Mother Theresa's Take on What Giving Means

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Mother Theresa's Take on What Giving Means
       

Friday, September 5, 2014
Jeff Lampl

1 John 4 . .  . . Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.  

Francis Collins in his book, Belief: Readings on the Reason for Faith, includes this from Mother Theresa.

Faith is lacking because there is so much selfishness and so much gain only for self. But faith, to be true, has to be a giving love. Love and faith go together, they complete each other. (p. 259)

Some weeks back I heard there was a family who had not eaten for some days – a Hindu family – so I took some rice and went to the family. Before I knew where I was, the mother of the family had divided the rice into two and she took the other half to the next-door neighbors, who happened to be a Muslim family. Then I asked her: ” How much will all of you have to share? There are ten of you with that bit of rice.” The mother replied: “They have not eaten either.” This is greatness.  

Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So spread love everywhere you go; first of all in your home. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to the next-door neighbor. (p. 260)Abandonment is an awful poverty. There are poor people everywhere, but the deepest poverty is not being loved. (p. 261)

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My best shot at exlaining a Christian View of sexual orientation

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My best shot at explaining a Christian View of sexual orientation
Thursday, September 4, 2014
Jeff Lampl

Question: How can I have a conversation with someone about my belief in traditional marriage without coming across ad discriminatory and judgmental?  How can I respond when I am accused of denying gay people the very happiness that I experience within my traditional marriage?

In Genesis one we read,   

 “God said, 'Let us make human beings in our image, to be like ourselves . . . .' So God created human beings in his own image.  In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."    Genesis 1:26-27 (NLT)  

Then in the second chapter of Genesis, the second of the Bible’s two creation stories, a huge point is made that permeates the entire bible.   It is that the conjugal marital union of a man and a woman is the primary metaphor used in the Bible to portray God and God’s relationship to His people.  

“As the Scriptures say, 'A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.' This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one."  Ephesians 5:31-32 (NLT)   

Here's what we (or at least what I) learn.  

We know from the New Testament that God is three in one, a Trinity. Interestingly we see in the creation stories in Genesis this three in one pattern implied over and over again.  First there is the Trinitarian picture of God, creation and people.  Then there is the Trinitarian picture of God, man and woman followed by the Trinitarian image of husband, wife and child(ren).   In each image there is also procreation, the procreating image of God now represented by the union of a man and woman.  

In Genesis one man and woman together are an image of God    In Genesis two the picture is that of man and woman originally being one, then separated out then being combined as a procreative unit.   They become one again.   It is a picture is of inseparability.  “Till death do us part” we say.   The next thing we see is that they have children.  

Then as we progress throughout the Bible we notice even more.  We notice that the Old Testament views Israel as God’s bride and God as Israel’s husband.    At Sinai we witness a kind of wedding ceremony where God promises his eternal faithfulness to his bride and his bride (Israel) promises theirs.   The 10 commandments can be viewed as Israel’s wedding vows.   We observe that the entire book of Hosea is built around Hosea’s faithfulness to his prostituting wife as a metaphor for God’s faithfulness to his wandering bride, Israel.  

In the New Testament the Apostle Paul makes much of “marriage as image of God”.  In Romans chapter one the first example of idolatry that Paul uses is that of adultery, the practice of sexual union outside of the bond of marriage.   Adultery as idolatry.

Even more profoundly he speaks of marriage (harkening right back to Genesis 2) as a “mystery” (do I hear any amens?) which is a profound picture of the relationship between Christ and the Church.  

The conclusion that remains is this:   Marriage is a permanent total person (emotional, committed forever, conjugal, economic, spiritual) union between a man and a woman for the purpose of reflecting God on earth and for the procreation and nurture of children.  Any other arrangement than this, whether good or bad, is something, but that something is not marriage.   

Interestingly we also notice  as we progress through the entire Old Testament what we find is that there are no good examples anywhere of this kind of one man one woman marriage!   What we see instead are terrible marriages dysfunctional families and no one seemingly even concerned about living out this passage.   Thus we learn something  important about how to read the Bible. . . we learn that it does not gives us people who live their lives in a way that is to be emulated so much as we see flawed, imperfect sinful men and women used by God anyway.  

