Page 5098 – Christianity Today (2024)

MARY ELLEN ASHCROFT¹Mary Ellen Ashcroft teaches part-time at the College of Saint Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota.

For awhile I thought my dislike of video cameras was sour grapes: I’d missed filming my children’s first staggers across the room, and I have no reel-to-reel memories of exotic places I’ve visited.

But my regret flamed into something hotter last summer. Picture the scene: Three parents lounging in deck chairs by the lake, their eyes alternating between magazines (propped dutifully against their knees) and the lake (in order to count the kids occasionally—one, two, three, four, all there).

Suddenly, a shriek: “Daddy, look! look! I’m swimming! Look!” Even the two of us whose progeny this isn’t drag ourselves a little straighter to goggle at the child’s discovery of buoyancy. Splutter, shout, swim.

I turn to congratulate the proud father, but his chair stands mysteriously empty. I twist around to follow the sound of breaking twigs and see the father bolting up the hill, heading frantically for his cabin. My friend and I pipe up the obligatory parental praise to the new swimmer, “Hey, good work, John, nice job.”

Four or five minutes later, the frantic father appears. He is sweating profusely, jiggling his video gear, and plugging the sound cord into the relevant hole. The star, meanwhile, has hauled himself out of the water and stands shivering (not exactly the kind of footage that will inspire Grandma on a snowy evening). “Hey, son, I want to catch you swimming!” But it’s no good—the swimmer’s moment of glory has passed, and Dad has missed it.

Later that same day we meet another video whiz, this time a mother with four children. The children are riding model trains, and they are shrieking, “Look at me, Mom!” Mom cannot ride or shriek because she is filming from the platform. What would posterity say if she did not preserve these memories? Fun cannot just “happen”; it must be engineered and recorded. As the kids cruise into the station, mother shifts Tom so she can get Randy in the picture, and she adjusts Franny’s hat so that you will be able to see Bill’s face.

Magic In Mothballs

Why are video cameras such a hot item? One reason, I suspect, is because we finally have the technology to indulge our covert materialism. Despite what we utter in church, we suspect anything that we cannot touch, see, and hear. We want desperately to own and keep that which cannot be kept. We want to mothball Sally’s first steps and preserve the moment when John learned to swim (at only five years old!).

We don’t trust intangible memories; we want something we can store and access with the press of a button. We cling to the materialistic world view in which the visible is all important, and we struggle to capture and cage each “magic” moment.

But magic moments cannot be captured. We cage the memory, but it escapes. Pry open the cage (rerun, rerun), and the magic is gone—what crouches in its place is tame and boring. The filmer/reporter misses the essence of the experience: the sparkle in the child’s eyes as she toddles across the room; the seashore smell of salt, spray, and breakers as they are thrown onto the sand.

There is a distance, as if you were to contemplate the principle of kissing while in the act of kissing, or wonder if you’re really having a good time while in the act of skiing. When we view reality through an objective lens, we move to the sidelines; we are not swept into the tingling, the formidable, or the overwhelming. We are left holding an empty chrysalis: the life—the magic—has flown.

Forty or 50 years from now, I can picture retirement villages filled with people who struggle to catch vague memories of events they never fully experienced by watching tape after tape of recorded happenings—no memories evoked and considered because the participants were never fully present.

Bethlehem On Videotape

Epiphany is the moment of revelation. I try to imagine the wise men’s visit today: Mary to Joseph, “Joseph, will you grab the video camera? I’ve got to get this on tape”; to the wise men, “Say, would you mind backing up and approaching the house again, maybe a little more slowly this time, but with some eager expressions, please? Okay—no, that camel is blocking the angle.”

How did Mary manage without a video camera? Scripture tells us she stored up her experiences and pondered them in her heart. She fully lived them and then ruminated their significance again and again.

Scripture points to the lilies of the field and the birds of the air and exhorts us again and again to reflect on God’s sustaining care. The psalmist moves from depression to praise by remembering and meditating on God’s works (Pss. 77; 107). The children of Israel are commanded not to make tangible, graven images, but to remember God’s act of deliverance. Hundreds of years later, Augustine writes that without the “sweetness” and the “delight of truth” given in contemplation, the “burden” of action commanded by the duty of love would be unbearable (De civitate Dei, xix: 19).

Like the children of Israel, we need faith in order to throw ourselves fully into our experiences with our children, with God, and with his world. Paul writes, “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” When we surround ourselves with our taped lives, we are like two-year olds who treasure the pile of glitzy wrapping paper but do not realize that the Savior is born; we squeal over foil-wrapped eggs in a pink-and-green basket when it is Jesus’ resurrection that has shattered the world’s despair.

Our lives consist of a series of experiences, some more photogenic than others. God, through his Spirit and his Word, breathes significance into and around these experiences so that they grow into treasure houses of faith that can sustain us in times of pressure or depression. Mary’s experiences of God were her treasure, and they were carefully stored where moth and rust could not touch them. She had her treasure with her when she scrubbed the kitchen floor, when she walked to fetch water from the village well, and when she suffered a mother’s anguish at the foot of the cross.

When CHRISTIANITY TODAY asked its readers which religious questions seemed important to them, “Does God have a plan for my life, and if so, am I living it?” received the second-highest number of “high interest” ratings—62 per cent of those surveyed.

The editors knew divine guidance was an important topic to young Christians. But when we considered that the average CT reader is in his or her forties, we were surprised at the high rating, and decided to consider what the question of divine guidance means for persons in midlife.

Many religious people expend their spiritual energies telling God how much they love him and about the wonderful plan they have for his life. Of course, they don’t put it that way, but—cloaked in proper pious platitudes—they devote their prayers to telling God what to do.

On the other hand, mature followers of Jesus Christ are more concerned about God’s will for their lives. Thus they may spend more prayer time in listening than in talking.

But listening for God’s voice has become a problem for many Christians. Some seem to hear his voice as perhaps Joan of Arc heard it, getting her instructions from Saints Michael, Catherine, and Margaret—and then they proceed to take on impossible and irrational projects just as the Maid of Orleans did. Others listen, if not exactly expecting to hear voices, at least hoping for some solid assurance that God wants them to choose a particular path at a crossroads in their lives. And when they don’t get it, their faith may falter as they raise the wrong question: whether God is present in their lives, rather than whether some of the talk they have heard on guidance might not be a bit vacant. To add to the puzzlement, there are indeed some who listen faithfully, act on what they hear, and live lives of exemplary spiritual achievement.

Have I Done Well?

The puzzlement is unfortunately complicated for people who are reaching midlife. Much of the writing about knowing God’s will for our lives has been focused on questions and spiritual approaches appropriate to youth.

After World War II came to an end and the United States was flooded by GIs seeking jobs, educations, and sweethearts, Christian thinkers addressed the question of God’s will largely in terms of choosing a career and finding a mate. Twenty years later, as the leading edge of the baby boom entered college, the concerns were largely the same. But in the last decade of the twentieth century, the the leading edge of the baby boom is entering the bewildering landscape of “midlife crisis”—and facing a new series of questions.

While both young adults and midlife Christians are dealing with issues of identity, these Who-am-I questions take a different form at different stages of life. Young adults ask, “Who am I?” by asking which career to pursue or whether to pursue a career at all. Midlife adults are more likely to ask whether they have been successful in their chosen careers. Young adults try to understand their sexual future by asking whether they should marry and, if so, whom. Midlife adults are more likely to examine their sexual past, asking whether their earlier choices about marriage and children were indeed the right ones, and whether they have fulfilled their obligations and, in turn, been fulfilled by them. Young adults try to gain knowledge by earning degrees and honing their techniques. Midlifers, by contrast, try to consolidate wisdom by asking what they have learned.

The questions of midlife, thus, are essentially evaluations (Have I done well?), while the questions of young adulthood are choices (What shall I do?). This process of evaluation is an opportunity for growth as well as a door to disaster.

For example, giving a negative answer to the question “Have I paid enough attention to my children and instructed them well?” can help midlifers recognize shortcomings and do what they can to improve relations with their offspring. But in some circ*mstances, it can call forth a neurotic response that imposes moralistic and restrictive religion on teenagers who are supposed to be discovering their own values and testing their own judgment.

Likewise, a sense of failure within marriage can lead to deepened intimacy and understanding. Or it can produce a panicky search for intimacy and excitement outside of marriage, resulting in the pain of separation, divorce, and child-support payments.

Unworkable Ideas

Not only are the kinds of questions asked in midlife different, but the understandings that are often taught to young people of how God guides are no longer workable in a period of adjustment to imperfection and limits.

A number of erroneous ideas were at least tolerable in the energy of youth: (1) that missing God’s preferred choice in a situation by choosing some other, but equally God-honoring and moral, path will lead to spiritual ruin; (2) that the special guidance given to apostles and prophets as they spread the Good News or corrected God’s people is somehow the norm for what all Christians should expect; and (3) that God’s scriptural revelation of right, of wrong, and of principles to live by is not sufficient information for us to please God.

Young people, who are more spiritually idealistic, energetic, and resilient, may survive this kind of erroneous teaching. But these ideas, if taken seriously at midlife, can be much more potent for spiritual ruin. Either midlifers will give up hope of special guidance and therefore give up hope in God, or they will listen to their subjectivity, follow their impulses, and claim God’s blessing for the turmoil they create. In this regard, I never cease to be amazed at those who abandon hope for their marriages and pass through an illicit affair or two on their way to a second union, only to interpret that experience as God releasing them from bondage and bringing them a blessing in the guise of a new spouse. However unwise our early choices may have been, there is never an excuse for trying to improve the situation by violating the clear and inspired commands of Scripture.

Why Ask?

Why then do we even bother ourselves about seeking God’s plan for our lives? Why do we so often put ourselves through the anguish of searching? While all Christians wish to live within God’s will, most of us proceed in our day-by-day routine doing the tasks we find at hand. We feel settled that it is God’s will for us to change the baby’s diapers, go to the office, mow the lawn, and teach our children well. We also know it is God’s will that we not do certain things—lie to the Internal Revenue Service, for example, or sexually abuse children.

And we do not bother much to ask God about the incidental affairs of living. These questions we recognize as having no moral significance.

But as midlife adults, it is natural for us to ask about God’s will for our lives partly because of what Scripture says, and partly because of what our psyches tell us.

The Intimate God

Scripture tells us of a God who is near to us: one who keeps account of the hairs on our heads (Matt. 10:20; Luke 12:7); one who has plans for some of us from the moment of conception (Judges 13:5; Ps. 139:13–15; Jer. 1:5); one who wants good things for us in the same way a father wants good things for each of his children (Luke 11:11–13). God even keeps track of the two-for-a-farthing sparrows, Jesus said. Of how much more value are we human beings than birds to him (Matt. 10:29, 31; Luke 12:6–7)!

We could infer from these texts that God has a plan for us. How could an all wise God who knows us better than we know ourselves not have a blueprint for our lives, an itinerary through the bewildering choices of career and job assignment, housing and community choice, mate and offspring? The fact that certain biblical characters were chosen before their births to do special work for God seems to reinforce this idea. And the mystical direction of the Spirit experienced by such as Paul and Philip (Acts 8:26–29; 13:1–7; 16:10, 6–7) likewise gives the impression that God has our lives mapped out for us.

