Now, we’ve been through the endings of churches that we loved before. In the past, they’ve been terrible endings. They’ve been over serious theological issues, or serious personal issues, or a combination of those things. We have been hurt, or we’ve seen people that we loved be hurt, or we’ve felt we couldn’t continue in the directions that things were going.

But Neighbors Abbey, at least for us and as far as we know for others, didn’t end like this. No one appears to be bitter. No one appears to feel like his or her face was kicked in. It seems like we all view it as a lovely season that has ended. A death has occurred. It needs to be mourned, but the beautiful thing for me is that there is much to be mourned and much to be celebrated.

Some context: Neighbors Abbey was an Emergent community. One of a few that have existed in Atlanta. For most of its existence it met in houses in Southwest Atlanta, though toward the end it rented a small space at a nonprofit in that part of the city. That part of the city has been long forgotten, and has its issues with sex and drug trafficking, violence, and so on. But many in our community live there and love there, engaging in various acts of justice, and it has always helped us to be involved there as we could, even though we live in a different part of the city.

Anyway, we had a celebratory service last Sunday. We were asked to think about things we could remember, things we could grieve, and things we could imagine for the future. I felt kind of numb during that time. Not really sure what to think.

But then, we did our weekly communion. We’ve always done communion as a weekly thing. It helped create a community that was centered around sharing a table (communion, followed by a meal) with each other and with Jesus, and it was fantastic. But often, and last Sunday was like this, we sang a simple song as we did it. It goes like this:

Love, love, love, love, love (repeat)
I will show you a more excellent way (repeat, and then harmonize with the first line)
I’m just a noise; I’m a lost cymbal. I gain nothing if I do not have love. (sing once, then harmonize with the first two lines)

So there it is. Three verses, with folks singing them in harmony. It was a great way to mark things on a weekly basis.

But last Sunday, as we sang it for the last time as Neighbors Abbey, I was overcome. I don’t cry much. When I do, it normally is the Spirit of God doing something. And this was one of those times. I was no longer numb. No longer was it hard to think of what to mark from this season of our lives.

Neighbors Abbey had love.

From the beginning to the end, through all of the transitions, possible transitions, dreams we attempted and things we failed to do, we had love. The love of God was there, and our community loved one another and any who came to join us. And that’s a deep, abiding, and beautiful something to be remembered and celebrated.

Likewise, one of the things I love most about being a designer is user experience. It gradually came into my life, initially through A List Apart, and then through UX Week three years ago. But since then, it has increasingly become a passion of mine to create designs (as a visual designer and a developer) that improve the lives of real people, as this is what it means to me. UX Week, as well as other conferences, books, in-person conversations, and countless bloggers and Twitter folks have given me ways to think about that and practice it in what I hope are significant ways. I’m deeply grateful.

The other day, I was sitting with dear people at our faith community exploring the next stages of our own place. We were dealing with some complex data, and needed to start to figure out what the voice of God and our community was inside that data. In doing this, we had some seminarians, an accounting-type, a city planner, and me, and I felt this was a beautiful mixture.

As I looked at the things before us, it felt like user experience design had a great deal of things to say to us, and that the disciplines that we practice as designers could, along with the other disciplines, help us as a faith community to ask the right questions and create the right structures from our data. We then hoped to present these things to our community, and ask them to seek the voice of God for themselves and our community to see where it would lead.

I still think this, and I think we were able to get to the right places, but I wasn’t able to articulate what I wanted to bring from user experience design into our conversation. Realizing that, especially in light of my own feeling that one of the places that inspires my life is the intersection of design and faith, made me want to think about how to articulate it.¹

People at the heart

At the core of user experience are the users who experience the design. This is exemplified in visual design, product design, content strategy, (even sometimes in programming) and all the other areas where folks work to make things people like to use. The beautiful thing about this is that it often really does try to make people’s lives better while creating something they like to use. User experience has had a few years to think about activism. Many of its leaders are concerned about making the world a better place, and I think this is because they’ve learned to think about people as more than consumers. If the field realizes (even some of) its potential, it will affect all of us in ways we can’t yet imagine.