In particular we see how their not living out God’s purposes for their lives make a mess of their lives.    Recognizing this is a great teaching tool.   We see the difference between God’s good plan and what happens when we subvert it.    As we begin to see this it begins to dawn on us that the Bible is far more than an instruction manual.     It is a subversive deconstruction or criticism of how the people that God chose were actually living.   We see the destructive results of polygamy and not trusting God guidance on God’s original plan for marriage.   This might be stretch but could it be that Sarah and Hagar are still fighting as they rail against each other from Gaza and Israel respectively?  

With the above as necessary background for any discussion on homosexuality, I would make the following comments based on thirty five years of doing my best to think this through biblically.  

Yes, Christians do say that God has made each of us just as we are, however Christians never say (or at least shouldn’t) that without the stated, implied, or assumed corrective that every single of us is a flawed production.   Each of us is created to be a God-directed, God permeated soul (body mind soul, God permeated unity), which, though wrought through with imperfections (aspects of each of us which fall short of the mark, which the Bible calls sin), is nevertheless intended to flourish living the life of God during our brief time on earth.  

Does God make people gay or straight?   I think God just makes people male female and every single one of us has proclivities, propensities, desires and orientations that don’t fit how God set up life to work in God’s good world.  I have misdirected desires, you do, we all do in one way or another.  

Is homosexuality wrong?  Insofar as homosexuality is misdirected sexuality, just as distorted heterosexual desire is misdirected sexuality, then I can say, yes, it is not a desire intended by God.   As you can see I don’t like to use the word wrong, because wrong is heard by most people as judgmental, pontificating and attacking the person and it’s wrong to do that because Jesus would not have us do that.   

The issue is not what God is against.  It’s what God is for and God is for what is the best life possible for every one of us, no one left out.  

God’s best for human beings, God’s “set up” for acting on one’s sexual desires, is a one man one woman marriage with anatomy intended for child bearing.   This, at least as it appears to me, the best conclusion that I can come to based on the best reading of the Bible.  

The implication follows that for a single person God’s best life is to wait to engage in sexual union until marriage arrives.   If marriage does not enter the picture then a single person’s best life is not found in entering into a sexual relationship anyway.  

If one is married God’s best is to stay married and to keep one’s desires reserved for your spouse.  

If one is gay, things are different because it’s not like being a heterosexual single.   The heterosexual single person has God’s blessing to marry one day.   Some gay people may be able to reorient their desires with God’s help but the success stories are few and far between.   Yet for the gay person, and I realize how easy this is for me, a married man,  to say but I’ll say it anyway,  choosing to sublimate sexual desires in favor of a life lived fully for God can be a very, very beautiful thing.   (see 1 Corinthians 7)  

What about civil ceremonies, a union in the sight of the law, but not in the sight of the church?   (I am thinking of civil ceremonies which would confer all the legal benefits of marriage but are not marriage simply because they are not the same thing as marriage which, unless refined, includes anatomy intended for procreation)  

Part of me loves the idea of presiding at a civil ceremony of a gay couple!   It’s a beautiful thing to contemplate two people giving themselves fully to one another for ever, through thick and thin until death do them part!  Part of me would love to preside at such a ceremony.  

The other part of me, though, trusts God’s judgment on this more than I trust my own sentiments.  God’s out to give us the good life, not take it away, therefore if God tells us to avoid something then I conclude that is must be for our own good.  

So, when I take all of the above into consideration, it looks to me like God’s direction on this is a whole lot more than antiquated ancient biases that are way out of date.  

At the very least, the Bible’s direction on this issue makes me think that gay and lesbian unions have emotional, physical, relational, and spiritual dangers associated with them from which God wants to protect us.   Maybe it’s that a marital union, when attempted by same sex couples, is simply impossible to achieve because such a union is ontologically impossible and God wants to protect us from that impossibility.    

Finally, I am absolutely convinced that every one of our elders and staff members would love for CLC to be full of every type of sinner there is:   “straight” sinners,  gay sinners, , red, yellow,  black,  and white sinners, old ones,  young ones, long haired ones and no haired ones, all recognizing their shortfall before God and others, yet all so very grateful for God’s grace and for God’s protection from our tendency to self-destruct, and all wanting to spread that Grace far and wide.