But is that the necessary implication? Healthy parental love wishes for its offspring a rich and rewarding life. But healthy parental love does not force its specific hopes—that a daughter should marry a doctor, for example, or be one herself—on its children. Healthy parental love gives guidelines for safety. (“Don’t stick your fingers in electrical outlets,” we tell our little ones, and when they are older, “Just say no to drugs.”) Wise parents try to inculcate good habits and edifying practices (brushing regularly, going to church and giving to charity, and changing the oil in your car every three to four thousand miles). But within wise guidelines, our children face a creation that is bulging with good possibilities. And healthy parents encourage their offspring to invest themselves in those possibilities.

Likewise, God seems to have given our first parents only a few limitations (“Don’t touch that tree, but from all the others you may freely eat”) and a host of possibilities. And our spiritual ancestors received moral and spiritual laws (the Ten Commandments in particular and the Mosaic legislation in general) that guarded their heritage of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (not strictly biblical terms, I realize, but not exactly unbiblical either).

Under the New Covenant, Christians are encouraged to live in a spirit of freedom and sonship rather than in a spirit of fear and slavery (Rom. 8:14–17; Gal. 4–5). In fact, without revoking any of his former guidelines, God has articulated for those who walk in the Spirit a summary guideline of sacrificial love; for those who live by a rule of self-sacrifice in search of the good of their fellow human beings will surely fulfill all of the moral and spiritual laws.

It seems from Scripture that God does on occasion have special purposes for chosen individuals. But it also appears from Scripture that the bulk of humanity is given the freedom and responsibility to choose wisely within the limits of the moral law. This has been argued briefly but cogently by J. I. Packer on the pages of Eternity (April, May, June 1986) and at length by Gary Friesen with J. Robin Maxson in their book Decision Making and the Will of God: A Biblical Alternative to the Traditional View (Multnomah Press, 1980). It seems only reasonable that to those creatures he has made in his image, God gives the principle and burden of freedom. The daunting truth about our high calling is well put by Bishop Dafyd in Stephen R. Lawhead’s Merlin (Crossway, 1988): “The higher a man’s call and vision, the more choices are given him. This is our work in creation: to decide. And what we decide is woven into the thread of time and being forever. Choose wisely, then, but you must choose” (p. 328).

God’s Will—and a Little Creativity

Never have I seen a time when people are busier but with less sense of direction in their lives. Lou Harris tells us that 86 percent of Americans are chronically stressed out—and that number includes Christians. The question is why. Why are we so willing to tolerate stressed-out living? Why are our lives so lacking in direction and purpose?

I have particularly wondered about this in light of the fact that there is so much sermonizing and writing on how to find God’s will for our lives by “open and closed doors,” “fleeces,” and assorted “pulse taking” measures. Virtually all the personal-growth books, career-planning texts, and financial manuals for Christians provide simple, direct formulas for finding God’s will. And yet there is a majority of men and women who still seem to be wandering in the wastelands of uncertainty and confusion.

Back to basics

One reason why people are so stressed out and confused is that we are trying to do it all, have it all, and follow Jesus too. But we won’t find God’s will by doing the American Dream with a Jesus overlay. If we seriously want to find God’s will for our lives, we must begin with very different questions than “What do I want?” and “What will God let me have?” Instead, we must ask, “What does God want?” “What is God doing in history?” and “How does he want to use my life?” And the way we answer these questions is simply to go back to the Bible. There we discover God’s purposes for his people and his world. I usually begin by studying Isaiah.

The vision of the prophet is absolutely breathtaking. He describes a spectacular new heaven and new earth—nations of the world in which the blind see, the deaf hear, and the lame dance with joy; captives are set free, and a sumptuous banquet is spread for the people of God.

God purposes to create a new order of righteousness under his reign in which there is no more sin. He purposes a new kingdom of justice in which there is no more oppression of the poor; a new era of peace in which the weapons of war are transformed into the implements of peace; a new age of wholeness in which the partial are made whole; and a new day of celebration when suffering and death are put away and we share in the wedding feast of our God forever.

Clearly, Jesus Christ understood God’s purposes for the human future. And as the Messiah, he made God’s purposes his purposes, singularly devoting his life to that vision. The author of Hebrews encourages us to look “unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross” (Heb. 12:2). What was the joy set before him? It was the complete realization of the purposes of God, a world in which all things are made new.

This same Jesus taught us to pray a very radical prayer: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” It is clear in the Gospels that he expects his followers to join him in his vocation of praying and working to see the kingdom purposes of God realized on earth as they are in heaven. He repeatedly urged us not to worry about the self-involving agendas of a secular society but to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, assuring us that he will supply our essential needs (Matt. 6:33).

In other words, if God is ultimately opposed to sin and plans to create a new order of righteousness, then we too must work for righteousness. If God is opposed to the oppression of the poor and wants to create a new society of justice, then we too must work for justice for the poor. If God is opposed to the suffering of the innocent and intends to create a new era of peace, then we too must commit our lives to work for peace and reconciliation. If God’s heart breaks over those who are partial, and he wills sight to the blind and healing for the disabled, then we too must work to bring wholeness to the broken. And if God wills to create a wedding feast to celebrate the establishment of his reign, then we too must join him in celebrating his reign now in anticipation of that day when Christ returns and God’s kingdom is fully established.

Obviously, we can’t all fully devote our lives to all that God intends for the human future, but we can through prayer, retreat, and community discover how God wants to use our lives and gifts to work intentionally for his purposes now. Some will be called to work one evening a week doing evangelism among international students. Others will discover their vocation in working with the growing number of abused kids in our cities. Still others will become involved in agricultural projects in Somalia. All, however, must find ways to express God’s loving purposes through their lives.

What I am suggesting is this; (1) Once we have clarified what God’s purposes are through biblical study, (2) discerned through prayer how God wants to link our lives to his purposes, and (3) had that call confirmed in community, then we have the opportunity to orchestrate our whole lives around that sense of purpose. I call this whole-life discipleship.

Whole-life discipleship

Al felt called of God to go into engineering when he graduated from the University of Washington. He turned down the first job he was offered because even though the pay was good, building cruise missiles was, for him, counter-kingdom. He looked a little while longer and took a job redesigning cardiology equipment. One day a friend invited him to visit a home for cerebral-palsied kids. During that visit it all came together for Al. He is now at the University of Chicago learning to use advanced engineering design and computer systems to help cerebral-palsied kids move and communicate for the kingdom of God.

Virtually any occupational or professional training can, with a little imagination, be intentionally directed for God’s loving purposes. But if we can’t do it through our occupations, then each of us needs to find some way through our leisure to work for the purposes of God. Most of us, with some modest changes in our timestyles, could find one evening a week to do ministry.

Recently, I received amazed stares when I told a church congregation that one of the top discipleship decisions they will ever make is the decision to purchase a home. I explained, “Talk all you want about the lordship of Jesus in your life, but once you sign that contract, both husband and wife are working for the mortgage company for the next 30 years.” Usually it is a decision not to do short-term overseas service. It is a decision to have less time for family life. And with both spouses working, they probably won’t have any time during the week to be involved in service to anyone else.

John and Pam created an alternative so that they and their family could place God’s purposes first. They decided to build their own house. Since they only have two little boys, they decided to construct a simple, two-bedroom house. John and Pam have just completed construction of their suburban house. The total cost: $25,000 (not including land costs), paid up front (as opposed to a mortgage that would have cost nearly $500,000 over 30 years).

Since they have no mortgage, Pam does not have to work outside the home. She has more time for family life and working in the church. As for John, he can afford to take time off from work periodically to go overseas and do video work for World Concern in Nepal.

I realize we can’t all build our own homes, but with a little imagination, most of us can find creative ways to free up some time to join our Lord in “bringing sight to the blind, release to the captives, and good news to the poor.” We can discover a way of life that is less stressed and more festive and satisfying than anything the rat race can offer.

By Tom Sine, author of Why Settle for More & Miss the Best? (Word).

The Desperate Search For God’S Favor

But despite God’s gift of freedom, it seems that many people expect him to have an agenda for their existence, perhaps not because of what Scripture tells them, but because of what their psyches whisper. Of course, the desire to please God in making our choices great and small is a sign of spiritual health. But there is another drive to please—a desperate desire to pacify God and win his favor by divining exactly what he wants and doing only precisely that. That desire is a sign of spiritual pathology. This inability to live with uncertainty, to allow God to allow us freedom, may often be rooted in a bad experience with a parent or other authority figure. I have seen this consuming passion most often in people who felt abandoned by a parent—an adopted teen whose adoptive parents beat her; a collegiate man whose father died early and unexpectedly of cancer; another whose father still lived but had grown cold, distant, and uncommunicative. In counseling, all of these persons came to recognize that they subconsciously feared God would abandon them (as the human parents had) if they failed to win his favor at every juncture in their lives.

Midlife can bring this fear of abandonment even more intensely than young adulthood. And thus midlife anxieties can produce an even more intense search for being “in the will of God” as an assurance that when other aspects of life are decaying, at least one can Jacoblike tighten a full-nelson hold on God.

At midlife, many adults discover they are not going to rise any higher in their organizations. They discover they will probably never enter a higher salary bracket than they already have. They find their superiors at work noticing the industry, creativity, and stamina of younger employees—all at the very point when their own energies begin to ebb and their joints begin to stiffen. They discover their children are not achieving all they had hoped. And they realize their children are no longer malleable, but already set steadily on their own courses.

Midlife adults may also find their own marriages have lost their luster and that, as the children grow older and leave home, the needs of offspring can no longer distract attention from deficiencies in their marriage. And then their friends and former classmates begin to die off, just one or two, in accidents or with untimely coronaries; but the person in midlife has entered the valley of the shadow of death.

Loss is real at this stage. Loss of goals. Loss of energy. Loss of a sense of accomplishment. Loss of family pride. Loss of friends. And loss of faith—for those who have been good churchgoing, pillar-of-the-community Christians discover that even their faithfulness to religion has not made them exceptions to the life patterns of the rest of humanity. As Raymond Studzinski writes:

The desire to totally control one’s environment and one’s future, frequently through a close relationship with God, the all-good provider, has proven to be unrealizable. Plagued by unfulfilled dreams and by shattered ideals, persons at midlife find that the enemy of their fulfillment and happiness is less outside themselves in other people or in situations and more within, in their own hearts. They experience their internal chaos in terms of not knowing what they want, what they care for, or if anything is worthwhile. Rather than being fulfilled, they feel drained by all they have done in their lives. Life looks like a series of losses with the greatest loss, that of life itself, still ahead. (Raymond Studzinski, O.S.B., Spiritual Direction and Midlife Development [Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1985], p. 37.)

Holding On To An Idealized Past

Whenever a person is moving into a new phase of life, it is not unusual for him or her to want to hold on to elements of the former stage. Every parent learns how a teenager can act remarkably mature one minute and revert to utter childishness the next. At least for the teen there is the promise of increased freedom and responsibility that will lure him or her to “put away childish things.” But what is to motivate the person in middle age to move ahead developmentally? The promise of false teeth and bifocals? Thus it is only natural that the midlife person will try to grasp at the piety of his or her youth, longing for the excitement and enthusiasm that followed conversion and trying to revive the sense of God’s intimacy that accompanied an important personal spiritual experience. But that energy cannot be contrived. A spiritual discovery once made cannot be made again. And thus the midlife adult often feels the loss of God’s presence along with the loss of youth, idealism, and opportunity.

