THE LIFE LESS UNRAVELED

For too long M. Scott Peck’s best-seller from 1978, The Road Less Traveled, gathered dust on my bookshelf. When recently starting it, I immediately felt my loss in not doing so sooner. This book conveys not only a secular psychiatrist’s religion-friendly observations on mental health but many practical principles about love and relationships.

I was pleased to find that Dr. Peck’s preliminary words on love validated and supplemented my own in “Dance of the Sexes”—an occasional talk I’ve given for decades. He expressed it bluntly: “Of all the misconceptions about love the most powerful and pervasive is the belief that ‘falling in love’ is love or at least one of the manifestations of love.” After showing why falling in love and romantic attraction are not love, he described the real thing. Authentic love is work. To face life’s challenges, it takes tools of courageous discipline, which he introduces at the outset: “delaying of gratification, acceptance of responsibility, dedication to truth, and balancing.”

When he wrote this book, Dr. Peck was not a Christian. I found myself disagreeing with him in some areas of ethics and theology. But our current culture urgently needs his psychological wisdom. Today’s society is unraveling at the seams from adults failing to grow up into authentically caring persons and parents.

Dr. Peck calls love a mystery with many facets that raise questions not “answered by sociobiology.” He frankly admits that “people who know the most about such things are those among the religious who are students of Mystery.” In fact, he finishes his book by addressing the “relationship between religion and the growth process.” While duly critical of “hand-me-down” faith or manipulative uses of religion, he boldly affirms that “an understanding of the phenomenon of grace is essential to complete understanding of the process of growth in human beings.”

It was perhaps this thought about grace that led him to explore the New Testament shortly after writing this book. Studying the Gospels doesn’t seem to have ended his religious eclecticism, but he said it did bring him to Christ. Already having recognized the importance of grace, Dr. Peck’s conversion testimony isn’t surprising. I read that, upon hearing of some scholars disagreeing on what made Christianity unique among world religions, C. S. Lewis candidly commented, “Oh, that’s easy. It’s grace.”

The 60s song that exclaimed, “What the world needs now is love, sweet love,” is true now more than ever! But authentic love has a divine source: the loving God of the Bible whose “grace and truth” were bodily revealed in His Son (John 1:14). For a “life less unraveled” I unashamedly preach our need for the Good Shepherd’s enlightening grace and guidance, but that doesn’t mean He won’t use liberating truths and helpful insights reported by those not yet in His flock.

While Christians may need to study it with spiritual discernment, The Road Less Traveled is a sound stimulus for healthier patterns of behavior. Bible reading and church attendance are both good practices, but neither guarantee personal maturity, productive lifestyles and successful relationships. Believers cannot shirk the hard work of love and expect to enjoy the blessings of psychological and social health.

For people struggling with stubborn attitudes and habits that keep them stuck in cycles of personal and interpersonal dysfunction, this book may be just the eye-opener they need. Its many examples from therapeutic case studies provide reality checks for those of us who think we’re doing “just fine” on our familiar, well-traveled roads. But the choice to pursue the discipline it takes to grow up into real love is, unfortunately, a road less traveled.

(a book available in most libraries, and on Amazon)

SEX IS CENTRAL TO GOD’S SALVATION PLAN

Evangelical pulpiteers can shout louder than ever about sexual morality, but most are still reluctant to frankly address the physical aspects of human sexuality, even at a time when society desperately needs to hear a Christian voice. Why this characteristic shyness about sex? Believers have no biblical warrant for it. Such a squeamish attitude certainly didn’t come from our Maker. Neither in Scripture nor in orthodox Christian theology is there even a shred of support for our long history of embarrassment about the body’s sexual nature. In fact, a careful review of the Bible itself—done in the fear of God and not in the fear of tradition—will actually show that our reasons for avoiding the anatomy of gender and its physiological purposes in sexuality are not only unscriptural but may have heretical roots.

Why not boldness rather than bashfulness in our approach to sex? Christians, of all people, should be so open about the physical wonders of human gender and reproduction that it makes the world’s treatment of these subjects seem prudish in comparison. We owed it to the Designer of the human body to have developed such expertise and excellence in the realm of sex education that secular authorities would resort to us for in-depth informational and audio-visual teaching materials, rather than vice versa. In this crucial area of stewardship, the church has not only failed our Lord but left a promiscuous modern society to flounder in a more diabolical degree of sexual confusion than history has ever known.

Why didn’t we take our cue from God’s Word in this area? The very first words God uses to state how humans reflect His image are not the commonly assumed aspects of personality (ie., reason, emotion, volition, etc.), but physical gender! (Re-read Genesis 1:27, and if you don’t say “Ouch!” you’re in theological denial!) Yes, He did equip us rationally for the task of governing creation, but His very first command to us in Genesis 1:28 was what? To reproduce!