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How Do I Respect My Husband When He Makes So Many Mistakes?

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"How Do I respect My Husband When He Makes So Many

Mistakes?

Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Jeff Lampl

“. . . . each wife should respect her husband”  Ephesians 5:33

The Following comes from Shaunti Feldhahn, formerly of the US Senate Banking Committee, but is now a researcher and author who studies marriage.   I find today’s question to be a huge one for marital success!  Jeff 

Dear Shaunti,

I really struggle with the whole ‘respect your husband’ thing you talk about in your book For Women Only. How do I do that? My husband has a huge amount of pride and is unable to accept any criticism or failure on his part; he always throws mistakes back on me. I can’t help but see him as irresponsible and prideful at times. I know that I have delivered some harsh criticism to him over the 14 years of our marriage, which probably contributes to the defensiveness, but I’ve gotten better over the last few years. He is a faithful husband and very loving father, but there are so many times that he seems to place a higher value on our two daughters than on our marriage. He loves to be their hero to a fault, so that his relationship with them seems to be a codependent one. I can’t seem to change the way I think about him. And I’m tired of feeling like he values our daughters more than me.
-Second Fiddle

Dear Second Fiddle,

Nobody wants to be the second fiddle when they are truly a first string or solo quality. But I hate to be blunt: in most cases, second fiddles have earned their spot.

Sure, he probably has big issues to address as well – but the only person you can change is you. And I think you have already recognized the actual source of your problem: 14 years of harsh criticism of him as “irresponsible” and “prideful.” You also need to know that what you have misperceived in your husband as “pride” is actually a deep insecurity. An insecurity and self-doubt that you, my friend, have inflamed to the point of pain.

All of us – men and women – have a tendency to become defensive as a way to protect ourselves when we are criticized. But since a man’s primary emotional need is respect, please understand that for your husband, criticism isn’t just frustrating– it feels like a vicious attack on his most vulnerable emotion: his fear that you see him as inadequate.

When a man’s emotional backbone has been whipped raw by repeated critical comments and “brutal honesty,” his insecurities are so inflamed and painful that he can become super-sensitive and agitated at even the slightest suggestion that he has done something wrong, hence the inability to accept responsibility for mistakes or to admit error. It isn’t right or mature, certainly – but it sure is understandable.

From my thousands of interviews with men, I know that a man longs to be a hero to his wife, first and foremost. But when he feels that he just can never measure up in her eyes – that she will always see him as second (or tenth) fiddle — he will seek that affirmation elsewhere.

You say he is a faithful husband, so it sounds like he thankfully hasn’t sought solace from a woman who does think he is amazing. Instead, he’s gravitating toward affirmation from your daughters. Indeed there may be a codependent relationship with them, but I hope you can understand why it could have developed.

How do you get past this, and to a place where you do respect him?

I often suggest a two-part 30 day challenge to women in your situation. First, for the next 30 days don’t say anything negative about your husband. . . . .  either to him or about him to someone else. Not your mom, not your best girlfriend, no one.

Let me repeat that, so you really ‘get it’: Say nothing negative about him.

At all.

And second, every day for the next 30 days find one thing positive that he has done that you can praise or thank him for, and tell him, and tell at least one other person.

The beauty of our psychological wiring is that our feelings follow our words and actions, and so the more you focus on what you are dissatisfied with, the more dissatisfied you will be. But the more you focus on the positive, the more you will see and be struck by the truly wonderful things about your husband. The more you will, in fact, respect him!

This may not be easy for you — there’s a reason I call this a “challenge.” But in the end this sort of process is one of the only ways to change what you think and do.

I hope in the end, that after the 30 days you will find it so much easier to return to a true partnership where there is a give and take. Where you can see and affirm the positive, and recognize that some of the negative is simply a difference of opinion – and that some criticism can be communicated with grace or simply not mentioned at all. Remember that thirty days of ‘reform’ is not going to eradicate 14 years of criticism, so have realistic expectations. Even after the 30 days are over, you might have to be ultra-careful how you communicate criticism for the foreseeable future.

But hopefully, some major changes won’t take too long. Because as you continue to focus mostly on the positive, and thus make sure your husband knows that he is your hero –I’ll bet you’ll quickly be promoted from second fiddle to first string.

