Some interesting things elsewhere III

Yes, that’s me, sitting at the beach at the mouth of most Southern estuary of the river Schelde in the North Sea, in the Netherlands, where we were with the people of our Vineyard church from Antwerp yesterday. As you can see the weather was changing at the moment of taking the picture, and not for the better…

Now onto the new list of ‘Some interesting things elsewhere’: I know I’m not disciplined enough, and not able to give my blog enough priority to do this every week like some bloggers do, but here is a new list:

Dianne Anderson  has written an interesting series on C.S. Lewis and platonism(part I, part II, part III) and complementarian use of the shadowlands metaphor. I think she has an interesting point that is much broader than her feminist application, and important in other ways too.  And then Sarah moon has a post on ‘intangible christianity‘, and I understood much more why her point is so important. Christian salvation is not something vague and mystical (in the pejorative sense) that means that somewhere in the heavenly realm your status has been changed, and your sins (actually the punishment for them) has been ‘washed away’ without anything happening here and now, but it is the Inbreaking of the Kingdom of God, ‘already and not yet’, that will only be complete after the Judgment with erasing of all evil. But salvation is something very real here and now!

Josh Hopping has a post about scriptures, politics, and the bootstrap myth, confronting the myth of the ‘do-it-yourself’-person that is even more pervasive in America but endemic to (neo)liberal Western thought but completely unchristian. Something similar from Bill Guerrant on sustainable traditions about American virtues and the seven deadly sins. (And again, what’s said about the US can be broadened to our Western culture in general…)

These stats on the sex industry from treasures in Los Angeles make me very very very sad… Kyrië Eleison! 

Related, Kurt Willems on the Pangea blog asks question ‘can porn be used responsible’, and gives an interesting observation about freedom: “God invites us to allow the Holy Spirit to shape our character to make us look more like Jesus, free from the shackles of longing for someone other than a spouse. Porn never accomplishes this aim in any circumstance.“

And for something completely different, Scott Morizot wonders about the influence of Islam on the Western renaissance in general and calvinism in specific. Intriguing idea.

peace

Bram

Why I wanted to marry an ugly girl as a teenager…

Rachel Held Evans, a thoughtful progressive evangelical woman who is doing a year of biblical womanhood for a book project, and exploring the bizarre world of conservative ‘biblical womanhood’, has a very interesting post about female beauty and the way some ‘conservative’ Christians approach it. I must say I’m not in that segment of christianity anyway, and that I never fully understood how the described mentality can be claimed to be Christian, but who am I but a stranger on this planet… Anyway, for what it’s worth I can give my view on these things, even if it’s as alien to some as conservative christian gender roles are to me.

Let me first say that I am mostly very annoyed by the sexist way this culture defines the worth of a woman by her beauty (according to standards that are alien to me) and that I’m always surprised to see when some Christians seem to teach essentially the same. It seems superficial, sexist and very unrealistic to me. Surely, women are beautiful (if they don’t put on too much make-up and dress like Lady Gaga that is) and God created them that way, but no-one stays young, and whatever our obsession with youth and beauty in this culture may be it won’t change a thing, and our artificial ways of keeping up the appearance are not healthy at all. And there is more to beauty than this.

To quote Rachel:

I often struggle with what appear to be misogynistic elements of the Levitical purity codes, of ancient Israeli wartime conduct, of the letters of Paul and the doctrines of the early church. But in this case, the misogyny is new. The ancient writers of Scripture seem to affirm what all women know -

That our bodies change as we get older.

That our bodies change when we bear children.

That our bodies change when we get sick.

That our bodies change as we experience joy, pain, life, death, victory, heartache, and time.

And frankly, the suggestion that men are too weak to handle these realities is as emasculating as it is unbiblical.

That last sentence is very important. To me it’s very sexist, not just to women, but to men, to suggest that men are too weak to handle this aging and loss of youth in their wives. Maybe men are if the world teaches it to us, I guess it’s a very Freudian idea which has parallels in certain muslim views on men and woman. But by no means there is anything biblically justifiable in it, nor is it Christlike!!

Rachel ended with a question that sounds just too silly to me to seriously consider.

“Guys – What is your reaction to the suggestion that a wife’s changing body incites men to cheat?”

My reaction on her blog was:

I’m tired of this kind of sexism towards men, as if we’re only interested in sexy bodies and not in a life companion to share everything with. My reaction would be that you’ve never loved you wife in the first place if you cheat for such a reason, but that you’ve projected some ‘smoking hot fantasy wife’ onto the woman you married. Which is not very ‘biblical’ at all, and very superficial and ‘worldly’.

I mean it, if you cheat on your wife because she’s aging and becoming less beautiful, you probably never loved her, only her beauty and what it stood for to you.

