My Grading Scale for Fall 2007

It's finals week and I'm overwhelmed, so instead grading the old-fashioned way (actually reading student work), here's my new scale.

A: Student turned in something sweet for me along with the final paper.

B: Student's first or last name has positive connotations for me.

C: When I see student's name on final exam, I can't remember his/her face.

D: Final exam/paper is written in nearly illegible handwriting.

F: Student asked to take the final exam at a different time so s/he can get home sooner for Christmas.

Any ideas for pluses and minuses?

Cursed are the barren

Christianity Today's cover story is Sarah Hinlicky Wilson's "Blessed are the Barren." In it, she describes her theology of infertility and how it intersects with her emerging story of infertility and adoption (if I read it right, they are pursuing both conception and adoption, and hope to have a child in their home soon). I read this a over a week ago, and it continues to sadden me, so here's a blog to get the thoughts out of the mind-groove they're rolling around in. I would appreciate any reader's thoughts on the theology of this article (and don't worry about my feelings being hurt if you disagree with my conclusions!)

Wilson writes that Zechariah and Elizabeth's story of barrenness and miraculous birth is the end of a 'covenant' of sons for the barren. Jesus marks the turning point after which adoption is prized above birth. She cites his comments about not looking back at one's family, and then the prophecy from Luke 23: 28-31: "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For the days are surely coming when they will say: Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed! Then they will begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us, and to the hills, Cover us. For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?"

I've always read that as parody/irony, not to be taken seriously as a blessing. Doesn't this passage just mean that women will be wishing they never had children during a time when they have to watch their children suffer? If it 'blesses' anything, this passage blesses the childless (who may or may not be barren), and by extension perhaps those who have no loved ones whatsoever. This passage is not a statement of God's blessing, but one that states what some people will say when the world goes bad. (Or am I wrong?) And I don't think there ever was a covenant of sons for the barren - allowing the barren to bear children is a blessing in the Old Testament, New Testament, and today, but I don't see it as related to a covenant or special promise. It's just plain old mercy.

I read similar theology (similar in arguing that infertility is a blessing - not a similar biblical analysis) in an essay by Miraslov Volf titled "The Blessing of Infertility" (in The Christian Century?), and being at the time infertile, it made me sob. Both Volf and Wilson found resolution to infertility in adoption, and then were blessed deeply by adoption, both personally and theologically. That story and theology needs to be proclaimed -- adoption is too often seen as 'less than', and the spiritual adoption by which we all participate in God's family is too often downplayed by people who prize biological family over adoptive family. Amen to all of that! But that doesn't require looking back at infertility as a blessing.

I think infertility is a curse -- at the very least a curse of nature, and at worst a curse of a capricious God. It deserves lament, not positive spin. It's crazy-making to tell people that what they experience as bad is actually good. I can't explain why all infertile people don't just adopt (when suggested as thoughtless advice, adoption is preceded by 'just'), but after years of infertility and maternal loss support groups, I appreciate the diversity of couples' and women's responses. I've known couples who, after a few months of dealing with infertility, turn quickly and decisively to adoption, and others who, after over a decade of infertility, won't stop trying for a biological child. I've known men who still stay with their wife for a biological child, but don't want to be in the marriage for adoption, and women who will leave their husbands if he won't participate in infertility treatments. And I know my own story (to sum up years in twelve words: infertility, infertility treatments, loss of triplets, then living twins, then living singleton). I'm grateful for all my children, but wouldn't consider barrenness to be their blessed source.

Infertile people seek resolution by the logic of their own hearts and the logic of their relationships. Infertility devastates people's mental health, their ability to function socially, their marriages, and their faith. When barren couples finally resolve their infertility by bearing a child or adopting or embracing a child-free life, that warrants great celebration. But the celebration doesn't erase or diminish the lament. Our curses -- for whatever reason we bear them -- are part of how we carry the mystery of Christ's suffering in the world, and this has dignity in itself.

In both Volf and Hinlicky Wilson, I appreciate the vulnerability to integrate one's own story with one's theology. I appreciate the theological contributions from adoptive families, and their encouragement of others to adopt. Maybe I'll change my mind later, but for now, I just can't swallow the idea that barrenness is a blessing.

I put the "I" in evangelical

I went to my first Mennonite Hymn Sing last night and only knew one song. Other than Holy, Holy, Holy, it was all just peace-and-justice this, simple and holy that, and hoping for deliverance from suffering the other. The only related song I know is "Amish Paradise" by Yankovic, but it wasn't in the hymnal index. I grew up singing around grandma's piano with the1952 edition of the Robbinsdale Baptist Church hymnal, but our songs were more about individual salvation, heaven, obedience to authority, and demarcating the saved from the unsaved. How can two traditions be so different, when in name they are separated only by "Ana"? It brings to mind my father's prayer when he visited us last month: "Lord, we don't know who these Anabaptists are, but we trust they are from You and will be a blessing to the Paris family." Amen to that!