Shaunti Feldhahn is the best-selling author of eye-opening, research-based books about men, women and relationships, including For Women Only, For Men Only, The Surprising Secrets of Highly Happy Marriages and her newest, The Good News About Marriage.  A Harvard-trained social researcher and speaker, her findings are regularly featured in media as diverse as The Today Show, Focus on the Family, and the New York Times. Shaunti speaks regularly at churches, conferences, and corporate events. Learn more about speaking inquiries here.

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Do Universities destroy the faith of our children?

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Do Universities destroy the faith of our children?
A surprising new study suggests that is not what is happening

Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Jeff Lampl

A new study suggests this stereotype isn’t true—in fact, college might make people more likely to be religious.

“The core finding is that the association between graduating from college and religious disaffiliation has changed drastically across generations,” said Philip Schwadel, the study’s author and a professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. For people who were born in the 1920s and ’30s, the godless-college-grad stereotype is somewhat true: They were twice as likely as their uneducated peers to be religionless, not identifying with a particular church or synagogue or other religious institution.

But over time, that trend changed. “For those people who were born in the 1960s, there’s really no difference between the college-educated and the non-college-educated in terms of their likelihood of disaffiliating from religion,” Schwadel said. “And for those born in the 1970s, it’s actually the non-college-educated who are relatively likely to disaffiliate.”. . . .

Even so, these findings are important: They offer one more piece of evidence that college grads are society’s best defenders of traditional institutions. People with bachelor’s degrees are more likely to get married, more likely to marry each other, and more likely to wait until after their wedding to have babies.

They’re also more likely to live 1950s, Leave It to Beaver-esque lives. “College-educated people are joiners,” Schwadel said. “They’re more likely to participate in civic groups, to volunteer in their community. What we’re seeing is this moving into religion, too—not necessarily to hold all these different kinds of beliefs, but at least to participate in a nominal sense.”

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"The Lie"

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"The Lie"

Monday, September 1, 2014
Jeff Lampl

This post from Lisa Sharon Harper of Sojourners Magazine is painful rebuke to people to people like me (and perhaps you).  I’m doing my best to listen.

 

“Sometimes national events make plain the yawning distance between disparate worlds. The slaying of Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, on Saturday, August 9 was just such a moment.

That moment triggered a series of responses and counter responses by authorities and residents, as well as local and national clergy that shaped two weeks of protest and clarified camps that were largely defined by social and religious location. Residents of Ferguson, local and national leaders of historic black churches, and some multi-ethnic mainline Protestant and Catholic church clergy engaged. White evangelical leaders largely fell silent.
That silence was deafening.
Flashback eight years to November 25, 2006, when the shooting death of Sean Bell proved a clarifying event in New York City.

Three weeks after an unarmed Bell was shot 50 times by police officers in the early morning hours of his wedding day, African-American New Yorkers flooded 5th Avenue shutting down traffic in the middle of the Christmas shopping season. Led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton the protesters were mostly black.

I lived in New York City at the time and attended a Vineyard church downtown. I knew my friends were as rocked by the tragedy as everyone else, so I was dumbfounded when I saw no movement on their parts to join efforts to bring justice for Sean Bell. This was a manifestation of the power of race in America at work within the church: Segregated and separate societies live and worship in segregated and separate churches. Many evangelicals needed to be intentionally invited to cross the lines of spiritual and societal segregation. Without that invitation, evangelicals were stymied by racial fears and a pronounced lack of leadership within their own ranks.

After two weeks of interviews with St. Louis faith leaders and advocates, and several days on the ground moving between mobilizing efforts in Ferguson and dialogues with evangelical faith leaders, I see the same dynamic at work here. But there is another dynamic that is equally, if not more deeply rooted at play here. It is a core spiritual lie at work in the region—and I dare say the nation.

This spiritual lie is profound and ugly. It has shaped beliefs about the black residents of Ferguson, laid the foundations for missteps by authorities, and affected the black Ferguson community’s capacity to prevent the death of Michael Brown.

This lie was caught on video when a Ferguson police officer said, during an early protest march, “Bring it! All you f***ing animals! Bring it!”

