“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
-John Maynard Keynes, responding to an accusation of inconsistency

While I was in college many years ago, I could never get myself to say it. I didn’t have the
guts to come right out and tell my ministry partners and friends that I did not believe that
women should teach men in religious settings. Whether in a dorm Bible study or from the
pulpit, I thought that a woman shouldn’t have a leadership position over any man in the
fellowship. But a position like this wouldn’t be popular with the ladies, a not-so trivial thing
for a single college male. So I kept it to myself.

To read the entire paper: Can Women Teach?

November 9, 2009

This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship president Mark Earley.

On the night of October 23rd, a 15-year-old girl in Richmond, California, was brutally assaulted by as many as seven young men between the ages of 15 and 20.

One policeman called the events of that night a “barbaric act” and “one of the most disturbing crimes in my 15 years as a police officer.”

What disturbed him wasn’t only the overt criminal acts but the response—or more precisely, the lack of a response—of those in a position to help.

According to the police, the victim had left a dance at Richmond High School and was in the school’s courtyard when she was gang-raped. As heinous as this crime was, what made it a national story was that approximately 20 kids witnessed the attack and did nothing. Nothing.

Actually, it was worse than that. As word spread about the attack, people came to check it out. There are reports that some of the bystanders took pictures of the assault with their cell phone cameras instead of calling for help. Others laughed and a few even joined in the attack.

No sooner had police found the victim, semi-conscious under a bench, than attention focused on the behavior of the crowd. Comparisons were made to the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in New York, in which her neighbors supposedly ignored her cries for help because they didn’t want to get involved.

While how many of Genovese’s neighbors actually heard her cries for help is in dispute, there are no such doubts in this case.

So why didn’t anyone do something to help? An obvious factor is fear. Richmond, California, has been described as “one of the nation’s most dangerous cities,” and its murder rate is higher than Oakland’s or Los Angeles’. The school even recently approved the use of surveillance cameras following a series of violent crimes on campus.

In this setting, people have reason to believe that authorities cannot protect them and, thus, getting involved will put them at risk.

Even so, many people live in dangerous neighborhoods where “snitching” is dangerous, but they don’t gather to watch another person being brutalized, much less take photos or laugh. After all, the attack ended when people down the street from the school learned what was happening and called the police.

The response that shocked the nation speaks to an indifference to the well-being of others among some of our children. Instead of empathy, these young people showed apathy—and, as one observer said, “a total indifference to [behavior], customs, mores, and sensibilities,” the things we associate with being civilized.

What happened in Richmond, California, is an unsettling reminder that the standards that make a good society possible cannot be taken for granted. It doesn’t take much to set them aside. That’s why those standards and the beliefs that make them possible must be taught and renewed continuously.

As one Oakland pastor wrote, what happened on October 23rd “is reflective of a societal breakdown that is not limited to the Richmond city limits.”

And that’s what should disturb us the most.

For years I went to church. Religiously. I actually went to church for about 25 years. Then I stopped. I’m so glad I did. Instead of going to church, I started being the church. It’s radically changed me. They have changed me. My family has gotten bigger.

Bono’s Church

The church is supposed to be a family. But there’s a problem. The church in America is too often very un-church. As a result, a lot of people say that they like Jesus, but they just don’t like the church … and they’re in pretty good company … with Bono. In U2’s song “Acrobat”, from the album Achtung Baby, Bono articulates a fairly common perception of the church:

No, nothing makes sense, nothing seems to fit.
I know you’d hit out if you only knew who to hit.
And I’d join the movement
If there was one I could believe in
Yeah, I’d break bread and wine
If there was a church I could receive in.

This is a common view of the church. What’s the view? Conflicted: “And I’d join the movement If there was one I could believe in. Yeah, I’d break bread and wine If there was a church I could receive in.”

Like many of us, Bono wants the church, but there are too many ifs. He wants to be part of the movement of the church. Unfortunately, many churches aren’t concerned with movement. Too many of them are inwardly focused, not outwardly focused. They aren’t the world-changing communities of the New Testament. They are static, inert and inward.

Bono wants the communion of church, but says there’s no church he can believe or receive in. I’m guessing that what Bono is referring to is not merely the eucharist, but the one-body community that is symbolized in the act of communion (1 Cor 10:16-17). Like Bono, many of us long for church as movement and communion, a church that is missional and communal.

To read the rest of the articles…

21st Century Southern Baptist Martyrs

by Erich Bridges and Jerry Rankin

Click here to download the introduction of this incredible book

For years Kerry coasted in his Christian belief. Burned out by the legalistic culture of his Christian college experience, his post-grad years were a combination of disillusionment and disengagement with church. Church attendance was infrequent. Instead of investing in spiritual things, he decided to pursue his career, start a family, and carve out a spot in the good life.

He climbed the career ladder pretty quickly. Before he knew it, he was living in a half a million dollar home in a nice neighborhood, father to two, and enjoying a new community among fellow cyclists.

What could be better?

After a while, though, his good life seemed flat. He tried a few things to jump start it, including increased church attendance, but nothing seemed to work.

One day Don², an ex-rockstar buddy turned Jesus freak, shared with Kerry how God was changing his life through community. Skeptical but interested, Kerry began to ask more questions and even invited Don’s pastor over to his daughter’s birthday party.

The more Kerry learned, the more he was intrigued. Something was different about this church. Not only did they care about one another, but also cared about their city. Kerry joined them in social service projects and even showed up at some house church meetings.

Deep down, he knew this was something he had been longing for, something much better than the so-called good life. He began asking God if he should sell his house and become a missionary. Little did he know he was already becoming a missionary. Kerry was beginning to understand the gospel in a new way.

To read the rest of the articles…

“My internet reading has once again led my attention toward Africa. On December 27, 2008, the London Times published a short article by Matthew Parris with the long and attention-grabbing title, “As an Atheist I Truly Believe Africa Needs God.” The even longer subtitle summarizes the bottom line: “Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa’s biggest problem—the crushing passivity of the people’s mindset.” Parris doesn’t explain why he is still an atheist, but he does a stunning job of explaining why his view of Christian missionary efforts in Africa has drastically changed in recent years.”

To read more, download the PDF

From the July/August 2009 Issue: Volume 22, Issue 6

From Outreach Magazine by Rob Wilkins

Two our of three high-school students leave church after graduation. How can we reverse the trend?

Shannon was 13 when she cut herself for the first time, three years ago.

“No one knew I was depressed,” Shannon says. “I was the model youth group person. I smiled a lot. I answered the Bible study questions.”

And she left the group, week after week, month after month, without a clue about how faith affects life.

Also three years ago and 13 at the time, Levhi came to the same youth group by way of a friend.

“We were both kids whose parents forced us to go to youth group,” he says. “He was much more into smoking weed than he was into Jesus.”

Shannon and Levhi are two of the nearly 150 young people who attend the youth group at Journey Community Church in La Mesa, Calif., on any given weekend. That’s 150 similar stories: personal searches for identity, purpose and significance.

Journey’s youth pastor of high school ministry, Brian Berry, understands the urgency of reaching youth at this time in their lives. The statistics, as he recounts them, are sobering:

– Two out of 3 high school students leave the church after graduation.

– But 77 percent of Christians come to faith by the age of 21.

– More than 40 percent of young people aged 16 to 29 are now outside the Christian faith, up from 27 percent during the previous generation.

Facing a daunting challenge, Berry, along with many youth leaders across the country, wrestles with difficult questions, like:

To read the rest of this article…

North Carolina ministry seeks to build ties between prisoners and their children

MAURY, N.C.—Along the back roads of eastern North Carolina, the 1,500 residents of Maury barely outnumber the population of the tiny town’s largest residential facility: the Maury Correctional Institution, a close-security prison holding nearly 1,000 men facing long, hard time. Just around a secluded bend, the prison’s concrete walls and barbed wire tower over the surrounding acres of green fields brimming with short, leafy tobacco.

Even if inmates’ families make the trek to Maury, visitation is a sterile affair: Inmates sit across from visitors at small, square tables, and rules are strict—one hug on arrival, one hug when leaving, and no other physical contact. The regulations are understandable: Many of these men are serving time for violent crimes, including murder. Whatever the crime, the sentences are often long, averaging 20 years to life.

None of that seems to bother Scottie Barnes. The founder of the Taylorsville, N.C.–based Forgiven Ministry—a Christian ministry for inmates and their families—is familiar with visiting days: Her father began spending long stretches of time in prison when Barnes was 4 years old. He died in a Kentucky jail when Barnes was 42. Her life-long desire to reconcile with her father happened after he embraced Christianity, shortly before his death.

Barnes hopes to narrow that gap for other children. That’s why she’s in a conference room at the Maury prison on a Thursday evening, training local volunteers for a program that will reunite a handful of inmates with their children for an entire day. The program—called One Day With God—is particularly striking at a prison like this one where visitation rules are tight. Officials have agreed to allow carefully selected inmates to interact with their children in ways they normally couldn’t: playing games, holding hands, sharing a meal, making crafts, lots of hugs.

Over a small sound system, Barnes tells a dozen volunteers why organizing one day of interaction is worth so much effort: “Just because that daddy’s behind these walls doesn’t mean he’s not a father.”

That’s a theme the ministry has repeated at more than 15 camps this year, serving more than 1,100 inmates, children, and caregivers. Barnes plans to conduct 14 more camps in five states before the end of the year with the help of two other full-time staff members, including her husband, Jack, and a cadre of unpaid board members and volunteers. Each place they visit, the message is the same: Be a responsible father. Ask God to help you do it.

