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AR 24:33 - Surprise: Antidote for 'hookup culture' is… Jesus
In this issue:
SEXUALITY - the solution to foundational misunderstandings is found in Christ
+ a lesbian Lutheran pastor attempts to "dig a gold nugget out of that pile of rubbish" known to many as Scripture
Apologia Report 24:33 (1,441)
August 15, 2019
"Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it."
This passage from Matthew 7 is abundantly familiar to apologists, especially those of us who are most concerned about the phenomenally successful counterfeit Christs today. Then again, consider the collateral damage being wrought closer to home. This issue of Apologia Report touches on the experience of those in mainline churches with the aim of encouraging empathy and compassion for many who are being taught to hate conservatives.
SEXUALITY
"Jesus at a College Party: How I teach ethics in a hookup culture" by Jennifer Beste (Professor of Theology, Koch Chair for Catholic Thought and Culture, College of Saint Benedict and St. John's University, Saint Joseph, MN) -- "When I landed my first teaching position, I never imagined that Christian sexual ethics would become my favorite and most regularly offered course. ... I learned, among other things, that students are willing to reflect critically on their own gender and sexual socialization and are eager to share their experiences and their honest perspective on college culture.
"I also learned that most Christian millennials find the church's teachings on sexuality negative and judgmental, or simply irrelevant. When faced with the choice of either remaining faithful to the church's religious teachings on sexuality or pursuing peer acceptance by endorsing the culture's celebratory depictions of wild, drunken college parties and unattached hookups, many choose the latter.
"Despite this choice, however, the majority feel let down by the realities of hookup culture. An alarming percentage of them (particularly women) are left to deal with negative consequences of hookups: loss of self-esteem, anxiety, depression, and a variety of posttraumatic stress symptoms. ...
"If our goal is to empower young adults to follow Christ in their daily lives and make sexual decisions that foster holistic growth and fulfillment throughout their lives, simply educating youth about church teachings or even assigning the best theological texts on the subject is not adequate.
"What does work, then? A text that I've found useful is Johann Metz's Poverty of Spirit [1], which explores the mystery of the incarnation and meditates on how Jesus' decision to embrace poverty of spirit and to become fully human is saving for humanity. When students come to wrestle with what it means to become fully human in matters of sexuality and relationships after having read Metz, their model is none other than Jesus. ...
"I've noticed three main recurring themes. First, the students think that Jesus is all about relationships. They repeatedly describe a college-aged Jesus standing out because he isn't interested in 'all of the false pretenses of college life' but instead wants to 'get to know the heart of every person'....
"A second theme I find is that Jesus takes every opportunity to subvert masculine norms that objectify women and use them as objects of pleasure. ...
"Third, the students regard Jesus as an extraordinary teacher. Students regularly depict him simply leading by example, but he's also effective at engaging peers in discussions about whether party norms help them feel good about who they are."
Context: Beste <www.bit.ly/2YZ57CY> says she "teaches not at a notorious party school but at a small church-affiliated college where the majority of students grew up going to church and where 82 percent identify as Christian. ...
"Fears of vulnerability figure prominently in students' analyses of why they drink excessively and hook up. ...
"Hookups are ... less risky emotionally than dating or being in a committed relationship. For many, it is far easier to conform to hookup norms of being unattached, unemotional, and invulnerable than to risk sharing your authentic self and facing the prospect of getting hurt. ...
"A significant percentage of students (particularly women) experience loss of self-esteem, anxiety, and depression due to the way in which they are treated in this culture. ...
"A great deal of academic literature chronicles the ways that drunken hookup culture is a breeding ground for sexual assault. My research as well indicates that both men and women regularly experience sexual victimization and a wide range of PTSD symptoms. The reality that hookup culture normalizes sexual harassment and assault also numbs many students' moral consciences, enabling them to treat their peers like objects to be used and promptly discarded. ...
"One reason I keep assigning Poverty of Spirit is that students readily identify with the author's claim that we all experience (as Jesus did) temptations 'to renounce the poverty of our unique, mysterious personality, to do just what "everyone else does" in order to secure social validation.' ... It encourages them to explore their struggles honestly and directly, and it shines a light on a life path that is actually in their power to choose. ...
"What is most heartbreaking to me is that students are so often dissatisfied or clearly unhappy in this culture - and yet they still opt in. They sacrifice their unique personalities to conform to party norms of excessive alcohol use, hookups, and other forms of dehumanization.
"If this personal behavior is distressing, what shall we call the culture that promotes cruelty, callousness, sexual assault, suffering, and injustice, all the while anesthetizing its participants to their own emotions and obscuring the fact that such violence is actually intrinsic to the culture? ...
"Semester after semester I have glimpsed the fruits of cultivating dialogue on these issues." Beste seems to set her sights quite a bit lower than most conservatives here. See for yourself. Christian Century, Feb 13 '19, pp30-33 <www.bit.ly/2ZQo6kv>
Also consider the author's book: College Hookup Culture and Christian Ethics: The Lives and Longings of Emerging Adults [2].
