Free the Feet! A Shoe Experience of a 1st Season Barefooter.

Yesterday I made the (reluctant) decision to wear fully enclosed shoes. It was raining and usually when we go into town, I bring a pair of very loose, two flat-strapped sandals that would fall off if my feet weren't trained to hold them on with each step. I only wear them in stores. I walk and drive without shoes otherwise. I didn't bring my sandals because they have no tread and I can slide 20 feet on a good-balance day before landing on my posterior in public, when my sandals are wet.

Anyway, I haven't enclosed my feet since winter, and doing so produced some unexpected findings.

I expected that my feet would feel constricted relative to the way they are usually, and they did. I expected that they would feel too warm and they did. What surprised me though, was that I now use my feet so differently that the low, wide shoes I previously found comfortable caused me to have to completely change my gait to accommodate them! I found that I had to stiffen up my whole lower leg and foot in order to make my step conform to the shape and form of the shoe!!! And these shoes are considered, and really are by comparison, 'flexible!'

So, since that is ludicrous to me (and I am so glad that my body has adapted to moving in the way I didn't know it would or could, that actually suits its form rather than that of a shoe), I have endeavoured to make my own foot-coverings that will allow for natural motion so that when winter comes, I can still walk and not feel like I'm wearing casts on my legs and feet.

I'll post pictures of my creations when they are complete. :) So, this was news to me. Apparently, I now walk like a good-old-fashioned cave woman. :D

*ETA: I wanted to include- and have been consistently forgetting- that I was pleasantly surprised to find that my new leather-like-bottomed feet are not less sensitive, but in fact more than ever! BUT, I don't experience this heightened sensitivity as pain, and often have a need to walk on pebbly ground to relax my whole body and relieve my feet of too many hours on a smooth surface or sandals or minivan carpet. It is genuinely a delight so small and yet so delicious that in my desire to embrace the present, I am reluctant to express my sadness for having been without this experience for nearly 32 years. My feet are free; free at last!

A Kernel of Truth: Lend Me Your Ear or I'd Rather Be Restrictive Than Corny

For many years, it has continued to perplex me that people who don't know me well (and some who think they do) have charged me with being a radical restrictivist, party-pooper, kill-joy, picky, a worshipper of food (lol!) and other like unfavourable judgments based in ignorance.

Since we moved out west, this has subsided substantially as we have met many more open-minded people in the ten months we've been here than I can recall in my whole life combined. Granted my desire for such people may not have been manifest then as it is now. Anyhow, in spite of the overwhelming majority of people we meet being quite open to how others live, we still have encountered some resistance and imposition of judgment here too. Why, when we've been successively unfettering ourselves, seeking and attaining to greater planes of freedom and consciousness, are we still accused of radical restrictiveness?

*Lest any one person think this is a backlash on you personally, it isn't. As I wrote above, you would just be joining the masses of people who've concluded on the same thing about me for decades, so not to worry, you're well-supported. :)

The answer came to me for the first time this evening. I'm going to use that word that has become the unnecessary recipient of the assumption of perjorative when others hear me use it... mainstream. It is invariably mainstreamers and mainstream-wannabes who make these judgments of us and the reason is now clear to me. A mainstreamer, being predicated in his/her actions on conformity, sees others in terms of what they don't do. They lack any aspiration to take full and utterly conscious responsibility for their thoughts, actions, and life, and view someone who does as a threat to the comfortable system that affords them this sloth. I am just such a person and I threaten just that.

So what about me? What is my role in inviting such criticism? Well, as far as I can tell, I am party to my own accusations in that I haven't severed my ties entirely with people lacking consciousness in their living, so I'm an easy target. Aside from that though, I am not so accomplished in the complete shedding of mainstream's influence that I have been able to ward off such attacks on my life, character, abilities and efforts. When I've matured to that point, my presence will no longer be permeable to low criticism as I've seen that trend already in other areas of my life. In a way, my whole person, being whole, won't have any holes or spaces for intrusive or demeaning commentary, much like the soil in a healthy garden doesn't allow pests to take up residence; the presence of beneficial beings is purposed and recognised, but the absence of harmful ones is only incidental to the health of the garden.

My own perspective regarding others is the precise reason why I continue to be taken aback and surprised by the accusation of being legalistically or radically restrictive in my life. Unlike mainstreamers, I view others for what they DO, not what they don't do, because I am not concerned with conformity or the perpetuity of sloth-enabling life systems. 