The most healthy reaction is not to look for God in an idealized past, but to move into the future, confident that God will present himself to us in new and different ways.

For example, the believer who does not try to recreate his or her spiritual past can find God’s presence and a sense of direction in different scriptural stories and motifs from the ones that appealed in the passionate and energetic days of youth. Teens and college students are often challenged by images of the young Daniel and his friends standing firm for truth in the court schools of Babylon. Or perhaps they are inspired by the exploits of a young Gideon, David, or Esther. Stories of courage and accomplishment are models for the channeling of the spiritual energies of the young in the service of God.

But the midlife believer, who sees that his tomorrows are fewer than his yesterdays, and who realistically understands that many of his earlier goals may be unreachable, will find inspiration in the biblical tales of failure, of repentance, and of persistence: Peter’s rebounding from faithlessness to take a post of apostolic leadership; Paul’s wisdom and faithfulness in spite of the physical torment of his “thorn in the flesh” and the politicization of the churches he had helped found; Hosea’s faithfulness in the face of Gomer’s promiscuity; the aging David’s acceptance of his inability to complete the building of the temple, yet doing what he could to amass the materials. These stories can be inspirations at midlife.

Similarly, persons in midlife must look for God’s presence and listen for his direction in the new challenges that come with a new phase of living. Many midlife men, for example, are given a new opportunity in the workplace. Instead of being rising young stars, they now find themselves in a position to become mentors—to take the skills, wisdom, and savvy acquired in the first 20 years of work life and use them to help younger, more energetic workers to develop themselves and make a contribution to their field. Thus one can find God’s presence in these new serving relationships.

And more than ever, midlife persons can seek God’s presence and guidance in their relationships with fellow believers. The achievement-oriented lives of so many young adults effectively prevent them from developing deep relationships in either the family or the church. So much energy and time are devoted to making it financially and achieving advancement that barely enough is left for perfunctory family meals and church attendance. But midlife can be a time of consolidation rather than expansion. Wise midlifers may recognize that they have reached a career plateau. For these individuals, the pressure is off if they will allow themselves to be thankful for what they have achieved with God’s help. If they will, they can then turn their attentions to mining the riches of their relationships. And in these relationships, they can find God’s presence and his guidance.

A few years before I formally became a midlifer (the transition begins at about age 40 and ends at about 45, says Studzinski), I was considering a career change. Should I return to school for a degree in clinical psychology? I asked myself. After all, I had done a fair amount of pastoral counseling, something I had enjoyed. I asked God for guidance, and then asked four Christian friends who knew me well: a former student who had graded papers for me; a former secretary who was now involved in career guidance counseling; a fellow campus minister with whom I shared racquetball games and lockerroom chat twice a week; and my wife. All four said it would be the wrong choice—and each of them gave different reasons. And all of the reasons were compelling. Later, when I considered becoming an editor, the voices of friends confirmed the decision. At all stages of our lives, God makes himself present to us in our relationships. But at midlife, we need to turn to our friends more than ever. And in addition, we need to avail ourselves of the spiritual mentors God has given us in the church.

Love For The Unlovely

Understanding two aspects of the character of God is important to the person in midlife, for these scriptural themes help us feel yet more comfortable in our relationship with God at the same time they help us make decisions consistent with God’s character.

First, God is characterized by covenant faithfulness. So, too, should his people be. If there is any aspect of God’s character that through sheer repetition in the Hebrew Scriptures should impress us, it is this characteristic. The Hebrew word chesedh appears nearly 250 times in Scripture—mostly in connection with God’s character. Often translated “lovingkindness” and still more often “mercy” in the older translations, when associated with divine love the word is perhaps best rendered as “covenant faithfulness.” Or as E. M. Good writes, chesedh is “a faithful love, a steadfast, unshakable maintenance of the covenantal relationship” (“Love in the OT,” The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 3, p. 167).

The steadiness of God’s covenant love is spotlighted repeatedly by the unfaithfulness of Israel. In spite of their whoring after other gods, their syncretistic adaptations of pagan deities, and their grinding the faces of the poor, Yahweh’s lovingkindness seems to endure forever. He continues to send his messengers to woo them and warn them.

The biblical covenant between Yahweh and his people has both a unilateral and a bilateral character. It is radically one-sided, of course, for Yahweh chooses a group of people who have little to recommend them, leads them forth from bondage, gives them civil and moral laws by which to live, gives them food and drink, and finally, he gives them a land in which to live. All this he does when they are so disorganized and disorderly they cannot hope to take any credit themselves. Thus his covenant with them, his agreement or contract, is one-sided. Knowing their weakness, Yahweh nevertheless promises to be faithful.

Yet there is a subtle two-sidedness here. While Yahweh knows their weakness, while he realistically understands that he will not receive perfect obedience from this nation newly formed, he places upon them the condition of keeping covenant, that is, to remember him as the source of their existence (Deut. 6:10–15), to obey his commands (Deut. 7:6–11), and to be holy as he is holy (Lev. 11:45). After all, as David sings in 2 Samuel 22:26, with those who are faithful, God is faithful (“With the chasidh you practice chesedh”).

Christian theologians differ on whether God’s covenant love for Israel is in some way conditioned on their continued obedience. A case can be made from Scripture for the idea that God’s covenant faithfulness has its limits. And a case can be made for the completely unlimited character of that chesedh. But most biblical scholars will agree that God’s covenant faithfulness includes a tolerance far beyond any human comprehension.

Human covenants are by their nature more bilateral than divine covenants. But the promises we make (as in the marriage service) and the promises inherent in our very existence (as in our relationships to our children) are to be characterized by a divinely unilateral quality. No matter what my children may do, they are still my children. No matter what my spouse may do, she is still spouse to me. Wise Christians therefore treat these bonds as indissoluble. And in the turmoil of midlife, they preserve these covenant relationships by practicing a longsuffering lovingkindness.

Faithful In The Face Of Failure

The painful story of Hosea and his fidelity to the faithless Gomer is recorded in Scripture as a parable of God’s utter faithfulness and an example of how human love can partake of divine chesedh. In the face of Israel’s spiritual adultery, God says he will romance her: “Therefore”—that is, because of Israel’s idolatry (Gomer’s adultery)—“therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.… And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.… And I will betroth you to me for ever; I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love [chesedh] and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness; and you shall know the LORD” (Hosea 2:14, 15b, 19–20).

The word of the Lord through Hosea is the word of faithfulness in the face of infidelity. When midlife Christians evaluate the “success” of their relationships, they must remember that God, who condemns his people’s idolatry, lives yet by his covenant with them.

It is natural for persons in midlife to evaluate the health and success of their relationships. But midlife Christians must resist the temptation to write off completely the relationship that did not fulfill their romantic (and perhaps unreasonable) expectations. Seeking solace or excitement in an affair is anything but practicing covenant faithfulness. Love does not seek solace; love does not thrive on thrills. Love suffers; love forgives; love nurtures; and love heals when possible. And rather than discarding a relationship, love examines it to see whether it might be entering a new chapter of existence.

Such covenant faithfulness is difficult, to be sure. But it can indeed be rewarding—even when a divorce seems inevitable.

Divorce certainly seemed inevitable when Ellen returned from a trip abroad. Charles could tell from her distant coolness that something had changed for the worse and that the marriage was over. That was over five years ago. Charles still doesn’t know if Ellen was unfaithful to him on that trip. But whatever had happened had caused Ellen to turn on him and blame him for all her bad experiences and turbulent emotions. Charles, hurt though he was, decided to exercise covenant faithfulness, to act like a husband even though Ellen wouldn’t let him be a husband. Over the next few years, Charles insisted that she see a counselor and face her inner turmoil; he insisted that they come to an agreement about their property and avoid expensive and upsetting legal wrangles; he helped Ellen get launched on a new career (she now makes significantly more than his ministerial salary); and when she wanted to save money for a down payment on a new house for herself and their son, he invited her to move back in with him so she could set the money aside. Over five years passed between their separation and their divorce, but those five years were a time of growth for both and, in a curious kind of way, faithfulness for Charles. Ellen’s midlife turmoil could have spelled emotional and financial disaster for them both. Charles’s Hosea-like commitment avoided ruin even when he could not singlehandedly avoid divorce.

To be godlike at midlife means to hold faithfully on course, as Charles did, even when faced with failure. But Charles’s story also demonstrates another aspect of God’s character.

The Chess Master

God is the master of creative possibilities, one who is not boxed in by our bad choices. Having been created in his image, we share in that creativity. Surely Charles would have chosen another course for his ill-fated marriage; but given the realities of a sin-ripped world, Charles chose a creative path that wrung more good out of a painful situation than anyone might have hoped for. Likewise, the sovereign God (who is all wise) would often have chosen a course different from those chosen by his people through the ages. But given the hard realities of human history, the creative God finds ways to bring victory from tragedy, success from failure, and hope from disappointment.

Einstein reputedly said, “God doesn’t play dice.” True, but I believe God does play chess. The essence of dice is chance; but the essence of chess is strategy; and the essence of strategy is looking beyond the narrow confines of the immediate challenge to the multitude of options that are open beyond. Human beings often feel squeezed by the either/or-ness of daily life. We may feel we have a narrow range of options, none of them particularly attractive. But like a good chess player, our sovereign God in his foreknowledge sees his second, third, and fourth moves hence. Thus he can—and does—bring good out of evil. This is illustrated in the wisdom of Joseph, who had been betrayed by his jealous brothers only to be made governor of Egypt. In Genesis 50, Joseph faces his fearful brothers and says, “You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (v. 20). No one could have advised those foolish brothers that it was God’s will that they sell their sibling into slavery. But it was God’s will that many should be preserved from starvation; and, like a chess master, he took the deplorable circ*mstances of Joseph’s life and brought good to many. This must be the meaning of Romans 8:28, “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.” It is not that Paul affirms the goodness of all circ*mstances, but that he affirms God’s creative good will in all circ*mstances.

Can Christians find a way to be creatively godlike when faced with hard choices? Yes; they can choose not to follow their flesh-bound instincts and sulk, rebel, or give up. Instead, they can follow the intuitions of God’s Spirit, which leads them to “be imitators of God,” to “walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:1–2).

What gives us the courage to act in sacrificial and creative love, in unorthodox (by the world’s standards) ways as Charles did in his disappointment with Ellen? It is the surety of God’s faithful and creative love. When we love creatively, we can and do make mistakes. But we gain the courage to act from knowing that our mistakes are more than matched by God’s creative opportunities. Nothing we do in the spirit of sacrificial love can permanently thwart his good and loving purpose for us.

Excerpted from the book Tough Questions Christians Ask (Christianity Today/Victor Books)

RUTH A. TUCKER¹Ruth Tucker is visiting professor of missions at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois. She is author of From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya and Guardians of the Great Commission: The Story of Women in Modern Missions (Zondervan)

In 1959, after seven years of missionary service in the Baliem Valley of Papua New Guinea, Dorie and Lloyd Van Stone faced a wrenching decision. Their young son, Burney, had not adjusted to the boarding school that he was required to attend. He was severely depressed, and after a visit home, had to be tom from his mother’s arms and taken back to the school against his will. The Van Stones decided they could not sacrifice their son’s well-being for the sake of their work—an attitude that was then an exception to the rule. There was no alternative but to leave the mission field.