Ecclesiology does not (exclusively) have people at the heart of its thinking. Ideally, it has God at the heart of its thinking (though this is not at all a given). But missional ecclesiology (and others, over the years) has what God is doing in the world among the people that he loves at the heart of its thinking. It seeks to involve people in experience of, and pursuit of, the kingdom of God. Again, it thinks of them as more than consumers, and this is a deep shift that cannot be overestimated.

How we figure out what God is doing among people, and how to go with them toward the kingdom of God, can be deeply impacted by the disciplines of user experience. We can’t know what God is doing among people until we know them and find out from them, and this is one of the most important things good design can teach us to do.

Helping people to do more than consume

At its best, good design helps people to do things more than it helps them to consume things. It does involve consumption, as does any part of our economy, but this is not where it thrives. It thrives in helping people to do things. Google, Twitter, and Apple, to name a few, all do this. They give us things they want us to consume, but they also give us deep opportunities to do things in the world, whether it be learning to organize information or catalyze deep cultural change or create entirely new ways for us to do what we already need to do, or even simply to look at the world as a bigger place (all three of these companies do all of these things).

The church, as well, exists to help people do more than consume things. It typically just wants people to come in, consume religious goods and services, and then pay some money for them, but this is not where it thrives or where it is called to be. Inviting people into the kingdom of God means is inviting them into something that is far bigger than they are, and giving them opportunities to do something there.

Usable

I put this last, as I think it can be the easiest to misunderstand. Good design always creates things that real people can really use. Things that are unusable make it harder to do things, whether they’re beautiful things that change the world or stupid things that numb us into thinking there is meaning where there is none.

This doesn’t mean it has to be simple, though simplicity is a wonderful thing that most designs could use a lot more of. It means that the design should be as simple as it needs to be in order to be used and experienced properly. If we’ve added complexity for complexity’s sake that makes people frustrated, confused, or unable to do what they want, we’ve designed badly. But if we’ve been simple for simplicity’s sake and neglected features that are necessary, we’ve still designed badly.

This could lead us, again, to think of the seeker-sensitive church. And it’s true, they’ve done a great job at making usable things. One could walk into any megachurch in any suburb, and know exactly where to go, what to do, and what to expect next if it wasn’t the first time.

But can you imagine walking into one of those for the first time, without prior experience of Christendom? If you can, or if you’ve ever been involved in planning for one of them, you’ll know that the last thing they are is simple, and often they are simply not usable. And this is the question for us who seek to form communities for post-Christendom: how do we make our communities usable? How do they allow people to be invited into the kingdom of God without the equivalent of things that are not links but look like links, things that are links but don’t look like them, and forms that ask us questions that don’t make any sense (to name a few)?

Toward a user experience ecclesiology

In designing these communities, we in more missional settings typically have the freedom to be more organic and shape things as we go, but my argument is that we can consider these disciplines that allow us to think about how people will actually experience what we create.

This will lead us to ask questions that we wouldn’t otherwise ask, of ourselves as shapers of community, of others who join us, and further (as people who would at least like to be incarnational types) of the people around us who are not yet part of our communities. We’ll need to think about how to see people as deeply equal participants rather than consumers, how to help them see themselves that way as part of something huge, and also how to make our simplicity deep enough and our complexity understandable enough to reach into real lives.

We need to think about ecclesiology in a number of other disciplines as well, and they’ll all have deeply valuable things to contribute as well, but design can be one that gives structure to the stories we’re telling.

1. Initially, I thought a direct parallel of user experience design and ecclesiology would lead us to the seeker-sensitive church of the last century, most exemplified by Rick Warren’s Saddleback. I remember reading the story of his development of that church, and while I don’t have any interest in that model there was good content in there. But of course, it’s thoroughly an attractional model. Personas were created of the citizens of Orange County, and then programs were created to attract those folks. It has worked well for them of course, and that’s fine, but it’s not the kind of missional community that we have sought to create and be a part of.

His post looks at the excuse that the gospel is offensive and therefore we are allowed, even expected, to be offensive also. You should read the whole thing, but I want to look at this part:

How does this translate today? Does it mean we need to post status updates about the extremist muslim that will surely burn in Hell? The homosexual or the stay at home dad who is worse than a non believer? I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s offensive, I think that’s more of the same. It’s the same hate that this world is filled with. It doesn’t surprise anyone, and surely, it can’t offend…

The same hate the world is filled with. Not surprising.