There it is—the belief that usually resides deep beneath the surface of conscious thought, safe from examination and extrication, but was born in biblical times, solidified in the days of the Enlightenment, and codified into colonial law in 1660 through the racialization of Virginia slave codes. Then 14 years after the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed “all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,” the lie was embedded in the U.S. legal structure through the Naturalization Act of 1790, which barred the rights of citizenship from both free and enslaved black people.

These are the roots of the lie. Here it is—plain and simple: Black people are not fully human. In most crass terms—they are animals.
This spiritual lie has shaped our public life since the founding of our nation.

This lie lived out in the open, in our early history. Now, after 360 years of presence in various forms and its extrication from our legal structures through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, it’s gone underground—hidden and unchallenged as a subconscious bias in the hearts of most Americans including some black people. In fact, a recent study found that 75 percent of respondents have an unconscious bias toward white people over blacks.

This spiritual lie has shaped our public life since the founding of our nation. We have yet to face it down, name it, and repent.

So, we shouldn’t be surprised that Officer Wilson shot to kill Michael Brown and left him lying in the street for four hours, uncovered for much of the time. We shouldn’t be surprised that Ferguson police didn’t give Michael Brown the respect due any human by calling an ambulance to pick up the body. Instead, they loaded his body in the back of an SUV. We shouldn’t be surprised that masses of incensed residents of black Ferguson marching peacefully through their own streets in protest of sub-human treatment would trigger abject fear in the hearts of Ferguson’s nearly all white police department. They are “animals,” after all. They are dangerous and need to be controlled with a heavy hand.

A cursory glance at social media reveals evangelicals, whose segregated churches give them little opportunity to encounter the humanity of blackness, are demonstrating high levels of speculation about whether Officer Wilson was justified in shooting the unarmed 18-year-old boy for jaywalking and alleged shoplifting. Never mind that the death penalty is never levied on human beings for such menial infractions. Only dogs are put down for such offenses.

So, I am not surprised by what I found in Ferguson and St. Louis: two hurches—churches that empathize and stand with Michael Brown, his family, and his community, screaming into the darkness: “We are human! We are made in the image of God!” And churches that will wait for a final judgment from the courts.

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Confessing My Racism - How forgiveness could transform us all

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Confessing My Racism

How forgiveness could transform us all

Friday, August 29, 2014
Jeff Lampl

The following post is written by Anna Broadway (pictured above).   I offer to you because she writes what I’ve recognized in myself and have never found a way to express it as clearly and profoundly as she has.  I hope you take the time to read this and allow it to help you see your own heart at little bit more clearly.   Jeff

How can Christians seek racial reconciliation, justice and healing? Attempting to answer that question means reckoning with racism. But as a member of the ethnic group that has enjoyed disproportionate power and privilege because of systemic and other forms of racism, attempting an answer means trying to address a blind spot that afflicts my own vision.

Far easier to point out the comparatively more obvious blind spot of another person's racism — be it Donald Sterling, Paula Deen or commentators on Jeremy Lin. But insofar as we can call racism a blind spot (by which I don't in any way mean to absolve people of responsibility), Jesus taught a very different process for correction: start with your own sin.

Confession raises all sorts of fears, but racism has become one of the most shameful sins I can think of. I didn't realize I saw it that way until one day about 10 years ago, when various slurs started coming to mind as I walked down a street in my neighborhood and saw people of different ethnic backgrounds.

As someone with relatives and close friends of various ethnicities, I was horrified by my own thoughts. Each time it happened, I begged God for forgiveness and a change in heart. At first, I hoped God and I could work it out privately. But you can't address something as long as you pretend it isn't there. And racism causes inherently communal destruction. So I confessed my thoughts to others at church and asked for their prayers. The thoughts continued.

Then, shortly after I moved to California, my then-roommate invited an African American pastor over to pray with her. After they finished, something prompted me to confess my struggle with racist thoughts.

When the pastor asked for more background, I reluctantly shared a hurtful experience that happened around the time the thoughts began. I'm not sure what I expected her to say, but to my astonishment, she said, "Oh, no one ever apologized to you" — and then proceeded to do so herself.