The message extends to the ministry’s other programs too: For example, an 18-week re-entry program led by volunteer mentors teaches life skills to inmates nearing the end of their sentences at minimum-security jails. Monthly Bible studies encourage inmates to stay connected to their children. Some programs cater specifically to children: Volunteers staff the ministry’s Ezekiel Room at another prison, allowing children to hear Bible stories and interact with each other during otherwise long visits in confined quarters.

But the ministry’s centerpiece is the two-day camp at prisons, which usually begins like the weekend in Maury: On an early Friday morning, inmates—17 when I visited—in white T-shirts, tan pants, and white tennis shoes begin trickling into a windowless visitation room. Each man has one or more children he hopes will visit on Saturday. The prison chaplain and other officials have selected inmates who must meet certain criteria: no sex offenders or pedophiles; each participant must remain infraction-free for at least 90 days before the camp.

Barnes, assistant Karen Strickland, a Bible teacher, and a handful of volunteers spend Friday helping the fathers prepare. The day is mostly devoted to biblical teaching about fatherhood, with an emphasis on the gospel. The fathers prepare in other ways too as they gather around small tables set with white tablecloths and a cluster of gifts for each inmate: crackers, Moon Pies, peanuts, bottles of juice, a bar of soap, a toothbrush, a tract, a devotional book, and a Bible-based parenting booklet.

Before the teaching begins, Barnes tries to break the ice, but these dads are quiet. She finally asks: “How many of you are nervous?” Every hand goes up. Barnes pauses to pray for the men and then assures them: “Your kids aren’t looking at you in any other way than as a daddy tomorrow.”

The men line up at a long table for their first project: decorating wooden picture frames for their children. A photographer will snap a photo of each inmate and his child on Saturday, and the dads will give their children the hand-­decorated frames to display the pictures. They’ll also write a message on the back with a black pen.

Sheldon Sutton talks about his nervousness as he sticks a small, foam diamond and pink flower to the corners of a frame for his 8-year-old daughter. Sutton is serving a sentence of life without parole, and he hasn’t seen his daughter in over a year: “I really don’t know what to say to her.” Mostly, he wants one thing: “I want her to leave knowing I love her.”

In a box in the corner, the men stack the completed frames, bearing hand-written messages: “I wish I could be back in your life.” “I miss you very much.” “I look forward to our future together.” “I think about you everyday.” “Daddy loves you.”

Barnes tells the men they’ll make a small lamp with their child tomorrow. She asks, “How many of you have something you made with your daddy?” No one raises a hand. She follows up: “How many of you had a daddy who was in jail?” More than half raise their hands.

Barnes knows that these inmates’ children face a similar danger: Children of prisoners are seven times as likely to end up in prison themselves. It’s a sobering statistic for these fathers, and Barnes asks: “Do you want to break that cycle?” Heads nod hard around the room.

Haseem Everett especially wants to break the cycle. His daughter is 9 years old. He hasn’t seen her in 6 ½ years. He’s eager to encourage her to live a clean life: “I was running the streets at 13, and I refuse to let her get into that situation.” He’s also eager to begin a relationship with her. “If we can just start a foundation,” he says. He confesses his biggest fear: “Her not coming.”

That’s a fear Barnes and her assistant, Strickland, share. After prison officials identify men for the camps, Barnes and Strickland send letters to each child’s caregiver—usually a mother, grandmother, aunt, or other family member. They follow up with phone calls, often pleading with sometimes-wary family members to bring the children. By Friday afternoon, they’re still calling families to confirm, and encouraging the inmates to place calls that evening too. Nothing is certain, they gently warn.

But the risk is worth it to these men, and they listen intently as Jim Williams of Blue Ridge Ministries presents a fathering seminar with practical instruction: Contact your children as often as possible. Encourage them to respect their caregivers. Maintain a relationship with Christ that informs your relationship with your kids.

By late afternoon, the men eat the last of their snacks—they can’t take food back to their cells—and they file out for a long night of waiting.

Early Saturday morning, children and caregivers begin arriving at a nearby church. The ministry pairs a volunteer mentor with each family, and mentors will remain with their assigned child throughout the day. Caregivers stay at the church for a day-long program designed to encourage and support them.

Meanwhile, in the prison’s gym, the dads blow up balloons and pace nervously. By 9:20 a.m. the children have arrived, and the prison goes on lockdown as they’re escorted through the cold, gray corridors toward the gym. Dads crane their necks as volunteers introduce each child. Some run to their fathers. Others are more timid. Some shed tears.

Sutton is relieved to see his 8-year-old daughter approach with white beads decorating her pretty, braided hair. She offers a wide smile and big hug. In a separate corner, Everett isn’t smiling: His daughter did not come, although she lives less than 30 miles away. “I’m just disappointed,” he says, and so are four other men. But Everett says he’s still glad he came, and he hopes to apply what he’s learned about fatherhood as he’s able.

For the others, a series of games, a magic show, and other fun activities allow dads to relax with their children, and begin to connect. For the first time in years, some hold their children on their laps. At a catered lunch of fried chicken in the visitation room, the conversations grow loud as fathers, children, and mentors chat over lunch. Since dads miss their children’s birthdays, the ministry provides a birthday cake and everyone sings.

After lunch, the families make small lampshades by threading clear beads onto gold safety pins and closing them with wire. Each child will take home a small electric lamp that fits the shade. One child, Destiny, expresses her gratitude for time with her father: “I’ve never had a day like this in my life, and I may never have one again.”

Darlyn White, the prison’s administrator, says she’s open to the ministry returning and says she hopes the men will keep in touch with their children. White believes in the Christian-based nature of the program and says her church donated $1,700 toward covering the camp’s cost. “We’re not so naïve to think that every one of these men is going to change, but Jesus says He goes after the one lost sheep,” says White. “These are our lost sheep—and if we can save one, we’re going to do it.”

The day winds down with quiet time for fathers to talk with their children, and with a balloon release in a tiny outdoor courtyard surrounded by towering walls. As the families watch the colorful balloons dot a blackening sky, some wipe away tears. In a few moments, the day will be over. The children will be gone.

The last few minutes are difficult, and some fathers cry harder than their children. Barnes and Williams gather the men to encourage them to build on what they’ve started today, and promise to pray for them. “I love every one of you,” says Barnes. “You’re my daddies at Maury now.”

For Sutton, saying goodbye was hard, but the dad who initially wasn’t sure what he’d say sent his daughter home with this handwritten message on the back of a frame holding a picture of the pair: “I give you my all/I am there to pick you up when you fall/In flesh or in spirit/In chains or free/I will love you forever/I will be a better me.”

For more information on this year’s Hope Award for Effective Compassion and to read profiles of other nominated organizations from this year and previous years, click here.

Forgiven Ministry

• First six months of 2009:
• 1,133 inmates, children, and families served at 14 camps;
• 1,256 camp volunteers, most from local churches
• Serves both men and women inmates
• Maintains “The Adams Center,” a facility for families visiting inmates in area prisons
• Winner of Texas Governor’s Criminal Justice Volunteer Service Award for “Best Family Program”
• 2008 income: $327,291
• 2008 expenses: $298,530

Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination

“This is the most important and exciting theological work to emerge in a generation. It will have a profound effect on Christian thinking well into the next century.” – Charles Elliot Cambridge University

WINNER of the following awards:

• Pax Christi Award, 1993
• Academy of Parish Clergy:
  Book of the Year, 1993
• Midwest Book Achievement Award
  - Best Religious Book, 1993

 Click here to download the PDF

This commentary contains material that may not be suitable for children.

A few years ago a pastor named Dale Kuehne took some college students to work in a farming village in Costa Rica—a poor village that lacked electricity and running water. The locals did have a generator, however; once a week, they fired it up to watch a raunchy American television program—Beverly Hills 90210.

Kuehne was shocked to see village teenagers mimicking the behavior of the characters in the show. And he was floored when village men asked him what was wrong with the women who’d come on the trip. “Why don’t they want to have sex?” they asked. “We thought all American women want to have sex.”

Kuehne relates the story in his new book, Sex and the iWorld: Rethinking Relationships beyond an Age of Individualism. What happened in Costa Rica, he writes, shows how far iWorld messages have spread—and how little the Church has done to engage the iWorld culture.

Kuehne says that we are witnessing in the West the collapse of the Judeo-Christian worldview. Replacing it is a worldview that some call “postmodern individualism,” but Kuehne calls it “iWorld.”

iWorlders are dissolving long-established boundaries because they believe that people are happiest making their own moral and relational choices—outside of the family, community, and faith traditions into which they were born. And the iWorld promotes a desire for immediate gratification—as illustrated in the huge levels of consumer debt and the tendency to become sexually involved at the very outset of a romantic relationship.

Sadly, iWorlders often unwittingly sacrifice what they want, in the long run—contentment and fulfillment—by succumbing to their immediate desires, especially when it comes to sexual relationships.

Perhaps even more sadly, the Church has done precious little to present to iWorlders a vision of true fulfillment. That’s partly because the Church itself has turned a “blind eye” to sexual immorality within the body of Christ. Even worse, writes Kuehne, “is the degree to which the historic orthodox understanding of sexual morality and marriage is being ignored or revised by clergy and laypeople alike.”

This has enormous consequences for the Church’s ability to be salt and light in a culture suffering from the after-effects and social ills of the sexual revolution. The Church needs to be reminded—and needs to make the case—that “the biblical teaching that limits sexual relations to a marriage relationship between a man and a woman is actually beneficial to all.”

And that’s exactly what Kuehne does in his book, in a direct, challenging, but ultimately compassionate way. Every human, he says, is on a “never-ending quest for acceptance, love, and fulfillment.” But these things can never be found in the iWorld—by asking, “What’s in it for me?”