So when I think of people I know, I am affected and influenced and impressed with what they DO. I don't give any thought whatsoever to what they don't do unless it is obviously and insidiously negligent or dangerous. I'd notice if my friend didn't ever speak to her children, for instance, or if another didn't... I can't even think of another example because that sort of thinking is so unnecessary and unhelpful to me.

When I first began to question the mainstream, I also had a long list of what-I-don'ts. This was a natural progression from recognition of what I had previously been doing and what I wouldn't do anymore. In that transformation, it became necessary for me to switch paradigms though, to examining what I do and not focussing on what I don't do, which wouldn't allow for me to authentically change my life. Lifelong alcoholism in spite of a cessation in actually imbibing alcohol should make focus on the don't-do's an obviously ineffective strategy for change.

So initially, my list was full of what I don't do anymore, but that was years ago and I no longer even have such a list because my life is full of what I do, not what I don't. When my days and weeks and months are full of things I value, there simply isn't need or desire to consider what I don't do. The fact that upon being asked, I can answer that 'yes, we don't do that' is not a confirmation of an obsession with what I don't do. It is almost exclusively within the context of answering the mainstreamer's questions about what we don't do that I can even think of such things. In my own life and from my own perspective, I wouldn't even think of formulating such a question as that.

I want to examine some of the charges though, because this is all talk and no action so far:

Will the accused please stand. You have been charged with the worship of food and health and radical restrictivism of such of life's pleasures as edible oil whipped topping and pop tarts.

In my defense, I would like to propose a comparison and contrast of my diet and approach to health to that of the mainstream.

I will begin by introducing the foods and principles upon which my family bases decisions about what we DO eat.

We eat mostly a traditional European diet. By traditional, I mean that we use home-rendered fats from chicken, duck, bison, etc... and we cook with the bones in and use those bones to later make gelatin-rich broths that we use for gravies and sauces and stews and in place of water for cooking other foods.

We eat whole vegetables and fruits and only indulge in tropical fruits and vegetables as treats occasionally. We eat fatty unpasteurised yogurt and milk (can't find raw just yet, but hope to by next summer even if that means by having our own dairy goat or cow). We eat loads of butter. We eat whole grain breads in a very small proportion to the rest of our diet. We eat olives and home lacto-fermented sauerkraut, broccoli stems, garlic and hot peppers. I make my own cheese and we also buy some that is cultured and unpasteurised. We eat raw veggies dipped in garlic/yogurt/mustard/apple cider vinegar mixture.

We drink litres of herbal and green tea every day and eat a pound of raw, microbe-rich honey every day too. We eat this fresh-from-the-field and personally delivered from down the road  honey on our homemade baked home-ground whole oats, eggs, and raisins squares with butter served warm.

We eat eggs every morning on toast or in our oat squares. We use 6 dozen eggs each week.

Everything is as local as possible and almost always organic because there is no point in eating something that is so full of chemicals that it will take more nutrients to detoxify it than it will provide to the body. In this way, we could eat all day long and still starve, gaining lots of weight if we eat too much because our bodies are trying to conserve what little nutrition we are receiving ,or losing weight because we don't eat enough to fulfill our nutrient requirements.

So, we eat naturally cultivated, free-growing foods in their whole state, which also goes for our meat. It is all pastured (truly, not industrially) on naturally growing grasses and insects and given no antibiotics or vaccinations. The animals live according to their nature- chickens in flocks, ducks in pairs, bison in herds, etc...

To achieve this, we have to talk to a lot of people, go a lot of different places and try a lot of different ways of preparing our foods when items are not available or when there is a variation of what we expected (unlike boxed, processed foods, the earth doesn't produce cubic vegetables with uniform innards and outards by its own initiative, so we go with what we're given).

Diversity is an encompassing principle in our food acquisition. Not purposed in all ways, but definitely incidental, at least. We have a diverse experience in our eating, preparation, meeting and speaking to new and becoming familiar people, excursions we wouldn't otherwise experience to farms and homesteads along the highways of our territory, and abundantly healthy children whose ailments are healed with this diet and herbs, homoeopathy and home remedies as needed.

Now in contrast, the mainstream diet, which is the non-restricted one, remember?

Based upon my highly unscientific observations, I am going to generously presume that the average mainstreamer eats about 1-2% of his/her diet in whole, locally grown, industrial organic and truly organic foods, all being vegetable and none being from the meat category of the food pyramid.