Now. If we could just grab onto that, I think we’d be alright, but he’s got me thinking in a different direction. The folks who he’s talking about, and I’m sure their counterparts who post status updates about other things, may think they’re being offensive for the gospel. But as they do it, the vast majority of them are easily offended when people who disagree state their cases. The ones who rant about Muslims get offended that the Muslims want to built an Islamic cultural center in a neighborhood they have served for many years, and the ones who rant about homsexuals are offended that they want to be able to get married.

Clearly, there is a double standard. We – whoever “we” are – are allowed to offend people because we think we’re doing it for the gospel (even though, as Andy points out, we’re just using the same hate everyone else does). But others are not allowed to offend us (by our criteria of what offensiveness is) because they’re doing it for their own reasons?

As I reflected on why this is the case, it occurred to me that there are a couple of reasons. One is that we are too busy thinking of ourselves. We think everything that we disagree with is an offense to us, and therefore it must be an offense to God. If it is an offense to God, our logic goes, it is our job to do everything we can to stop whatever the offense is. The problem, though, is that God isn’t like us. Brennan Manning wrote an incredible book called Ruthless Trust that dealt with some relevant issues. One of the things he wrote forever changed the way I try to look at myself:

Feelings of insecurity, inadequacy, inferiority, and self-hatred rivet our attention on ourselves. Humble men and women do not have a low opinion of themselves; they have no opinion of themselves. The heart of humility lies in undivided attention to God, a fascination with his beauty revealed in creation, a contemplative presence to each person who speaks to us, and a “de-selfing” of our plans, projects, ambitions, and soul.

Can you imagine if folks who are easily offended lived this way instead? A heart of humility, in the way he speaks, can’t be offended by ridiculous culture wars, and isn’t preoccupied with what other people are doing. Deeper still, if we lived like that we wouldn’t be preoccupied with what we are doing.

And that’s the issue, I think. It’s possible to think that God needs us to defend him, and to be preoccupied with doing that instead of living humbly before him. This is why folks think it is a positive thing to be offensive for the sake of being offensive. If we don’t piss people off, the logic goes, we aren’t defending the gospel well enough. And it spirals from there.

Now instead, as Andy mentions, the offensive thing of the gospel is its love. It’s Jesus eating with sinners, it’s the divine dying on a cross to deliver people from their sin, it’s people loving their enemies, and it’s people who have no opinion of themselves.

This first one is a really random one that, I assume, is not Cornerstone specific although I experienced it there. As a festival, there aren’t necessarily a ton of conservative political folks. There are some, but there’s a vein of activism that runs through it due to its creators, and it keeps things a bit more tempered than you might expect. In any case, one morning we were walking down a path and I saw a sticker on someone’s ATV that read: “Liberal Logic: Terrorists have rights, Christians don’t.”

Read that again. “Liberal Logic: Terrorists have rights, Christians don’t.” I couldn’t let the image go, and I’ve been reflecting on it since I saw it. This isn’t a political post. The statement, politically, is patently and demonstrably false and based exclusively on the ignorance and fear that dominates a great deal of conservative rhetoric these days. That isn’t surprising or interesting. But I am deeply interested in what is going on with the statement beyond that ridiculous world, and in the images that it raised in my mind.

The church in America is preoccupied with its own rights. We are spoiled by living in a country that has sought to give religious rights to everyone because for so long we have seen ourselves as everyone. We are further spoiled by generations of religious empire-builders, including our own that overwhelmingly believes it’s okay to torture people, in which we thought it was okay to combine the American agenda with the Christian agenda regardless of the people who lost their rights and their lives because of us.

The deadly irony in this is that the entrenchment of that combination causes us to react with fear and mistrust of anything that seeks to tip the scales even a little bit in favor of rights for human beings that are not part of the American or the Christian agenda. Liberals have asked that we stop torturing and indefinitely locking people away who are suspected of terrorism. They’ve asked that we stop giving insane favoritism to Christianity within a society that has people of many faiths. Both of these are completely reasonable and should be supported, but instead they are feared.

My mind, though, went from a gut reaction of sad laughter to an imagination of a church and a world in which this sticker was actually true. Don’t misunderstand me: this is still not about politics or foreign policy or anything to do with the State, though it would deeply affect the way that Christians engaged with the State. Maybe they would rethink their unquestioning support of violence.