So instead of being subsumed by the iWorld culture, the Church has the “rWorld” to offer. The rWorld understands that God created people for relationships—and that we find our deepest fulfillment in relationship with Him, and in living a life rich in self-giving, not self-satisfying relationships.

And that makes Kuehne’s book, Sex and the iWorld, a worthy read. Visit BreakPoint.org, and we’ll show you how to get a copy.

By William Kilpatrick

From First Things, February 1999

Seventeen years ago in Psychological Seduction I wrote about the dangers of mixing psychology with religious faith. Such a mixing, I cautioned, would result in a dilution of faith. Six years before that, Paul Vitz had made a similar point in Psychology as Religion: psychology, he wrote, had become a substitute for faith—a new religion encouraging a cult of self-worship. We both emphasized that this psychological faith, although it bore a surface resemblance to Christianity, was incompatible with, indeed, deeply hostile to, Christian faith.

Psychology as faith has proven to be a sturdy creed—almost all of the criticisms we made then could be made today. The concepts of popular psychology are still being blended with Christian faith, and confusion still abounds. The attraction to psychology is not, of course, confined to the area of religion. The assumptions and techniques of psychology and therapy have found their way into business, schools, families, popular entertainment, and even the courts—so much so that it has become common to speak of our society as a “therapeutic culture.” As long ago as 1966, Philip Rieff’s book The Triumph of the Therapeutic predicted that this psychological mode of understanding society and identity would triumph over all other modes. It would become the frame of reference by which all other beliefs and commitments would be judged.

One would expect Christian churches to resist this rival faith. Instead, they have in differing degrees been seduced by it, unable in many cases to say where the psychological faith ends and the Christian faith begins. The continuing temptation to blend psychology and faith suggests the importance of revisiting the arguments against this ill-advised ecumenism. The arguments fall roughly into two categories: those of the don’t-embarrass-yourself variety, and those of the more serious don’t-cut-your-own-throat variety.

The first line of criticism is employed in a recent article by Paul Vitz entitled “Support from Psychology for the Fatherhood of God” (Homiletic and Pastoral Review, February 1997). He first notes that the Christian concept of God as Father has been under attack—much of the attack coming from Catholics influenced by feminist psychology. But, says Vitz, much of this psychology, based as it is on an androgynous view of the person, is passé. All the latest research, he continues, shows how very different the sexes are, and how fathers and mothers play distinct roles that are not interchangeable. All the statistics, moreover, clearly demonstrate what happens when fathers cease playing their role in family and society. Indeed, fatherlessness correlates with crime, drug addiction, school dropout rates, and out-of-wedlock pregnancies better than any other factor. Moreover, it turns out that boys are much more fragile than girls and suffer much more acutely from the absence of fathers. (See, for example, psychologist Michael Gurian’s two books on the subject, The Wonder of Boys and A Fine Young Man.) Vitz observes that, doctrinal objections aside, it is “bizarre to the point of pathology at this time in our culture to be trying to remove God the Father from our theology.”

We are just now aware of the widespread social pathology, especially the increase in violence, resulting from fatherlessness in families and the data are staggering! (See David Blankenhorn’s 1995 book Fatherless America: Confronting our Most Urgent Social Problem.) What worse moment could there be to diminish fatherhood in our theology? We have enough absent fathers without trying to send God the Father away too! To remove God the Father is to remove a major support for positive male identity. In a church that is already far more popular with women than with men, this means the removal of one of the few remaining supports for men.

When Christians embrace psychological fads in hopes of keeping up to date, they frequently end up behind the curve when the fads turn out to be just that. The foolishness that can result is illustrated by a recent Christian youth curriculum that includes a cross-dressing activity called the Suitcase Relay. It works like this: “On the word Go, a first couple (boy and girl) from each team must run with their suitcase to the opposite end of the room, open the suitcase, and put on everything in the suitcase . . . the boy putting on the lady’s dress and the girl putting on the man’s suit.”

One can only urge purveyors of such nonsense to stop embarrassing themselves. Psychologists up to date with the literature on adolescent development no longer counsel gender confusion. Sex roles, they have found, are not to be carelessly tampered with.

There are a number of other therapeutic concepts that are now either in dispute or in disrepute with professionals but are nonetheless still tremendously popular with religious educators, parishes, priests, and bishops. Take the concept of self-esteem, now a central element in curricula for Catholic and other Christian youth. In psychological circles serious questions are being raised about the efficacy of high self-esteem, and about whether the trait can even be measured.

For example, the measure of self-esteem used in the well-known American Association of University Women (AAUW) study seems highly questionable. According to that study, girls suffer a sharp drop in self-esteem when they enter high school. But look at the items employed on the self-esteem questionnaire: statements such as “I’m happy the way I am,” “I like most things about myself,” and “I’m an important person.” To these statements children can choose one of five responses: “always true,” “sort of true,” “sometimes true/sometimes false,” “sort of false,” or “always false.” But what sort of person would answer “always true” to “I’m happy the way I am” or “I’m an important person”? Someone with insight or someone who feels a need to be defensive or boastful? It is not surprising that boys, who are less self-reflective than girls of the same age, would score higher on this test.

Moreover, as Christina Hoff Sommers has pointed out, there seems to be no connection between high self-esteem scores and academic success. A little-reported outcome of the AAUW study is that, although boys tested higher than girls on self-esteem, the very highest average scores were obtained by black girls and black boys. When the results were broken down by race, black boys showed the highest level of self-esteem. Yet, as is well-known, black boys do not, on average, do well in school, and they do not go on to college in very large numbers. On the other hand, white girls—the group that scores lowest on self-esteem—is the group that displays the greatest academic success.

These findings should at least raise doubts about the importance of self-esteem. But there’s more. Recent studies by Roy Baumeister of Case Western Reserve University suggest that high self-esteem may be related to anti-social behavior. In fact, the most dangerous youth seem to have highly inflated opinions of themselves. Efforts to raise self-esteem, suggests Baumeister, may actually increase violent behavior.

Once again, Christian educators seem to be on the wrong track. At just the moment in our history when youth violence and drug use are at near-record highs, at just the moment when adults ought to be talking to youngsters about self-control and self-restraint, their energies are focused instead on teaching children to applaud themselves. We seem bent on giving our children the opposite of what they need.

It’s the same with the popular concept of non-judgmentalism. If there ever was a time in which it was important for youngsters to exercise moral judgment, this is it. As psychologist William Coulson has pointed out, “It’s precisely the necessity of judgment, not its absence, that must be promoted with the young today, given the magnitude of the drug problem.” Yet in Christian education the emphasis is still very often on acceptance, trust, and the absence of judgment.

A good example is provided in a curriculum lesson for evangelical children. The lesson presents two children, Amanda, who is fat and unattractive, and Jason, who shows a marijuana joint around school to impress the other boys. The lesson is that students are not to judge either Amanda or Jason, but rather “to accept them as they are.” Cathy Mickels and Audrey McKeever, authors of Spiritual Junk Food: The Dumbing Down of Christian Youth, pinpoint the problem. They write, “To equate a girl who is quiet and unattractive with a boy showing an illegal drug around is not only confusing, but is an example of distorted and twisted reasoning.” As the authors point out, Jason is probably not the kind of boy you would want your child to associate with, yet there is nothing in the curriculum to indicate that he ought to be avoided or corrected. In 1 Corinthians 15:33 we are told, “Do not be deceived: bad company corrupts good morals,” but the world of Christian textbooks does not usually encourage this sort of judgment. Rather, it is a world inhabited by basically good and well-intentioned people who seem to have been barely touched by the effects of original sin.

Examples of this sort can be multiplied. Charles Sykes, in his book A Nation of Victims, describes a Colorado church that offers thirteen different weekly support groups ranging from “Debtors Anonymous” through “Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous” to “Codependents of Sex Addicts Anonymous.” This parish clearly subscribes to the medical model of human behavior. Meanwhile, other churches have bought into the notion that homosexuality is biologically driven and is therefore not a choice. Yet these are issues that are hotly contested by professional psychologists. The evidence that homosexuality is biologically driven, for instance, is quite skimpy and far from convincing. It seems quite ill-advised for Christians to join the chorus of theories suggesting we can’t help ourselves, that we are not really responsible for our behavior.

The informal alliance formed between evangelical Christians and clinical psychologists during the day care witch-hunts of the 1980s provides another example that should be embarrassing to psychologizing Christians. The clinicians had come up with a number of interesting theories that soon gained the force of law: one theory asserted that children never lie about sex, another claimed that repressed memories could be reliably recovered. More ominously, the psychologists had discovered a new syndrome called Ritual Satanic Child Abuse. The symptoms of this disease were legion and included forced sex, occult rituals, and animal sacrifice. Unfortunately, many evangelicals in the affected localities were all too ready to believe that Satan was alive and active in the local day care centers. In many instances they joined forces with the psychologists and law enforcers, and even provided incriminating evidence against the defendants.

Dozens of people ended up in prison as a result of the day care scares of the eighties, and many careers and reputations were ruined. We know now that it really was a witch-hunt. The FBI reports that there is no evidence of a single case of ritual satanic child abuse in the United States. We know now that the child witnesses had been subjected to leading questions, threats, and bribes. We know now that most of the testimony was bizarre and fantastic. We know now that, in addition to recovered memories, there are also suggested memories—memories of events that never happened. Thankfully, most of the convictions in these cases have now been overturned, but many individuals still linger in prison. The day care cases show that child experts can sometimes be extremely naive, and that Christians can sometimes be remarkably gullible. It should not surprise us that when the two join forces the result can sometimes be credulity compounded.