I will generously then presume a 98% diet of variably 'value-added' (read: processed) foods that include various fruits and vegetables, raw and in boxed dinner-type meals; boneless and skinless meats along with some breaded, some seasoned, some fast-food, some in pies and burritos and other freezer 'meals.' They eat boxed crackers, cookies, confections and treats of all kinds, baked and fried and slathered with edible oil frosting and fried, flavoured, and candied nuts and cereals; breakfast cereals, jars of jams and nut butters and margarine and 'not-butter'; flavoured and sliced processed cheeses, low fat milk and fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt and canned soups and beans and 'whole wheat' and 'french' bread; 'vegetable/canola oil' for cooking. They eat cream puffs and potatoes baked and in bags for baking and frying, and salads made with mayonnaise and macaroni and coleslaw too. A package of pudding cups for the kids and a jar of baby dills and carrots sticks with dip for lunches. Who can live without a bag of Doritos and a pop on the way out of the self-check-out at the grocery store?

The meat came from animals living in deplorable conditions such that anyone witnessing this would quickly lose his or her appetite for them, but onto my point: eating corn. Cows, pigs, chicken, and even fish, all eating corn for their breakfast, lunch and dinner.

They are cut up into pieces and the 'value-added' ones are severed from the only hope that had in being nutritious- the bones, and variously prepared with CORN-DERIVED monosodium glutamate, malto-dextrine, glucose/fructose and high fructose corn syrup, regular old corn syrup and corm meal, modified corn starch and plain old corn starch, corn oil, di- and tri-glycerides, lecithin, leavening, etc... and is then wrapped in shiny corn-derived packaging with corn-based dyes emblazoned on reading 'healthy choice!'.

The chickens lay their corn-fed eggs and sometimes make new corn-developed chicks that make more corn-eating chickens to be cut up and covered by and marinated and fried in more corn.

The milk and milk products from the corn-eating cows are also corn-produced, bearing its trademark genetic C4, in case anyone doubted the presence of corn in milk.

Their veggies and fruits have been sprayed with corn-derived pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and waxed with corn-come-wax and boxed in corn-waxed boxes treated with more corn-derived chemical compounds for 'freshness'.

A quotation from The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan (to whom all credit goes for the above list of corn-derived products, which is not exhaustive by any means): “There are some forty-five thousand items in the average American Supermarket and more than a quarter of them now contain corn. This goes for the non-food items as well-...” (page 19) And this does not account for the items which are produced via corn-dependence through spray fertilizers and 'cides' of all sorts. Almost everything edible in the grocery store is a product of the constituents of corn.

Now onto the experiential part. Mainstreamers are very open and diverse in their experiences of food, right? Well, once/week they jaunt to the grocery store staring mindlessly (who wouldn't? What's to ponder?) at the shelves upon shelves of flashy boxes and cans, knocking one of them every so often into the cart, cruising the produce section for bags of apples, lathed carrot sticks and some fruit and dip combination packages, the dairy section for eggs and milk and milk products, bread and bakery- grab and toss, meats in styrofoam with no bones and fat trimmed, and then the snack aisle on the way out (was going to skip that one... oh well, what's the harm?) and waiting in line for the self-check-out, putting groceries into bags (corn) and carting them to the trunk of the car, stopping for gas (more corn) on the way home, then to the pharmacy to pick up prescriptions for the kids (and corn again), and then unloading at home only to do it again the following week.

But no matter, meal preparation is usually a snap, 20-30 minutes for dinner, tops, and lunches are packaged fruits and veggies and some cheese strings and a juice box. Breakfast, easy- cereal in low fat milk. WHY would anyone want to do more work than necessary to feed themselves and their family? So glad not to be a pioneer or in a tribe. Food preparation would take over life!

Please, PLEASE, share with me how my diet and outlook is restrictive when it consists of diversity in food, relationship, preparation, source, and health-giving qualities, when the mainstream diet consists mainly of CORN and requires pharmaceutical supplementation to allow the body to function, while no or nearly no attention is paid to the source of the food and no relationships or few are forged in the process- a complete lack of diversity- the very definition of restriction in this context?

