Author: Danny Webster

A merger of gluttony and lust

Danny Webster Leave a comment

I’ve got a bit of a confession to make: occasionally I go to the cinema on my own. I’ve always thought that it’s an unusual social activity, but the first time I went to the counter to buy a ticket – just one ticket – it was rather awkward, I could feel the person at the counter judging me.

But that’s enough of a tangent before I actually begin, it is all to say that earlier this week I walked out of work with my head spinning and headed to the cinema picking the film that best suited my arrival time regardless of what it was. This is how I ended up watching ‘This Means War’. I know that’s no excuse, my taste in films is dreadful, but as usually happens, even in the most dreadful films, something catches my attention.

Curiously it was a similar theme that had already piqued my interest while rampaging through the Hunger Games trilogy all in around a week.

A girl likes two guys at the same time.

Yes, I’m back to blogging about relationships.

I had slightly accidentally eased off writing too much about relationships because I didn’t like being referred to as having a ‘relationship blog’. But you may have noticed that I have more or less eased off writing about anything in these hallowed lines of html in the past month or so. Here a minor side note: I will return to women in leadership at some point, and those who offered to write guest posts, I haven’t forgotten.

In the Hunger Games the issue lingers below the surface gradually pushing its way to the surface as the pages turn into books and one cover closes and the sequel opens as quickly as you can get to the shop to pick up the next instalment. In contrast, This Means War could not be more obvious if it tried, the posters make watching the film an optional extra.

There are stand out lines in each that sum up the main protagonist’s efforts to make their minds up. In This Means War she is told to pick the man who will make her better, in the Hunger Games the two competing love interests accept she’ll go for the one who she thinks will give her the best chance of survival.

Because we all make choices. We all have a frame of reference that informs and influences our decisions. In Bill Hybels’ book Courageous Leadership he examines how he makes decisions and the factors that come into play; it’s a combination of experience, rationality, emotion and prejudice. The things that allow us to decide when to cross the road. The things that tell us that we like one person a little more than appropriate for us to be friends.

The things that might tell us we like more than one person more than appropriate to just be friends.

Is that just crazy? Or is it really just owning up to what actually goes on in our crazy little heads? And does it force us to re-evaluate the frame of reference that we use to come to those conclusions?

First of all, this is not crazy. It happens, I don’t think I’m making some stunning revelation to dare suggest that I have, and others have too, liked more than one person at once. And in my case, I should say not at present, that dilemma has been the cause of hesitation and avoidance, and the hope that in time one would take precedence. Usually in time honoured fashion not one but both fade from my affection.

Now we’ve got over the fact that it is not analogous to polygamy to have split affections how do we deal with it? Because it’s not a sustainable place to linger. For a while you can juggle the competing claims on your heart, and rearrange the aspects of your life that tessellate with each in turn. But sooner or later you have to make a decision. And that’s where it stops being about emotion and it starts being about will.

So often I opt out of making a choice in the hope that it will be made for me. I hope that events will conspire to lead me to one and them to me. And make it clear that choosing them is like waking up each morning and the night sky eclipsed each morning as it fades to light.

Both the Hunger Games and This Means War offer a selfish view of love, but a selfish view that exists within us, and one which we often do not try to disown. We chose the partner who will make us happy, or make us better, or making it sound all to utilitarian the one who will give us the best chance to survive.

And there is something selfish in our thinking when we try and decide if we like someone and if they like us. When we might be attracted to more than one person at once maybe it is time to make you mind up and follow through on that decision. It’s not easy, or perfect, or certain, but it’s better than trying to get everything you want. That’s just a merger of gluttony and lust.

But when that phase of shadow boxing is in the past and we are committed to one person as an act of will. Then selfishness just doesn’t get a look in. It is, as marriage was recently described, something designed to gently destroy the ego.

Perhaps, in the words of Summer, we hope that one day we will wake up and just know. But I think it’s a bit harder than that.

The power of no

Danny Webster Leave a comment

There are so many opportunities in life. A canvas of choices that spread out in front of us. And we have to make the most of it. With so much on offer, who am I to turn it down?

A lot of attention is sometimes given to our tendency to avoid commitment, to opt out of things rather than dive in. I’ve not checked, I’m not sure I want to, but I’m sure there is a self-help book called ‘the power of yes’. If not, someone will surely soon write it. There certainly is a film, and a better book, called ‘Yes Man’. It is about a guy who has become so withdrawn that he says no to everything, never takes a chance, always plays it safe, and therefore stays at home. Doing nothing. The film and the book vary by transatlantic and film director logic but the main character ends up committing to saying yes to everything, no matter what. And the point is that despite the craziness that ensues, life is a lot more fun for his deciding to say yes.

Now I want to be contrary. I don’t think that the lesson we most need to learn is how to say yes more. I think we need to say no.