Imagine if, instead of seeking to kill terrorists by whatever means possible, we sought to dignify, help, and seek reconciliation with them. We often ignore the fact that terrorism breeds among poverty and oppression, and we act like the fights America engages in are between people who possess equal power. This just isn’t the case. So imagine if we as Christians, regardless of what American politics sought, tried to give rights to the poor and oppressed, whether or not they liked us and whether or not it cost us. Imagine if we sacrificed our positions of power, hate, and dominance, and the military and other backings of establishment that came with them.

I know I’m a liberal and I know the American church would have to lose a lot before this could happen (and might lose things it thinks are valuable if it did happen), but it sounds like Jesus to me. It sounds like the sacrificial love for enemies that he displayed and commanded us to display.

She hopes to teach on the collegiate or graduate level after getting a PhD, partly because she wants to help open the eyes of folks who come into these institutions to things they haven’t seen, and also partly because she can affirm folks that want to do new things. She has unique and deep skills and passions that will flow into the changes that need to happen in the broad higher educational system.

Along the lines of unique possibility, there has been a lot of recent attention given to Claremont School of Theology‘s project to educate ministers within Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and so on as well as in Methodist Christianity, allowing the traditions to teach students with their own faculty, but encouraging the students to learn from those in other traditions. Claremont is part of the mainline establishment, but lots of folks who are open to emerging things attend there, will attend there, or have commented on the implications of this project for the future. Some have said that this project is the future of the church.

I don’t buy it. Granted, the potential for this project is big. But it’s only big in that it can, and probably will, lead its participants to develop relationships with those who practice and lead other faiths and also participate in the project (certainly a small number of such practitioners), and to understand the faiths of these folks more authentically. This is a good thing, certainly. It’s necessary, and it’s possible that in some trickle-down way, it will eventually lead to less violence, hatred, and misunderstanding between the practitioners of these faiths. Also a good thing.

But do you see how that’s illustrative of the fact that this isn’t as big as it might sound? It’s a continuation of a trickle-down model of theology, ecclesiology, and cultural understanding. Graduates will hope to be the ones forming the theology, the ecclesiology, and so on that is consumed by their parishioners. There won’t be any attempts to create new systems that deal with the economic and cultural changes that will, in all likelihood, continue to change the way we do everything else.

I want to see a much more ambitious future from theological education. Theological education currently teaches students to be the dispensers of knowledge and the representatives of God to their communities. If it is to thrive, it has to learn to create communities that teach each other, represent God to each other, and create spaces for people to encounter God themselves (as Mars Hill says, “create spaces for the resurrected Jesus to speak to people” and “make sure we’re not blocking it for others”). I have enough deep experiences from undergrad, and I know enough folks who have been to graduate school and have had deep experiences, to be aware that institutions of theological education are, on their better days, communities that teach each other, communities in which students represent God to each other as much as possible, and communities in which space is created to encounter God.

But the communities that students are taught to lead, or taught to create if they are expected to create anything, are not like this. Ministers teach their communities, and their primary tasks are to dispense knowledge and provide symbols of God, whether through pastoral care, sacraments, or other things. Often the language that is used is not so blatant, but essentially the message is that ministers are still the representatives of God on the earth.

One of the most beautiful things about postmodern culture is that it isn’t primarily concerned with what people think they know. No one who doesn’t have roots in church starts attending because they agree with the knowledge that gets dispensed. It’s very possible for folks interested in such things to learn how to think theologically on their own. Further, another of the most beautiful things is that people don’t expect someone else to represent their spirituality. This is one cause of the rise of the “spiritual but not religious” people that the church is so afraid of. They don’t understand the idea that it takes an authority figure to represent God to them.

Do you see the potential that exists here? The kind of systems that could be created if we could dream bigger than the (admirable, but in practice often a bit cheesy when institutions do it) future of creating dialogue and friendships with people of other faiths? The kind of communities that could be created by an education like this? That’s my hope for the future of theological education, which could contribute to a beautiful future for the church. Granted, it may not be able happen until these institutions lose some things or new institutions and models arise, but too often this is how change works.

So, in light of Tony’s posts, some of the comments, and also the beautiful thing that is happening this weekend at the TransFORM East Coast Gathering (which you can follow on Twitter) I want to reflect upon what I think Emergent has offered, is offering, and will offer to the church.