Now on to my strange title: my thoughts also went back to some Christian summer youth camp long ago, one to which I don’t have much positive memories. What I do remember is that I was sleeping in a room with a lot of guys who were talking about girls all the time in a not so very ‘christian’ way (not the way the leaders of the camp would have liked…). I can remember some of them making tasteless and not even funny jokes about a girl with unshaved legs. I still feel ashamed I didn’t speak up to silence them. I hated the whole atmosphere of ‘we boys together’, and was sometimes fairly disgusted. I couldn’t look at girls that way, I saw people like me who needed frienship and honesty, and respect. At that age (17 or so) I was still a lonely boy who’d never had a girlfriend though I was good at being friends with girls that I’d never fall in love with.

So about then I had completely crossed over to the other side in the war between the sexes. I saw the way girls, people like me I liked to be friends with, were supposed to conforn to unhealthy standards, and I saw them being hurt by it on the one side, and boys who kicking on playboy posters on the other side. Yes I’m not only moderately feminist from time to time, but even a closet misandrist (who do we have a word for mysogyny but not a male version?) who wants to live in an asexual world when I see some of those abberations of ‘masculinity’.

At that moment I made the decision to marry an ugly girl. I really did. Because it’s just plainly dishonest when people who are less ‘beautiful’ don’t find a lover to share their life with! It’s just immature when the beautiful girls get more chances.

(oh, and I never thought of myself as beautiful nor ugly, it’s always been a non-issue to me.)

I suppose it’s not exactly the average teenage boys dream about girls, but I was very serious. I might have been a struggling christian on some fronts at that age, but I knew love was more important than looks, and I knew that the beauty standards of our world are just not fair. (Later on I wrote the song ‘unfair competition’ about it, you can listen and download it at my bandcamp site)

And it’s not that I’m not very interested in female beauty, I am. That’s one of the reasons why I hate porn so much, because it defiles something so beautiful… But it didn’t seem right to add ‘beautiful’ to whatever list of requirements a future wife should have. It felt kinda evil even… Very unchristlike.

I guess I was a radical (that’s what they wanted us to be on the camp anyway, ‘radical’ christian youth) even though I’ve never talked much about this to people.

And I didn’t succeed anyway: my wife is kinda beautiful. Not only when puts on make-up or pretty clothes, but also when she’s just woken up, or walks around the house in the most uncool old shabby clothes. If you don’t find a woman beautiful in those moments, you don’t find her beautiful, period.

And I do even have a very beautiful baby daughter right now.

And now I kinda wonder if it’s possible anyway to love an ugly woman. Not because ugly people are unlovable, but because we learn to see the beauty in people when we love them. No human being created in Gods image can be really ugly if you love them. There is a beauty that goes deeper than outward looks, and that’s the real beauty. But it might require another way of looking, more in line with the way God looks…

Open our eyes to Love, God

shalom

Bram

just in from a spammer

You actually make it seem so easy with your presentation but I find this topic to be actually something which I think I would never understand. It seems too complicated and extremely broad for me. I’m looking forward for your next post, I will try to get the hang of it!

from someone with the word ‘porn’ in the website, on my ‘about me’ page…

it’s a strange day…

 

on sexy porn models and human dignity

Last night in a dream I suddenly had clear and developed plans to make an awareness system for pornography, which at least in my dreamy state seemed perfectly possible to do. When I woke up a lot of the ideas was lost, and it also seemed a lot less practical and much less obvious to do in the real world than I had imagined in my dream, but nevertheless I thought that I could try to just  write it down the way I remember it, and share with the world…

Even without taking my faith as a christian as a factor, I simply as a human being find the concept of porn a very bad idea that enormously devaluates human dignity. Getting yourself sexually exited on a picture of someones sexy body generally goes together with the reducing of thet person to just her body, and the reducing of that body to just some organs that can give you sexual pleasure… No woman (or man) deserves to be robbed of her humanity that way, and it’s extremely low to make money using people in such a way.

The use of images of sexy women to sell something that has nothing at all to do with them is totally degrading for both sexes. It’s not only woman-unfriendly, but also sexist to the other side. It is just assumed that I as a man will follow my natural urges and buy whatever crap they sell just because those women arouse me. sorry, but tend to I find this very offending! it’s an insult to her, and to me, and it devaluates humanity for everyone who would be conditioned enough to fall for it… For a long time I have been thinking that I should not take this nonsense, but still what can I do about it? I am not the type to write letters and stuff. and I’m not a knight who can fight wind will, let alone real dragons…

(and I’m not even talking about teens in their puberty time who are filled with unrealistic pictures of the female body and sex before they even have sex, which can be very destructing for their relationships later in their lives. I know there are already age limits for porn and that they don’t make any difference in real life, but maybe awareness raising in school suring lessons about sexuality may be a good idea… )

Every woman or man is a person. (As a christian I would add that we are created in Gods image, but that’s not an argument that I can use to convince people who believe differently) so even speaking just from a basic humanist position, every person deserves respect as such, and a whole industry that is built on the abuse of the human sexual integrity should not be allowed to just do anything. At least they should be balanced with warnings and reminders.