It is embarrassing to be behind the times, and even more embarrassing to be caught up in psychological delusions and hysterias, but embarrassment ought not be the only reason for avoiding ill-considered alliances with the world of psychology. There are reasons of survival, too-reasons of the don’t-cut-your-own-throat variety. The mixing of psychology with faith can be destructive to Christianity; this is especially true when questions of doctrine are involved. Indeed, it is often difficult to distinguish between what is merely embarrassing and what approaches the suicidal.

One of the most destructive consequences of carelessly mixing therapy with faith is a diminished sense of sin. The best evidence that this has already happened in the Catholic Church is the tremendous drop-off in the practice of confession over the last thirty years. When we couple this with the nearly 100 percent communion turnout in most parishes, we have to conclude that most parishioners don’t have a strong consciousness of sin. They seem to have been so schooled in the gospel of self-acceptance that they can’t think of any sins they need to confess.

A colleague at Boston College told me a story that reinforces the point. He once asked members of his philosophy class to write an anonymous essay about a personal struggle over right and wrong, good and evil. Most of the students, however, were unable to complete the assignment. “Why?” he asked. “Well,” they said—and apparently this was said without irony—“We haven’t done anything wrong.” We can see a lot of self-esteem here, but little self-awareness—the absence of a sense of sin seems strange when one considers that most of these students have had years of Catholic schooling.

It is strange as well that this inability to talk about sin, Satan, and the existence of evil comes at a time when the imagination of young people is captivated by performers such as Marilyn Manson who flirt with an aestheticized Satanism. If we want Christian youth to struggle against the temptations of evil in this world, they at least ought to be forewarned that evil exists. They ought to know, also, that Satan is more than just a name dreamed up by a rock band.

A related—if seemingly opposite—problem resulting from freely mixing faith with psychology is a diminished sense of the sacred. I discovered in a survey of religious texts for Catholic students that they are studded with references to “communications breakdowns,” “risk-taking,” “involvement,” “decision-making,” “personhood,” “I-you relationships,” “getting in touch,” “self-disclosure,” “awareness,” and “assertiveness.” The pervasive use of such language carries the implication that all the deep mysteries of faith can be encompassed in secular/psychological categories. There is in these texts very little sense that there are any deep mysteries—elements of the faith so awesome and unfathomable that they exist far beyond the reach of the social sciences. One of the deep mysteries that has suffered is the mystery of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. There are several indications that faith in the Real Presence has undergone a process of erosion. For example, a poll taken a few years ago suggests that many Catholics either do not understand or do not accept the doctrine of the Real Presence. More telling, perhaps, is the marked decline in the practice of benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and in the practice of eucharistic adoration. If many Catholics have become casual about holy communion, it may well be because they have lost the sense that communion is indeed holy—an encounter with the Source of all holiness.

Philip Rieff has written that a therapeutic society is by its very nature a negation of the sacred order. It has no room for the concept of transcendence. Obsessed with self-fulfillment and self-realization, it is uncomfortable with higher claims on our attention. “Religious man was born to be saved,” writes Rieff, “psychological man is born to be pleased.” One way of pleasing him is to reduce everything to his size, something at which religious educators have become rather proficient. In religious studies curricula, both Catholic and evangelical, a great deal of energy goes into entertaining the student with games, puzzles, fun activities, and the like. The texts contain happy faces and sad faces, connect-the-dot games, teddy bears, pictures to color, and stickers to paste. One video curriculum for evangelical children is entitled The Gospel According to St. Bernard. It features, as you might guess, a cuddly St. Bernard dog. Bernie’s theme song introduces each segment:

The questions of life are tough to figure
But we found a friend, like us, but bigger
He helps when we’re caught off guard
Here comes the Gospel According to Saint Bernard.
Bernie loves kids like you and me
His doghouse is Florida by the sea
He helps us follow God’s plan
When we listen to Bernie
It’s never very hard
To love him, he’s Bernie
The Saint Bernard.

The quest for relevance does not abate as students grow older. For junior high and high school students there are blind walks, trust falls, tree hugging exercises, role playing, self-esteem relays, and various touching activities such as the “blush” game and the “lap-sit” game. Besides taking away valuable time that might be spent learning Christian doctrine, the use of such games carries the implication that the Christian faith by itself is insufficient. Students may be forgiven if they gain the impression that the faith must be reinforced by secular concepts and activities, that it must be made attractive by blending it with secular forms of entertainment.

More insidiously, such presentations subtly erode the sense of awe and reverence with which God ought to be approached. In their quest for what is relevant and recognizable, religious educators often reduce God to a comfortable size. He becomes a chummy friend whom we can approach with an easy and casual familiarity, another reason why for many Catholics receiving communion seems not to be an occasion of soul searching or prior purification.

This desacralization process can happen even when materials are free of doctrinal error, and even when sound concepts and accurate Bible narratives are present. A lot depends on the presentation. For example, compare the Faith and Life catechism series published by Ignatius Press with a similar series from Sadlier, Coming to Faith. Book One of Sadlier, Coming to God covers approximately the same content as Book One of Faith and Life, Our Heavenly Father.

In the Sadlier volume, the Creation is there, and so is the Fall, the birth of Christ, the Last Supper, Pentecost, the Mass, the sacrament of Baptism, the Our Father, and the Hail Mary. But it is revealing to see what else is present. In addition to Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and the apostles, there is a poem about a fish named Sharkey and a crab named Charlie, a picture of a T-shirt to be colored in with the signs of Easter joy, a poem about Shelly Turtle and her friends, Gator and Froggie, a connect-the-dots game, a celebration circles game, a puzzle to be cut out and glued together, instructions for making a moon and stars mobile, two pages of stickers, and a paste-your-picture-in-a-sunflower activity.

The average child, of course, is familiar with all this. He has encountered similar activities and games in countless other places. And there’s the rub. The continual juxtaposition of the sacred and the secular conveys the (hopefully unintended) message that the two are on the same level. The authors seem afraid to suggest that there is anything outside or beyond the child’s experience. Over and over, the events depicted in the Bible are related to everyday and often trivial activities. The illustrations convey the same message. Most depict boys and girls engaged in everyday activities: drinking milk, feeding a cat, shaking hands, playing ball, playing at the seashore, blowing pinwheels, flying kites, and so forth—exactly the sort of illustrations that children would find in a public school text.

By contrast, the cover of Our Heavenly Father is graced by Raphael’s “Creation of the Animals.” In this painting God the Creator has a kindly countenance, but at the same time He appears immensely powerful, and He dwarfs the lion standing beside Him. The painting evokes a response of awe and humility.

The rest of the text is illustrated with more Raphaels, as well as paintings by Fra Angelico, Barocci, Titian, Velasquez, and Veronese. The sections on the Mass and the sacrament of Baptism are accompanied by photos of a priest reverently saying Mass and administering the sacrament. There are no distracting pictures of boys and girls flying kites, no teddy bears, no fun activities, no stickers to paste. The chapters are short and readable, and present in an understandable sequence the story of Creation, Fall, preparation for the Savior, and the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ. The student encounters the powerful and eternally relevant story that changed the world—and does so undistracted by a supporting cast of stuffed animals and cartoon characters.

The text, though simplified, does not pander to the child’s immaturity, nor does it convey the notion that the mysteries of faith are comprehensible from within his own experience. On the contrary, the refusal to compromise with fads, gimmicks, and self-esteem activities allows the drama of redemption to shine through as the unique and central event that it is.

The trivializing of so many religious texts is, again, but one small reflection of the effect of Rieff’s therapeutic culture. Such a culture, he observed, is one focused primarily on the self and its material and psychological needs. A therapeutic society is not simply one in which many people go to therapists, but rather one in which the therapeutic mode of analysis becomes the preferred way of explaining what life is all about, and the therapeutic technique is extended to all areas of life. The most obvious examples of this therapeutic expansion are the television talk shows which provide mass therapies of confession, and which attract huge viewing audiences. These lachrymose entertainments should not distract us, however, from noticing that the therapeutic is essentially a religion, a religion in which faith in God is replaced by faith in the self and its possibilities. The therapeutic can tolerate other religions as long as they conform to its own image and likeness, but it is implacably hostile to religions that make a transcendent or supernatural claim.

The message of the therapeutic faith is precisely the reverse of John the Baptist’s message, “He must increase and I must decrease.” Its central creed is nicely captured in the words of the first Humanist Manifesto issued in 1933 by the American Humanist Association: “Religious humanism considers the complete realization of human personality to be the end of man’s life and seeks its development and fulfillment in the here and now.” This, as the advertisers might say, is not your father’s religion. “The modern individual,” writes Rieff, “can only use the community as the necessary stage for his effort to enhance himself.”

The co-opting of faith by therapy culminates in spectacles like that surrounding the death of Princess Diana. Faced with the stark contrast between the lives of Mother Teresa and Princess Di, the masses concluded that both were saints. Mother Teresa’s project in life was to do God’s work; Diana’s project was mainly herself. For years we were treated to open displays of her affairs, her emotions, her sufferings, her illnesses, her charities, her wardrobe, and her confessions. In an earlier age such a life might have elicited responses of pity or contempt, but in a therapeutic culture these are exactly the traits that merit sainthood.

The most obvious current example of the therapeutic co-opting religion is provided for us by Bill Clinton. It is a marvel to see how easily and smoothly he mixes the therapeutic with the religious, and how effortlessly and shamelessly he bends the vocabulary of faith to serve his own designs. He has “sinned,” he seeks “forgiveness,” he has a “broken spirit.”