For the purposes of this post, I’m not strictly referring to Emergent Village, though I’m using the word Emergent as Tony did in his posts. I’m referring to networks and movements like Emergent Village, TransFORM, The Underground Railroad and broader counterculture movements, the new monastics, the Jesus Freaks, 24-7 Prayer, the lovely new Anabaptists that are influencing so many of us, and various other networks and groups around the world that I’d love to meet, just to name a few.

I think there are deep gifts that these movements have offered, are offering, and will offer to the church and world. A deep sense of mission, learned to a large extent from folks who lived and developed their theology outside the Western world (Newbigin and Bosch, among others), is a (the most?) significant one in my mind as it seems to be in Tony’s, and though it bugs me to no end that missional and other similar words have become buzzwords for churches that don’t know the thought behind them and thus continue with what they were already doing while relabeling it, the emerging church as a whole has resisted doing that.

In my experience, the emerging church has deeply and authentically sought to learn what missional living and missional church look like. Once it has learned that a missional life is an incarnational life, it has sought to learn how these things relate to the world, and specifically to cultures and subcultures in which it finds itself.

It has tried to create indigenous ways of experiencing and communicating with God and with those cultures in a deep desire to live lives after the heart of Jesus, and allowed these things to shape its communities from the ground up (in worship, spiritual practices, leadership, location, and any number of other factors). It has tried to integrate activism on local, national, and global scales (I passionately disagree with those who say that we, as a whole, haven’t done any justice work beyond talk, as many of us have joined movements that already existed¹, were started independently of us², or that folks in this movement started themselves³) without being colonialist about it, and that is a deeply significant thing.

Certainly it hasn’t done any of these things perfectly, and no similar thing ever will. But it truly has tried to holistically live what it has learned about mission in its spirituality, in its ecclesiology, and in its desire for justice; and I really think this has shaped the overall trajectory of the movement like none of the other factors. Different folks come to different understandings of where that desire to be incarnational should lead, and I don’t agree with all of those understandings and expect that not everyone would agree with my understandings, but I trust that people do come from that place and that desire.

I’ll continue to follow the TransFORM conference as it continues this weekend and I wish I could have been there; I’ve already seen so many thoughts pass across Twitter that demonstrate this gift of mission and incarnation that Emergent offers to the church, and it’s a beautiful thing. Much love to all of you who are there, and I hope to be at the next gathering like this one.

1. Such as Sojourners, Christian Peacemakers, the Christian Community Development Association, and many other beautiful things related to disease, war, slavery, poverty, and politics.
2. Like Invisible Children, Not For Sale, Falling Whistles, charity: water, for just a few.
3. Advent Conspiracy and One Day’s Wages are beautiful examples; though there are countless small and local things that have broad, under-the-radar reach into deep issues of justice.

I’ve followed this discussion, not because I’m a fan of Jennifer Knapp’s music (I don’t have anything against it, but it’s not my scene) but because I’m passionately interested in the potential for Christians to show love to the GLBT community, not because they want to evangelize them but because they are people and because many of them are (or would like to be) part of the church. For more on this, read Andrew Marin’s blog and his book.

Now, the reason I’m posting on this is a particular person’s Tweets that I saw directed to Jennifer Knapp. I’m sure these are not the worst she’s received, but they are the worst that I saw. I post them here as they appeared, split into two tweets because the first is more than 140 characters, followed by the second.

@jennifer_knapp my wife & still love you & are praying 4 you. We know all of your songs. May you see the truth & turn back 2 Jesus before

@jennifer_knapp it’s 2 late. Jesus loves you but whoever practices sin never knew him.

Consecutive tweets directed to Jennifer Knapp

I want you to read them a couple of times.

First, this person says he and his wife love Jennifer Knapp, are praying for her, and know all of her songs. Great. Then, he expresses hope that she’ll turn back to Jesus, because whoever practices sin never knew him.

A quick story: I met Jesus in a fairly dramatic fashion during high school. In my mind, I made an intense break between the Christianity I had previously been acquainted with and this new thing I had encountered, so I entered it with a lot of naïveté that was both good and bad. Anyway, a few months after this happened, I was sitting in a specific service with a guest speaker at the church I attended. Pentecostals love altar calls. Often to their deep benefit, and often less so. This particular altar call was a simple statement, when everyone was supposed to have their eyes closed: “Raise your hand if you have sin in your life.” Knowing myself, I raised my hand. Then I looked around, and realized that no one else did.

