Oh best beloved, I am stricken by indecision. I spent most of the day thinking about this thread by Amanda Knox, and I really love this funny thing about how to be more productive (it’s not supposed to be funny, I just can’t help laughing at the idea of saying, out loud, “shutdown" at night, and jumping rope first thing in the morning—I don’t need that kind of productivity in my life). But then the Christian world united yesterday over this curious, and, I will say, alarming article by Josh Butler. I can’t quite make out if it is an actual excerpt from his forthcoming book or just a preview of what’s to come. And that’s because as soon as I’d read it, I myself clicked away with all speed. Which is to say, if you haven’t read it….well, as I said, the internet united in alarm and shock. The right memed away happily and the left cried abuse and you know what, for once, I feel like everyone had a point.
So first of all, I like TGC. I’m on everyone’s side here. And, second of all, years ago, when I first started blogging at Patheos, I got a free copy of one of Butler’s books and read half of it and blogged about it and then got busy and never got to the second half. And I see that he’s supposed to talk at the IF Gathering. I don’t see why, if you’re into conferences like that, you would try to get him canceled. I don’t know why you wouldn’t go hear what he has to say. He’s obviously trying very hard to communicate something about the love of God.
But also…you’re not going to be able to make me read his book. The article was sufficient unto the day, for me. No, instead, I want to join my voice to the throng and suggest what I’m going to call (because I feel like it) the Anglican Way TM. That is to talk lots lots more about the weather and much much less about the sex. This very funny person agrees with me. As she astutely observes, if you wouldn’t talk about it with your mother in the room—and your mother isn’t the star of Toddlers and Tiaras or that creepo show where mothers try to seduce their friends’ sons (I think someone actually filmed that and put it on the television)—then you shouldn’t put it on the internet.
This, for me, represents the via media in a moment of marvelous unity. The Bible does offer us a lot of visceral images and metaphors that can be, as Butler noted, alarming. But what are we supposed to do with them? As robust Christian culture has sickened, and is, indeed swaying and tottering into the dust, we have to instruct people in mores and thoughts that they haven’t encountered before. We have to describe various aspects of life that were before assumed, understood without ever being said out loud.
The most crucial of these, tragically, is sex and gender itself. In a properly functioning social system, what the different people are supposed to do is basically tied to who they are, and knowledge of that is communicated in rich and sundry ways, usually with no explanation about the purpose or even meaning that undergirds them. When an outsider comes in and asks questions—why do the women get the water from the well and the men never do, for example—the people who live in that world will grope around for all the reasons they can grab. They haven’t, perhaps, overtly “thought” about it, but in another sense, it undergirds the whole spiritual structure by which they live their lives.
But all those basic assumptions evaporated for us in the west like a vaporous smoke, and in their place, we received the dubious gifts of technology and “science.” The result is that ordinary Christians find themselves groping around in the dirt, cutting their fingers on bits of rubble, trying to sift out the vestiges of meaning and identity. Some people (the left) come in and say that this sort of sifting is good because what really is happening is that we’re getting rid of the patriarchy and putting some better, plastic gender superstructure in its place. Some people on the right want to go back to a more comfortable time when men and women basically knew who they were and what they were supposed to do, where only a few people were out there wallowing in the rubble while the rest were pushing their trolleys around Fred Meyer and thinking up more delicacies to encase in aspic.
In the recreation of a new Christian age (be it ever so inconsequential and beleaguered—people who are not Christian yet have to be added to the kingdom of God, that’s literally how this works) Christians are going to have to talk about delicate subjects.
But, I think they can still adhere to the principle that not everything should be said. Part of the work of marriage is figuring it out, is learning difficult lessons by obedience to the Spirit of God, rather than being handed a complete manual on the topic by the pastor as you’re walking out of the church on your special day. When you have a baby, you can try to learn all you can by reading and asking for advice, but honestly, it takes giving birth and trying to keep the sweetheart alive for twenty-four hours for all that book learning to fall into a semblance of order and beauty.
Another way to say it, perhaps, is that other Christians aren’t the Spirit of God. They can be helpful, but when you’re embarking on your journey of marriage, they aren’t going to be able to tell you how you should do it. Only some of the advice they give you will be helpful. You’ll have to argue and struggle your way with your new beloved to discover how you should order your life. Deciding ahead of time to be “traditional” or “progressive” is great. But don’t be so proud that you’re actually crushed to earth when you find yourself facing a sink of dishes if you’re a man, because your wife had to go get a job even though neither of you wanted it to be that way because you had to eat, or, being so relieved, if you’re a woman, to quit your job even though you spent the GNP of a dying European country on your education. The details of the “role” are not so important as the mysterious dance of negotiations that gradually turn you into a picture of the mystery of Christ and the Church—not that Christ negotiates with the Church…see! You cannot press any of these metaphors too far.
So much more with something like sex. You might have private inklings or wonderings in the course of your daily duties and pleasures. I, for example, felt like I got quite a different view of the cross when, in giving birth to my third child, I missed my epidural and had to mentally bind myself to the business of letting my infant come forth in suffering and pain. But you know what, I don’t want to talk about it with you—the internet. For one, I’m not Jesus. For another, I don’t want to commit heresy by explaining things that ought not be explained. And for yet a third, I would be robbing you of your own private journey through your life and the scriptures. Those strange moments when you’re sitting in church and something in the prayers or the sermon or the walking forward for communion illumines your mind’s eye and you find something about Jesus makes more sense than it did when you first staggered in the front door.
I think I know what Josh Butler is trying to do. He’s trying to “de-mystify” in the way that we think we want. He’s trying to explain the unexplainable, because that’s what this cultural moment insists is the best way. If you know better, after all, you’ll do better. But there, as Twitter has risen as one to explain, is a limit to that exercise.
Have a nice day!
"I think I know what Josh Butler is trying to do. He’s trying to 'de-mystify' in the way that we think we want."
Color me cynical, but I think what he's trying to do is sell books.
Matt sent me here. The day after International Women’s Day. Looking forward to reading your thoughts.