In a recent issue of the Wall Street Journal, Dick Morris, Clinton’s former advisor, is quoted as saying, “The people who are going to help [Mr. Clinton] out of this scandal are ministers, clergymen, psychiatrists, and experts on addiction.” Shortly afterwards Newsweek reported that the President had asked a trio of ministers to be his “personal accountability group.” One of them is the Rev. J. Philip Wogaman, who thinks the President should not resign or be impeached. According to Newsweek, Wogaman believes that such demands would be judgmental, because all men are sinners. The article is immediately followed by a related boxed article reflecting the opinion of therapists. They endorse the ministerial “accountability group” but say Clinton also needs therapy for his “sex addiction.” As one of the therapists puts it, “If he can admit his problem and share it with people, he can leave a very powerful legacy of healing.” It is very strange, this spectacle of ministers and therapists joining forces to heal the President. It is difficult to say what will come of it, but there is no doubt that the forces of religion have the most to lose from the alliance.

Some forty years ago, C. S. Lewis wrote, “If Christianity is untrue, no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be; if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all.” In a psychological society, however, the question of the truth of religion is beside the point. The main question, the only question, really, is whether or not religion furthers the cause of the self.

It is important for people of faith to keep in mind that there can be no real compromise between Christianity and the psychological society. Rieff in a 1991 essay insists that the therapeutic culture is at war with traditional culture and aims to destroy it. This seems overblown at first. If the therapeutic culture is our enemy, it appears rather a tame one. After all, it speaks the language of compassion, sensitivity, and tolerance. But any culture that has no use for truth is ultimately a dangerous culture. If there is no meaning outside the self, there is no meaning. And if there is no meaning, there is no morality. As Dostoevsky famously warned, without God everything is permissible—and the therapeutic culture has no God. It is well on the way to dismantling the moral structure of society through semi-sincere appeals to tolerance, compassion, and diversity. There is no reason to think it will put limits on what is morally permissible. There is, in the end, not a dime’s worth of difference between the nihilism of the therapeutic culture and the nihilism of a Nietzsche—except that the therapeutic culture lacks Nietzsche’s sense of the tragic nature of life.

The twentieth century has seen many attacks on Christianity, but the frontal attacks of militant atheists, Marxists, and Nazis have not resulted in as much lost ground for Christians as the more insidious attacks of the therapeutic culture. The sense of guilt, the sense of sin, the sense of the sacred, the sense that there is another order of authority by which we are judged—these have not disappeared entirely from Christian culture, but they have been eroded. If this is difficult to see, it is because of the fog that the culture of therapy emits—an empathic fog which surrounds us and confuses us and prevents us from seeing life clearly. We wander around in this fog thinking our enemy is our friend because he is so exquisitely concerned with our health.

The only thing powerful enough to cut through this fog is the light of revelation. Revelation reminds us that physical and emotional health is not the Alpha and Omega of existence. The Gospels tell us that if our hand offends us we should cut it off, it being better to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into Hell. Likewise, it may be better to enter the kingdom of Heaven with a repressed psyche than to enter the other place brimming with self-assertiveness. There is no ultimate consolation to be found in the theories propounded by psychologists. Psychology has very little to say to the majority of suffering people in this world, and absolutely nothing to say to the fact that all of us must one day die. The therapeutic culture’s well-adjusted person, for all his serene sense of self, has one overwhelming problem: he is blinded to the beatific vision.

by Jim Forest

Among the hottest best-sellers of the 1970s was a book that had the catchy title, I’m Okay, You’re Okay. One of its enthusiastic readers, a young priest in Boston, gave a sermon about it which was a rave review. He wished he could give everyone he knew a copy. The book’s message was simple: To love others started with loving yourself, and loving yourself meant acquiring self-esteem.

At the end of Mass, standing at the door, the priest asked one of his older parishioners how he had liked the sermon. The man wasn’t eager to criticize but responded, “I haven’t read the book. If what you say is true, it’s better than the Bible. My only problem was that I kept thinking of Christ on the Cross saying to those who were watching him die, ‘If everybody’s okay, what in blazes am I doing up here?’”

The problem is I’m not okay and the chances are neither are you.

I’m Okay, You’re Okay was one of the pioneering books in launching the self-esteem movement which has gone on to produce a Niagara Falls of books, magazine articles and television shows that remind us that, to the extent that we lack self-esteem, we are unhappy, our marriages doomed, our careers stunted, while a society whose citizens are blessed with high levels of self-esteem will be more stable, more prosperous, and less troubled with anti-social or criminal behavior. In 1986 the California State Legislature created the California Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility.

Unfortunately recent studies in America and other countries suggest that self-esteem isn’t delivering on its promises.

“A preoccupation with self-esteem may be inevitable in a society where self-worth is often defined by a diploma from Harvard, a size 4 dress or a mansion in Southampton,” commented New York Times journalist Erica Goode in a report published in October 2002. She noted that one of the findings of recent self-esteem studies is that criminals often have more self-esteem than people who are not a danger to their neighbors.

One of the researchers she quoted, Dr. Jennifer Crocker, a psychologist at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, argues that the frantic pursuit of self-worth as measured through external trappings exacts a high personal and social toll.

“The pursuit of self-esteem has short-term benefits but long-term costs,” says Crocker, “ultimately diverting people from fulfilling their fundamental human needs for competence, relatedness and autonomy and leading to poor self-regulation and mental and physical health.”

Crocker found that people whose sense of self-esteem is based on good looks, favorable reception of others, academic or vocational achievement, recreational performance or similar yardsticks are actually more at risk of difficulties, relationship conflicts, aggression and an increased likelihood of drug or alcohol dependence.

In a study of 642 college freshmen, Crocker found that students whose self-regard was based heavily on academic performance reported more stress and more conflicts with their teachers than did their peers. They spent more time studying than other students but did no better in their classes. Freshmen who invested heavily in appearing attractive reported more aggressiveness, anger and hostility than others, more alcohol and drug use and more symptoms of such eating disorders. They also became more depressed as the year wore on.

In contrast, it’s striking that students who judged themselves by more internal measures such as religious faith or virtue were less likely to show anger and aggression and more restrained in their use of alcohol and drugs even though some of them had to cope with greater feelings of loneliness for being outside the main currents of social life on campus.

While it should hardly come as headline news, Dr. Crocker’s studies show that an obsession with external markers of self-worth leads to self-absorption. The correction for an exclusive focus on the self, Crocker argues, cannot be found in self-esteem classes that encourage children to believe that their personal success and happiness are of paramount importance. “Not everything is about ‘me,’ ” Dr. Crocker said. “There are sometimes bigger things that we should be concerned about.”

While I hardly dare imagine that publication of such a report in The New York Times suggests the high water mark has been reached in the self-esteem movement, still it is encouraging to see this pseudo-gospel being challenged.

A different, more intimate kind of evidence that self-esteem mania is being challenged greeted me a few days ago at the Matthew 25 House in Akron, Ohio. The founder is Joe May, a member of Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in the same city and a graduate of Holy Cross Orthodox Seminary. In what was formerly a crack house, Joe and those who work with him take in homeless men. At the moment the guests include a number of refugees from Latin America and also some US-born ex-convicts. In the house library there was no sign of the I’m Okay, You’re Okay type of book, but in adjacent bathroom, next to the mirror, was a small sign that read:

I am not a big deal.
I am not a big deal.
I am not a big deal.

Over lunch I asked what was behind this surprising message. Joe explained that during confession his priest once suggested that every morning he repeat the words “I am not a big deal” three times. Just to make sure he remembered, Joe put the text in the place where he shaves each morning.

One might also say:

I am not okay.
I am not okay.
I am not okay.

Not only am I not okay but it may well be that I will never be okay this side of heaven. In fact I am, to put it bluntly, a sinner. I am not just a sinner but I dare to say I am an expert sinner. At my age, I’ve had a lot of practice.

Forty years ago, when I was a catechumen preparing to be received into the Catholic Church, I recall what a hard struggle I had in trying to understand the word “sin.” I was bewildered with the idea that, if you knew God didn’t want you to do something, you might do it anyway. How could any sane person consciously and intentionally disobey God?

A legalistic definition of sin, which was what my catechism provided, never quite cleared the air for me. It helped later on coming to know the Hebrew and Greek words — chata’ and hamartia — normally translated as “sin” simply mean staying off the path, losing your way, going off course. “You shoot an arrow, but it misses the target,” as a rabbi once explained to me. “Maybe it hits someone’s backside, someone you didn’t even know was there. You didn’t mean it, but still it’s a sin. Or maybe you knew he was there — his backside was what you were aiming at. Now that’s a sin!”

The Jewish approach to sin tends to be concrete. The author of the Book of Proverbs lists seven things which God hates:

A proud look, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that plots wicked deeds, feet that run swiftly to evil, a false witness that declares lies, and he that sows discord among the brethren. (6:17-19)

As in so many other lists of sins, pride — that is to say, self-esteem — is given first place. “Pride goes before destruction, and a disdainful spirit before a fall” is another insight in the Book of Proverbs (16:18). In the Garden of Eden, Satan seeks to animate pride in his dialogue with Eve. Eat the forbidden fruit, he tells her, and “you will be like a god.”

Pride is regarding oneself as god-like. In one of the stories preserved from early desert monasticism, a younger brother asks an elder, “What shall I do? I am tortured by pride.” The elder responds, “You are right to be proud. Was it not you who made heaven and earth?” With those few words, the brother was cured of pride.

The craving to be ahead of others, to be more valued than others, to be more highly rewarded than others, to be able to keep others in a state of fear, the inability to admit mistakes or apologize — these are among the symptoms of pride. Pride opens the way for countless other sins: deceit, lies, theft, violence, and all those other actions that destroy community with God and with those around us.