I went through a phase where I was frustrated by my introspection. I decided to take opportunities, to say yes, go do things I otherwise wouldn’t have done. And it was fun. I made some new friends. I went to a couple of unusual places. And part of that mentality has stuck. But part of it was always there.

Because that’s the thing. In some parts of life I always say yes and need no excuse to push the boat out, except a challenge and agree to ridiculous deadlines 17 minutes before I’m due to leave work for a week’s holiday. I have always enjoyed the sense of challenge of saying yes to things that push me outside of my comfort zone and force me to improve, and get better.

In my social life I’m much less likely to take the initiative, much less likely to push boundaries. I’m more reserved, more hesitated, altogether a whole lot less sure of myself. Perhaps that is why I’ve found it relatively easy to expound in this virtual parish what I would rarely share in person. Even though it has led to a remarkable amount of attention in my face to face world. I say no too easily in my social life. I find it too easy to find an excuse not to go to that party. Or to leave church early without talking to people. Or not to ask that girl out.

Yes I just went there. Because I don’t.

But I’m going to leave that there. And you can just deal with that.

Because that’s not the point I’m trying to make. The lesson I’ve learnt this week is the value of no.

I’ve been ill. I hate being ill. I browse netflix, I watch DVDs of Sharpe, I even contemplate a full week’s run of Come Dine With Me. I lay on the couch for 48 hours. And all the time my phone is buzzing with emails that I can’t answer with any coherence. I talk to colleagues with all the eloquence and clarity of an ogre. And I have to make some tough choices. Because as well as being ill, I’m off on holiday next week. So I have a very finite amount of time to do rather a lot of things.

And that means I have to say no. And on this occasion it meant saying no to one thing in particular. It was the one thing that I didn’t want to say no to. In fact it was really the wise counsel of my mother, still as helpful and necessary as ever, who swung the decision. I’d had an opportunity to do something today which I’d never done before. It would have been fun, it would have been scary, and it was the right thing at the right time and I really wanted to do it.

But I knew that saying no yesterday was the right decision.

Because sometimes we just have to stop.

And not worry about what it costs us. The chances that are missed by refusing to be sold the lie that this is the very thing that will make all others fade in comparison. That if we allow this opportunity to pass us by we will regret it for the rest of our lives.

We wont. I won’t. I don’t.

At the end of the day, what choices are really that critical. At what junctures in life does the decision to go down one path rather than another really affect the overall outcome.

I’m not saying there aren’t better and worse choices. I’m not saying that there isn’t such a thing as guidance from the divine which might indicate one route over another. But nor am I forgetting the redemptive nature of Christ.

The fact that he is in all things, that he is working in and through my very frailties, that he is working to redeem the creation that I inhabit and he has done it all that he may redeem me. That when I turn down something, he still remains. That when I walk away from him. He still remains. When I say no, both to the things that could distract me from doing what he calls me to do, and when I say no to his calling. In both cases he does not desert me.

So I was left wondering, what matters? What commitments and decisions would I not jettison? What do I hold to? For what is my yes so important that I would say no to so many other things?

And perhaps, just a little, it saddens me that there is little to which that applies. For too much of my life is a consumerist existence based on what I chose to think that I need. And when I turn to face it in the cool of the morning, I learn that saying no is sometimes the very thing that I must do.

Saying no is not the means to an end, to achieve space to otherwise fill. It is the means to a beginning. To a start of a life where we don’t accept the logic of the world. That we can let things pass us by. And the world will not collapse.

Women in leadership: gender generosity

Danny Webster 3 Comments

Theology is probably not my strongest point, I get impatient with it, I want to move on, I want the answers with everything resolved and neatly organised into custom made boxes. But that’s not how theology works. Maybe by its very nature it has an unresolved tension that runs right through it: a complexity that permanently remains just out of grasp.

It can’t be ignored altogether, but nor can it be rushed. And the legacy of two millennia of deliberation enforce a hesitancy against jumping to conclusions and the risk of hubris of thinking that you know for certain what others have wrestled for generations over.

So I step with some trepidation into the theological terrain of gender. And I do so knowing that behind me sit not only theology but also tradition and reason and culture, all things that flavour and colour the debate. A tradition that has seen men take the primary roles in public and church life, a tradition that suggests a woman’s role is with her family. A culture that tells me men and women are equal and all discrepancies must be removed. And reason that struggles between the two, trying to use the witness of scripture to arbitrate between what is and what should be.

The fact that for pretty much all of the visible history of the church men have held all the leadership roles does not tell us very much. It could either mean that it’s been right all along, and we should carry on as we are. Or that we’ve got it colossally wrong and history just anaesthetises us from this.