We eat whole foods, meet the farmers who produce them, meet other conscientious eaters in little shops tucked away in the corners of the city and rural areas to obtain their wares, chat, make contacts and share common understandings, engage our children in understanding how their food comes to their plate and in the end, eat very rich, flavourful foods that few other than celebrities and the very rich enjoy nowadays as the old ways of preparing tasty food have been lost and forgotten in favour of spending more time at soccer games and eating micro-waved meals trays.

HOW, when my experience surrounding this aspect of life is so rich and diverse and open to new experiences on-going-ly, am I restrictive??? 

If refusing to be a giant walking manifestation of corn and cold-stranger-procured formed and flavoured food-like products called edible is being restrictive, then I guess I am.

I am also restrictive in my refusal to treat my children like ninny-heads who need adults to 'teach' them how to 'act' like children, and my rejection of chemical band-aids for ill-health, and general ignorance. 

I guess I am highly restrictive, but from my perspective, MY whole world is WIDE OPEN, free and full of possibilities and potential, unlimited and unhindered by fear and it's cousin: 'this is how it's done.' 

In my mind, the world (cosmically) is a gigantic sea of wondrous potential and loving possibilities and fulfillments and the mainstream exists as the tiniest speck outlying the boundary of that sea. 

If in refusing the limitations of that speck, I seem restrictive, having instead chosen the whole sea, then so be it, but I don't see myself that way. I never will. I cannot; I know too much and I'd have to kill myself if I did.

I am free, and conscious of that reality. If the manifestation of that reality in my life seems restrictive of options that fetter me with ideologies that would stand in my way to fulfilling who I am here to be, then I'll restrict with wild abandon!!!

Default to Real Life

Underlying the very non-mainstream and counter-cultural-seeming decisions that I make is a practice that few others themselves undertake to explore. Because so many issues come up on this blog and in my life where my decisions seem rebellious or unnecessarily difficult to others, I thought it might be helpful to share the philosophical process in short-form that I use to determine my course.

When a question arises, I immediately default to another set of questions which form the foundation for my philosophical examination. These questions are the following:

1. What is the anthropologically established norm (AEN)?

2. Does this conform to the anthropologically established norm?

3. Is it beneficial, as in does it meet authentic needs?

4. Is it personally beneficial, as in does it meet needs in the way that the person for which this is being considered will appreciate?

5. Does it improve upon the anthropologically established norm? (I've NEVER seen this occur that something outside of the anthropologically established norm leads to true progress, so it is a theoretical question that I keep for the purpose of allowing for a missed understanding on my part)

Some definitions are probably helpful to others who don't know the particulars of my loaded questions.

'Anthropologically established' means that human beings are observably built for and have predispositions that anticipate the meeting of such needs as are also observable. These needs are not limited to but include aspects of the human being that we would label physical, emotional, spiritual, mental, intellectual, instinctual, creative, expressional, etc... So, it is a wholistic evaluation of the needs and expressions (also evaluated through needs assessment), which is always open to expressed needs according to timing and maturation, circumstances, etc...

It is my macrocosmic view of a microcosmic organism relative to the universe. It is primarily an intuitive and instinctual assessment that I confirm through study, and not the other way around, which would obviously completely defeat the definition if it were reversed that way. Abstract enough? I'll run a test demonstration later in this post.

'Beneficial' means that the decision would yield an affirmation of or realignment of a wayward quality according to the AEN.

'Authentic need' means that the need is established as essential to the well-being and functionality of the human being within context, and that context includes the proper order of the human being- family, community, etc... Human beings have an essential need for community which is demonstrated by the qualities we possess that anticipate response- speech, creative expressions such as music, art and dance, etc...- and the more visceral utter interdependency of the human race for its survival.

'Authentic need' is distinct from 'manufactured/synthetic need' which includes things like weight-lifting shoes, which are not an authentic need, but reflect the synthetic grasping after what would otherwise be the authentic need- to use our bodies for physical work. Case in point: fire-wood collecting in the woods leaves little necessity for weight-lifting exercises at the end of the day. Can you imagine collecting straw and clay and sand all day to make bricks and then thinking, 'well, I better do some weight-lifting or my body will be weak'? So saying, weight-lifting is a synthetic substitute for an authentic situation and need, and so the shoes 'needed' to support the outsides of the feet to prevent ankle roll-overs are also a manufactured or synthetic need. This would not pass my test.