“We’re capable of doing some rotten things,” the Minnesota storyteller Garrison Keillor remarks, “and not all of these things are the result of poor communication. Some are the result of rottenness. People do bad, horrible things. They lie and they cheat and they corrupt the government. They poison the world around us. And when they’re caught they don’t feel remorse — they just go into treatment. They had a nutritional problem or something. They explain what they did — they don’t feel bad about it. There’s no guilt. There’s just psychology.”

So eroded is our sense of sin that even in confession it often happens that people explain what they did rather than admit they did things that urgently need God’s forgiveness. “When I recently happened to confess about fifty people in a typical Orthodox parish in Pennsylvania,” the Orthodox theologian Fr. Alexander Schmemann wrote, “not one admitted to having committed any sin whatsoever!” [Fr. Alexander Schmemann, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 3 (Fall 1961): 38-44; also posted on the web — www.schmemann.org/byhim/reflectionsonconfession.html. ]

Confession is not a rite of self-esteem but is rather the recognition that there is rubbish in my life — things done and undone — that damage my connection with God and with those whom God has given me to live among, people I know and people I don’t know, people I love and people I fear. Confession is facing up to all in my life that I find it painful to know about myself and struggle to keep hidden or camouflaged from those whom I want to love or respect me. It is a gradual return to wholeness, a return to communion, not because I have been made admirable by the church’s sacraments but at least am pointed in the right direction and am trying not to delude myself about how excellent I am when left to my own devices.

For the person who has committed a serious sin, there are two vivid signs — the hope that what he did may never become known; and a gnawing sense of guilt. At least this is the case before the conscience becomes completely numb as patterns of sin become the structure of one’s life to the extent that hell, far from being a possible next-life experience, is where I find myself in this life. (Rod Steiger in the film The Pawnbroker, in a desperate action to break free of numbness, slammed a nail-like spindle through his hand so he could finally feel something, even if it meant agonizing pain — a small crucifixion.)

It is a striking fact about our basic human architecture that we want certain actions to remain secret, not because of modesty but because there is an unarguable sense of having violated a law more basic than that in any law book — the “law written on our hearts” that St. Paul refers to in his Letter to the Romans. [2:15] It isn’t simply that we fear punishment. It is that we don’t want to be thought of by others as a person who commits such deeds. One of the main obstacles to going to confession is dismay that someone else will know what I want no one to know.

Sin is linked with guilt, which is one of the themes of Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins. The central figure of the novel is Dr. Thomas More, a descendent of St. Thomas More, though the latest More is hanging on to his faith by a frayed thread. The latest More doesn’t seem to be in danger of becoming a martyr for the faith. Dr. More is both a physician and a patient at a Louisiana mental hospital. From time to time he meets with his colleague Max, a secular psychologist eager to cure More of guilt.

Max tells More, “We found out what the hangup was and we are getting ready to condition you out of it.”
“What hangup?”
“Your guilt feelings.”
“I never did see that.”
Max explains that More’s guilt feelings have to do with adulterous sex.
“Are you speaking of my fornication with Lola…?” asks More.
“Fornication,” repeats Max. “You see?”
“See what?”
“That you are saying that lovemaking is not a natural activity, like eating and drinking.”
“No, I didn’t say it wasn’t natural.”
“But sinful and guilt-laden.”
“Not guilt-laden.”
“Then sinful?”
“Only between persons not married to each other.”
“I am trying to see it as you see it.”
“I know you are.”
“If it is sinful, why are you doing it?”
“It is a great pleasure.”
“I understand. Then, since it is ’sinful,’ guilt feelings follow even though it is a pleasure.”
“No, they don’t follow.”
“Then what worries you, if you don’t feel guilty?”
“That’s what worries me: not feeling guilty.”
“Why does that worry you?”
“Because if I felt guilty, I could get rid of it.”
“How?”
“By the sacrament of penance.”
“I’m trying to see it as you see it.”
“I know you are.”
[For the full text, see pages 110-20 of the Farrar Straus & Giroux edition of Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins published in 1971.]

Percy’s novel reminds us that one of the oddest things about the age we live in is that we are made to feel guilty about feeling guilty. Dr. Thomas More is fighting against that. He may not yet experience guilt for his sins, but at least he knows that a sure symptom of moral death is not to feel guilty.

Dr. Thomas More — a modern man who can’t quite buy the ideology that there are no sins and there is nothing to feel guilty about — is battling to recover a sense of guilt, which in turn will provide the essential foothold for contrition, which in turn can motivate confession and repentance. Without guilt, there is no remorse; without remorse there is no possibility of becoming free of habitual sins.

Yet there are forms of guilt that are dead-end streets. If I feel guilty that I have not managed to become the ideal person I occasionally want to be, or that I imagine others want me to be, then it is guilt that has no divine reference point. It is simply me contemplating me with the eye of an irritated theater critic. Christianity is not centered on performance, laws, principles, or the achievement of flawless behavior, but on Christ himself and participation in God’s transforming love. When Christ says, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48), he is speaking not about the perfection of a student always obtaining the highest test scores or a child who manages not to step on any of the sidewalk’s cracks, but of being whole, being in a state of communion, participating in God’s love.

This is a condition of being that is suggested wordlessly by St. Andrei Rublev’s icon of the Holy Trinity: those three angelic figures silently inclined toward each other around a chalice on a small altar. They symbolize the Holy Trinity: the communion that exists within God, not a closed communion restricted to them selves alone but an open communion of love in which we are not only invited but intended to participate.

A blessed guilt is the pain we feel when we realize we have cut ourselves off from that divine communion that radiates all creation.

The figure of Dr. Thomas More in Walker Percy’s novel at least doesn’t suffer from the common delusion that one’s sins are private or affect only a few other people. To think our sins, however hidden, don’t affect others is like imagining that a stone thrown into the water, so long as it’s small enough, won’t generate ripples.

This is a topic Garrison Keillor addressed in one of his Lake Wobegon stories.

A friend — Keillor calls him Jim Nordberg — writes a letter in which he recounts how close he came to committing adultery. Nordberg describes himself waiting in front of his home for a colleague he works with to pick him up, a woman who seems to find him much more interesting and handsome than his wife does. They plan to drive to a professional conference in Chicago, though the conference isn’t really what attracts Nordberg to this event. He knows what lies he has told others to disguise what he is doing. Yet his conscience hasn’t stopped troubling him.

Sitting under a spruce tree, gazing up and down the street at all his neighbors’ houses, he is suddenly struck by how much the quality of life in each house depends on the integrity of life next door, even if everyone takes everyone else for granted. “This street has been good for my flesh and blood,” he says to himself. He is honest enough to realize that what he is doing could bring about the collapse of his marriage and wonders if in five or ten years his new partner might not tire of him and find someone else to take his place. It occurs to him that adultery is not much different from horse trading.

Again he contemplates his neighborhood:

As I sat on the lawn looking down the street, I saw that we all depend on each other. I saw that although I thought my sins could be secret, that they are no more secret than an earthquake. All these houses and all these families — my infidelity would somehow shake them. It will pollute the drinking water. It will make noxious gases come out of the ventilators in the elementary school. When we scream in senseless anger, blocks away a little girl we do not know spills a bowl of gravy all over a white table cloth. If I go to Chicago with this woman who is not my wife, somehow the school patrol will forget to guard the intersection and someone’s child will be injured. A sixth grade teacher will think, “What the hell,” and eliminate South America from geography. Our minister will decide, “What the hell — I’m not going to give that sermon on the poor.” Somehow my adultery will cause the man in the grocery store to say, “To hell with the Health Department. This sausage was good yesterday — it certainly can’t be any worse today.”

[Garrison Keillor, News from Lake Wobegon, “Letter from Jim,” on the first of four compact discs, a Prairie Home Companion recording, 1983, PHC 15377.]

By the end of the letter it’s clear that Nordberg decided not to go to that conference in Chicago after all — a decision that was a moment of grace not only for him, his wife, and his children, but for many others who would have been injured by his adultery.

“We depend on each other,” Keillor says again, “more than we can ever know.”

Far from being hidden, each sin is another crack in the world. As Bishop Kallistos Ware observed:

There are no entirely private sins. All sins are sins against my neighbor, as well as against God and against myself. Even my most secret thoughts are, in fact, making it more difficult for those around me to follow Christ.

[Bishop Kallistos Ware, in a talk “Approaching Christ the Physician: The True Meaning of Confession and Anointing” at an Orthodox Peace Fellowship retreat in Vézelay, France, in April 1999.]

One of the most widely used prayers, the Jesus Prayer, is only one sentence long:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, be merciful to me, a sinner!

Short as it is, many people drawn to it are put off by the last two words. Those who teach the prayer are often asked, “But must I call myself a sinner?” In fact that ending isn’t essential, but our difficulty using it reveals a lot. What makes me so reluctant to speak of myself in such plain words? Don’t I do a pretty good job of hiding rather than revealing Christ in my life? Am I not a sinner? To admit that I am provides a starting point.

There are only two possible responses to sin: to justify it, or to repent. Between these two there is no middle ground.

Justification may be verbal, but mainly it takes the form of repetition: I do again and again the same thing as a way of demonstrating to myself and others that it’s not really a sin but rather something normal or human or necessary or even good. “After the first blush of sin comes indifference,” wrote Henry David Thoreau. [”On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.”] There is an even sharper Jewish proverb: “Commit a sin twice and it will not seem a crime.”