Assuming that the 200 or so other folks knew something I didn’t, I put my hand down. Eventually I learned that many times Christians, often with good intentions, make themselves feel better by making a distinction between individual actions of sin and a habitual lifestyle of sin. It occurs to me that these tweets may come from a similar sentiment.

Eventually, I recovered, learned about the extravagant grace of God, and stopped caring what anyone thought about my sin. I have sin in my life. So do you. I’ll die with sin in my life. So will you. None of it will keep us from knowing Jesus. The Spirit will deal with it.

Moving on, this post is not designed to reflect on whether or not homosexuality is a sin. I’m not interested in the question, for reasons like these from Rachel and others, some scholarly and exegetical and others very practical.

Instead, I want to offer love; peace and grace; and indeed, public support to Jennifer Knapp. She deserves it from all of us. If you bought her older music, buy the new stuff. Listen to it. Love and support her and her partner. You don’t need to tell her about your interpretations of Leviticus, or of Romans 1, or any of the other four passages that folks use to determine their thoughts on homosexuality. She knows those interpretations, and she knows the alternatives, whichever side you may be on. She is clearly a person gracefully seeking to live out her own salvation. You can do the same.

There is a fairly unique opportunity for the church in this situation, in that fans of Contemporary Christian Music haven’t dealt with someone who is, whether they like it or not, a Christian artist and a lesbian. They can choose to show her support with love and humility, knowing that she is their sister, or they can choose to shoot her down and drive her away over something that will never keep her from knowing and loving Jesus.

Grace to us all.

The book seeks to link together a number of thoughts and disciplines – ecclesiology, science, network theory, missiology, and spirituality, among others – to indicate the incredible interconnectedness in which we can live, and how that affects the way we think about leadership, theology, ministry, and the mission of God and the church in the world.

The subtitle is a little misleading, first of all. I don’t recall more than one or two mentions of Facebook, specifically, in the entire book. This is a wonderful thing, as far as I’m concerned, because Facebook is just one part, albeit a very large and influential part, of much broader things that are going on in culture. It is also just one manifestation of the larger discussion that Dwight brings to us of scale-free networks, of hubs and links and nodes of various sizes and connectedness, connecting everyone to everything.

A related observation: the book does not spend time telling us how to use Facebook, or Twitter, or any other specific networks. I think he assumes we can get this information elsewhere, or that we are already doing these things. This is one of the great strengths of the book, as most books that try to tell people how to use social networks are out of date by the time the print has dried. Thinking about networks theologically and thinking about the church through network theory is, in my opinion, far more valuable and can help us understand the implications of these core parts of culture.

This is the image that he gives us of the people of God – nodes of people connected through real relationships and encounters to other people. He also gives us this image of a connected, linking God, and reminds us of the perichoresis. God is not a lighthouse, standing afar off from us, but even in God’s essence there is linking, connecting, and relating in the Great Dance between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, and we are invited into that Dance.

There are beautiful thoughts on leadership in the days of Google, which for me fit really well with the conversations that are happening around Theology After Google. The ideas being presented in the book remind us that people don’t come to us, as the church or as ministers or as individuals, giving us authority or asking us to give them information.

They come to us, and we can give away our authority by creating genuine connections. Connections with God and the reconciling work of Jesus in the world, and connections with others. This kind of image of the kingdom of God, then, is relational and always moving, and is thus chaotically unpredictable.

These images lead into specific practices, and specific ways of creating space for people to engage God and others. There are beautiful ideas on how leaders can creatively seek to create this kind of space in their networks, and how each network has to be in relation to other networks in order to thrive. This leads into discussions of missiology, and how we understand our encounters with people who are fully Other from us; whether or not we allow ourselves to be shaped by these encounters.

All of the images in the book move back to the mission of God in the world – creatively reconciling people to God and to each other, and understanding that mission in light of things we know about the world through computer networks, ecological systems, tapestries, and other intricately connected things. I’d highly recommend this one.