Today family concerns are paramount in the minds of potential missionaries and missionaries already on the field. And the plight of missionary kids (MKS), once a peripheral issue, has become a key factor in shaping the future of world evangelism.

Mission board representatives find that the first question prospective couples often ask relates to the well-being and education of their children. “When I first began doing recruiting in the early 1980s, the subject rarely came up,” says Hal Olsen, a representative for the Africa Inland Mission. “Now it comes up all the time.”

Young parents schooled in sermons and radio broadcasts of “family theology” are having second thoughts about bringing up their children in the uncertainties of a foreign environment. “The notion is popular among today’s younger missionaries that being overseas during the years of childhood and adolescence will hurt the child,” observes Ted Ward, dean of international studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Though his extensive research on intercultural education has convinced him otherwise, Ward says much of the parents’ anxiety derives from “a negative view of the intercultural experience.” “Americans in general,” he says, “are linguistically and culturally narrow.”

In fact, many missions leaders are concerned by what they perceive to be an almost exclusive emphasis on the health of the family and the individual. “Family has become god in many churches, thereby throttling many potential missionaries,” writes Evangelical Missions Quarterly editor James Reapsome. “Some churches are putting the married state, home comfort, and the education and happiness of children before world evangelization.”

School Days

At the center of the MK issue is education. What is the best system of MK schooling? For much of this century, the predominant answer in many areas of the world has been boarding schools. This approach allows parents to be with children at least once a year, and in some cases as often as three or four times a year if the school runs on a schedule of three months of classes followed by one month of vacation.

Boarding schools were developed as a welcome alternative to sending children to their home country for education, but such schools have not been accessible to all missionaries. In some cases, this deficiency has created painful family upheaval.

Marlene Hess, who teaches at Michigan State University, was raised as an MK in Liberia. In the late 1950s, when she was 12 years old, her parents returned to their mission work, leaving Marlene and her two sisters with a family they met for the first time only one day before the separation. Her 10-year-old brother was sent to live with another family. Between sixth grade and high school graduation, Marlene spent only one year with her parents.

For Marlene and her family, there was no time for tears and feelings of self-pity. God’s will came first, and God’s will meant long separations. During those years she suppressed the pain, but the emotional stress surfaced during her college years and took a heavy toll. Her mother, too, suppressed anxiety until, in the late 1960s, she and her husband were forced to leave the field due to what was whispered about as a “nervous breakdown.”

In an effort to avoid such situations, MK boarding schools have grown in size and number over the years. Studies of boarding schools offer mixed reviews, but the schools nevertheless have a reputation for offering high-quality education. Weaknesses arise in staffing and funding. Teachers are typically volunteers who raise their support, and thus their services are often welcomed whether they are qualified or not. Many have no training to work with transcultural kids, and their term of service is often only one or two years.

Another weakness frequently cited is the “compound mentality” that the environment can foster. MKS can become so involved in their own small community that they lose awareness of the nationals living close by. And the nationals sometimes resent the massive expenditure of money—by their standards—on boarding-school children, when their own children attend poorly constructed and underequipped facilities. Thus boarding schools can be perceived as a form of elitism.

Boarding-school education is simply not suitable for every child or every family. (For instance, the Van Stones’ older daughter adapted well to boarding school.) And it has been the subject of bad press. To counter the negative image, many missionaries raised in boarding schools have responded defensively, which has served to polarize the issue.

On one side are those who, like a visiting speaker at Western Baptist Seminary in Portland, Oregon, feel that missionaries who send their children to boarding schools are out of the will of God. On the other side, some MKS brand those who complain about alienation and loneliness “a bunch of crybabies!” as one wrote in a recent issue of Simroots magazine. Rhetoric aside, it would be difficult to obtain an accurate survey of the MK response to boarding schools. However, an informal, anecdotal survey seems to show that for every one MK who has bad memories of boarding school, there may be two or three who sing its praises.

Satellite Sessions

Fortunately, today there are many options for MK education, options that didn’t exist a century—or even a generation—ago. These offer approaches to accommodate virtually every personality type and taste. For missionaries working in or near large cities, a variety of private schools that allow children to live at home may be available. These include American schools (military and civilian), international schools, and non-English-speaking schools, such as a French or German school.

National schools are also an option. Although they can have drawbacks, they offer the greatest opportunity for the MK to identify closely with the culture and people. Other alternatives include home schooling and correspondence studies, or a combination of the two. Here the greatest drawbacks, as with any home-schooling program, are the lack of social and intellectual interaction with peers and the time consumed in parental teaching.

The wave of the future, in the minds of many parents and MK educators, is the satellite or field education system—a program that utilizes computers, itinerant teachers, and regional learning centers where students can assemble periodically. Though still in the early stages of development, such systems have been promoted by Wycliffe Bible Translators and other missions that work in remote areas.

Despite the options now available, however, MK schooling, even at its best, is an aspect of missionary life that can often be filled with frustrations. If the children are in boarding school, they are away too long. If they are in home schooling, they are home too much. If they are in national or international schools, they may find themselves ahead in some subjects and behind in others, and sometimes unprepared for college entrance exams in their homeland.

Problem Or Fad?

Are the problems that MKS confront being magnified simply by overemphasis of the subject? “For those who are inclined to emphasize the hardships and hazards of missionary life, it is easy enough to focus attention on the problems of missionary children,” observes Ward. “Every childhood tantrum, every adolescent pain, every perplexing dilemma of educational choices becomes transformed into an MK problem.”

Some leaders have suggested that the issue is the latest fad in missions, and in the long run it may serve neither the cause of missions in general nor the MK in particular. Still others emphasize that the most crucial element in MK development is not the type of schooling or the degree of cross-cultural adjustment required, but rather the family world view, its perspective of the world.

Parents, of course, are most influential in the formation of this family world view, molded to a large extent by their outlook on life. Their perception of God; their relationships with each other, their children, the culture, the mission organization, and their co-workers; their style of problem solving, showing affection, sharing responsibilities, and using leisure time—all these factors have a profound influence on a child’s development. And they account to a large extent for the MK’s attitude toward his or her unique lifestyle.

Miriam Adeney, who teaches cross-cultural ministries at Seattle Pacific University and Regent College and served as a missionary in the Philippines, advises missionary parents to encourage their children “to look for things they can appreciate in their new culture,” such as colorful festivals, foods, family lifestyles, and intriguing art, music, drama, and poetry.

Missionary parents can make times of separation less difficult by openly expressing painful emotions of fear and anxiety, says Frances J. White, a clinical psychologist at Wheaton College Graduate School and a former missionary to Africa. When children are not verbally expressive, she says, parents must “try to read behind their words.” Letting MKS know their parents understand what they are going through “assures them that they have been heard and understood.”

White also encourages families to celebrate farewells and homecomings with parties—to make them celebrations to anticipate and to look back on with fond memories. She emphasizes proper mental preparation ahead of time for such changes, and recommends that parents schedule a period of transition to buffer what otherwise might be a sudden culture shock.

Testing the MK Stereotype

Are MKS misfits? The stereotype persists that missionary kids, because they grow up in two (or more) cultures, have difficulty assimilating into either one.

But is the image accurate? The question has prompted an increasing amount of research in recent years, while response to the perceived needs of MKS has spawned a growing list of organizations and networking groups.

Many recent studies have been commissioned by mission boards, but the vast majority consists of independent graduate research. Though these studies approach the MK question from different angles, many offer similar conclusions: that MKS do struggle with social adjustment.

One such finding was recorded recently in a master’s thesis submitted to the Wheaton College Graduate School, “A Study of the Psychosocial Development of Adult MKS.” In that study, Karen Wrobbel examined nearly 300 adult MKS. She concluded: “The finding that psychosocial development was lower for the MKS in this study was an unexpected, or at least unhoped for, finding. The data indicate that the adult MKS studied, while having much positive resolution, are not resolving the development crises … as successfully as their monocultural counterparts.”

Other studies also suggest MKS have lower self-images than their peers.

But while research supports some notions about MKS, it disproves others. For example, the idea that boarding school has a negative effect on missionary children has not held up. One study found self-esteem higher among boarding-school MKS who had spent more years separated from their parents than among those who had spent fewer years away from their parents.

Another study indicated higher self-esteem was found among MKS whose postadolescent years were spent at a boarding school, compared with nonboarding-school MK peers. Wrobbel found that MKS who had spent most of their growing-up years overseas were better adjusted socially than those who had spent only one or two terms abroad.

Another common theme found in studies of MKS is that they tend to be high achievers and intellectually more advanced than their non-MK peers. This conclusion has been widely assumed for decades, but only recently has it gained statistical support.

More in the future

Studies currently in progress promise even broader understanding of the MK “problem.” For example, a comprehensive graduate-study project was recently initiated at the University of Tennessee to examine dysfunction in missionary families.

Probably the most far-reaching research effort is being undertaken by a research team headed by Leslie Andrews, associate dean of Alliance Theological Seminary, Nyack, New York. This team is made up of individuals from several mission organizations and is known by its acronym MK-CART/CORE (Consultation and Research Team/Committee on Research and Endowment). This long-term research program includes six phases, the first two involving a thorough analysis of MK schools worldwide. More than 5,000 hours’ worth of data from 18 schools has already been collected from the first phase alone.

One of the most publicized research and networking endeavors is the International Council on Missionary Kids. There have been two ICMK councils to date—in Manila (1984) and Quito (1987). Both focused on alleviating the negative side of the MK experience through more effective care giving.

One major aspect of care giving is re-entry assistance. In 1986, Interaction, Inc., an organization headed by David Pollock of Houghton College, sponsored the first of its CORE (Consultation on Re-Entry) seminars, designed to research problems related to MKS’ re-entry into their native culture and to recommend ways to alleviate those problems.

As these and other projects clarify the profile of the MK and his or her needs, churches and mission agencies will be better prepared to meet the increasing demands for family well-being on the mission field.

By Ruth A. Tucker.

Sons and Daughters of the Pioneers

Prior to the modern mission period, which began around 1800, the “MK issue” was virtually nonexistent. During the centuries of Roman Catholic missions, missionaries took the vow of celibacy. Even many of the earliest Protestant missionaries, such as the great Frederick Schwartz, who served 40 years in India during the eighteenth century, were single.

But beginning with William Carey, questions of what to do with missionary kids emerged. Dorothy Carey was mentally ill during most of her years in India, and the Carey children often had to fend for themselves. Their wayward behavior was a source of concern to one fellow missionary, who believed the fault lay with their father: “The good man saw and lamented the evil, but was too mild to apply an effectual remedy.”

For other great pioneer missionaries, their greatest trials often involved the death of little ones or the years of separation when their children returned to the homeland for education. Adoniram and Ann Judson lost two children before Ann herself died. Adoniram’s second wife, Sarah Boardman, was a widow with a young son, whom the Karen people affectionately called “Little Chief.” When he was six years old, Sarah sent him back to America for his education. The separation was surely traumatic for this little boy, whom his mother described as having “a clinging tenderness and sensitivity which peculiarly unfitted him for contact with strangers.” Sarah had eight more children by Judson, but died before she could see “Little Chief” again.

The mouths of babes

Despite the difficult circ*mstances so often associated with MKS of earlier generations, there is evidence that many of these children went on to become well-adjusted adults. For example, of the five children of Adoniram and Sarah Judson who survived to adulthood, two became ministers, one a medical doctor, and one the headmistress of an academy. Another served honorably in the Union Army until he was disabled in battle.