I think that the New Testament tells us two broad messages about the role of women within the church and a third that relates more broadly to gender, and maybe specifically to marriage. Here I will deal with the first two and leave the third to a later post.

The first message I pick up is that women were clearly active and present in many, and probably all areas of the early life of the church. Men are clearly the dominant force in the early church and they are the witnesses that we look to in the letters of Paul, the ministry of Peter and the training of Timothy. But women had a role too and from the hints we pick up about Phoebe, Junia and Priscilla their role was significant. Junia was described as highly regarded among the apostles. Scott McKnight has investigated this particular lady’s history and how through many centuries she was exorcised from the text and turned into a man. Women read scripture in public, helped instruct apostles, they hosted churches, they financed ministries, and as an apostle, which Junia was, would have planted churches. The churches we know now cannot easily be compared to those of the first century so working out which roles in our present churches they would occupy if they lived now, or if our churches existed then is a tricky exercise. So instead, I’ll satisfy myself with a broad description that women were significantly involved in the life and leadership of the early church.

The second message is that there are clear prohibitions on the activity of women in the early church. Mostly this involves women not being permitted to speak in church and have authority over men, but it also addresses head-wear and make-up. These, as the most explicit commands relating to gender and the church, have traditionally won the day, and are certainly hard to ignore.

Other arguments are also marshalled against allowing women to occupy positions of leadership which I believe to be spurious and distracting, for example citing the male only membership of Jesus’ twelve disciples. While true as fact it means nothing, absence does not confer endorsement. I would take the issue of slavery as a parallel, Jesus did not speak out against slavery, that does not mean he condones the practice.

Another that I find hard to give credence to is the use of the masculine pronoun when referring to apostles and teachers, and the command that they should be the husband of one wife. Firstly, I see very few churches refusing to permit single men in positions of leadership, even if they would not allow women to occupy them. Secondly, lets play a little game of futurism. In a few centuries time records of the Conservative Party in the early twenty-first century come to light. Historians debate whether or not the party allowed women to hold the post of chairman, after all, the title suggests it refers explicitly to a man. The problem comes with the records of Sayeeda Warsi, otherwise recognisable as a woman, but described as a chairman. What are we to think, that this was in fact a man?

As I summarise very briefly the theological landscape surrounding gender and the church I think we have to hold two apparently contradictory messages and decide where that leaves us. One, women were in positions of responsibility and leadership in the early church, secondly that women are instructed not to teach.

The problems that I have with drawing too heavily from the passages that tell of women not speaking in church is that our adherence to them, even in churches that place strict confines on the roles a woman can take, is patchy. For example, very few churches operate a mandatory policy of head-scarves for women. Nor do churches insist women must be completely silent in church as passages in 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2 suggest. The point I am making is that even in conservative churches these passages are parsed and interpreted before application.

It seems to me that one of these themes must be wrong, or at least wrongly applied if interpreted as a universal command. And I think that’s where we start to get towards some sort of resolution, for me it is easier to see how the commands requiring women to be silent and not teach men are reflective of specific situations in the early church. It is hard to write off the practice and ministry of women who are commended as highly regarded. Quite where this leaves us I am not certain, but it does show the direction in which I am travelling.

Defining the debate: women in leadership

Danny Webster 1 Comment

The question of women in leadership is not a single issue, it is a plethora of overlapping and sometimes contradictory, sometimes mutually exclusive questions. So before we start wadding into the discussion it is worth defining the debate.

As I have pondered upon this issue I think the various questions form around three themes:

  1. What we believe about women in leadership?
  2. What is the impact of these beliefs?
  3. How should the church respond?

Obviously the answers, and indeed the questions, for 2 and 3 depend on the answer to the first theme. But I don’t think that necessarily means it is the most important of the issues.

Perhaps too often we have known what we believe but have given insufficient thought and attention to what the impact of those beliefs are, and how the church should respond.

In the first theme the questions that require exploration include the classic, and maybe principal, question of what roles should women be permitted to hold in church life. However, it also includes the need for a consistent ethic of gender roles that includes family life and positions of authority in wider public life. For example, what does our understanding of gender roles mean when considering who should be the main earner in a family, or whether a mother should stay at home if they have kids rather than going out to work? The church is increasingly embracing an idea of church life that is far more than a congregational service on a Sunday: ministry takes place in all parts of life and men and women are in positions of leadership and authority. Therefore it is important to have a theology of gender that addresses this form of leadership. These are theological questions.

The second theme asks: if this is what we believe, what does it mean? What are the consequences of either allowing or preventing women from holding all positions available to men? The consequences fall into a variety of different categories, the general life of the church and the discipleship and development of men and women forms one main section, but there are also consequences for the impact the church has outside of its congregation. What is the impact on mission of a church that takes a particular stance on gender roles? Does the presence of strong male leadership make outreach to men more feasible, or does the absence of women disenfranchise many from engaging with the church? These are descriptive and analytical questions.