Like the warnings we have here on packs of cigarettes, there could be awareness stickers on magazines or other publications of a pornographic type. Just a reminder that the people who are shown are human just like the reader. I had a cool text in my dream, but I lost it.. Something like “All men and woman shown here, are humans just like you are! They don’t only have a sexy body, But  also  a  personality,  and  human  dignity, friends and family, hopes and dreams, and they need love, friendship and happiness just like you and everybody”. The same kind of reminder sticker could be used for publicity and advertisements with (almost) naked women (or men) used to sell something that has nothing to do with sexy human bodies. And naturally also on the boxes of pornographic movies such a warning could be put… And the films could be preceded with a small awareness video clip (like the anti-piracy vids) For example starting with the sexy picture of a model, and then parts of an interview where she is in normal clothes and without make-up, telling about her family, her time as a child, her hobbies, her hopes and dreams, to conclude with a photograph made with ‘aging software’ to show how she might look within 40 years… and then al last slogan as ‘sexy models are as human as you are’

The same could be done to certain music videos (cough, cough, R&B)…

No I’m not a conservative puritan, far from it. And it’s not that I would want censorship as it exist in the USA (which is extremely irritating), just a very personal reminder for the uncensored versions that everybody, also those with a sexy body that make money with it, are much more than their body. and that it is not fair to treat anyone like a sex object. Human dignity is something we should not trample. Not in war and torture, but also not in all this commercialising of sex!

But I guess I’m just being naieve, and my imaginary activism will never do anything in the real world…

shalom

Bram

Post-human broken sexuality… vs the beauty in this innocence

Sometimes I feel like an alien on this planet… Maybe it’s not okay for some people to watch this, but otherwise, just watch this video, and ask yourself WTF???

And yes, the f-word is totally appropriate in this context. It is all so fucked-up, and broken, and degraded, and degrading… I’m not a specialist, bu I think it’s a lot worse even than regular porn, which is degrading to both men and woman, woman become objects, men become something less-than human that has to obey the dark side of their instincts. And I’m really I’m glad that all I feel when seeing this is a disconnect. This is far beyond anything that even the darkest evil part of my sexuality could enjoy… It doesn’t feel human anymore, it reminds me more of Marilyn Manson than of the oversexed videos they had when I was a teenager. Everything about her looks fake. There is nothing left of love and playfullness and human beauty.

I’m really glad that I’m not one of these poor teenagers who see this as a mainstream hit video on TV and without knowing for their view on sexuality based on this kind of shit. It is so destructive. I see nothing positive about sexuality in it. Se doesn’t even seem to care, she just gets taken by whoever is accidentally close to her. Her face reminds me of the girls in the red light street, whose eyes haunted me for long after I passed through there…

There’s no good news in sexuality to find in here… It’s so fucking empty!!!

Oh how I wish someone could just give her a hug, and be her friend…

Oh how I wish all of this nonsense is just fake, and that after her working day is over she’ll come home and sleep in the arms of a loving boyfriend, as was the case in the story of a stripper with whom I once heard an interview on the radio…

This one is a bit different, it’s just the consequences of rock’n roll I guess… She’s a human wreck, but I can still see human brokenness in it… But still I see no hope, no light at the end of the darkness, a description of a broken sexuality and a broken humanity. There’s nothing about it that could ever seduce me to ‘go over to the dark side’. Only a foretaste of hell…

All this brokenness makes me so sad and wanting to cry inside.

I know I am so blessed to not have to think that all this fucked-upness is all there is. Praise God!! I think about the way some people in this world are positively surprised by my own relationship. Being together for six years, married for almost 3, and still playful and in love and best friends. It is the opposite of all of this fucked-upness. Maybe not perfect, but there is trust and love and safeness…

shouldn’t we as Christians try to find a way to bring love as ‘good news’ in this sexually broken world? That sexuality doesn’t have to be pain and brokenness, but that it CAN be safe and intimate and loving and stuff, and that lifelong monogamous relationships are possible? It may require a priority and paradigm shift, but it’s worth it. It really is…

‘marriage’ is not about legal contracts, or institutions in the first place, or decadent wedding parties, and whatever. It is about a lifelong commitment, in which a new family is born. It also is about having a safe place for sexuality. Sexuality is something very powerful, and if it goes wrong, it breaks people, it destroys, it tears apart. That’s the message we should bring. Not that sex outside of marriage is wrong because somehow the bible says it, but that it is wrong because it hurts, and destroys, and degrades, and in the end you loose your humanity like the laday gaga character…

