A Merry Digital Christmas
This is pretty clever. I sometimes have to smile at the creativity of people who make You Tube clips like this one. Enjoy and do, everyone who visits this blog now and then, have a Merry Christmas this day.
Sacred Sexuality and Friendship
Author Dan Brennan believes that friendship love between a man and a woman is poised to become a receptive love that can coexist with marriage and not become a rival to it. I doubt that few conservative pastors or marriage and family writers in America agree with him. His thesis is simple, but clearly provocative: cross-sex friendship love is a journey toward communion with God through life with others. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s classic little book, Life Together, comes to mind here!)
Put another way Dan Brennan is saying that men and women, in the new creation, are not limited to stark contrasts between romantic passion in marriage or inappropriate sexual expressions beyond marriage that lead to infidelity. Most conservative Christians that I know really do believe these are the only two real options in cross-gendered relationships. Passion in friendship is for marriage and if pursued anywhere else will lead to sexual unchastity.
I have recently been watching an A & E series titled: “God or the Girl?” This series […]
Aren’t You Playing with Fire?
When Dan Brennan began to explore his view of human sexuality and cross-gender friendships his pastor implored him to be extremely careful. His counsel was simple: “Dan, you’re playing with fire! Men and women are hard-wired for sexual union when they enjoy intimacy with each other” (21). To be honest this is exactly what I would have said before reading Dan’s book carefully. I do believe men and women must be wise, careful and respect the power of sexual attraction in a proper, mature way.
Brennan’s pastor went on to say, “The exceptions are familial intimacy, such as a close bond between mother and son, or brother and sister. Look at Genesis one and two; it’s all there. Dan, look at Scripture. Men and women are designed to experience intimacy and are wired to be one flesh” (21).
If you’ve ever counseled people in marriages where sexual sin has destroyed the bond you know why Dan’s pastor counseled him in the way he did. But is this counsel completely right? Is this the best way to avoid sin and build deep communion with God? Are we not going […]
The Problem of Romantic Myth
Could it be that modern church culture elevates the romantic experience of falling in love even above religious commitment to Christ? 
Author Dan Brennan, in his provocative and important book Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions, believes the answer is yes. He believes that we have so emphasized romantic passion as a unique, one-of-a-kind, love that all other love is seen as relatively unimportant in comparison with this amazing love. Almost every marriage seminar that I have ever heard celebrates romantic love in marriage as God’s greatest gift to human beings.
It never seems to dawn on many Christian teachers that the Bible does not clearly support this understanding. Could the myths of our culture have so overwhelmed the radical message of Holy Scripture that we have accepted a profound Freudian influence without realizing it?
Many Christians, especially single Christians, are driven to excessive preoccupation with themselves through such imbalanced teaching. They already feel unloved and unwanted. Then the church gives them this romantic message as if this is the […]
Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions: Engaging the Mystery of Friendship Between Men and Women
I began reading the book Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions (2010) with an eye to find loopholes and practical problems in the author’s thesis. To say that his idea made me very cautious about endorsing this is a huge understatement. When I finished the book my personal copy was marked and annotated throughout. And almost every concern that I had was addressed in a way that I found quite satisfactory. This does not mean there are no practical problems in working out the thesis in everyday community but it does mean the thesis is itself worthy of the serious attention it just may not get from far too many Christians.
Let me begin by telling you that the author is a personal friend. Dan Brennan was once a part of the church family that I served as pastor for sixteen years. We have recently reconnected in a deep and personal way as older (hopefully much wiser) men. But I hasten to tell you that I do not endorse […]
Dr. Rick Richardson on the Mission of ACT 3
Many of you have seen the video that was made about thirteen months ago on the vision of ACT 3. This thirty-minute video was made by two great friends before the book, Your Church Is Too Small, was released. We made the film to help make our vision as clear as possible to a wider circle of people. Several of the interviews that appear on this longer video, which is available on the ACT 3 site, make great clips to help you, our friends, understand our mission and vision.
This very brief interview with Dr. Rick Richardson, author and director of the M.A. program in evangelism and leadership at Wheaton College Graduate School, is one that captures my heart and passion beautifully. I share it today with the desire that you will watch this sixty-second clip and through watching better understand what makes me get up in the morning and why I give myself to missional-ecumenism as my life’s mission.
Fatal Attraction
The classic Hollywood movie, Fatal Attraction, was truly a surprise film in 1987 when it first appeared. It has endured, over nearly twenty-five years now, as a film noir. The premise is that a person may form an attraction for another person (in a sexual and emotional way) that is much more than it appears to be on the surface of things. This relationship may ultimately become so neurotic that it becomes fatal. When I recently watched this dark film again I was struck by the parallels between the figure in the apocalypse who is, “The woman clothed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand the golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her fornication” (Revelation 17:4). This metaphor is meant to remind us of the allure of “Babylon the Great,” a symbol for the power (and ideology) of the world as arranged against the cross of Jesus Christ. This woman is said to be “drunk […]
How Can Doctrinal Fidelity and Christian Unity Be Reconciled?
Cardinal Avery Dulles, one of the truly important voices in American Catholicism in the twentieth century, was a very insightful thinker about the nature of the church and ecumenism. Not only was he a first-class scholar he was also a first-class Christian gentleman. He was a man of the mind and the heart. He worked tirelessly for the greater good of all Christ’s people. Though I have many friends who knew Avery Dulles personally I never had the privilege of personally meeting him face-to-face.
In an article he wrote in 1986 he posed a question I am asked on a weekly basis: “If a measure of doctrinal accord is a prerequisite for Christian unity then how can we proceed in the real world?” Dulles’ second principle, under the first of his ten theses about doctrinal agreement, was (he believed) “equally indisputable.”
Complete Agreement on All Matters of Doctrine is Unattainable
Agreement on all matters of doctrine should never be regarded as necessary for unity. Why? “In every church there are certain and disputable questions.” For example, in the Roman Catholic Church, […]
Cardinal Dulles on Doctrine and Ecumenical Unity
The late Cardinal Avery Dulles (August 24, 1918 – December 12, 2008)who died two years ago this week, was a Jesuit priest, theologian and Professor of Religion and Society at Fordham University. He was also an internationally known author and lecturer. My first exposure to Dulles came as a college student in the late 1960s. Several of his early books were influential in my early theological journey to missional-ecumenism. Revelation and the Quest for Unity (1968) and Models of Church, Doubleday (1974) both come to mind in this context. In 1985 he published The Catholicity of the Church (1985), which still impacts my thinking very profoundly.
Dulles had a deep family connection with the government of the United States. He was the son of U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his uncle was the Director of Central Intelligence. Both his great-grandfather, John W. Foster, and his great-uncle, Robert Lansing, served as U.S. Secretary of State.
Dulles was raised a Presbyterian but had become an agnostic by the […]
Is Christianity the Most Persecuted Religion?
The Catholic organization Aid to the Church in Need released a religious freedom report on November 30th. The report says that seven of ten people are unable to freely live out their faith without some form of state or personal opposition that seeks to make their expression of religion difficult or nearly impossible, at least in public. I am not sure what figures and means were used to determine this percentage but I have to believe the reality of this problem is much greater than almost anyone in the West knows or understands. And I do believe no other religious profession is as widely persecuted as the faith of Christian believers the world over.
Americans, in particular, take the freedom of religious expression for granted. We should be vigilant to protect this hard won freedom and we do all that we can to properly extend it to others wherever possible. This freedom is always tenuous and when virtue goes freedom is often not far behind, which should concern those of us who live in the modern West.