This is basically where the debate stands, at least within the church. Liberals on one side, conservatives on another. Just like so many other things. I’m interested in a third way, though. I’ve seen a few other people mention that they’d like a third way too, but it usually ends up fitting within either the conservative or liberal framework within which they find themselves. Maybe mine will too. Either way, it’s worth a try.

Context within pluralism

To start: abstinence-only sex education in a pluralistic society fails because it isn’t realistic for people without convictions that sex before marriage is wrong to avoid it. It’s just not. People without this conviction shouldn’t be forced to live as though they have it. But whether a conviction is from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, another religion, straight-edge (there aren’t many of those left, but still a few), or a sincere desire to focus on other parts of life is irrelevant – the fact is that there is a conviction for certain folks, and that gives things, at the very least, the potential of being different.

Fine. But of course, focusing on folks with that conviction doesn’t account for the multitudes of teenagers who sign the oft-mocked virginity pledges at youth rallies, indicating that they’ll be abstinent until marriage. We know that most of them aren’t. We also know that many of them do genuinely desire to keep these pledges and the convictions associated with them, and that when they don’t, many of them become burdened with guilt and self-judgment, sometimes affecting their capability to have healthy sex lives once they do get married.

The reaction to this is, for some, a belief that it is unrealistic and outdated for us to expect followers of Jesus to live lives of abstinence before marriage. Various interpretative stances are taken on various Scriptures, and we are left with a vague notion of teaching teenagers about contraceptives and how to have sex intelligently.

For other folks, of course, the reaction is a deeper entrenchment into the culture wars, stating that this is all the fault of the media, politicians, liberals, homosexuals, or whoever else can be scapegoated with the blame for the “failure” of youth to live up to the standards put upon them. This, of course, leads to more guilt, and it also (rightly) leads the people that are being scapegoated to have even more dislike for Christian culture than they already do.

A possible third way

So this third way, as I call it for lack of other things to call it, is for those who do, for whatever religious or cultural or philosophical reasons, believe that sex should exist within a marriage. It doesn’t necessarily depend upon a specific faith, though it would be shaped by whatever context in which it found itself. For this purpose, I’m writing for followers of Jesus, as that is the perspective from which my wife and I approached it in our lives, and the perspective from which I’d love my own kids to approach it one day.

My wife and I married as virgins. Seriously. Both of us are genuinely grateful for this, and can’t overstate the freedom that is present in learning how to live sexually and how to be vulnerable and seek to love one another, together, without needing prior knowledge. I can’t overstate how great an opportunity I think that is. This is not to say that we suddenly became sexual creatures when we got married because we never had thoughts or desires or temptations before that time, or that we immediately became amazing sexual masters when we got married. Neither is the case, and neither is a realistic expectation for people to have.

This journey of ours is one of the reasons I believe sex is designed to happen within a marriage. I think there are marriages in which sex shouldn’t happen without intense change, because there are far too many marriages in which it happens ignorantly, oppressively, and beneath its potential for both powerful love and vulnerability, and for glimpses of the sacred. But I do, still, believe that it is designed to exist and flourish within a healthy marriage. I’m familiar with exegetical and theological arguments that put such thoughts in the realm of biblical interpretations that we should resign to the past, and I disagree with them.²

I think it is preferable and realistic for followers of Jesus to live this way. Teaching it includes everything from how to deal with temptations while seeking to live a kingdom-focused life, to understanding why sexuality is relevant to such a life, to learning how to think about one’s spouse in an holistic and egalitarian way when marriage does happen. It also involves helping people to embrace the lavish grace that Jesus gives to us in order to, and when we fail to, treat sexuality as we should – both in significant and seemingly insignificant ways, and both inside and outside of marriage. All of these things have powerful potential to impact lives and marriages.

People who believe that an important part of following Jesus is waiting for sex within marriage don’t do it by signing a pledge at a youth rally when they are 12, 13, or even 20. It doesn’t work that way. They do it the same way anyone follows Jesus in any other area – day by day, learning the rhythms of grace. They do it by seeking to be in situations, and in relationships with people, that help them and empower them, and by seeking to resist things that don’t. They do it by living in communion with the Spirit, and seeking to reject sin and injustice, both personal and systemic, as the Spirit helps them.

