Jackets

I don’t like shopping for clothes. Not only do I categorise all non-underwear items of clothing as startling expenses and therefore invariably feel guilty while paying for them (which lasts for up to a week afterwards, no matter how often I shower), the combination of lights and sounds and busyness in shopping centres frazzles my brain and makes my heart pound anxiously until I leave. I would happily move to a much warmer climate and start a nudist colony in order to avoid having to fret about clothing, but alas, my husband (KILLJOY) seems to think that this is an extreme and ridiculous way to avoid having to set foot in a DFO ever again. Instead, I tend to wear clothes until they are threadbare, farewelling them sadly as they float down the street after being blown off my body by a strong breeze. Here is my old jacket:

It’s been my friend for almost 6 years now and we’ve been through a lot together, however there are certain places I feel uncomfortable rocking the “grunge” look, and classy Adelaide restaurants are among them. It was time to move on. Long and boring story later, after only 15 minutes of half-hearted browsing I FOUND MY NEW JACKET! IN AN OP SHOP! It totally knocks my Twilight find out of the number one Most Exciting Vinnies Experience Ever position:

It’s leather and it’s deep-plum-coloured and I’m now one motorbike license away from being the coolest person I know.

Submission: Love in practice

from here

In a very early post on the whole egalitarian/complementarian issue, I said that I didn’t like reading pro-egalitarian arguments written by women because I tended to accuse them of “finding loopholes in what the Bible says because they don’t like submitting.” It’s interesting reading back over where I was a year ago, and comparing that to where I am now. One of the reasons I started this blog was to document the journey, and I appreciate the record I have of the ways different assumptions and confusions have been reshaped over time. An important part of my conversion to egalitarianism has involved a new respect for and love of the concept of submission; I now believe that it should be a way of life – the way of life – for all Christians. A couple of posts ago I spoke about magic, and I’m about to attempt some for myself: Be amazefied, ladies and gentlemen, as I condense two giant ideas – submission and love – into one not-too-lengthy* blog post!

Complementarian teaching on submission is aimed only at women**, encouraging them to let men initiate, lead, protect and provide for them. Submission seems to have become synonymous with Peter’s “gentle and quiet spirit” which has morphed into just being “gentle and quiet,” causing most passionate and loud-laughing women to question their submissiveness and therefore their chances of impressing godly men. So submission is reduced to women aiming to be less animated and men not thinking about it at all. (I have never once heard a man wishing he was more submissive; hopefully by the end of this post, this fact will worry you as much as it worries me.)

Egalitarian teaching on submission encourages both men and women to follow Jesus’ example by humbly “taking the very nature of a servant” and giving themselves up for others. I found it striking to read that the word ‘Islam’ means ‘submission’; it made me wonder if we Christians had missed the hugeness of submission by applying it to only one sex. Surely submission is something that should define Christianity too, because it’s the way we live out Jesus’ great command to love our neighbours as we love ourselves. As Darren Hanlon sings, “love is just a lazy generalisation that we use for a hundred different feelings and as many situations” – it’s a word we throw around a lot without ever thinking through how to actually do it (although we also know, thanks to DC Talk, that “Luv is a Verb“). I think 1 John 3:16 tells us how to do love: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” Love is being like Jesus: laying down our lives, humbling ourselves, looking to the interests of others as well as ourselves, sacrificing for the sake of others; in short, “submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21).

I used to panic about what submission was supposed to look like practically in marriage (of course, I thought it was my job alone, as the wife; my husband was busy trying to work out what practical love looked like), but I’m seeing it more often as I understand it better. As a treat, my husband and I sometimes buy a box of ice creams. There are three flavours in the box, and strawberry is our least favourite. Last time we bought them, I knew there were two left and I headed to the freezer hoping that only one would be strawberry so that I could eat it and leave my husband the one he preferred. My husband takes our son for a couple of hours every morning so that I can sleep for longer. We both aim for submission, which looks a little like a friendly dance (“You go first!” “No, you go first!” etc., etc.). He lets me initiate, and I let him initiate. We support and encourage each others’ gifts and passions. He leads where he’s strong and defers where he’s weak, and I do likewise; we recognise and embrace the fact that God has made us complementary in many ways.

In our best moments, our marriage is like a tiny and mysterious version of the Church, a body in which there is no division and each of its parts have equal concern for the other; “if one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it” (1 Corinthians 12:25-26). And it’s not just husbands and wives who make up the Church and are therefore called to adopt the attitude of Christ Jesus and be servant-hearted, or “slaves of all,” as Jesus puts it in Mark 10:44; in all relationships Christians must “do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3).