Because Sunday School is becoming and has been for over five years in my life, a hot topic, I thought I would use it as my example of how this works for me. Please understand that this is not comprehensive, so you're going to have to trust that in the past six years of my research and study, contemplation and observation, I may have already come across the accepted and mainstream defences of Sunday School's presumed merit. You'll see at least a portion of why it doesn't pass my test in the following:

What is the anthropologically established norm (AEN)?

Human beings need beneficial education.

Human beings receive beneficial education through common experience with parents first, siblings, family and bonded community members.

Human beings need to worship God.

Human beings learn continuously and are innately equipped to do so in the most efficient and beneficial ways.

Human beings worship spontaneously and are innately equipped to do so .

Does SS conform to the anthropologically established norm?

It does not provide a common experience for the parents, siblings, family and community except in retrospect. It requires the subdivision of the parents from the children and the children from their siblings in most cases and the family from the community.

It does not provide worship; this is a human expression and does not come from anything not specifically human such as a curriculum or program. Worship will happen there; worship happens everywhere and is not limited to location or activity.

It does not connect to or seamlessly coincide with and work within the natural learning rhythms of the human being, given that it is a time set apart and includes outwardly prescribed activities that the participants do not choose and may or may not be (likely not) relevant to the authentic needs of the participants.

It is like 'school' in all ways and for this reason any defence of SS is also a defence of mass schooling- both being completely outside the anthropologically established norm.

Is SS beneficial, as in does it meet authentic needs?

If it does, it is incidental and in spite of its utter inefficacy to meet the individual and communal needs of the human being. A human being's needs are met through relationship and that within family and community. SS doesn't offer either, and requires the separation of the child from the family and community as they spend their time elsewhere, excepting the 'teacher' who is not an adequate substitute for the richness of relationship that naturally occurs in a family and community. The education received under this circumstance can't be better than utterly inadequate.

Is it personally beneficial, as in does it meet needs in the way that the person for which this is being considered will appreciate?

Not authentically, but most people's manufactured needs are met in this way.

Does it improve upon the anthropologically established norm? (I've NEVER seen this occur that something outside of the anthropologically established norm leads to true progress, so it is a theoretical question that I keep for the purpose of allowing for a missed understanding on my part)

Absolutely not.

The anthropologically established norm is easily observed in the order of the human being. S/he is born from the mother whose body provides his/her nourishment and comfort, temperature regulation and heart rhythm regulation, amongst other hugely important aspects of well-being such as security through emotional and spiritual confidence and openness, etc... The child and mother are meant to be skin-to-skin as much as possible and both experience stress when this is not the norm or it has been stopped even for a few minutes. The father and siblings provide a support and network of interesting and familially/culturally relevant information and acceptance to the child.

As the child grows, s/he chooses to wander in increasing increments from his/her mother's body. The distance that occurs in every way establishes first independence in the child from the body of his mother and her direct control over his/her activities (since they do everything together initially), followed by the mature phase of the human being which is the consciousness of and contribution to interdependence. There is no phase-skipping. If the child is removed from his/her chosen incremental increase in space, the child loses the ability to learn and mature in that phase. A child who is required to separate from his/her mother will not gain independence, but survival coping strategies which are not at all the same thing. This child will not move into an understanding and maturation that is encompassed by the consciousness of interdependence until and unless s/he can pass through the phase of independence first. This doesn't ever happen out-of-order. It may take 12 or 56 or 99 years or never, but the order remains and the human being is meant to have moved through these phases in the opportune time when s/he is primed instinctually for such maturation- as in the earlier years of his/her life.

Any action of society or the surrounding community must reinforce the bond and purpose of the individual family units within its context, and where that doesn't occur, where the importance of marriage and the bonds between parent and child are not recognised as primary for the well-being and survival of the community or society, a break-down of both family and society or the community is inevitable.

What are the mechanisms by which a family is reinforced in its primary role in the nurturing of both its members and the community? Firstly, it is assumed that the family remains as a whole- nourishment, education, skill-building, socialising, creativity, play, all occur as a wholistic and integrated mechanism of the natural outflow of the family dynamic simultaneous to the contribution of the community toward the family. In other words, when the community has a party, everyone is invited, not as special thing, but as a matter of course. Nobody says 'you can bring your children' because there is no opposite, nothing that relates to the separation of children from their parents, not to mention the obvious problem with if the children were left at home, who else would be assumed to be uninvited while looking after them?

Education comes from being in the presence of parents doing real work and building real relationships with the people around them. This means that the children also learn from the other people. The potential for education is then exponential. No school of any sort can provide anything that even merits comparison to this.