The final theme is one of response, if this then what. With all of the categories of response to the above questions there is work that the church needs to do. In situations where a church places definite restrictions on the role of women, how can it ensure that women do not feel like second class congregants? Some would argue that they can’t. But often the problem of response is more evident in churches that don’t formally endorse strict categories of what men and women may or may not do. In these situations the challenge is ensuring that the practice matches up to the theological position. For example, if a church holds that women can do everything except be in overall leadership, is this modelled in the life of the church? These are practical questions.

A further part of this theme is how individuals respond, it will come as no surprise that there is only so much I can say in answering this one. How does a woman who feels called to ministry act with integrity in a church that suggests this is not a role she should take? And commensurately, how does a man act if he is in a church led by a woman and he is uncomfortable with this arrangement?

There are a lot of questions. And a lot of individual stories that make up a tapestry of experience. Hopefully over the coming weeks we can learn how it all fits together. I’ve got a few guests lined up, but if any of the issues mentioned above hit a nerve let me know and this space is open for your thoughts.

Women in Leadership: avoiding the issue

Danny Webster 1 Comment

It crops up every now and then. In fact, it never really goes away, just sometimes the intensity is more than usual. I’m talking about the subject of women in leadership. In some contexts the answer is clear cut, one way or the other, and in others it is all a bit vague, confused, and often hushed up.

Ever since I started blogging I’ve wanted to tackle this subject. From when I kicked off with my thoughts on relationships, to the most recent fandango featuring Mark Driscoll, so many conversations end up at this point.

And I go to a church where this is frequently spoken of in quiet tones, but the conversation trails off. I go to a church where I think I disagree with them on this, but to be honest, my thinking is not finished, and my unspoken criticisms are more often about the practical outworking than the theological reasoning.

That’s one reason why I’ve not brought it up, why so often it’s been the next post I’m going to write. Why I sit in the pub and chat and promise to put my thoughts together at some point soon. But don’t get around to it. But it’s not the main reason.

It is not because I don’t have my own views, and nor really that I am reluctant to air my disagreements – although I do take that seriously.

Godwin’s law is that if any online discussion thread goes on for long enough it will eventually descend into comparisons with Hitler and the Nazis. Here’s my law for discussions of women in leadership, it takes even less time for comparisons to slavery to pop up.

I don’t really fit into either of the two sets of debate that tend to dominate the airwaves about gender roles. One is the academically theological, the other is emotional and relational. I don’t think either is wrong, and nor do I think either side has a monopoly on one or the other. I have heard many emotive arguments for male only leadership and seen scholarly defences from advocates of women in ministry.

The reason I’ve not posted is that I want to avoid criticism. So much of what I write is heavily caveated as personal and based on my own thoughts and feelings. I rarely write about what is right and wrong, because too often I do not know the answer. And because if I do I’ll divide and alienate by picking sides.

So I stay silent, out of the debate. Standing on the sidelines watching everything else kick off. That way I don’t risk offending anyone. I want to make some headway on this subject, so I’m going to write a few posts flirting with the topic, and get a few people to weigh in from different perspectives. I’m going to hold off anything too conclusive for a while, but I’ll get there eventually.

I’m looking for guest posts so if you want to contribute drop an idea in the comments, or give me a tweet

Some introductory reading to get you going:

Krish Kandiah here and here

Andrew Wilson here, here and here

The Sophia Network, in particular this, but also everything else

And Scott McKnight’s ebook

Celebrity and the Church

Danny Webster 3 Comments


Does the church in the UK need more big name preachers? That’s the challenge that’s been circulating the internet over the past couple of days.

Why, when organising a big conference or festival are speakers imported from overseas, usually from the US, why are worship bands brought over from Australia? I do not think it is just because they are great preachers or worship groups. I think there is something slightly less savoury about it.

It’s because we want to ensure that crowds come, that we hit the break even point. I’ve been in a hall with over 2000 crammed in to listen to Rob Bell, I’ve queued for hours to listen to, and worship with, Hillsong United. If there’s someone with a recognised name on the flyer then it’s a more or less guaranteed way of filling the room.

I’ve travelled across the country, I’ve paid money, I’ve given time. All the symptoms of sacrificial worship. But what is it that I’m worshipping? Is it the God who created all things, or the celebrities on the stage? I’ve also watched in despair as teenage girls queue to have their photo taken with the latest heart-throb worship UK worship leader, and others run across the grass to catch the home grown speaker and talk to them. So that they can then relay through innumerable conversations about when they were talking to so and so.