Outside of marriage, submission may mean washing up your flatmate’s dishes without keeping tab of how many nights now you’ve done it because she hasn’t. It may mean offering to make your colleague a cup of tea every time you fix one for yourself. It may mean tidying up the mess in the lounge room even though it was your brothers who created it. It may mean sticking to your position at the back of the field even though your team still hasn’t scored. It may mean biting your tongue, it may mean looking for new chances to show kindness, it may mean losing self-righteousness, time or money, and it may mean talking to someone on their own at church even though you’ve noticed your buddy Jordan is back from Europe and you haven’t had a chance to catch up with him yet. There are so many chances each day for all of us to serve, to submit, to be humble and loving, that it’s almost ridiculous to suggest that such a massive theme should apply merely to a Christian wife as she is to relate to her husband, as is too often the case. 

In last Saturday’s paper, Sandy Gordon, a sport psychologist, is quoted as saying this: “It’s important to realise that the best teams in the world aren’t full of well-rounded people who do everything well. They’re full of people with particular, complementary skills, whose goals for the team trump their individual goals.” The thought of every person in the world working alongside each other towards a goal of peace and harmony is one that fills my heart with fuzziness and makes me long for heaven. This is submission, this surrender of our own goals and selfishness and desires and pride and resources and ability for the sake of others! And this is love. Christ was servant-hearted, humble and loving, someone who repeatedly and willingly gave himself up for others (including those who hated him). His submission is what makes him so compelling, so worthy of worship and adoration, so worthy of following. It’s a beautiful guide and goal for all of his disciples, as we strive to love a little more like him and taste a piece of heaven here on earth.

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* Okay, it was a little lengthy.

** For an example, click on this link, search for the words “And I think” and then read the paragraph that follows. I originally saw this sermon on the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood website months ago, but they’re currently updating their site so I found it elsewhere.

Cars

My husband and I have always agreed that a car is not something worth taking out a loan for, so we’ve only ever owned second-hand cars. This has meant that over the years we’ve had to deal with a higher number of explosions and similar inconveniences than our new-car-driving friends, but once you’ve moved your dead vehicle out of the middle of Cleveland Street and found your way home, it’s a great story, right? Besides, it’s truly liberating to be able to respond with nonchalance upon finding that someone has scraped a good chunk of paint from all of the panels on one side of your car while you were inside shopping for milk and tissues.

I loved our first car, a zippy Mitsubishi Lancer, but it could barely fit more than 2 people inside it, let alone a baby, pram and nappy bag, so we found a replacement car a few weeks before our son was born and sold the little Lancer soon after. Our Magna, the replacement car, was not at all zippy. It was a sensitive soul, which is a kind way of saying that it broke down whenever anything important was about to happen for which we would need a working vehicle (Magna: We’re moving tomorrow and you expect me to take some stuff?! I CAN’T COPE WITH THIS KIND OF PRESSURE! *refuses to start*).

It would also let out a deafening scream to let outsiders know how hard it was working to keep its passengers air-conditioned, which regularly embarrassed my husband and caused many an argument in classy neighbourhoods (Me: I DON’T CARE WHAT THE RICH PEOPLE THINK IT’S TOO HOT ARE YOU WILLING TO KILL ME JUST FOR THE SAKE OF IMPRESSING THESE STRANGERS YOU CRUEL CRUEL MAN) or around the police (Me: ARRESTED SHMARRESTED I DON’T CARE WHAT THE POLICE THINK IT’S TOO HOT ARE YOU WILLING TO KILL ME JUST FOR THE SAKE OF NOT PAYING A FINE YOU CRUEL CRUEL MAN). We did find the Magna on Gumtree, full of camping equipment, and paid just $2000 for it, so we weren’t too surprised by its neuroses. Our Magna served us as well as it could for 2 years, and kindly let us know a couple of days before our rego was due that it was dying for real this time. That was last month, and, after about 5 minutes of mourning, my husband went out on his bike to find us our new used car.

We’re now the proud owners of a Toyota Camry, a shnazzy silver one, and by far and away the flashiest car we’ve owned. If the Lancer said, “I’m young and hip and easy to park,” and the Magna said, ”I’m pretending to be grown up but really I just want to go backpacking around Australia,” the Camry says, “I am a serious family car. I will even change gears for you.” Our cars pretty much tell the story of our transformation over the last almost-5 years since our wedding day. I don’t like to think ahead about what the car after this one will say about the next stage of our lives, but hopefully I won’t have to find that out for at least another 8-or-so mostly-car-drama-free years. Mr Camry assures me he’s completely on board with this plan.

This

This post articulates the frustration I've been feeling but explaining poorly lately. A taste, to whet your appetite:

I just wonder if perhaps your congregation is actually full of people who long to know that they are more than sinners saved by grace, who long to hear that in Christ, they are saints who sometimes sin. I wonder what would happen if from the pulpit there were messages that energized them to learn what it means to live as a saint, fully loved and wholly redeemed. I wonder if the people under your care would be so inspired and intrigued by this New Creation Life you spoke of week after week, that they would be compelled, day after day, in the quiet of their own homes and hearts, to fall more in love with our Risen Lord.