Nobody learns anything of true value under constant duress, except how to cope with constant duress. That seems a sad goal for a human being of immeasurable worth and potential for love and expression such as we are. Schooling has nothing better to offer than duress, and it cannot because the essential bonds that provide the security within which the human being learns most effectively and happily are assumed to be absent and strategies for coping with this are abundant, but still woefully lacking in substance since it turns out that there is no true substitute for parents and community.

This topic for me is vast and to really give it the time and justification for the years of my life that I've spent studying it, warrants a book, so I'll leave off with a simplification of the practice that I find so useful and effective in determining the natural course for myself and my family.

When something is presented to me, my question is not 'why shouldn't I?' as is generally asked of me when I deny something mainstream, but 'why would I?' Why would I send my children to Sunday School? Why would I give them antibiotics and flush out their gut flora? Why would I force them to wear shoes? Why would I feed them boxed white flour pasta products with chemical approximations of the flavours of real food? What would the potential benefits be? Why WOULD I?

I presuppose that the human being is equipped to live a human life. I wasn't born with a disposition to receive disconnected instruction or to have my natural gut flora removed, but rather strengthened, so when I ask the same question of the naturally occurring way, I come up with the answers that make sense. I would and do eat microbe-rich foods because they keep me healthy, those microbes being interconnected with my own body within the larger living organism which is our home- earth. I would and do go barefoot because the human foot is our equipment for walking and does so superbly well. I educate my children as we walk along the road, as I go about my work, as I sit with them observing our geese's foraging habits, as we eat free-range organically-raised roasted chicken, etc... They are continually cognizant of the gift that the Lord has given us in whatever we are enjoying, and even suffering.

Default to nature, not to the mainstream. Ask questions that probe to the core, and not just to below the surface. That's not deep enough. Not even close. At least not for me.

On Women In Ministry

Gregory Boyd. He's a man of great learning, insight, and dedication. A former atheist, he became a Christian in 1974, and eventually gratuated from Princeton Theological Seminary with a Ph. D. He's a formidable philosopher, a top-notch theologian, author of many scholarly and popular books, a former professor of theology, and currently a pastor at Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Lately, I've been reading through some of the material on his site, Christus Victor Ministries, and came across a very important article I think every Christian should read. It concerns women in ministry. It's a hot-topic, to say the least, and has been for quite some time.

Now, given my background in conservative Lutheranism, I was once a staunch supporter of the 'men only' policy toward ministry positions. Women, I believed, were wonderful, beautiful, and spiritually gifted individuals who -- for reasons that were suspicious to me then -- were disallowed any ecclesial teaching office. Since I was ordained a Rev. Deacon, and was training in seminary to become a pastor, I wasn't prepared at the time to challenge the status quo. Most especially because it would mean expulsion from seminary, and a definite case for church discipline where I was serving.

On a more personal note, I am married to a tremendously erudite, and sagacious woman (Sarah, co-author on this blog) who, despite her many and profound giftings, was prevented from using those giftings (which extend beyond her natural ability to nurture our children, and cook food) because of her status as a woman. To Sarah's credit, I probably wouldn't have done as well as I did at seminary were it not for her incisiveness, natural knack for making theology practical, and her superior ability to converge disparate, abstract pieces of information. In many ways, any success I have ever had as a teacher, church servant, and communicator is due to Sarah's ministrations to me, and our family.

Given what I've just written -- that I was always suspicious of the 'men only' dogma, and that Sarah has many extra-domestic talents and giftings -- it became a matter not just of curiosity, but of necessity for me to start asking important questions like: why shouldn't my wife, who is a more capable teacher than me, have the opportunity to teach? What biblical warrant is there for Sarah to have to suppress her God-given abilities? And wouldn't that be contradictory? Or, as Sarah once put it, "why would God give me these gifts and then make it so that I'm disallowed using them?" These kinds of questions apply across the board, really: why would God create women to have the same spiritual and intellectual gifts as men, declare their total equality to men (Gal. 3:28), and then proscribe their use of those gifts? Is God capricious? Is He fixed on torturing women's psyches? What's the deal here?