Still, many MKS of past generations did resent their circ*mstances. The son of Alexander Duff, a Scottish missionary to India, was left as an infant with a “widow lady” when his parents returned to the field. On their homecoming 11 years later, he was immediately drilled on his catechism by his father, who rebuked him, saying, “The heathen boys in my Institution in Calcutta know more of the Bible than you do.”

During the four-year furlough, the boy and his mother bonded almost as though they had never been separated. The parting in 1855, from young Duff’s perspective, was a mixture of sorrow and anger: “I … well remember how my mother’s and my own heart were wellnigh breaking, and how at the London Bridge my father possessed himself of the morning Times, and left us to cry our eyes out in mutual sorrow.… A sadder parting as between mother and son there never was. The father buried in his Times … parted from the son without any regret on the latter’s part.”

Another MK whose childhood was marred by painful separations was Ida Scudder, whose father was one of a longline of Reformed Church medical missionaries to India. When she was 12, her father returned to India following his furlough, and two years later her mother joined him. Ida had to be torn from her mother, who was taken by relatives to a Chicago train station while Ida sobbed uncontrollably in her mother’s empty pillow. Although Ida vowed she would never become a missionary, she later returned to India to become one of that country’s most distinguished missionary medical doctors.

Birth of the boarding school

When C. E. Hurlburt, general director of the Africa Inland Mission, arrived in Kenya in 1901 with his wife and five children, he shocked many old-timers. But he insisted that family life was paramount and was determined to have an MK boarding school on the field close enough for parents to spend time with their children three or four times each year. All of Hurlburt’s children later became ATM missionaries to Kenya. And the school he founded, Rift Valley Academy in Kijabe, Kenya, has since become one of the largest and best-equipped MK boarding schools in the world.

It is paradoxical that the MK boarding school, the institution that has become so controversial today among missionary parents, was initiated for the purpose of strengthening family ties and avoiding the long separations that created turmoil in families.

By Ruth A. Tucker.

In Their Parents’ Footsteps

MKS themselves have widely differing viewpoints on their own unique lifestyle, and its advantages and disadvantages. One MK now in her 50s looks back with bitterness. As a child, she felt abandoned during the long separations and resented the sacrifice she had to make for a ministry to which her parents—not she—were called. In spite of her experience, she has continued in the faith, but she is the only one of her family’s four children to do so.

Rosie Roth, who has served as a house parent for MKS in Nigeria, points out that time spent with parents can be as difficult as separations. She recalls one teenage girl who returned from a vacation with her parents in a deep depression. Roth spent extra time with her, and finally the girl poured out her heart. “As I gathered her in my arms,” Roth says, “the sobs came, and so did the real cry of her heart: ‘Dad didn’t have time for me, he didn’t have time! He was so busy with his work, and I know that is why he came. But I need him, too!’”

Other MKS, however, present an entirely different view. Tammy Carlson, a seminary student at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, has fond memories of growing up in Singapore. She always thought she had led a normal life, until she became the center of curiosity in a Sunday school class while home on furlough. Her “normal” life has included travel to Italy, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, England, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Guam, Western Samoa, New Zealand, Australia, Egypt, and Israel, as well as living in Singapore. She is now preparing for mission service herself.

Following in their parents’ footsteps is not uncommon among MKS. Steve Richardson, son of Don Richardson of Peace Child fame, grew up in Irian Jaya. When he was a baby, his father left in a dugout canoe to make contact with the Sawi tribe. Steve, a graduate of Columbia Bible College, is following a similar calling and is himself initiating a work—with his wife, Arlene, also an MK—to another unreached tribe, the Sundanese of West Java in Indonesia.

New World

Just as changing attitudes toward the family have reshaped the attitudes of missionary parents, the changing face of world missions has created new MK questions, and has offered | some answers as well.

One of the most important changes is that the MK issue today is no longer limited to Western missionaries. As more non-Western Christians serve cross-culturally, the MK situation becomes more complicated. For example, Joshua and Hiroko Ogawa, Japanese missionaries who have served in Indonesia and Singapore, chose not to send their daughters to the Chefoo Boarding School, where other OMF (Overseas Missionary Fellowship) MKS were educated, because they feared they would lose their Japanese identity. Instead, they sent them to national schools and supplemented their education with Japanese correspondence courses. Both daughters have returned to Japan for their high school studies.

tieth century, however, also holds opportunities for family togetherness that have been largely ignored in the past. For more than a century, missionaries have been passing through the teeming, world-class cities on their way to tribes in sparsely populated areas. Today, as more and more tribal people immigrate to urban areas, the needs there are greater than ever. In those cities, missionaries have almost limitless opportunities for ministry and for a lifestyle that does not require children to live away from home. Perhaps, had the Van Stones been commissioned to Buenos Aires instead of the Baliem Valley, they might never have been caught in the dilemma of choosing between what was best for their child and what was best for their ministry.

What conclusions can be drawn about the life of an MK? Surveys done over the years indicate that the vast majority of MKS, despite their frustrations, would not have chosen a different lifestyle. Perhaps the situation can best be summed up by saying that by its very nature, the life of an MK has potentially negative side effects—especially if parents are not attuned to the child’s needs—but at the same time it offers tremendous opportunities not found in other vocations. Family bonds and the well-being of children need no longer be sacrifices inherent in missionary work. As the nature of missionary work changes to meet a changing world, families can find new ways to fulfill Christ’s Great Commission—together.

A strange court decision underscores the apostolic advice against being unequally yoked.

Jerold Simms and Dorothy Boeke got a divorce. Boeke is now remarried and is continuing to raise their children, two girls, ages five and seven. Tragic, yes. Unusual, no.

But there was one unique feature of the Simms-Boeke story that caught the attention of the national news media just after Christmas. For the first time in U.S. history, a court had intervened in a family to declare in what religion the children ought to be raised. The judge in a Colorado family court gave Mrs. Boeke, who is Catholic, “physical custody” of the children, while she gave Mr. Simms, who is Jewish, “religious custody.”

A bit of background: Dorothy Boeke was raised in a Christian home, but when she married Jerold Simms, she converted to Judaism.

The Simms home was not actually “a home full of Judaism,” Dorothy Boeke told ABC-TV’s Morton Dean on “Nightline.” “The children were only two and four years old at the time of the separation,” she continued. “So they had had, in fact, no religious training at that time.… We only went to synagogue like two times a year. We were not practicing Jews at all. We had a very nonreligious home.”

After several years of marriage—and marital problems—Dorothy Boeke wanted to return to her Christian upbringing. After reconverting to Catholicism, she began to attend Mass daily and to bring young Rachel and Lauren with her. When her estranged husband learned of it, he asked the court to enforce his “religious custody” and to forbid the mother from taking his daughters to church except on Easter and Christmas. This the court did, creating as much confusion as it did clarification.

In addition to raising the obvious religious liberty question, the ruling also indicated an extraordinarily naive understanding of religion on the part of the court, as if it were something that happens only in church or synagogue on Sunday or Saturday. The girls’ stepfather knows better. “I don’t know if I am permitted by court law to say grace or worship God the way that I know God in my own home,” protested David Boeke.

Fortunately, experts suggest that the conflict raised by this decision will probably warn other courts away from similar decisions.

Dividable Property?

A deeper and more troubling matter remains, however. What is a family’s religion in the court’s—and society’s—eyes? ABC-TV’s Brian Rooney posed the issue this way: “Whether the courts can treat religion as dividable property, almost like the house, the car, and the family record collection.” And the courts are often a reflection of our commonly held sentiments.

Our society now talks about “religious preference” as if religion were something one shopped for like a new automobile or a college. In our noble efforts at tolerance and pluralism, we treat religion as a matter of taste or style. Yet we have forgotten that we do not choose a religion so much as a religion chooses us.

Religions choose people in a variety of ways. Some find themselves chosen by the religion into which they were born. Their culture and ethnicity determines their religious identity.

Others are chosen by a religion as the Spirit of God finds them in their need and pulls them into a helping and healing community of faith. “I once was lost, but now am found” is their refrain.

“Was blind, but now I see” would be the confession of still others, who are inescapably gripped by the intellectual soundness of a particular theology. They, too, have been chosen as much as they have done the choosing.

This independent and uncontrollable quality of religious faith can be a wild card in a marriage. It is difficult enough for a man and a woman of similar religious upbringing to forge a common spiritual vision that will allow them to devote their mutual energies to the kingdom of God. Because marriage is often a subtle contest of wills, and because religion is for Protestants a last refuge of personal decision, husbands and wives can manipulate each other through religious differences, often in ways too subtle for them to recognize.

Visible Differences

Once you introduce the more visible differences of an interfaith marriage—whether Jewish-Christian, Catholic-Protestant, mainline-sectarian, or even humanist-supernaturalist—the situation gets both easier and more difficult.

It is easier because religious differences are more visible before marriage than many of the other differences couples have to cope with. We can see our different religious heritages and practices more easily than we can see differences in money management, personal tidiness, or ways to sort laundry. Apparently, couples from differing faith backgrounds take the time to discuss this potential source of conflict before marriage and as a result find it easier to transcend those differences in the early years of marriage. One study of couples in their first year of marriage compared couples in interfaith marriages with those who had married spouses of the same religion. Their finding: “Newlyweds in interfaith marriages were 10 percent more likely to report that marriage was easier than they had expected it to be” (Arond and Pauker, 1987).

That said, interfaith marriage is also more difficult because, for those to whom faith is not a “preference,” for those who feel “chosen,” the stakes are higher. There is a lot of pain believing that your spouse and your children, the people you love most, will not see the kingdom of heaven.

And for many, the bond to children is stronger than the bond to spouse. Couples who have been able to work out the peaceful coexistence of two religions in a marriage often find themselves starting from scratch when children arrive. The ties of blood are deep and mysterious, but their strength continues to surprise us. The primal human sense that in our progeny we live on is part of this. We feel that if our children do not carry on our faith, we have lost something. But above that shadowy emotion rides the bright prospect of building the kingdom of God both here and hereafter through the blessedness of family life. “Happy is the man whose quiver is full of them.” Miserable are they who are forced to submerge and surrender their religious convictions as their children are being led by another vision.

The televised pain of David and Dorothy Boeke and Jerold Simms serves to remind the church, both Catholic and Protestant, that it once took with utter seriousness the apostolic injunction against being “unequally yoked” (2 Cor. 6:14). In our rush to accommodate the niceties of modern culture, we have failed to repair the hedges around Christian marriage and to steer young adults away from unequal yoking. It is time not only to recall the rules of yesteryear, but to articulate clearly a theology of Christian marriage that places united service to the kingdom of God once again at its center.

By David Neff.

Just when you thought your relief dollars made little difference in the lives of the world’s starving, Ethiopia gives us reason to hope.

That’s right, Ethiopia—a country the State Department pessimistically classifies as a “permanent disaster.”

It seems as though a second famine, which many believed would be far greater than the first, has been averted. For how long is unknown. But for the time being, there will be no heart-rending scenes of mass starvation from that part of the world. No spectral images.

Journalistically speaking, says Robert Seiple of World Vision, “it is fair to say that Ethiopia is the largest ‘nonstory’ of the year.”