Repentance, on the other hand, is the recognition that I cannot live any more as I have been living, because in living that way I wall myself apart from others and from God. Repentance is a change in direction. Repentance is the door of communion. It is also a sine qua non of forgiveness. As Fr. Alexander Schmemann points out, “There can be no absolution where there is no repentance.” Repentance, on the other hand, is the gateway to heaven. As St. John Chrysostom said sixteen centuries ago in Antioch:

Repentance opens the heavens, takes us to Paradise, overcomes the devil. Have you sinned? Do not despair! If you sin every day, then offer repentance every day! When there are rotten parts in old houses, we replace the parts with new ones, and we do not stop caring for the houses. In the same way, you should reason for yourself: if today you have defiled yourself with sin, immediately clean yourself with repentance.

It is impossible to imagine a vital marriage or deep friendship without confession and forgiveness. If you have done something that damages a deep, loving relationship, confession is essential to its restoration. For the sake of that bond, you confess what you’ve done, you apologize, and you promise not to do it again.

In the context of religious life, confession is what we do to safeguard and renew our relationship with God whenever it is damaged. Confession restores our communion with God.

The purpose of confession is not to have one’s sins dismissed as non-sins but to be forgiven and restored to communion. As the Evangelist John wrote: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 Jn 1:9). The apostle James wrote in a similar vein: “Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed” (Jas 5:16).

Confession is more than disclosure of sin. It also involves praise of God and profession of faith. Without the second and third elements, the first is pointless. To the extent we deny God, we reduce ourselves to accidental beings on a temporary planet in a random universe expanding into nowhere. To the extent we have a sense of the existence of God, we discover creation confessing God’s being and see all beauty as a confession of God. We discover that faith is not so much something we have as something we experience — and we confess that experience much as glass confesses light. The Church calls certain saints “confessors” because they confessed their faith in periods of persecution even though they did not suffer martyrdom as a result. In dark, fear-ridden times, the faith shone through martyrs and confessors, giving courage to others.

In his autobiography, Confessions, Saint Augustine drew on all three senses of the word. He confessed certain sins, chiefly those that revealed the process that had brought him to baptism and made him a disciple of Christ and member of the Church. He confessed his faith. His book as a whole is a work of praise, a confession of God’s love.

But it is the word’s first meaning — confession of sins — that is usually the most difficult. It is never easy admitting to doing something you regret and are ashamed of, an act you attempted to keep secret or denied doing or tried to blame on someone else, perhaps arguing — to yourself as much as to others — that it wasn’t actually a sin at all, or wasn’t nearly as bad as some people might claim. In the hard labor of growing up, one of the most agonizing tasks is becoming capable of saying, “I’m sorry.”

Yet we are designed for confession. Secrets in general are hard to keep, but unconfessed sins not only never go away but have a way of becoming heavier as time passes — the greater the sin, the heavier the burden. Confession is the only solution.

To understand confession in its sacramental sense, one first has to grapple with a few basic questions: Why is the Church involved in forgiving sins? Is priest-witnessed confession really needed? Why confess at all to any human being? In fact, why bother confessing to God even without a human witness? If God is really all-knowing, then he knows everything about me already. My sins are known before it even crosses my mind to confess them. Why bother telling God what God already knows?

Yes, truly God knows. My confession can never be as complete or revealing as God’s knowledge of me and all that needs repairing in my life.

A related question we need to consider has to do with our basic design as social beings. Why am I so willing to connect with others in every other area of life, yet not in this? Why is it that I look so hard for excuses, even for theological rationales, not to confess? Why do I try so hard to explain away my sins until I’ve decided either they’re not so bad or might even be seen as acts of virtue? Why is it that I find it so easy to commit sins yet am so reluctant, in the presence of another, to admit to having done so?

We are social beings. The individual as autonomous unit is a delusion. The Marlboro Man — the person without community, parents, spouse, or children — exists only on billboards. The individual is someone who has lost a sense of connection to others or attempts to exist in opposition to others — while the person exists in communion with other persons. At a conference of Orthodox Christians in France not long ago, in a discussion of the problem of individualism, a theologian confessed, “When I am in my car, I am an individual, but when I get out, I am a person again.”

We are social beings. The language we speak connects us to those around us. The food I eat was grown by others. The skills passed on to me have slowly been developed in the course of hundreds of generations. The air I breathe and the water I drink is not for my exclusive use but has been in many bodies before mine. The place I live, the tools I use, and the paper I write on were made by many hands. I am not my own doctor or dentist or banker. To the extent I disconnect myself from others, I am in danger. Alone I die, and soon. To be in communion with others is life.

Because we are social beings, confession in church does not take the place of confession to those we have sinned against. An essential element of confession is doing all I can to set right what I did wrong. If I stole something, it must be returned or paid for. If I lied to anyone, I must tell that person the truth. If I was angry without good reason, I must apologize. I must seek forgiveness not only from God but from those whom I have wronged or harmed.

We are also verbal beings. Words provide not only a way of communicating with others but even with ourselves. The fact that confession is witnessed forces me to put into words all those ways, minor and major, in which I live as if there were no God and no commandment to love. A thought that is concealed has great power over us.

Confessing sins, or even temptations, makes us better able to resist. The underlying principle is described in one of the collections of sayings of the Desert Fathers, the Gerontikon:

If impure thoughts trouble you, do not hide them, but tell them at once to your spiritual father and condemn them. The more a person conceals his thoughts, the more they multiply and gain strength. But an evil thought, when revealed, is immediately destroyed. If you hide things, they have great power over you, but if you could only speak of them before God, in the presence of another, then they will often wither away, and lose their power.

Confessing to anyone, even a stranger in an airport, renews rather than contracts my humanity, even if all I get in return for my confession is the well-worn remark, “Oh that’s not so bad. After all, you’re only human” — something like the New Yorker cartoon in which a psychologist reassures a Mafia contract killer stretched out on the couch, “Just because you do bad things doesn’t mean you’re bad.”

But if I can confess to anyone anywhere, why confess in church in the presence of a priest? It’s not a small question in societies in which the phrase “institutionalized religion” is so often used, the implicit message being that religious institutions necessarily impede or undermine religious life. Yet it’s not a term we seem inclined to adapt to other contexts. Few people would prefer we got rid of institutionalized health care or envision a world without institutionalized transportation. Whatever we do that involves more than a few people requires structures.

Confession is a Christian ritual with a communal character. Confession in the church differs from confession in your living room in the same way that getting married in church differs from simply living together. The communal aspect of the event tends to safeguard it, solidify it, and call everyone to account — those doing the ritual, and those witnessing it.

In the social structure of the Church, a huge network of local communities is held together in unity, each community helping the others and all sharing a common task while each provides a specific place to recognize and bless the main events in life from birth to burial. Confession is an essential part of that continuum. My confession is an act of reconnection with God and with all the people and creatures who depend on me and have been harmed by my failings and from whom I have distanced myself through acts of non-communion. The community is represented by the person hearing my confession, an ordained priest delegated to serve as Christ’s witness, who provides guidance and wisdom that helps each penitent overcome attitudes and habits that take us off course, who declares forgiveness and restores us to communion. In this way our repentance is brought into the community that has been damaged by our sins — a private event in a public context.

“It’s a fact,” writes Orthodox theologian Fr. Thomas Hopko, rector of St. Vladimir’s Seminary, “that we cannot see the true ugliness and hideousness of our sins until we see them in the mind and heart of the other to whom we have confessed.”

Though we often dread it, confession itself is something beautiful.

I think of Zacharia, a large, round-faced Ethiopian woman of a grandmotherly age with a faded cross tattooed on her forehead, who is often the first person in line for confession in our parish in Amsterdam. The priest receives her, as he does all penitents, by reciting words that remind her that he is only a witness to the confession about to be made and that it is Christ the physician, invisibly present, who heals and forgives. Zacharia speaks little Dutch, still less English, and not a word of Russian, Greek, or German — thus no language that any of our priests understands. It doesn’t matter. She stands before the icon of Christ, her upraised hands rising and falling rhythmically, relating in her incomprehensible mother tongue whatever is burdening her. As the priest grasps not a word of what she is saying, he does nothing more than quietly recite the Jesus Prayer until Zacharia is finished. Then she kneels down while he places the lower part of his priestly stole over her head and recites the words of absolution: “May our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, by the grace and compassion of his love for man, pardon all your faults, child Zacharia, and I, the unworthy priest __________, by his authority given me, pardon and absolve you of all your sins: in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

With these last words, he traces the sign of the cross on the head of this African woman who misses the liturgy only if ill. Then Zacharia rises, turns to face him, and receives a final blessing before the next person comes forward and the confessions continue.

Parents often bring infants and children with them when they confess. This is their gradually unfolding introduction to the sacrament. On a recent Sunday in our parish I noticed Fr. Sergei Ovsiannikov, rector of our parish, hearing a young mother’s confession while holding her baby in his arms.

I recall of an over-crowded church, St. Cosmas and Damien, in Moscow on a Sunday morning. Three priests are hearing confessions. There is a long line for each of them. The priest I happen to be standing nearest was Fr. Georgi Chistiakov, an ascetic man who looks something like a Russian Icabod Crane, only Fr. Georgi’s face seems mainly full of a joy. Penitents, aware of how many people are awaiting their turn, tend to be brief. In some cases they simply hand Fr. Georgi a piece of paper on which they have written what they have to confers. In these cases he reads the paper, tears the paper in half, and gives the fragments back to the person, as if to say, “Your sins are now in the rubbish bin.”