As I said earlier, it became a matter of necessity to have these questions answered. And the answers didn't come fast, or easy. In fact, I agonized over this issue for many years. I was torn between wanting to keep my loyalties to those men of God that I loved (Rev. R.A. Ballenthin, and Dr. William Mundt), the Scriptural declarations that seemed so precise and clear (esp. 1 Tim. 2:11-15, and 1 Cor. 14:34-35), and the fantastically gifted woman I married. All of this came to a head when I took two years away from church (a wonderful catharsis for my wife and I, but not something I would necessarily prescribe as a common course of action).

During those two years in absentia, I grew more sensitive to the arguments proposed by my wife, and other scholars that certain passages of Scripture were more culturally relevant, or contextually skewed due to lack of appropriate cultural references in our present day. I didn't want to bite this bullet, as it were, because it seemed so hackneyed, so oft-parrotted that I didn't want to re-visit the philosophical implications it presented; I had already dismissed such ideas in my seminary days. God's Word was God's Word, and it contains no errors. And in this case, I still believe that God's Word contains no errors: it says what it means about women in ministry. The problem was that I wasn't understanding what Scripture meant by what it said. So, because of that, I was forced to chew back my (then) cynicism on the issue of 'cultural relevance', and re-visit the issue.

Fortunately, my wife and I came into contact with a house-church couple who invited us to participate with them in worship from the home. Eager to have fellowship, we accepted the invitation. But it quickly became apparent to us that this couple was living out to a much greater, and to a much more shameful level, the same 'men only' policy that I was struggling with. As I observed them and asked some questions, their understanding of Scriptural warrant for silencing women reflected the extreme logical end of the same understanding I had ruefully carried about for years: women were out-of-place teaching in church. For them, however, the extreme expressed itself in complete and utter disallowance of women to speak at all during times of worship. In fact, the one time I witnessed this couple's teenage daughter speak, both her mother and father quickly turned on her and launched Scriptural condemnations at her as if they were taking target practice with a handgun. She was shamed, the father was red-faced with anger, and her lively eyes dimmed into sadness.

So how was that experience 'fortunate'? Simple: it put a bold-faced stamp on the absurdity of over-extending ancient cultural imperatives into present-day scenarios. To put it differently, I learned that day that it is of paramount importance to re-examine our cultural differences now that we're 2000 years removed from the ancient biblical world. Sometimes there will be consonance. Sometimes there will be startling, and important differences. Seems like a simple, even obvious fact, doesn't it? But try learning that from the position of a pastor-in-training, who wants nothing more than to do God's will, and take care of his family. It isn't easy. And it took a total break from the pursuit of that vocation, that lifestyle, to even begin to have the opportunity to freely explore such an issue.

But I did. And here is where I now stand: I find it absurd that women are excluded from ministry positions. Not only that, I find the notion of religious 'authority' to be so illusory, and filled with shoddy, unbiblical reasoning that I can no longer justify the typical dyed-in-the-wool treatment of "no woman should have authority over a man" (1 Tim. 2:11). That pericope was an imperative leveled by Paul to a particular church, in a particular locale, at a particular time experiencing difficulties with certain rebellious tendencies. Paul, being the educated, and highly intelligent man that he was, I am quite certain of it, would have made a universal statement to all believers if it truly were God's will that no woman at any point in time, anywhere, and for any reason was to have a voice in the assemblies of God. It would be the height of imbecility and insanity to suggest that Paul intended a universal application of the 'men-only' policy when he quite consistently breaks his own policy in several other places in Scripture! It would also be egregious to state that Paul attempted a universal silencing of women when he wrote such passages as 1 Tim. 2:11 and 1 Cor. 14:34-35 when he was intimately aware of the ministry of women to Christ, Christ's elevation of women, and other Scriptural writings that showcase the importance of women in ministering capacities.

No. Paul intended to be particular in his application of the passages I've noted. To say otherwise, would be to misrepresent one of Christianity's greatest figures, and declare God a liar. Are you willing to go that distance? I'm not. I'm also not willing to make arbitrary, unbiblical distinctions the likes of which allow for women to minister in churches but only in nursaries, or to female 'tweens'. If you've agreed with me so far -- that women are equally ministers with men -- then such a cockeyed distinction is just another way to subvert the potential capacities of women in the church.

For some extra, more clearly explained material on this subject, let me refer you to Gregory Boyd's article "The Case for Women in Ministry". It's an excellent read with a lot of fantastic points, and straight-up exegesis.

Inspired By a True Story

I am not certain about the biblical story told about Adam and Eve. I am certain that the message as it was intended remains intact today. I am certain that it has been told for innumerable generations in order to share the message of it. I am not certain though, what sort of story it is.