It is, in fact, an astounding success story in which the church played, and continues to play, a critical part. It is the sort of good news that few will sing about, but which offers hope and encouragement both to the men and women who give to those who receive.

It was estimated that 1.3 to 1.6 million metric tons of food would be needed to sustain the population of Ethiopia in 1988, or on average, over 100,000 metric tons of food a month. In August of 1986, the largest month of distribution during the 1984–86 famine, 83,000 metric tons of food were distributed. Thus, every month could be worse than the worst month of the last disaster. And yet, throughout 1988, the pipeline of food was filled, maintained, and ultimately distributed in such a way that the prophecies of holocaust remained unfulfilled.

Moreover, Christian relief groups such as World Vision and World Relief continued to oversee development projects geared to meet not only immediate needs, but offer hope for the future. For example, World Vision, with the help of a group of volunteers from some Minnesota churches and the indigenous population, began to dig wells, cap springs, and plant trees in the Ansokia Valley north of Addis Ababa. Hillsides were terraced. Children were immunized. Better farming techniques were introduced. Roads were made passable.

Today, Ansokia, a famine camp in the last disaster, exists as an oasis. And it can be replicated throughout Ethiopia. “But,” warns Seiple, “the need is for perseverance.”

“A commitment to relief need only last as long as the immediate problem exists,” he says. “A commitment to development needs to be maintained over years, even decades. In the process, we must transcend ideologies that are not our own, governments that are not always to our liking, difficult environments that are uncomfortable.”

In short, the church has brought hope, but it can ill afford to rest. Instead, it must continue to be the hands and feet of Christ, and continue to bring his healing touch to those who can hope in nothing else.

“Compassion fatigue” is not an option.

By Harorld Smith

What do you notice first about a Third World slum?

You see numbing uniformity, for one thing. You focus on one home: walls made of cardboard and woven straw matting, a piece of tin slung across for the roof. It seems casual, temporary—the kind of structure bored Cub Scouts might throw together on a lazy summer afternoon.

But next to that home stands another just like it, and another; they stretch for miles—yes, miles—in all directions. Around the world, the names for slums may vary—shantytown, favela, barrio—but the construction does not.

In Lima, Peru, a wiry, tanned young American named David Wroughton stands in a slum neighborhood of 100,000 people, trying to explain to some visitors how such “instant cities” come about. Wroughton directs a Christian agency called ACUDE (a Spanish acronym for United Christian Action for Development) that works in these slums.

“Peru calls these areas pueblos jovenes, or ‘young towns,’” he begins. “In an effort to encourage land redistribution, a former government relaxed the laws against squatters. If you own a plot of land that is not being cultivated, a group of 20 to 50 families can get together and launch an ‘invasion.’ They just show up one night, throw together these instant dwellings, and raise a flag. You cannot expel them, and eventually they will gain legal rights to your land.”

The land policy has changed the face of Peru. So many settlers have flooded in that pueblos jovenes now fill virtually every vacant space in Lima. Slums, not suburbs, encircle the city, giving shelter to more than three-and-a-half-million people.

According to Wroughton, the pueblos jovenes go through several stages of progress. At first, fights may break out over property lines. No city services exist, of course, so each household digs a simple hole in the ground to serve as a toilet. Trucks bring in loads of water to sell at extortionate prices.

After a year or so of haggling with the government, a community may get water, electricity, and perhaps even a sewerline. Houses of sun-dried brick gradually replace the shacks. Vegetation appears: zucchini plants and grass and jacaranda trees. Finally, community leaders attempt to obtain title to the land they have invaded, a laborious process that may take ten years and require a few mass demonstrations in front of the presidential palace.

Thus, minicities have sprung up all around Lima. In this staunchly Catholic country, the pueblos jovenes take on poignant names: Via Salvador—“Way of the Savior”; and Ciudad de Dios—“City of God.”

Wroughton’s organization assists such impoverished areas mainly by providing jobs, ACUDE (affiliated with Opportunity International, formerly the Institute for International Development) provides loans for very small businesses, which help create more employment (one job for every $1,250 invested) and fit in well with Third World cultures.

Free Enterprise At Work

It is a hot, muggy afternoon, and Wroughton is checking on ACUDE’s projects in an early-stage settlement. He steers his four-wheel-drive Toyota through a labyrinth of dirt alleys. There are no street names, or even streets. Children shiny with sweat dash into the alley after a battered soccer ball. A skinny dog rouses himself to bark at the newcomers. You can see into most of the shacks: bare rooms, no glass in the windows, a statue of the Virgin along one wall.

Wroughton stops at a storefront business, the Speedy Parrot. Inside, a shoemaker greets him warmly. ACUDE loaned him $500 for a stitching machine, and as a result his business went from subsistence level to a kind of family assembly line. Two children and a mother-in-law are in the kitchen, boxing and sorting shoes for stores downtown.

“We start with individuals like this man,” Wroughton explains. “No bank would consider giving him a loan. He had no assets, no balance sheet to examine. We use local churches to screen potential borrowers for us, which encourages a sense of responsibility and honesty.”

The next stop, a bakery, shows the progression from family business to an enterprise with several employees. The owner opens the door after a few loud knocks, and the yeasty smell of bread fills the air. The baker smiles constantly, bows slightly in response to every question, and then eagerly shows off his brick oven which is large enough to hold 25 tin sheets of rolls.

Appearances may deceive, Wroughton remarks on the way out. The baker is one of his problem cases. After ACUDE loaned him money for new equipment, the man squandered all his profits in a lottery for an automobile. “About 20 percent of our borrowers run late with their payments, although sometimes they have good excuses: a family member comes down with typhoid fever; a thief steals a week’s earnings. In all, about 5 percent of our loans are never paid back. Yet, we feel proud of the fact that 90 percent of our businesses are still operating after three years.”

ACUDE has gradually moved toward an aggressive free-enterprise stance, an evolution that reflects Wroughton’s own change in thinking. “Having grown up in Peru, I was scandalized by the wastefulness of U.S. society I saw while in college. For a time, I ate only food that I retrieved from garbage containers behind grocery stores. And when I came to Latin America [first Colombia, then Peru], I favored more socialistic programs. But I have seen too many of them flounder here.

“Under land reform, for example, Peru went from huge food surpluses to perennial shortages. The peasants had no training, and much of the land they worked became desert. People had no incentive to be productive. Here in Lima, the bloated government bureaucracy makes it almost impossible to start a small business. As a result, over half the economy is ‘informal,’ or unofficial.”

Wroughton concluded that ownership was the key ingredient needed to instill pride and responsibility. ACUDE built in incentive programs. If a tailor pays off a $500 loan, he can qualify for a $1,000 loan; if he repays that, he can get a $1,500 loan. In this way, some ACUDE-financed businesses have blossomed into enterprises with 10 or 11 employees. More than 500 small businesses are now surviving, even thriving, because of ACUDE, which began with an initial investment by American Christians of only $360,000.

Although the initial loan pool comes from contributions, ACUDE does not operate like a charity. Wroughton explains, “We charge maximum interest for our loans, which in Peru is 40 percent. That seems steep, but with a 60 percent inflation rate we still lose money on every loan. And we badger all those who fall behind in payments. We’ve learned the hard way that charity ‘handouts’ can breed a form of permanent dependence. I want these borrowers to be working their hardest to pay back loans and succeed in business. Only that spirit will make these families self-sufficient.”

For his last stop of the morning, Wroughton drives to a one-room store. It is a neat building, with a very limited assortment of goods: bread, Coca-Cola, cooking oil, chewing gum, pens, pencils. The manager, Toribia Chavez, insists on serving complimentary soft drinks to Wroughton and his guests. She has an open Bible on the counter, and she tells Wroughton she is praying for him and all the other employees of ACUDE. The meager stock in her store comes from one of their loans.

Chavez has 16 children, aged from 11 to 33. She runs through the names of the older children, proudly describing what each is doing now. One son is learning carpentry skills in an ACUDE training program. The income from her store supports the 10 children who still live at home and her disabled husband as well.

“That’s what makes it all worthwhile,” Wroughton says after the visit, as he ducks under the doorway and steps into bright sunlight. “You can read the gratitude on her face,” he says. We have worked with Senora Chavez for three years, and she now has the same feeling of success as the owner of a corporation in the U.S. She feeds her large family with dignity.”

By Philip Yancey.

I was asked to write an extended blurb to promote a teaching aid that a friend had produced. I said I would. I was then told that to save me time a draft blurb would be prepared, based on things I had said in my books. All I would have to do was sign it.

The draft duly arrived, and behold! it began by making me tell a personal story that never happened, and went on to make me declare a personal debt to material I have never yet encountered. As advertising, it was no doubt a well-calculated come-on, but as literature (well, what else can I call it?) it was fiction dressed up as fact. Could you have signed such a thing? I couldn’t.

What to do? Rather than penalize my friend for the crassness of his entourage, I wrote a truthful blurb, and since I was able to adapt some parts of the original draft, I dare say some of my time really was saved. But just as mint candies, called humbugs in England, leave an aftertaste in the mouth, so this brush with human humbug, in the Dickensian sense of that word, left an aftertaste in my mind—and it was not a pleasant, warm glow, either.

Here was one evangelical devising false statements for another evangelical in the interests of a third evangelical, his boss. The justification offered would no doubt be that these statements, whether true or not, would encourage the use of good Christian teaching material, and that was all that mattered. That would be a way of saying that these statements fall in the category of what Plato called “the useful lie,” a type of statement that managers make in order to manipulate people into doing what seems good for them (and, of course, for their masters, too). To see the end as justifying the means, or, as old-time Jesuit casuists put it, to treat a lawful intention as legitimizing whatever is done to fulfill it, is typically modern. But it is not right.

Surely the means to any end has a moral quality of its own. Surely I am not respecting God’s image in my neighbor if I conspire to bamboozle him. Surely advertising a product by making false statements to people who expect me to tell the truth would be a case, even if small-scale, of doing evil that good might come—a way of acting that God condemns. Surely the Devil is the father of white lies as well as of black ones. Surely the old dictum that those who tell white lies soon become colorblind is true.

Said Samuel Johnson, that eighteenth-century man-mountain of Christian common sense: “Accustom your children constantly to this: if a thing happened at one window and they say, when relating it, that it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly check them; you do not know where deviation from truth will end.” The contemporary willingness of Christians to trade in hype and untruths suggests that some of us were not brought up on this wise principle of meticulous respect for the facts.

Evangelical Christians have become sensitive over the past few years about the sanctity of life. Thank God we have! But is it not high time we developed an equally sensitive conscience about the sanctity of truth?

Have you ever wondered why, following a solemn call to patience under pressure and before an equally solemn call to sustained prayerfulness, James inserts: “Above all, my brothers, do not swear.… Let your ‘Yes’ be yes, and your ‘No,’ no, or you will be condemned” (James 5:12)? People swear, we know, in order to commend falsehoods as true, as when Peter swore that he did not know Jesus. James only echoes Jesus (Matt. 5:34–37) in requiring plain, honest truth at all times, and no doubt his reason for making the point here is that he knows how those under pressure can be tempted to affirm untruths in order to get out from under.

But why “above all”? Why does James treat total truthfulness as so very important? Because, I think, he knows that nothing corrupts character so quickly or so deeply as habits of deception and untruth. I too know that; don’t you? There is no Christ-like consistency, no deep-level discipleship, without a passion for truth everywhere. I suggest we need to consider our ways.