If God’s very first words about His purpose for humans—that is, procreativity from sexual union between complementary genders—aren’t sufficient to gain our attention, maybe we’ll listen to His last words. There’s someone who joins the Holy Spirit in the last few sentences of Scripture (Revelation 22:17) to invite sinners to salvation? It’s “the Bride,” the Church, the corporate “wife of the Lamb.” The present symbolism of gender and sexual union ultimately find fulfillment in our spiritual union with Christ the Bridegroom. But until then, God has placed marriage as the Bible’s bookends for the redemption story, and right in the middle of it all is an erotic drama portraying just how sensually passionate He means for His symbolism to be (Song of Songs)! If both temporal and eternal marriage have such centrality in God’s mind, where have our minds been? When it comes to dealing with the fleshly dust from which God fashioned sexual body parts and their physical union, it’s obvious that our minds have been in the gutter.

Far from honoring the human body and it’s gender distinctions as sacred ground, we’ve religiously depicted them as avenues of temptation and lust. Our confident legalisms and manmade scruples to insure purity and morality have basically pornified the body! By redefining our physical forms and our sex organs as obscenities, we’ve paved the way for pornographers to defile that which was meant to be part of our Trinitarian Maker’s Self-portrait. With a prudish brush we’ve painted a lewd image of the sexuality through which God intended to proclaim His message of redemption. If this theological error is not sin, then missing the mark has lost its meaning!

Sexuality wasn’t created as an end in itself. It was intended, first, to image the Trinity’s unity in divine love and cosmic creativity through marital love and human procreativity. The sexuality of our complementary genders was meant to prophetically display the future one-flesh union we will enjoy with the incarnate Son of God, our Bridegroom. Why have we neglected or ignored these aspects of God’s emphasis on sexuality in Scripture? Perhaps they would have been more easily recognized, if Christian minds had not been culturally mesmerized through early Gnostic influences that heretically despised the material world and the physical body. But just as heretical, and even more blinding, has been the Protestant church’s wholesale religious embrace of the false standards of Victorian prudery.

It’s way past time for Christian repentance in this area. The need for reformation in the church’s view and treatment of the body’s gender and sexuality has never been greater nor more urgent. Embarrassing as it may be for Christian leaders to confess to bowing down for so long before the idol of cultural Victorianism—difficult as it may be for the average believer’s mind to be purged of the rituals of such idolatry—we can still return to the healing Word of God. The truth in Scripture about our bodies and their gendered sexuality has the power to set the church free from an unholy prudery and to equip saints with the transforming message our sex-obsessed, gender-confused, marriage-deforming world needs to hear.

[For an even more thorough critique of our failure to deal properly with the human body and its sexuality, I challenge you to read my doctrinal paper on this subject: “Incarnational Truth about Humanity’s Sexual Nature (Doing Body-friendly Theology Free from Gnostic Prudery).”]

THE VISIBLE BREAST CONTROVERSY

When my wife showed me the cover of TIME Magazine (5\21\2012) with a lactation consultant exposing her breast to nurse her 3-year old son, I saw it as an opportunity to preach on one of my favorite American controversies: the visible breast.

Such an “in your face” photo! TIME surely knew it would have “shock value” for marketing, despite their stated purpose of celebrating Dr. Bill Sears, the champion of maternal attachment. Online articles about it popped up everywhere, followed by public comments of prudish criticism, perverted congratulations, and sometimes practical commendation, like mine. Bravo for TIME, but especially for courageous Jamie Lynne Grumet, who showed the American public what God created breasts for!

“Teaching God’s Design for Breasts” was an art class assignment that depicts one of my routine tasks: helping topless mothers get their newborns latched on by skin-to-skin nursing. I also intended this self-portrait to SHOCK, but only so it could HEAL. This normal, non-sexual part of my job stands in stark contrast to the way society exploits women's breasts. That many women themselves see their breasts as sexualized objects indicates the degree to which this perception of women's bodies controls our culture.

I grew up with America’s sexualized view of breasts. Later, I pledged religious allegiance to exactly the same view under a new name: prudery. My experience as an RN, especially in teaching moms to breastfeed, cured me of both. I feel privileged and liberated to participate in the reality of God's primary purpose for women's breasts. For a small window of hospital time, I watch first-time moms experience that freedom, too, as they learn the truth about breasts. I encourage them to remember that truth and freedom as they reenter a culture that treats their breasts as sexual commodities. Assertive breastfeeding moms have a unique opportunity to force our society to face its immaturity. By openly nursing their infants and toddlers, they can teach the next generation of American citizens to see breasts wholesomely, as normal parts of the female anatomy and as beautiful organs divinely designed with the potential of nurturing babies.