It isn't as simple as concluding that either it is literal- reporting factual information as it unfolded in real-time in a specific point in history- or allegorical/metaphorical. Whether *the* Adam and Eve of the story existed as they are portrayed or not seems somewhat irrelevant to me, but it is clearly very important to many people that a side is taken on the issue of the veracity of the historicity of the story and its characters. I make no such promise to allay the anxiety of anyone hoping to see me resolve my own position on the matter.

I'd like to share another option. What if Adam and Eve did exist, and the story was also told in an allegorical way with many real-time details included, and the message of the story left intact, even though the story in its entirety isn't completely accurate? We have a genre for this sort of story even now. It's called historical fiction, and in movies, they call it 'based upon a true story' or 'inspired by a true story' so that we know that the message and purpose of the story is supposed to remain intact, but license has been taken for whatever reason (artistic, pneumonic purpose, ease of delivery, etc...) in the details likely including timelines and exact dialogue replication, sometimes characters are omitted or added in order to tell the story more effectively, etc....

Given that the Genesis account of the creation and fall (and other important stuff) was transmitted orally, could aspects of the actual story have been altered to allow for ease of delivery and memorisation for tradition? Could the whole story have been transplanted into a context that would allow for the message to be better understood than it would have been if it had been told as it occurred? I've never met anyone who had the book of Leviticus memorised, and if the original account of the creation was similarly complex, and therefore ordered and presented, who could tell it, let alone remember it?

What truly compromises the story?

Did Adam and Eve have to be the only people on the earth when the fall happened in order for the story to be understood and valid? Perhaps they were the only ones who initially sinned, which would warrant the story being told with them in leading roles, but is the story compromised by other players having also existed? I just wonder because God seems pretty concerned with who can procreate with whom, and sister-brother and child-parent couplings are a no-no, so who made the next generation?

There are many questions I have about this, but mostly, I wanted to point out that while I am not convinced of the real-time, detail-exact reading of the story of Adam and Eve, that doesn't mean I must therefore also discard everything within it as false or imaginary. There is a pretty wide margin for fence-sitting and even a badminton game with a fence-net. In either case, as usual regarding this subject, I am neither inclined nor intending to set up my tent, I just enjoy the company, the view, the discussion, and appreciate the fresh air. :)

Evolution Revolution?

I've been on an interesting metaphor in the stead of the abstract concept of growth, maturation of the human organism, more commonly referred to as a 'journey' for the past, um, 31 years. But more recently, I heard a short on a local Christian radio station instructing listeners that there is no mystery involved in understanding the dinosaurs, and acknowledging that many parents simply defer to evolutionary ideas because they haven't any ready answers for their children. It continues that since scripture says, in the book of Genesis, that there was no death whatsoever before the fall, evolution simply cannot be true, and therefore, human beings and dinosaurs and everything that is and has ever been on the earth has at least at some point existed concurrently since the beginning (paraphrased into my wordiness- edit bigger I say! lol).

Having paid absolutely zero attention to either side of the debate my whole life, having inserted the expected responses in my schoolwork from memory and not reason, I was startled that I even noticed this little bit of sickly sweet smelling radio candy.

So where IS that iron-clad scriptural account of no death before the fall? I checked Genesis; nothing. We surely die after we sin, but no mention of whether we were going to physically perish anyway (maybe it would have taken longer?), and nothing relating to the other creatures having never physically died before either. Okay, so without scriptural support and evidence for such a claim, why is this so commonly taught and accepted as scripturally sound doctrine?

Then, while reading Francis Collins' The Language of God, Collins alerted me to the Genesis account of the creation. Hmmm. Not all at once. Everything was created in steps. He asks how long the days were before the sun was created, if one holds to 'a day' being 24 hours, no more, no less. I consider the days described as eras rather than clock rotations anyway, so I wasn't bothered by this question. But, it occurred to me that the various arguments against old earth and evolutionary theory seem to rely very heavily or completely upon irreducible complexity and therefore, in a bizarro way, on inadequate technology.

Once we know and can view the parts that make what was previously thought to be irreducible, what happens to the arguments? What if the earth isn't flat and knowing this doesn't result in believers becoming morally unstable, abominable, reprobate despots?

My perspective on the universe seems to be evolving... ;) This may end up being the segue to my coming out of the... cave?