J. I. PACKER

“The Audacious Experiment”

I appreciated Richard John Neuhaus’s comments on the two aspects of the religious freedom clause of the first amendment [“The Upside-down Freedom,” Dec. 9]. He says, “Historically, religious freedom is in largest part an achievement of religion, not a secular achievement against religion.” This may be true, but it is well for Christians to realize that those who drafted the First Amendment were not Christians, but deists. Religion here takes on a vague and general meaning. Also he states, “The Declaration of Independence, which is key to understanding our constitutional history, says that we are endowed by the Creator with certain ‘unalienable rights.’” This is again a deistic concept.

As Christians we must focus not on our rights, but on the realization that all we have is a gift, freely given at the price of the life of God’s son. We have yet to see whether “the audacious experiment” of American democracy has worked.

Sally Frahm

Austin, Tex.

Neuhaus stated that the American government is the “oldest continuing government in the world.” In 1988 the English celebrated the 300th anniversary of the revolution of 1688, which, according to the historian A. L. Rowse, was “The Sensible Revolution.” It achieved five things without shedding any blood: (1) The Crown could no longer rule without Parliament; (2) There could be no standing army without the permission of Parliament; (3) Only Parliament could raise taxes; (4) Installing William and Mary on the throne established a Protestant succession; (5) The judiciary achieved independence.

Surely what was omitted was the word republic.

Eric S. Fife

Bradenton, Fla.

Neuhaus asserts that “the moral ligitimacy of the state itself depends upon the state’s acknowledgement of a higher authority”; the U.S. Constitution does not. Rather, it grounds the authority of government on “We the people.” Further, the Declaration of Independence states that governments “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Frederick Edwords

American Humanist Association

Amherst, N.Y.

A point overlooked that probably explains the increased inversion of the First Amendment is the heightened and more widespread religious pluralism in the U.S. The only way government can protect “free exercise” for people of all persuasions or no persuasion is to give “no establishment” a priority over “free exercise” in legal determinations. For example, in a public school where attendance is required, “no establishment” dictates that mandated prayer be forbidden; but this very decision equally guards the “free exercise” of religion to Baptist, Buddhist, and Jewish children.

Rolland M. Ruf

Collegdale, Tenn.

Moral Hypocrisy?

I think Gary Hardaway is unduly harsh in his column, “No Pardon for North” [Speaking Out, Dec. 9], The act of applying funds generated from one covert, off-the-books transaction (sale of arms to Iran) to another (aid to the contras) is not fairly characterized as “embezzlement,” or even, in my view, “misappropriation.” Second, I don’t believe anyone seriously contends that the Boland Amendment expressly applies to the activities of the NSC. Finally, I do not share Hardaway’s sanguinity about the role of the court in passing judgment on covert activities of the executive branch. I think the notion is utterly foolhardy. What next? Will we be trying our soldiers for murder if they are sent into battle for a cause of which Congress disapproves?

The issue is of grave importance and ought to be squarely faced: Are we to have and exercise a covert capability? To admit the necessity of covert action and then build a hedge of impossible requirements around its exercise is moral hypocrisy. As a lawyer I have much practical experience in our courts and am dismayed at the trend toward turning them into universal plebiscites for the resolution of political and policy issues. They are tools ill-formed for that purpose. If the trend continues, justice is doomed to become the hostage of politics, and the rule of law will perish.

Stephen P. Oliver

Torrance, Calif.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s disclaimer does not excuse printing such possibly libelous material. The writer admits that his remarks presuppose North is guilty. As a lawyer I must condemn a writer so unprincipled as to attempt to prejudice a case in court while it is being tried. He speaks of lying, stealing, embezzling, destroying evidence, etc., as though such crimes have been proven, though such is not the case.

Thomas J. Potts

Greenville, S.C.

Whither The Sunday School?

Your article on “Will Sunday School Survive?” [News, Dec. 9] raised realistic questions about its health. Because I was reached with the salvation message through the Sunday school, and work in the Sunday school, I am concerned about potential or perceived loss to an institution that still has vibrancy.

The article raises the possibility that enrollment is up in evangelical denominations and independent churches. This is probably true. I am concerned when Sunday schools in mainline denominations go down, because it reflects a national attitude toward the need for religious education. If there were a greater thirst for the Bible, it would be reflective in both evangelical and mainline groups. Historically, enrollment meant “submembership” into the local church, and was meant primarily for those not old enough for full church membership, or who for other reasons couldn’t qualify. Today, enrollment generally is a mailing list with little “bonding” value.

The Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches marks the decline beginning in 1970, but that was also when a shift was made in measuring Sunday school from enrollment to attendance. Prior to 1971, Sunday school attendance was generally higher than church attendance. Even though the national trend is away from enrollment, I see this as weakening the movement.

Elmer L. Towns

Liberty University

Lynchburg, Va.

According to all I have read from Win Arn, and the statistics he gathers, nearly everything in your article was correct. However, you listed the Nazarenes as experiencing lapsed enrollment during the 1980s. I pulled together our enrollment totals for the U.S., Canada, and the denomination worldwide: In the past nine years the Church of the Nazarene has increased in enrollment overall. Even with just the U.S. figures, we have increased enrollment from 839,248 in 1980 to 861,761 in 1988.

Phil Riley

Church of the Nazarene International

Kansas City, Mo.

Refocusing Advent Observance

Three cheers for Mary Ellen Ashcroft! I cannot say “Amen!” loudly or exuberantly enough for her excellent article, “Away from the Manger” [Dec. 9]. For the past several years, I have tried (without much success) to refocus the observance of Advent in the churches I’ve pastored away from preparing for Jesus’ birth (how can we prepare for something that’s already taken place?)—to preparing for his coming again in glory, triumph, and judgment. In view of the scriptural directive to “watch and be ready,” this seems to be the more urgent and expedient course for us Christians to pursue.

I cannot help wondering if the fact that nearly all our Advent observances focus on the first, rather than the second, coming of Jesus isn’t part of Satan’s strategy to better ensure that that Day’s coming will catch many of us unawares, and unprepared.

Rev. P. Douglas Martin

Gordonsville United Methodist Charge

Gordonsville, Va.

I think it is wonderful we evangelicals are rediscovering the church calendar. But if we really are going to observe Advent (as I think we should), let’s recognize that it is not a season during which we are meant to meditate on Christ’s second coming. There are other times for this, such as Communion, when we “remember his death until he comes.” Advent was meant to be a time when we meditate on the mystery of the Incarnation—how God became flesh and dwelt among us, bringing us salvation not only through an atoning death, but also by sharing our humanity. If we are too comfortable with Christ as a slumbering babe, the problem may be that we have an inadequate appreciation of how fully he shared our humanity, and how important this is for our salvation. Let Advent be a time when we meditate on this.

Christopher Smith

S. Hamilton, Mass.

Addiction Recovery

I read with interest the Alsdurfs’ article on codependency and addiction [CT Institute, Dec. 9]. I consider myself a recovering codependent/coaddict; my husband is a sexual addict in recovery. Both of us have been active church members for many years.

I have been in therapy for close to two years in addition to 12-step programs. For those with codependent behavior—who are trying to change their behavior as well as heal old wounds—a 12-step group is a great source of support and tool for living in recovery. Some in my group are beginning to see the possibilities for a real relationship with God for the first time because of the 12-step group and consideration of the steps. Christians should be wary about criticizing groups that successfully minister to people who are often ostracized and criticized, if not barred outright, by church fellowships. I am grateful to God that the healing of broken people comes first to most churches and pastors when a 12-step group asks for meeting space. Thank you for your thoughtful article on this subject.

Name Withheld

Drugs Not On The Short List

I disagree with Terry Muck [Editorial, “Stoned Logic,” Dec. 9]. Restrictive drug laws make no more sense today than prohibition did a generation ago. Prohibition was an evangelical darling, but it gave subsidy to the mob. For all the “good” intentions, that law helped create an evil empire in our midst. We now make it more wealthy, because the normal human response to any rule is to find a way to break it, even at great personal expense.

Christians would do well to limit their call for prohibition to those acts found in the Decalog, like murder, theft, or adultery. That law is our charter. We foolishly add to that short list.

Terry L. Schoen

Walla Walla, Wash.

Comparable Mirth

At our church board meeting the other night, staff salaries came up for review. One of the new members of our board made a plea for “comparable worth”—the idea that pay be based not on gender-dictated tradition but on “the relative worth of a given job to an organization.”

So, he argued, Agnes, our church secretary ($14,750), should make as much as our pastor ($26,500). And, based on comparable worth, he had a point. The church gets along fine during the pastor’s four weeks of vacation; but let Agnes go away for five days and the Great Commission grinds to a halt.

Then someone pointed out that Pete, our part-time janitor, ought to make the same amount, too. If he didn’t clean up after the junior-high caramel-corn party, the church would stop in its tracks—literally. And there’s Claire, whose pineapple upside-down cake at a potluck has probably drawn more people to church than any high-powered evangelist who has everpounded our pulpit. She’s definitely worth twenty-six five.

Before we knew it, we were figuring the pay scale for Sunday school teachers, prayer warriors, ushers—every one of them make a significant contribution to our congregation. By the time we caught up with ourselves, our church of 130 had a proposed payroll of more than $3 million. Being firm believers in a balanced budget, however, we found a way out: We passed a resolution declaring that we are all of incomparable worth, and tabled any further discussion of salaries.

Meeting adjourned.

EUTYCHUS

Few would argue the fact that family concerns have dominated the church’s relational agenda over the past decade. Led by such personalities as James Dobson and Chuck Swindoll, we have collectively turned our hearts and minds toward home in an effort to strengthen and secure a “sanctuary” from the rabid secularism and resultant breakdowns that typify our culture.

But not all those within the body have automatically benefited from this zealous family emphasis. Take missionary kids, for example. Is quality versus quantity time even an issue when Mom and Dad are “doing ministry” and their children are in a boarding school nine months of the year?

Hardly.

In fact, the reasons given for why family life in America is in disarray—absent father, absent mother—are commonplace on the mission field. So just how are transplanted missionary families (and their boards) coping?

Surprisingly well, reports missiologist Ruth Tucker, whose cover story cuts through some popular misperceptions (such as that MKS are generally socially maladjusted) while providing a no-nonsense look at the very real challenges that overseas families face—and usually face head-on. Indeed, the fact that so many MKS eventually become missionaries themselves speaks of a resilience and flexibility in the family that should be an encouragement to us all.

HAROLD B. SMITH, Managing Editor

This is a time of tragic irony for the right-to-life movement—for at the same time prolife activists are courageously escalating their fight for life, events and technology are conspiring to render such efforts moot.

Let me explain.

Last fall Operation Rescue hit the streets and television screens of America. During the last weekend in October, 2,212 prolife supporters were arrested for blocking access to abortion clinics in 32 cities, bringing to 7,000 the number of prolife arrests since the Democratic convention last July.

Why this sudden intensification of prolife commitment? This new willingness to sacrifice?

Some of the urgency may well come from desperation. After all the promises of the Reagan years, prolife forces have few victories to show for all their efforts. Few expect that George Bush will manage to get much of the social agenda that Ronald Reagan could not. Civil disobedience, for some, may vent years of frustration.