Becoming Anabaptist (our house church is Mennonite, morning church is Brethren in Christ, college is Anabaptist/Wesleyan/Pietist) is not disruptive to my spirituality; in fact, it's a blessing to my spiritual leanings toward plainness, simplicity, and practice over doctrine. But religiously, it's stirring the waters of my relationship to tradition and institution. I'm an evangelical; my socioreligious landmarks include things like Billy Graham, Christian bookstores, the Gaithers, and pocket crosses. But in recent years, both because of my life experiences and the cultural-political direction of the public face of evangelicalism, my relationship to my tradition has been at worst marked by mockery, but even at best, sadness and disappointment.

In addition to their own songs, Anabaptists also have their own history, internal disputes, vocabulary, and cultural landmarks (Lancaster Mennonite High School, Eastern Mennonite University, More-with-Less, etc.). In short, they don't define themselves with reference to mainstream American evangelicalism. It raises the question and possibility for me: do I still need to?

I'm not sure about that, but I do know that I need to join in with a tradition of singing, praying, and living that doesn't hinge on either promoting or despising evangelicals. That's hard to do in 'postevangelical' churches that are very closely tied in negative relationship with their reference group, and easier to do by simply sidestepping evangelicalism altogether. I want to -- simply, plainly -- move forward in a positive direction. It makes me feel light. I don't have to walk hitched to a wagon carrying Todd Friel, James Dobson, TBN, and a chunk of the Republican Party. I want to learn to appreciate, honor, and contribute to tradition; not just deconstruct and get mad at it.

But don't get me wrong; when Christians around here criticize evangelicals wholesale, I stick up for us. Evangelicalism is more than Republican politics, legalism, authoritarianism, and sexually inappropriate male leadership, though my upbringing was marked by all those things. It's also prayer, good deeds, and a great respect for the Bible. It was the nest of faith within which I came to know Jesus in a real and lasting way. I'll learn 606 and We Are Marching, but I'll hang on to my Robbinsdale Baptist Hymnal, too, though I'll set aside "Onward Christian Soldiers" when the Mennonites come to our house for a hymn sing.

The End of the Fiction

The End of the Spear moved my students, but not in the way the filmmakers intended. We had already explored an ethnography about the Waorani, one ethnographic film, one environmental activist documentary, and this essay by missionary historian Kathryn Long. The credits close with a small-font disclaimer acknowledging some degree of fictionalization, while opening with a full-screen shot that says "based on real events." The film is about reconciliation between a Waorani man and the son of a slain missionary, a narrative of individualized guilt, repentance, and reconciliation that didn't really happen. In selling a story to an American audience desiring a narrative of heroic individualism and minimal Christianity, the film denies the real story that involved lots of Christianity, a collectivist culture, a context of global capitalism, and a decades-long story of mutual harm and blessing.

One student said, "Why can't the film just tell the truth?" Another answered, "Because the truth is a cross-cultural truth, and Americans wouldn't resonate with the storyline." Another said, "Because we're Christians. God is perfect, so we must be perfect. That's what we tell outsiders."

Like plenty of my own evangelistic efforts, The End of the Spear fails because it fabricates real world events in an attempt to tell the truth about supernatural events. Here's my idea of a better movie. The main character would be Nampa, a Waorani man shot in the massacre of the missionaries who died shortly thereafter. It is presumed that a missionary shot him, but it is not known who held the gun, or what his intent was. Waorani people come to faith in subsequent years with this in recent memory. A second plotline would be the 1960s epidemic in which Rachel Saint made agonizing decisions about vaccination, which in retrospect probably caused some people to die. She also encouraged settlement of the people, both for proselytizing purposes and to help them organize against oil company incursions, and that sedentary shift made them susceptible to communicable disease. The third emphasis would be a global context. I realize you probably don't think about Waorani people as much as I do, but make no mistake: they are not oily, hard-bodied Apocalypto Indians running around a dark rain forest in fear and anger, as the film shows. The hallmark of their traditional life is abunduncia (sp?), abundance. They did get into homicidal rages, and were extraordinarily violent by hunter-gatherer standards, but their day-in, day-out existence was nice. They have been betrayed by their national government, and had oil companies intruding on their land, dumping raw waste, and exterminating neighboring cultures. Missionaries entered into this context, with their own complex relationships with governments and corporations. And this all continues into the present, which a viewer would not surmise.

What if, as Christians, we told the truth about our stories? That we try to love others and to share our faith, and sometimes it all goes wrong. Sometimes we try to follow Jesus in the midst of impossible situations, and even we are horrified by the unforeseen consequences of our well-intentioned deeds. Sometimes the people we're trying to save are more honorable than us. Sometimes we don't know what to do. Sometimes God's love is made manifest in the world in spite of us. We walk by faith, seeing neither our God nor other people nor even ourselves with perfect clarity.

The real story of Christians among the Waorani is remarkable, the truth of which resonates with American sensibilities about faith, risk, adventure, betrayal, disappointment, and gore. I teach the ethnographic account and the fictionalized account in Intro to Anthropology, and the truth always wins greater interest. The fictionalized account (Indians = bad and lost, Christians = good and found) isn't winsome because it isn't true. What if, as an act of love, Christians made ourselves vulnerable to the unsaved by telling our stories truthfully, including the biblical story in all its complexity, beauty, and horror? The truth is there to be seen -- it really isn't ours to package and sell -- and many people outside the faith see it plainly. Christians already see through a glass darkly - why cover our eyes further with pulled wool?