America’s sex-obsessed focus on breasts is seen by some world cultures as ludicrous. I think of it as toxic. Our cultural prudery promotes a pornographic view of the human body, and we need both spiritual and educational reformation. Everyone’s feelings and reactions to breasts and breastfeeding have been culturally learned. Through my work and my research, I’ve learned body acceptance, thus breast acceptance. If prudish and perverted views were merely harmless opinions, I’d let this issue go. But they're not. Both treat women as sex targets, and both dishonor the Designer of breasts. So, till I die or the Lord returns, I'll keep denouncing this great American obsession and keep telling nursing moms to openly demonstrate to our dysfunctional and immature culture what women’s breasts are really for.

(There’s more about this issue in my essay: “Teaching God's Design for BREASTS - A Message about ‘the Visible Breast’ for Christian Leaders.”)

INTRODUCING MY BLOG

I like to learn, but I must teach. Discoveries delight the mind, but sharing them fulfills the heart. When I gain new perspectives on God, His Word, creation, or our place in it, I feel compelled to express them. This usually comes through prophetic prose or poetic verse, but occasionally in the form of visual artwork. This blog is my way of passing along those insights and inspirations to those interested.

In introducing my blog, let me first break apart and explain the wording of my name for it: “PastorDavidRN's DANCE with NAKED TRUTH.” Its long title is an important description.

My parents named me “David,” which means “beloved.” I’ve always appreciated that. Knowing my name’s literal Hebrew meaning helped me grow up with gratitude. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always felt thankful for being “beloved,” not just by my parents, but by God.

I really am a pastor, an ordained minister in The Wesleyan Church. Since 1996, I’ve served a small retirement community church sponsored by Faith Legacy Church. Many of the sermons I’ve preached there can be listened to on “My Sermons” webpage. Some of the insights shared on this blog came during this pastoral ministry to seniors.

I’m also really an RN, which now stands for Retired Nurse after I left hospital work in 2015. I got my nursing degree in 1981 and worked the ER for almost a decade. Then, cross-training to OB in 1991, I helped multiple thousands of mothers give birth and breastfeed their babies. Meditation on the physical realities of life—so dynamically obvious in nursing—shaped much of my thinking about the embodied nature of our humanity.

Dance is a meaningful metaphor. Life rarely marches in a straight line. It spins and whirls, jumps and twirls. Also, we rarely dance solo. The dance floor of life is relational. I first used this illustrative term in my talk called, “The Dance of the Sexes.” All humans are in a dance, because we are made in the image of a Trinity Who have danced together forever.

Naked is another term with metaphorically rich meaning. Its reputation today, however, is smothered by prudish fear and sullied with pornographic filth. Hopefully, from time to time, I will offer an array of historical, cultural, theological, and psycho-social insights on nakedness that will help restore its human-friendly significance.

Truth is foundational for true love. Without it, love becomes wishful sentimentality, at best, and addictive fantasy, at worst. Jesus said “the truth” can liberate those enslaved to sin (John 8:31-36). We get the phrase “the naked truth” from an ancient fable that beautifully illustrates the nature of truth: “While Truth was bathing in a river, Falsehood stole her clothes, and rather than wear the rags Falsehood left behind, Truth went about thereafter naked and unadorned.” I wrote a poem about this fable to expand upon its concepts.

Insights are epiphanies, realizations that are usually sudden and unbidden. Since they seem to come more frequently with age, I believe most of them arise from the workings of human reason. But they can also be God-given revelations. If so, they must always be checked against God’s Word, His authoritative revelation to us. Part of the reason I’m starting this blog is that I seem to have so many of them. If they touch on Christian doctrine, I won’t share them unless they can be shown not to contradict Scripture.

Inspirations are much like insights, but to me they serve as ignition points for creative expression. I have been writing poetry since early childhood. My love for proverbs, epigrams, and aphorisms has made me a collector of quotes and lured me into the challenging task of whittling ideas down to short, pithy and catchy sentences. Since 2006, I’ve begun to fulfill my dream doing of artwork. Some of all these areas of inspiration will appear on the blog.

God is my King. My life and my thoughts revolve around Him. If I hear His existence doubted, my reason goes into gear to prove Him real. If I hear Him maligned, my thoughts line up in ranks to defend His character. My goal is to love Him more. So, I can’t help but bring God into this blog, since He is not only its Lord but the motivation behind it.

Creation is everything else—all reality other than God. I have many insights and inspirations both about the handiwork of God and about His creative will in the continuity of human creativity. But there is one place where God and creation personally meet: the Incarnation. If you find my blog heavy on the implications of that doctrine, it’s because it has captivated the bulk of my thinking for years, and I will never tire of its riches in contemplation nor exhaust its depths by writing about the God-Man Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh.

So, welcome to my blog—my dance with “the naked truth”—as it tries to offer my insights and inspirations concerning God and creation.