we dismiss it or embrace it as mere entertainment?  Only at our own peril.  Movies function as a deeply influential mythology in our culture, shaping the way we think and act.  Again, we need to discerning and careful.  However, to use this film as ammo to fire at our perceived political and/or religious adversaries is both foolish and counter-productive.

I had the privilege of becoming a friend Richard Twiss 10 years ago, around the same time I met my wife.  Richard has since played a big role in challenging my view of faith & culture.  Not only did he help open my heart & mind to the diversity of expressions found in the Church, but also to look for the beauty in my own culture (a rare affirmation these days).  So I was very pleased to see this interview (via iMonk).  The interviewer is Soong-Chan Rah who I interviewed here about his book “The Next Evangelicalism”.  Check out Richard’s book “One Church, Many Tribes” & his ministry with Wiconi International.