Love and Lifelong monogamous relationships are good news…

For a contrast I will end with the lyrics of a song that was recorded on our wedding ceremony. It can be listened at last.fm (look for the player) is a very lo-fi recording, sorry, and it’s just me and my wife performing.

the beauty in this innocence (Bram Cools)

before you touched my lips
i was unkissed
and so were you my love
a new world will open up for us
like an empty canvas
that’s only ours to paint
in a world of ugliness
in a world or lies
let’s paint something beautiful
let ‘s paint something true (my love)

to love means to give
and I gave myself to you my love
and I ‘ll give myself more and more
iust like you do
let God be our witness here
those promises we made
when we were lying on the edge of the world
breaking them wou! d be suïcide
the end of all we stand for

take my hand and come with me
let’s walk slowly
among those flowers
no need to hurry
let’s take our time
go there barefoot
with our toes through the grass
if we’d go there by car
we’d leave a scar in the landscape
and spoil this garden
and it’s the beauty in this innocence
that I’m in love with

it’s the beauty in this innocence
that I’m in love with

Isn’t only the possibility of this kind of relationships already very good news in the world of ‘bad romance’ and ‘I’m no good’???? We should not condemn those people, they are already in hell, we should bring them good new. Love does exist!!! But that means hat we have to live that good news, and show it to the world with our own lives and relationships. Like the gospel..

(And yes it may sound naieve, but is it not equally naieve to believe that this fucked-up brokenness is all there can be?)

shalom

Bram

christians and cross-gender friendships

One of the things of american christianity, which sometimes get copied in this part of europe but seems totally alien to me, is the way some people seem affraid of the other sex, and use theology to justify that.

Now, I do know some people just can’t get along with the other sex. In working class circles I noticed that there sometimes was a really large gap between the sexes that I could not understood, but I always noticed that such a disconnection was almost always paired to a porn-like objectification of the female. which is very evident: the more you treat female humans as sex objects, the less you will relate to them as human beings that you can be friends with… So I’m not that surprised when that kind of men would tell me that it’s impossible for them to be just friends with a woman. It is a deep and grave wound in their sexual human-ness, but totally understand, even though it’s sad and evil and it does no goed for man neither woman and brings lots of hurt to both…

But I’ve always seen Christianity as something which goes beyond that, something which bridges the gap between the sexes (‘in Christ there is male nor female’…) and cures the disconnections bethween people. But some people seem to totally disagree with that. I know some ‘true love waits’ type of people disapprove of being alone with the other sex at all, just like some ministries have rules for pastors to never be alone with someone of the other sex. Like this one from saddleback church. For reasons of temptation or reputation if you’d be seen with someone and stuff… But all of this looks so cramped in my eyes….

My whole life is opposed to that anyway, I am the kind of guy who sometimes makes friends with girls more easily than with other guys, even though the girls I like to be friends with are not the type of girl I would be romantically interested in. (Except for one interesting exception, who is now my wife…) I like to be friends with girls and women, and nothing of that did substantially change when I passed from celibate singleness into a relationshop into marriage, au contraire: she likes about me that I see girls and women as humans to be friends with, and not just sexuals things that could tempt me or that I could sexual fantasies about or something like that. Yike! Women are people to be friends with, and sisters in Christ.

In the end, doesn’t common sense and basic ethics tell us that we should consider every woman as a sister, mother, or daughter, depending on age? Or am I too naieve in thinking such things are a matter or logic? maybe I am. Maybe the disconnect is rooted too deep in our societies, and it may be growing with the explosion of porn and R&B-videos…

But still: that has nothing to do with Jesus And reading through the bible I see Jesus also acting against all that cross-gender paranoia. Jesus breaks all taboos when talkin (alone!) to the samaritan woman at the well: a rabbi doesn’t speak to women, and a jew doens’t speak to a samaritan, and one does not speak to people with the sexual history she has when one wants te be respected. That kind of logic is what I recognise in the Saddleback story, but it’s exactly what Jesus opposes.

Besides, I find it sexist and degrading, the idea that being with someone from the other sex should be considered unsafe. Very insulting even if I would be a woman offering to drive some speaker to somewhere, and he would refuse for that reason. Even autistic maybe. But totally unchristlike. Indeed Christ would not be hired at all in such ministry with the attitude he had towards women, if we look at the samaritan woman, and his friendship with Maria and Martha…

I still don’t get the christian intersexual disconnect, it is totally alien to me, and every time I read things suggesting that it is a controversial subject, like this zoecarnate blog-post, I am amazed again.

May we all learn to love…

shalom

Bram

ps:  for people interested in the subject, I do recommend the blog of Dan Brennan, who writes a lot about cross-gender friendships and related subjects from a somewhat post-evangelical perspective…