I’ve criticised such an attitude, and I’ve been called out on it myself. I’ve been close at hand, and raised my eyes to the sky, when other fawn towards the well known names. And then recounted the tale: on one level just so my friends know my contact is superior to the type I’m criticising.

And even telling that tale here, perhaps parading my humility for your own compassion, including the information that I know people you might not, and somehow that puts me in a position of advantage.

Not a lot of people read this blog, but then I don’t know what classifies as a lot. Every now and then I post something which picks up quite a few readers, my post about Mark Driscoll did exactly that. I knew it would, written just hours after the story had first came out, pushed out on twitter and facebook, me doing what I could to encourage people to read my thoughts.

There’s an irony here that nearly knocked me cold as I pondered it last night. I posted Thursday evening just before my small group was about to begin. We were talking about greed and contentment, and all the time my phone was buzzing with tweets about the post, as things drew to a close I checked the comments, found a bunch and saw the stats had gone through the roof. I slipped away into a world of my own, more bothered about what other people were thinking about me and what I wrote, than about the very real relationships with the people in my front room.

I’ve done a little bit of preaching and public speaking, and it petrifies me. I was visiting a church for work and had realised it was a bit bigger than I’d expected, the night before I lay in bed churning over what I was to say, and how I would come across. I was worrying about what they would think of me.

My reputation, whether it is when I speak in person, or when I write is of too much concern to me. I wanted more people to read what I had written all the while discussing avoiding greed and seeking contentment.

So I was reflecting about all this last night while listening to the majestic new and final album from the Dave Crowder Band (buy it!). While wanting more readers I am at the same time uncomfortable with the idea that I am in my own ridiculous microcosm occasionally in a position of authority, not an idea I had really entertained to date. That means that there is a responsibility on me for what I say, how I say it, and how I interact with those reading or listening.

In my criticism of Mark Driscoll, was I fair, was I right, was I right to post it even if I was right in the content? Am I responsible for other people thinking negatively about a fellow Christian? How do I feel about many people I have never met reading my words and interpreting them in their own way?

I wanted the status of being highly read without the responsibility of being in a position of authority.

Surely the church needs the exact opposite, people who can deal with the responsibility of authority without the need for the status?

Ignoring Mark Driscoll

Danny Webster 12 Comments

I may have said that when I write I have in mind what people want to read and that effects what makes into on the page. But some people take it a whole lot further.

Writing to meet your readers’ demands is one thing. Writing to provoke a response can have its place. Even courting a bit of controversy to get people thinking can be accepted.

But there is a line. We could probably even select a passage of scripture and create a grid of what we should and shouldn’t do. Maybe along the lines of what is permissible under the law, and what is helpful. I can see the attraction in that sort of approach, it would help us know where we stand. What is fine and what is beyond the pale.

Because someone who belittles men because of their personality or effeminate manner shouldn’t be paraded as a hero.

And hopefully we can agree that advocating fighting as an expression of Christianity is not the best way of imitating the suffering saviour.

Surely we can see that a book about marriage should have at it’s centre the model of Christ and the church. But instead spends too much time in crude, reductionist, interpretations of scripture.

Without a doubt we should know that encouraging a nation to intentionally raise up celebrity pastors is a step in the wrong direction.

Because when these sort of messages are pushed it harms the church. When these things are said it cannot just be accounted for and excused by looking to the following the author and speaker has, or the size of his congregation, or his place in the Amazon best seller charts.

It is not enough to say that because someone is popular and have had success in building a church they should be given license to say what they like.

It is nonsense to say that certain messages are necessary because men are leaving the church. The problem is not solved by taking lessons from the worst parts of a consumer driven, sex obsessed, violence glorifying, celebrity culture.

When such things are said by people with a following it is even more urgent that they are not allowed to get away with it. That they are corrected, and rebuked, and then in the future ignored. No more invitations to conferences, or interviews in magazines – then trailed to increase publicity, building second hand on his penchant for the controversial. Just left alone.

Maybe I should just man up, get on a flight to Seattle and pull him into the car park and smack him down. He’d probably have some respect for me if I did that.

But that would miss the point, because that’s not how I work, or who I am. Instead I’m just a granny in her pyjamas writing behind the invisible walls of the internet.

I’m not going to call anyone out in a fight to prove I’m right, after all, I’m not always sure I am right, especially about all this. If I’m wrong I’m sure Pastor Mark will be happy to help me out.

My hypocrisy evidenced in this post is duly noted.

Life in joined up handwriting

Danny Webster 1 Comment

Sometimes very strange things can motivate you. Things that you would not give credence to in the cold light of day. But these can be the things that cause us to act with the greatest fervour, provoke us to respond with haste and all the while convince us that we’re acting of our own accord.

I do things because I think people will like them.

I don’t do things because if I did it might cause people to think badly of me.

I write because I want people to read.