1. Including a recent study that indicated some success in a program that encouraged teenagers to abstain from sex. It is a small study, but it seems to have had an encouraging focus on dialog and honest discussion, rather than fear and hiding of facts.
2. Note that I’m not commenting on the biblical interpretations of homosexuality, as I feel that they are very complex, and I don’t know – or think I need to know – what the right answer is. Suffice it to say, at the moment, that I strongly support marriage for my GLBT brothers and sisters, and include their relationships as those that should have healthy, married sex.

But recently, I’ve seen a different side, that of nonviolent activism for peace, on the part of Israelis and Palestinians, starting with this interview on The Daily Show a couple of months ago, but really becoming something else entirely with the trip that Brian McLaren, Mike Todd, and other folks have been on a trip “to see the places where the Spirit of God is working now – for reconciliation, justice, and peace in the midst of turmoil.”

I want to draw attention to the things that have been said about and during, and the issues that are being examined. I’m sure both of them will continue reflecting now that they are home, and I encourage you to read all of their thoughts on this.

Brian, at one point, writes several things that have stuck out to me:

If you get a chance to go to Israel and Palestine, I encourage you to take it – but only if you can go on an alternative tour that will have you spending time in the West Bank, meeting both Palestinians and Israelis so you can see for yourself how different the reality is from the impressions gained from our well-managed media and highly-lobbied government.

January 29

We have spoken with many Palestinians in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem so far in our pilgrimage, both Christian and Muslim. Their voices are seldom heard in our corporate media, so it has made sense to meet, listen to, and understand them. But of course we’ve met with Israeli folks too. Yesterday we had some particularly important conversations with Israeli Jewish voices. They agreed that there will be no change in Israeli policy until the US decides to stop giving Israel a blank check.

January 27

If you’ve never been in both Israel and Palestine, I hope you will start questioning what you think you know about the situation here. I’ve been an avid reader on the subject for quite a while, but being here now, I see how many of my most basic assumptions were skewed from a lifetime of half-truths, unfair and imbalanced news, well-planned propaganda, and misinformation.

January 25

It was a reminder that the struggle here is not about people. It’s not about Jews versus Palestinians or vice versa. It’s not about choosing who the good guys and bad guys are, as our media so often portrays it (and sadly, as our religious leaders so often do as well).

January 23

But what is especially powerful – and what keeps us from being overwhelmed with cynicism or anger – is the lack of hatred among the Palestinians we are meeting with – both Christians and Muslims. Again and again we hear the word “non-violent” and we see a desire not for revenge or even isolation … but for reconciliation. To my surprise (based on expectations from the US media), I haven’t met a single Palestinian who wants a two-state solution. They want to live in peace with Israelis.

January 22

Mike writes equally poignant things, though he does not blog as much when he travels and will write more in the coming days and weeks:

The church has for too long swallowed the prevailing narrative about Israel’s policies in the occupied territories without question.

January 29

This is not about choosing sides. However, I’ll repeat an earlier assertion I’ve made, and that is that we have been fed a narrative that is simply wrong. It’s fiction, if you will. More about that to come I’m sure, but this is a big one: The church in the west must start thinking again, and not simply buy what we are told. From where I’m sitting this morning we are looking very foolish.

January 25

Again, I can’t encourage you enough to read the full posts, and the other things that Mike and Brian will be writing as they continue to process.

But I have to say: this honestly makes me willing to go to Israel on this kind of trip, should the opportunity ever arise. There is a beauty that is present there that, certainly we could assume was there, but I at least hadn’t heard anything about – people who have voices that we need to hear, stories that would inspire and change us, and a real desire for peace and nonviolent reconciliation.

I would like to see Barack Obama sit in this realm with his discussions of and with Israel. He is often accused of standing against Israel, but this is a completely unrealistic accusation as there is never any criticism or attempt to talk about the issues of segregation and oppression by Israel. This is consistently bolstered by the unwavering support of Israel in whatever it does by the mainstream media, to the point that it really is politically impossible for anyone on any side of American politics to criticize Israel for any of the oppressive things it does, or to suggest that there really is a necessity for reconciliation.

The American church today should be in this part of the story, seeking ways to encourage peace and reconciliation, but instead it is contributing to this kind of political climate, using various theological concepts to suggest that Israel is blessed by God regardless of what it does. Do you see the opportunity we could have?

I’d love to see more people go on trips like this, and come back to tell us what they see and learn. I’d love to see our role in this change.