Nothing had prepared me for a response like that. Everything in me resisted the admission, fearing that exposure of my sin at its worst would lead to relational disaster and rejection. Even seemingly lesser sins — ignorant, careless or inadvertently hurtful remarks — had previously damaged relationships and caused others to pull back in hurt and anger. So I was ready for what I thought I deserved.

But instead she was apologizing to me?

That woman's response was one of the most humbling and powerful experiences I've ever had with someone of another race. Though she apologized on behalf of others, her response also offered a measure of the forgiveness I desperately needed. In that moment, she embodied the hope of the coming racial unity Paul describes in Ephesians:

"[Jesus] himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility." (Eph. 2:14-16, NIV)

I wish my racist thoughts ended with that conversation, but it hasn't been so easy. So, recently, I decided to spend some time in listening prayer about racism. With the listening process my church follows, you ask God to take you back to where a particular issue began, showing you both the lies you believed and the truth about the situation. Later, you renounce your belief in those lies and, if necessary, walk through a similar process for unforgiveness, verbally releasing the other person from his or her debt.

To my chagrin, several old wounds came up again. I may never fully know the connection between those events and my thoughts, but I realized during my prayer time how many small hurts — especially with strangers — I'd left to fester quietly. And small as they might seem, each of those unforgiven wounds both damages my relationships and keeps me from God.

To say that all people bear God's image means we not only share a common dignity, we serve a God who has dispersed His image, uniquely entrusting Himself to each person. The more homogenous our relationships, the more distorted our resulting picture of God. If we truly desire to know God, we should seek to know as much of His creation as deeply as we can, no matter what sin we must deal with in the process.

So, in closing, I want to apologize for my part in whatever hurt, discrimination or injustice those reading this have experienced because of your ethnicity. I am sorry for the ways I have believed lies about you; dismissed your perspective; conflated your choices or actions with your race; expected you to speak for other people; not forgiven you when I felt hurt in our relationship; and otherwise denied your status as fellow image bearers of the divine King. I am sorry for the ways I have sinned against you because of how God made you, rather than rejoicing in His design. For whatever role I have had in this cruel and often seemingly hopeless family conflict, I apologize. And I ask you to forgive me.

To those reading this who see racism as a mostly "out there" or "back then" sin problem, I humbly suggest that you ask God to show you any blind spots you have. If the Bible does not leave room for human sinlessness, generally — Jesus aside — why should we be so confident of our innocence in racism? As God convicts you, ask Him how and to whom He might have you repent.

I didn't want to admit my sin of racism publicly, much less on the Internet. But I deeply long to see God restore relationships so that Africans and Europeans, Jews and Palestinians -- all members of His family -- enjoy and delight in each other as He intended. That healing comes on God's terms, not ours.

Earlier this year, I discovered Marilyn Nelson's award-winning biography of George Washington Carver. Artful and intimate (Nelson's own father briefly overlapped Carver at Tuskegee), the book introduced me to the botanist's late-in-life friendship with a young descendant of white slave owners named Jim Hardwick. Nelson depicts one of Carver's letters from their ongoing correspondence:

My Beloved Friend

"Your letter touched me deeply. How I wish
I was more worthy of the things you say
about me. I love you more dearly because
you are of another race. God is using you
to teach the world the brotherhood of man,
the fatherhood of God. How sweet it is
to let God purge our souls of ego and
bitterness, and to have a little taste
of heaven here on earth. I trust you will pray
for me, that I get rid of my littleness.
I did not have to learn to love you: You
were chosen for me. I knew that the first
time I saw you. It was the Christ in you, of course."

From Carver: A Life in Poems by Marilyn Nelson. Copyright © 2001 by Marilyn Nelson. Published by Boyds Mills Press. Used by permission.

May God give — and use us all to produce — more such tastes of heaven on earth until His kingdom comes in full.

Note: Several friends who gave input on earlier drafts of this piece deserve tremendous credit for helping shape what you've just read; any hurtful or insensitive words are entirely my own responsibility.

Anna Broadway is a writer and editor living near San Francisco. The author of Sexless in the City: A Memoir of Reluctant Chastity, she also contributed to the anthologies Talking Taboo and Disquiet Time (forthcoming). She has written for TheAtlantic.com, Books and Culture, on Faith and Paste, among others. She also contributes regularly to the Hermeneutics blog.

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