I write stuff I know people read because I want lots of people to read what I have to say.

It makes me think that what I have to say matters, as though I have a contribution that is worthy of the stage upon which I stroll. A bit like back in December when I waded into the discussion of whether women should be more like the image set out in Proverbs 31 or a Victoria’s Secret model. I knew that my readership stats would rocket. They do whenever I write on relationships. Which is probably why I’ve returned to it more times than perhaps I should.

Yet should this cause me to desist from writing just because it is popular, or should it cause me to question why I write? Of course it’s the later, I have never claimed to have any particular expertise on relationships, in fact it’s all rather comical the way things unfolded during last summer. But another motivation was suggested to me: am I writing to get a girlfriend?

And to that the answer is a simple no. At no point has that motivated me or caused me to write something which I otherwise wouldn’t write.

But I write to provoke a response. I think most writers do. And I know what the response is to different kinds of writing. I know that an angry rant isn’t going to win me any admirers. But I know that sentences carefully crafted and strung together in a particular form will show me as an understanding, considerate person. And maybe once I realised that, I chose to write like that.

So if I’m writing in a way about an emotional issue in a way that causes people, but in particular women, to think better of me, then does that equate to writing to find a girlfriend? Only as much as walking out the door after double checking how your clothes look could mean the same.

Only as much as my performing to the best of my ability when I know people are looking, is a little better then when they might not.

So when I read a blog recently with the caveat that it wasn’t in the search of a partner, despite ostensibly being all about that, I was a bit sceptical. Because if you’re single and unless you’ve taken a very absolute decision to remain so, most things you do have at least the smallest token of intent towards what the future might look like, maybe not always your marital status, maybe job promotion. Or the esteem you are held in by your colleagues, or your friends. Or even the likelihood of getting home in time for the final episode of Downton Abbey.

Because our lives are not made up of one off events. We have to learn to live in joined up handwriting, what we do today impacts on tomorrow, how we act in front of a crowd, a screen or an audience of one makes a difference.

Maybe we should have more confidence in our motives, last night I alighted on a twitter conversation on the back of someone else’s twitter gleanings. One lady put out a pitch on twitter for a husband. Simple, to the point, with four key prerequisites. And another replied suggesting maybe we should follow her lead.

I’ve heard a few stories of people meeting through comment threads on blogs, sharing tweets, and their relationship taking off from there. But I’ll be honest, I find it all a bit tough. Every now and then I read the words someone has written, and feel a connection to what they say. But I know nothing about why they are saying the words they use. I do not know if the inflection that connected with my own emotions was intentional, and if so, what specific intent it was laden with.

We can connect with people we would otherwise never meet. But we can also hide from those we perhaps should invest some face to face time. And while the online world can be real I would label it as a dubious reality, full of holes, uncertainty, confusion and misunderstanding. Maybe not that dissimilar to the rest of our lives.

Because it’s not just online that I can act differently. It’s when I’m on my own, thinking I am invisible to the world. Or when I’m with a certain group of people rather than others. It’s when I want someone to think better of me.

But before I leap to the inevitable conclusion that we should not live hypocritical lives with false facades and distinctions hold on a moment. I will act differently around different people because I don’t get to control everything, and I’m not just an individual making my way on my own. I am one of many, I am a part of a community, a multi faceted, permanently evolving community. Of people I know, of those I’ve just met, of people I’d rather avoid and maybe someone who I pay particular attention to.

And I live under the gaze and in the hand of a God who loves me. So I don’t get to run the show. I get to live in a wonderful opera with voices that soar and occasionally I join the action on the stage, responding to the story crafted by the myriad actors I share the stage with. Throwing in my own plots for consideration and interaction, my thoughts and idea, my hopes and my dreams. The things I hold so dearly it almost hurts. And the ones that never see the light of day but are known by god nonetheless.

So maybe being clear helps us all. Throwing the curtains wide open to let the world see into the life we lead. Maybe a pitch for a spouse doesn’t hurt. Maybe an acknowledgement that most single people are on the look out most of the time helps clear the air. But where’s the line, because surely there is one?  What’s too much information, or emotion to throw out into the ether in the hope it might connect with another who might then respond? Is it not that different from our everyday flirting? I guess it isn’t, but that little bit harder to know who’s receiving it and how they’re reading it.

And maybe soon I’ll get to penning a few words about internet dating. But not right now. I’m off to do my hair and check the colours of my clothes work together.

Returning from Narnia

Danny Webster Leave a comment

I guess this is not your typical beginning of year blog post. You know the the sort I am thinking of, where I talk about all the wonderful things that I will do in the coming twelve months. A kind of public statement about my New Year’s resolutions, one of which it seems, must be to commit to write here with a certain frequency.

