When you leave your own culture, you learn things about it. One of the things that I learned about Canadian culture when I moved to Japan is that we don’t seem to place a high value on wisdom. In Canada, we work hard at helping our children learn skills with lots of after-school clubs and activities, but in Japan, proverbs still have a significant place in a child’s development. In kindergarten, our children started learning Japanese proverbs along with the other kids. There are lots of well-made comic books that introduce them to age-old truisms that are recognized across society. In elementary school, children are formally taught proverbs and even tested on them. As a result, children grow with a sense that older generations possess wisdom about how life can be navigated effectively.
People don’t tend to talk a lot about the conflicts they have. That’s understandable, of course, but the result can be that we don’t have any sense of what’s normal. I often hear people say, “Every couple argues,” but what does that mean? Someone might wrongly conclude that every couple has shouting matches with threats and intimidation. That’s not the case! When does conflict cross the line? When should you be concerned? What kind of behaviour should be out of bounds?
Spiritual abuse can occur in a marriage, a parent-child relationship, and in the church and other religious settings. It’s powerful because it feeds on the guilt and shame that we can all experience and uses the Scriptures to assert control rather than to minister. If you’re being oppressed with the Bible, you need more than just someone else’s words – you need the clarity of the Word of God itself to discern what’s happening. Here are some Scriptures to use and questions to ask to discern spiritual abuse.
If you’ve seen the heartache and struggles of those who find themselves married to an abusive spouse, you’d do anything to try to help someone avoid that kind of pain. The problem is that most people have no idea that their spouse will turn out to be abusive until after the wedding. When you’re dating someone, there are so many things that you’re learning about the other person. And the excitement and thrill of being in love inevitably cloud your judgment and keep you from seeing things that you might otherwise notice. In her excellent book, “Is It Abuse?” Darby Strickland defines what the root of oppression is and gives a premarital assessment designed to help you identify the warning signs of abuse before it happens. Let me share some of the insights that stood out to me.
This week, I had a strange experience with two books on marriage. I finished reading Darby Strickland’s book, “Is It Abuse?” and started reading Tim and Kathy Keller’s book, “The Meaning of Marriage.” Both of them are excellent. Both of them address the topic of marriage from the Scriptures. But it’s as if they’re addressed to people from two different worlds. The first helps people to identify whether domestic abuse is present in a relationship and gives strategies for addressing it. The second helps people discover how a marriage can become all it was intended to be. Reading one gave me new awareness in reading the second. I realized that in only approaching marriage from the ideal that the Bible presents, there are principles that can be misunderstood and even used by abusers to manipulate their spouses. Consider the following examples.
As you look through the lists of qualifications for elders in the New Testament, you can’t find words like tough, outspoken, bold, or unrelenting. In their place is the call to gentleness. An elder is someone who is neither quarrelsome nor arrogant but is marked by a considerate attitude toward others. Consider whether you’re gentle enough to do the hard work of Christian leadership.
The most common term to refer to church leaders in the New Testament is “elder,” but it sounds foreign because we value youth so much today. The tech revolution has deemed most people who are over 30 as out-of-date, and so calling leaders “elders” seems to require that they be old and traditional. There’s value in holding onto the term, though. While it doesn’t demand a certain age, designating Christian leaders as “elders” does draw attention to the value of time as a necessary preparation for the role. In response to the question, “How old do you have to be to become an elder?” the Bible seems to answer in several ways.
Speaking into the internet is different than preaching because you can’t see who’s on the other side. At the end of the year, though, I like to check back and see what articles and videos gained the most traction. While I write for the congregation, certain posts attract broader attention (although in my case, not very broad!). This year, I compared the most-watched videos with the most read blog articles, took out anything from The Unstuck Life, and combined the results to form the top 10. This year, 3 of the top 10 related to Christian living and the gospel, 3 focused on predestination, and 4 dealt with the pandemic and mental health. Maybe there’s something you missed, or maybe there’s something you want to give another look. Here are the top 10 in ascending order.
Early in the pandemic, I thought I was taking a long-term approach to all that was happening. I knew that we couldn’t just hold our breath for a few weeks or months and hope that it would all blow over. I knew that we had to settle in for the long haul and develop long-term strategies to cope in the midst of an extended battle with COVID-19. We’re now well past what I had anticipated, and all reports are that we still have a long way to go. I want to share what I learned about how Christians are faring in the pandemic from The Fellowship’s recent national conference and suggest some areas where we need to pray and give attention.
We all know that Christian leadership is different than leadership in other areas. We’re not surprised to see certain requirements that you wouldn’t see, for example, in a senior management position. But there’s always been one requirement that seemed out of place. The qualifications for elders in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 both list “hospitality.” Can you imagine being interviewed for an executive role and being asked about your grilling skills and the frequency of your dinner parties? Is that what’s required of an elder? Why is hospitality one of the essentials of Christian leadership?