"Bruised and Blessed by Scripture" by Emmy Kegler, pastor of Grace Lutheran Church in Northeast Minneapolis -- "By the time I got to seminary, I'd had years of experience defending myself against Christianized homophobia. My life was a walking answer to 'How do you reconcile your sexuality with the Bible?'
"My best answer was that the scriptures had nothing to say on same-gender relationships. ... Even the instructions for heterosexuality were ragingly outdated....
"It wasn't impossible to still find meaning in the Bible; it was like a museum piece, one that still confessed to realities about humanity and, if investigated well enough, to how that humanity had once experienced God. ... As a seminarian and then an intern pastor, this distrust was a constant companion.
"In my feminist theologies class, I was given a name for my distrust: a hermeneutic of suspicion. Built on the work <iep.utm.edu/ricoeur> of Paul Ricoeur, it captured <www.bit.ly/31u1yGD> the modernist practice of distrusting self-proclaimed truths and looking instead for omissions and inconsistencies. In feminist theologies, it meant an awareness of the patriarchal and misogynist societies in which the scriptures were written and formed, and a continual open identification of where women and other minority voices had been silenced.
"But eventually the word suspicion began to fall short for me. It had come from a straight white man summarizing the modernist tendencies of other straight white men (namely Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche). ... This was not a parlor game for me, a murder mystery to page through warm by the fireside. This was ... a hermeneutic of survival. I had to find a way to cope with the violence of scripture, both what was literally contained within its pages and how it had been used to wound people over 2,000 years of cultural domination. I would not be able to exist within the church if I could not find a way to read the stories of its faith. ...
"The prophets could be safe, especially the justice-oriented books like Amos and Micah, but if I was not careful enough I'd find myself in the whore language of Ezekiel and, once again, have to shield myself with Hebrew grammar books and historical-critical critiques until I could find a way into safety - which was usually anything in the category of 'not the Bible.' ...
"And then it all unraveled under the weight of 14 words. It was a simple quote out of a lecture at the Festival of Homiletics, by author and theologian <www.bit.ly/2yP9g1P> Lauren Winner: 'What if our job as preachers is to just love the scriptures in public?' ...
"The scriptures were a receptacle for every queer- and transphobic, misogynist, white supremacist, and otherwise power-hungry excuse for violence and destruction over the past 2,000 years. I could dig a gold nugget out of that pile of rubbish if I worked hard enough....
"Others lived and even flourished with the hermeneutic of suspicion, but it was eating me alive. ...
"I needed more than suspicion. I needed more than survival. ...
"I did not have a plan for how I would accomplish falling in love with scripture. I simply decided that I had to and went from there. I bought a new Bible....
"I started on page one and just kept going. ...
"Three days in, I found the story that would come to guide my new relationship with the scriptures: the story of Jacob and the man who wrestled with him. ...
"I knew the dread that Jacob had felt. I knew what it was like to abandon what I had known for a new land. I refused the binary offered me of choosing either my faith or my sexuality, loving Jesus or loving my future wife. ...
"I was going to have to make peace with this, with scripture, with a holy book that would be used over and over again to wound me and my queer family.
"Some days the scripture I read would eat at me until nightfall. Some nights were sleepless or restless. ...
"I came across an essay ... called 'Wrestling with Faith'....
"The sun rose upon him [Jacob] . . . limping because of his hip. Through this ancient story, appropriated anew, Biblical studies, faith and feminism converge for me. Wrestling with the words, to the light I limp.
"This was a metaphor that could sustain me. It took me beyond suspicion or survival. ... We know the truth: sometimes coming face to face with God sends us away bruised and yet blessed.
"Some of us walk away forever. There is too much wounding. I carry with me many stories of those who have found no more blessing in the struggle. The church, the scriptures, God are all too wounding still. ... We are to honor these stories. To fear and silence them is to ignore the presence of God, who meets us not just in glory but also in suffering, who to give a blessing did not pronounce it from rendered heavens but whispered out a new name, pinned in the dark before the dawn." Christian Century, Mar 27 '19, pp22-25 <www.bit.ly/2TlHuU0> (The text above is found in author's book: One Coin Found: How God's Love Stretches to the Margins [3].)
Early in my (RP) Christ-centered life transformation, someone told me that most people experience enough of Christ to bug them, but they never trust Him enough to really know His eternal blessing.
POSTSCRIPT, Sep 14 '24: Just a note of caution regarding the BibleGateway site which includes this item: "Why God Uses Metaphors to Describe Himself: Guest Post by Lauren Winner" from Jonathan Petersen. <www.tinyurl.com/h5uj9h3u>
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SOURCES: Monographs
1 - Poverty of Spirit, by Johann Metz (Paulist Prs, 1998, paperback, 56 pages) <www.amzn.to/2MZhLiW>
2 - College Hookup Culture and Christian Ethics: The Lives and Longings of Emerging Adults, by Jennifer Beste (Oxford Univ Prs, 2017, hardcover, 376 pages) <www.amzn.to/2YYfCGO>
3 - One Coin Found: How God's Love Stretches to the Margins, by Emmy Kegler (Fortress, 2019, paperback, 200 pages) <www.amzn.to/2YVV05T>
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