But just because this is the first time I sit down to write since before Christmas does not mandate that I should write with such cheery optimism. And that’s not because I am full of gloom about what 2012 holds, but maybe I have a more circumspect character not easily given to grand public declarations. Like many I find it easier to express my self in considered words and letters refined through a pen and paper onto the screen and posted online, than in the instant unprepared communication so often foisted upon me. It means that I am always thinking that there is more to any situation, any dilemma, any quandary awaiting on the path ahead.

I began 2011 with two hunches in the back of my mind about things that might happen during the year. Neither of them did. I also decided mid way through January that I’d try and read 100 books during the year, and I lost the list I’d been keeping at the beginning of November. By my reckoning I probably fell just a few books shot. And I was surprisingly okay about that. Normally I would put myself under a stupid and irrational pressure to meet an arbitrary target no one else cared about. But rather belatedly I decided that if all I was doing was reading to get through books then I was colossally missing the point.

So I don’t really begin this year with any resolutions or predictions. I have no labelled goals to lose weight, take up exercise, achieve some incredible feat or master a new art. Nor am I going to tie myself to writing any more than I know I should, which is often and without fear. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to set myself up for failure. Maybe I am afraid of voicing my hopes and dreams aloud in case the scoffers turn and sneer at my dreams. Or in case my hopes are not mine alone to dream of.

Now that’s what this is not about, what I’m not doing at this commencement of the annual cycle of days and weeks and months that roll across the calender with remarkable speed and tell us that time has passed while we are otherwise engaged. But maybe it is also where this starts, the space between out hopes and fears, the thing that holds us back from throwing everything we have toward a goal, and the very thing that makes us know that we must.

Christmas television has a certain form and order that I think we miss, the very best of the scheduling occurs when they think you’re not looking. So when everyone else was out enjoying a New Year’s day stroll I was closeted safely inside away from the rain watching Prince Caspain from the Narnia series. And at the end there’s something added in from the book, my sister and other Narian purists would dissent but for me it made the film just that little bit more special. Susan and Peter are told they will not return to Narnia, and Lucy looks heartbroken, because in some little way Narnia has always been a little more special to her than all the rest, she discovered it, saw Aslan where the others didn’t, she was the one who held the faith when the others faltered. But what Aslan said in explanation was profound. They had learnt what they would from Narnia, it was time they returned to the world they knew as their home, to live out the lessons.

Narnia fans will know that it didn’t quite work out that way. Lucy had a crisis of faith of her very own in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and maybe Susan had not learnt quite enough of Narnia to prevent the vices of make-up and the like taking their toll. In the end she chose the world she lived in over the other world she knew lay just beyond, and sometimes broke into her own.

We do not have to be living in a special world to experience our own crises of belief. Nor do we have to be abandoned back in our own for the graft of life to hit us hard. All of the boys and girls who find their way into Narnia have their own struggles, from Edmund and his choice for more Turkish delight, to Peter refusing to believe Lucy, to Susan and her rebellion back at home, to Lucy in the Magician’s House, wishing she was the one in Susan’s place. So far away from that time on the hill top when her eye’s filled with sadness that her sister would not return. Now she was despising the gift that she had been given, wishing that she could swap her journey for another. Wanting a life that was not her own.

How often is that the case. How often do we want a life that is not our own, look with envy at others for the path they walk, the world they live in, the people they love, and the people who love them? With what incredible frequency do we despise the gifts and opportunities that we have been given, the place we are in, or the people we are around.

I’ve started 2012 with two books, one has made me angry and the other nostalgic. One, ‘Getting Away With It’ by Dave Boniface pays homage to a place I was and people I have known over the past fifteen years. It’s the wonderfully creative writings of a man who has criss-crossed the world and made his way in and out of a couple of tight spots. Not sure I quite make it into the book but I recognise the events and people now told in hindsight showing with a long lens some of the incredible things that went on just a few years ago.

The other, the one that got me angry, that’s ‘Mugabe and the White African‘ and it is the tale of people fighting for their land, fighting for justice, standing up against a tyrant who will do anything to enforce his will and suppress dissent. It makes me want to jump out of my seat and do something. The two work together, one tells tales of the past and the other provokes me for the future. Maybe that’s how we should start this year.

Know where we come from. Know what God has done. And have an idea what gets you angry, what you know is wrong and what needs fixing. Because if we have not learnt the lessons from where we have been how will we make it count when we return to the world of the present with all it various charms and vices.

Proverbs 31 woman or a Victoria’s Secret model?

Danny Webster 6 Comments

NOTE: this is the hardest post I have written yet, it is a work in process, the overflow of my thoughts, it will no doubt be superseded by further, more enlightened words. I want to know what you think.

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There’s a line in the West Wing where President Bartlett says to Governor Ritchie in an election debate ’10 word answers can kill you in political campaigns’.