* * *

Jim Forest

Kanisstraat 5

1811 GJ Alkmaar

The Netherlands

e-mail: <jhforest@cs.com>

tel: (+31-72) 511-2545 / fax: (+31-72) 515-4180

mobile: 06 – 510 11 250

Orthodox Peace Fellowship web site: http://www.incommunion.org

Jim & Nancy Forest web site: http://www.incommunion.org/home.htm

* * *

“Mark —”

I stopped and rubbed my eyes.

“Mark, about the girl you were going to share an apartment with —”

I stopped again. How do you explain the obvious?

“Look, I’m glad you’re not going through with the idea. And I understand that you weren’t planning to sleep with her. We don’t have to spend much time on it. But just in case you get a bright idea like that again, let me ask you: Exactly how were you planning to turn off human nature?”

“What do you mean?”

“Perhaps you hadn’t noticed, but opposites attract.”

“I’m not attracted to her that way. Professor T.”

To read the rest of this article…

To read Part 1: Does It Matter Who You Live With?

Any institution tends to preserve itself by avoiding conflict, whether external or internal. In addition to this universal tendency, many Christians have a false understanding of the nature and role of anger. It is seen as something negative, something that a Christian should not feel.

In the sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church, those who dealt with the bishops have consistently remarked that the bishops never expressed outrage or righteous anger, even at the most horrendous cases of abuse and sacrilege. Bishops seem to think that anger at sin is un-Christian. Gilbert Kilman, a child psychiatrist, commented, “What amazes me is the lack of outrage the church feels when its good work is being harmed. So, if there is anything the church needs to know, it needs to know how to be outraged.”

Mark Serrano confronted Bishop Frank Rodimer, asking why he had let his priest-friend Peter Osinski sleep with boys at Rodimer’s beach house while Rodimer was in the next bedroom: “Where is your moral indignation?”

Rodimer’s answer was, “Then I don’t get it. What do you want?” What Serrano wanted Rodimer to do was to behave like a man with a heart, a heart that is outraged by evil. But Rodimer couldn’t; his inability to feel outrage was a quality that had helped make him a bishop. He would never get into fights, never rock the boat, never “divide” but only “unify.” Rodimer could not understand why he should feel deep anger at evil, at the violation of the innocent, at the oppression of the weak.

To read the rest of this article…

It was only a little past 11, and the Union was almost empty. Expecting a quiet lunch, I chose a table where I could look out the window at the Quad. No sooner had I set down my tray than a familiar face materialized in front of me. “Expecting someone, Prof?” It was Mark Manasseh.

“Not at all. Pull up a chair.”

He sat down with a plate of something I didn’t recognize.

“What’s that? Some kind of taco?”

“Haven’t you ever had a gyro?” he said. “It’s like a Greek taco. Gyros have been around a long time.”

I shook my head. “Food has changed.”

“Food isn’t the only thing that’s changed,” he said, and lapsed into a moody silence. He chewed meditatively.

“So what else has changed?”, I asked.

“Huh?”

“You said food isn’t the only thing that’s changed. What else has changed?”

“Oh. The rules. They’re always changing them on you in the middle of the game. I can’t tell who’s on first any more.”

“Who’s ‘they’? Has the Faculty Senate changed the graduation requirements again?”

“No. Actually I was thinking of a girl.” He played with his gyro, then looked up. “I guess I’m not being very clear.”

“Clear enough. Girl changes terms of relationship, guy confused. You don’t have to explain.”

“Maybe I should. We’ve talked about this kind of thing once before, and I could use the perspective of an, um, older person. Do you mind?”

I shook my head. “I have time. Being so old, you know.”

He reddened. “I only meant — ”

I laughed. “I know what you meant. Go ahead.”

“There’s this girl. Molly. She’s a friend. But that’s it: Just a friend. You know, we talk and do things together. But I talk and do things with all my friends.”

“Do you talk and do things with them the same way you talk and do things with Molly?”

“Not exactly. She’s a close friend.” He paused. “But just a close friend.”

I smiled. “Just very close.”

“Right.”

“And a girl.”

“Right.”

To read the rest of this article…

I must have jumped when Mark spoke, because he said “Did I startle you, Professor Theophilus?”

“Yes,” I confessed. “Usually I hear people coming. You just shimmered in, like Jeeves.”

“Who’s Jeebes?”

“Never mind. Are you looking for someone?” He’d glanced over his shoulder.

“Yes, Sarah and Mary were supposed to be right behind me.” At just that moment they materialized. Sarah smiled. Mary burrowed in her backpack, and with a shower of number two pencils, extracted something and handed it to me.

“Yours.” It was my missing coffee mug.

“I’m glad to see you all,” I said, “But I was just going out for a bite.”

“Have it with us,” urged Sarah.

I asked “Is there a special occasion?” We walked to the Edge of Night.

“Not exactly,” said Mary, “but we need to pick your brains about living with non-Christians.” When I shot her a puzzled look, she turned to the others and asked, “Doesn’t he know?”

“Guess not,” said Mark. “Mary’s a Christian now, Prof.”

“Congratulations!” I exclaimed. “But why do you need to pick my brains?”

“My fault,” Mark said. “See, Professor Theophilus, I feel that part of my job here on earth is to make friends with people of different religions, so that I can bring them into Christ’s kingdom.”

“I don’t see the problem.”

“Just wait,” said Mary. “He’s crazy.”

“Well,” said Mark, “My old roommate moved out. I need a new one, so I’m planning to share the rent with this person I met who follows a different religion.” Mary rolled her eyes.

“How different?”

To read the rest of this article…

DEAR BOUNDLESS ANSWERS

One of my closest Christian friends introduced me to your column, and even though I’ve NEVER written to a column editor before, I thought I would give it a try.

I’m 24 years old, currently in my third year of medical school. I’ve been a Christian for most of my life, but really started to walk with God the last few years. I have a decent network of Christian friends, though I’m not currently attached to a church or bible study, due to the fact that I travel a lot for my clinical rotations. I try to go to church when I can, but I haven’t been able to plug into one church since I am on the road so much.

Anyway, during my first year of medical school I met and started dating a wonderful guy and we’re starting to think about serious commitment (i.e. engagement). He is very sweet, kind, smart, funny, all those great things … and he’s a medical student like me. In short, we’re basically perfect for each other. The problem is, I’m not sure where he is spiritually. He SAYS he believes in God and accepts Jesus as his savior; however, sometimes I’m afraid he’s only accepted Jesus in his mind and not in his heart. If you gauge it by his religious practices, then some might say he isn’t Christian — he doesn’t go to church, he doesn’t participate in Bible studies and he doesn’t pray openly (he’s more of a private pray-er). But if you look at the way he lives and the way he treats people, you could say he IS Christian. He is a very loving person, and I believe he loves the way the Bible teaches — unselfishly, unconditionally, etc., etc.
To read the rest of this article…

DEAR BOUNDLESS ANSWERS

In one of my calculus classes, I met a young man (I’ll call him Jeremy), who offered to help me on a project. At the end of the term, I gave him a Christmas card. To my surprise, he emailed me and told me I could email.

I did email him, and we continued to email for almost five months before we had another class together. During that time, we asked each other numerous questions and told each other a lot (or what I thought was a lot) about each other — our likes, dislikes, opinions, etc. When we finally had another class together, Jeremy asked if I could drive him home (he lived really close to my house and it gave us more time to talk about things). My parents had no problem with it, and I said OK. I drove him home for the rest of the term.

Eventually, we began to do non-academic things together. I invited him over several times to my house. He came over and we (along with my younger sister) had a lot of fun. Also, we went to see movies together, played in the park, etc.
To read the rest of this article…

DEAR BOUNDLESS ANSWERS

I am a Christian guy. I came to know Christ later in life (31 years old) and God has put me through a crash course, so to speak, in the Christian worldview. Now I am dating a wonderful Christian woman who is 28 years old and has known the Lord most of her life.

Recently, she wore an outfit that was really hot that included a pair of short shorts, and she could see that I was conflicted. This brought up a conversation about modesty. This seems to be a new concept for her and I’m having a difficult time discussing it with her. All of the resources I find seem to be geared at educating your kids on modesty. I need help because now she feels like she left the house feeling cute, like she had it going on, and now I have burst that bubble.

Please guide us to a resource that will help us through this topic in an adult manner and will help her feel like she can catch my eye without being immodest. Thank you so much.

To read the rest of this article…

Elisabeth Elliot: “Although I cannot control what other people wear, especially on the outside world, it seems disrespectful to me to see ladies in church in very short skirts or skimpy, sleeveless tops. I would imagine that it could be distracting to men who are trying to keep their minds on God.”

Lisa Barry: If you’ve ever tried without success to convince a woman that men are affected by another woman’s lack of modesty, you’ll appreciate today’s program. I’ve heard from many respectable men who say that a woman who dresses provocatively is a distraction. And I believe the men who say it’s not a distraction simply prefer to enjoy it rather than shoo it away.

But how do you convince a woman of something she herself cannot feel or understand? Elisabeth Elliot offers some important thoughts on the subject of modesty, coming up next on this Friday edition of Gateway To Joy.

Elisabeth Elliot: “You are loved with an everlasting love,” that’s what the Bible says, “and underneath are the everlasting arms.” This is your friend, Elisabeth Elliot, continuing my talks today on the subject of modesty. I have had piles and piles of letters from the last time that I dared to broach the subject of modesty. I expected a lot more brickbats than I got.

Here’s a letter from a woman who says:

“I don’t know if you will be under siege because of these week’s talks, but I thought I would just say thank you for having the courage to play them. Yes, I am strongly convicted, and yes, I hang my head because of guilt, but I know the conviction is from the Holy Spirit and not you. Thank you for the reminder of what I am to be as a woman of God. Sincerely, Kim.”

To read the rest of this article…