But from what I have seen of Operation Rescue, this is not the whole story. Their antiabortion sit-ins are not publicity stunts. They are attempts to save lives based on clear-cut beliefs. Christy Anne Collins, a prolife leader in the Washington area, has been jailed several times. As she describes her motivation, “The fact of the matter is, God said it’s a crime to shed innocent blood. I think we have to stop the killing. If we believe that abortion is murder, and I do, then I think we have to act like it is murder and try to stop it.”

Some Christian leaders have argued that Operation Rescue shows disrespect for the law. But to say that a law may never be violated under any circ*mstances is a form of extremism more disturbing than anything done by prolife activists. Certainly one could justly break a “no trespassing” law to save a child drowning in a lake; Operation Rescue, I believe, is the moral equivalent. Placing the value of a just law against trespassing above the attempted rescue of innocent lives is an inversion of Christian priorities.

It is a sad commentary that we live in a nation that puts such rescuers in jail. They are the most unlikely of prisoners. They are often intensely religious, both Protestant and Catholic. They have a deep respect for the law, though they value life more. They are nonviolent, but they are not easily intimidated.

These are, in short, the best of citizens—people who would be valued by any government under normal circ*mstances. But they populate our jails. It is a telling question: what kind of society would force its best citizens to violate the law as a matter of conscience?

But just as these principled protesters were indicting a calloused American conscience, events were taking place an ocean away that may soon render their protests impotent altogether.

On October 28, a day that saw a number of Operation Rescue arrests, the French government ordered a pharmaceutical company to resume distribution of RU 486—the abortion pill. Under pressure from prolife groups, the company had earlier withdrawn it; but France’s Socialist government ordered the drug back on the market, asserting that it was “the moral property of women.”

The pill, in effect, causes an early miscarriage. It means that a home abortion could eventually be as close as two tablets and a glass of water. It means fast, effective relief—like Alka Seltzer or Tylenol.

Certainly there are things that can and should be done to restrict the availability of RU 486 in the U.S. Experiments with the drug are already being conducted here, though it will be several years before it could be approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Prolife groups must make it clear to American politicians, health officials, and businessmen that this drug must not be legalized.

But the drug is already in use in China and Thailand. Populous Third World countries have made it clear they will be customers. Because it replaces surgery, the drug could easily be used on women who have little or no access to medical care.

And if RU 486 is used this widely, it would be impossible to prevent the creation of a black market. American demand would be high. Columnist Ellen Goodman comments, “Even if the opposition manages a legal ban, the abortion pill will become available. These pills are called in the trade ‘bathtub’ drugs; they are easy to make … Anyone who believes that we could control their importation hasn’t checked the cocaine business recently.”

Faye Wattleton, president of Planned Parenthood, gloats that “the right-to-life movement has seen its last gasp. If these drugs get to the market, the fight is finally all over.”

What response is left to us?

Of course we must fight for legal restrictions. But the effect of any law is bound to be limited, given the size of demand and the extent of legal distribution.

And of course we must continue to protest. But abortion clinics in the future may well be necessary only for the few. How do you intervene to save a life when an abortion is as near as the medicine cabinet?

What RU 486 will eventually mean, I fear, is a dramatic shift in the rules of the abortion battle. It will mean that our fight against abortion will no longer focus on the clinic, the dumpster, the Supreme Court steps. It will be relational and educational: Christians persuasively pressing the point among their peers that a life conceived is precious to God and must not be poisoned by a pill. The struggle will no longer be focused on legislatures and suction machines, but on people and the individual values they hold, the values that create their choices. What it means is changing the hearts and minds of a self-centered, callous generation.

That is a challenge perhaps even more daunting than the threat of a prison cell.

“I want to astound Paris with an apple,” said French impressionist painter Paul Cézanne, born January 19, 1839. On the one-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of his birth, the luscious, fresh fruit in Still Life with Apples and Oranges (c. 1899) still lure us back for more. Yet it took Cézanne almost a lifetime to gain acceptance as a respectable artist, and just as long for this mystical artist to find hope in God and the church.

The Evil Demon

The young Cézanne shocked the art world with his violent, lustful, dark portraits of alienation. Although as a child he received traditional religious instruction, he did not latch on to much in the way of Christian hope and beauty. Instead, as his closest friend, Emile Zola, wrote concerning him, Cézanne was controlled by “the evil demon which beclouds his thought.”

As a youth, Cézanne delighted in sharing his own poems with Zola and another boyhood friend, Baptistin Bailie. Much of Cézanne’s poetry centered on the macabre, such as one poem that describes a family devouring a severed human head, which is served by the father. It is little wonder Cézanne’s early paintings depict scenes of sexuality, torture, and death.

Devoid of religion’s depth and understanding, Cézanne frequently used blasphemy as his instrument of white-hot expression: “If I didn’t hold myself back, I’d hurl some litanies of God’s Name, God’s Brothel, Holy whor*, etc., up to heaven.” As the years went on, he sank deeper into his neuroses. Nightmares haunted him and found their fruition in such paintings as The Rape, The Orgy, The Strangled Woman, The Courtesans, The Murder, and The Abduction. Such works earned for Cézanne the title of “the first wild man of modern art.”

Although preoccupied with sexuality, Cézanne could not find fulfillment with women. His alienation is expressed in A Modern Olympia (1872–73), which depicts a well-dressed gentleman (obviously Cézanne) gazing at a naked woman. For all its eroticism, there is no hint of a relationship between the two individuals.

Nevertheless, there was one woman, Hortense Figuet—initially Cézanne’s mistress, and when their son, Paul, was 14, his reluctant wife. She was anything but a beauty. Hortense was known as “The Ball,” referring to a prisoner’s ball and chain.

Afraid Of Death

Cézanne held that “outside potent and individual life there is only lie and folly.” He denied God and called the clergy deceivers who had relegated themselves to the periphery of society. He did not, however, hold a positive view of the Devil. “I saw the diabolic band of Satan,” he wrote at one point, “… there the hideous vampires, To get at me.”

Although there were many who could not even locate “a beautiful temperament” in the man, it was fellow painter Gauguin who stated in a letter in 1885 that Cézanne’s nature was essentially mystical; unfortunately, Cézanne spent most of his life searching apart from God. From time to time, glancing in the direction of the church, Cézanne maintained his disgust. “I think that to be a good Catholic, one must be devoid of all sense of justice, but have a good eye for one’s interests.”

However, as his few friends began to disappear—either through death or the artist’s purposeful rejection—he came to rely on the companionship of his mother and his sister Marie, both of whom were devoutly religious. Because of their faithfulness to worship, Cézanne began to attend church services regularly.

Why so? It has been said that he feared death and concluded that if there was anything to religion that could help him cross safely to the “other side,” he would rather be on good terms with it. Consequently, as Cézanne moved into his later years, he confessed, “It’s that I’m feeble. And … only the Church can protect me.”

Cézanne disciplined himself to begin the day attending early Mass. It was so common for him to give money to beggars at the church door that Marie often had to restrict his generosity so that he did not give too much of his money away.

REVIEW

Bombay’s Throwaway Children

For most Westerners, the face of Third World poverty is embodied in photographs of emaciated, brown-skinned children gazing hopelessly into the camera. These faces appear on the envelopes of bulk-mail appeals into which we guiltily fold a couple of dollars before trotting off to Pizza Hut.

Although the generic face of poverty accurately captures the despair of children on the edge of starvation, it ignores their dignity as image bearers of the Creator. Everyone, after all, has a life. Everyone has a story. In Salaam Bombay!, Indian director Mira Nair shows us the human face of street kids as they struggle to beg, borrow, or steal their daily bread.

Salaam Bombay! was shot entirely on location in Bombay, using shops, markets, and an infamous brothel as sets. The result is a visual spectacle so rich in texture as to be somewhat overwhelming. But the dirt and degradation are also over whelming. For North Americans, the thought of 600 million people crowded into a space half the size of Canada can be hard to grasp. Salaam Bombay! offers us a few weeks in the life of one of those millions.

Salaam Bombay! is not a film to watch lightly. Yet it does offer an unblinking look at the plight of the world’s children. Even in North America, the majority of the poor are children. Salaam Bombay! reminds us that each of these children is a special human being, deserving of love and a decent life. It might serve as reality therapy for those of us whose main concern is to lose the extra weight gained over the annual holiday binge of food and gifts.

By Stefan Ulstein, English department chairman at Bellevue (Wash.) Christian School.

Salaam Bombay! contains offensive language and situations related to prostitution and the drug trade. Viewer discretion is advised.

A Growing Sense Of Life

Is there a correlation between this interest in the Christian hope and a growing sense of life in his paintings? As Cézanne grew older, his canvases became more spontaneous and exciting, particularly the lush landscapes of his beloved Aix-en-Provence. By the time he died on October 22, 1906, Cézanne’s work revealed a master painter.

Interestingly, however, he barely noticed the acclaim his name began to attract. Instead, he abandoned himself increasingly to excellence while living quietly in Aix.

“I have caught a glimpse of the Promised Land,” he wrote a friend. “Am I to be like the great leader of the Jews, or am I to be allowed to enter it?” One would pray that, as he drew on the hope he had so long denied, Cézanne was permitted to enter.

By J. Grant Swank, minister of the Church of the Nazarene in Walpole, Massachusetts.

ARTBRIEFS

Coping with Success

How does the “definitive adult-appeal” Christian musician feel about fame and success? Listen to The Fine Line (DaySpring/Word), Wayne Watson’s latest album of introspective easy rock and ballads. With 15 consecutive top-ten singles on contemporary Christian radio and a 1988 Dove Award (Contemporary Album of the Year), Watson sees himself, in the words of the title song, walking the fine line between “contentment and greed / Between the things that I want / And the things that I need.” Watson reads the papers, watches TV, hangs out in lonely cafés, and tells us what he thinks through a variety of instrumental and lyrical moods. The only song that does not seem at home on the album is the revivalistic “We Belong to Him.”

Although he has two sons and a 16-year marriage, Watson does not want to write primarily about family themes; The Fine Line deals with issues such as AIDS, homelessness, p*rnography, and the nagging temptation to live without God—a temptation common to his thirtysomethingish audience.

ARTBRIEFS

The Crucifixion of the Homeless

Broken lives may best be described by broken poetry, such as the fragmented verse in Daniel Berrigan’s new volume, Stations: The Way of the Cross (Harper & Row). And the sufferings of Christ may be most clearly reflected in the broken lives of the urban homeless.

Jesuit priest, social activist, and award-winning poet, Berrigan portrays Jesus’ crucifixion mirrored in those who sleep under bridges and dig through garbage for food.

However, the backbone of Stations is formed by Margaret Parker’s 14 terra cotta reliefs of the stations of the cross.

“All the time in New York, you pass people who have fallen asleep on the street,” Parker told CT. “I realized I could show the shape of the city—the hard, sharp lines—and the people who have to find a soft place in it.”

The most striking rendering depicts scattered body parts hung on a chain-link fence. “To think of pulling a body apart and using it for a crucifix took a lot of nerve,” Parker said, “but I felt if you were actually dying on the street, the sheer disintegration—I feel I portrayed that in the piece.”

Parker, who was raised in the United Church of Christ, did not intend at first to create religious art. “My main point was to show the contemporary scene,” she said, “but when the religious aspect came together, it was startling.

“I hope the series picks up the spirit of redemption,” she said. “I, myself, have changed.”

By Daniel Coran.