The context was that Ritchie had just pulled out a snappy answer to a tricky question about tax. The president’s staff had been working hard trying to craft such effortless remarks but had hit a brick wall. So before he responded with that little vignette Bartlett shifted into one of his trademark step backs and told his challenger and the audience that was what they’d been looking for all week. But then he moved on, to pose a question of his own, what are the 10 words after that, and the next 10?

CJ Cregg, the president’s press secretary, stepped into the post debate spin room to reinforce her bosses’ message that complexity was not a vice.

Why do I tell you all this? Because I think sometimes we do the same in the church. We like quick and clever answers, we like the aphorisms that role of the tongue and deftly communicate the message we want to convey. Sometimes 10 word answers can kill you in Christianity too.

If you’ll let me take 12 instead of 10 here’s a pretty current example: “I’d rather have a Proverbs 31 woman than a Victoria’s Secret model.”

From the live31movement, with its burgeoning facebook fan page, popular Youtube video and trending topics on twitter, this has championed the cause for women who want to be like this and men who pledge to prefer it. So my question echoes President Bartlett, what are your next 10 words? And the 10 after that?

Because that’s the challenge isn’t it? What does it actually mean to prefer a Proverbs 31 woman, and come to think of it, if you find one could you let me know? The passage is often used to demonstrate a wife who is entrepreneurial, compassionate and loving. But the actual lines in the text don’t take us very far, they are not a useful reference point as I look around and try and assess how many attributes noted in scripture the girls I meet possess.

A point picked up by Preston Yancey in his now redacted post was that a portrayal of women centred on these verses misses the witness of the wider narrative of scripture. It tries to sum up in a few words what a wife should look like. The danger of 10 word answers is not new, context is important when we try and interpret scripture: what came before and what comes after, what is the situation, the environment, the externalities, the things that made the words on the paper we read mean something more than just snappy labels for us to adopt and print on t-shirts.

It’s not just that the 10 word answer is incomplete and that it fails to really answer the question. My problem is that sometimes it is a lie.

It’s pretty easy to win some kudos in the Christian world as a guy if you stand up and say you prefer virtue to beauty. And a plethora of girls despairing at not looking like the scantly clad girls in festive commercials will fawn over your spiritual maturity and pursuit of righteousness. (I’ve very nearly deleted these two sentences every time I’ve read through this, but decided to keep them, they are not, absolutely not, directed at the guys behind this movement, they’re about me as much as anyone)

But this is where I call guys out for their crap and ask girls to bear with us a while.

The problem with this movement, and in fact in virtually everything that Christian guys write about relationships, is the tendency towards neutering romantic and sexual attraction to make a point about virtue and purity.

I actually want to be attracted to the woman I marry. That’s a shock isn’t it?

Of course it isn’t, it is what living and breathing guys want. There is certainly such a thing as lust, and there is such a thing on valuing someone for what you can get out of them, and these tendencies are ones we should not to indulge. There maybe guys out there not affected by physical beauty, and that’s great, I know most Christian guys go through phases when they would be desperate to swap places with you. For a day or two at least until they want to appreciate the wonders of God’s creation once again. And then they would probably like their inclination to physical attraction back.

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I wrote most of the above yesterday and I’ve been pondering it. What worries me is that I’m writing to excuse myself. Justifying why I don’t always value virtue, and why instead I prefer beauty. The answer is that I am frail, and I am weak, and maybe sometimes I do not always get my priorities right. But the answer is also that maybe we shun beauty too easily. Maybe we cut it out of our wish list because we think there is something wrong with it. I think there’s something wrong with that.

I think at its core this nascent movement gets something very important right, the call to value the depth of a person over a shallow verdict based on their looks. And that is good, but my problem is that I’m not really sure that’s what it conveys. I’ve chatted to a few guys and girls in the past two days about this, and one guy commented that just because something is simple doesn’t mean it is simplistic. I think I disagree, I think that in this case a quest for a catchy sound bite has made it overly simplistic.

Where this gets difficult is the segue between aspiration and acknowledgement of reality. I think it is crucial to hold up our ideals, to know that some things are better than others. But we tend to do that often enough. What I think we do far less well is accepting that we live in a messy world and we are broken beings who don’t always make the right choices. Too often we focus on the aspirational and miss out the ambiguity that for most of us is the norm. Calling on guys to declare their preference for something which they may only choose on certain days is not always helpful. It can lead to disenchantment when you realise it is not always what you want, and even deceit when you pretend it is what you want because you think it is what you ought to. Admitting to liking attractive women is not always approved of in the church.

This isn’t all I’ve got to say, but it’s about enough for now. These are very much unfinished thoughts, I want to know what you think, is the call for Proverbs 31 women any more than a pious catch phrase?