Relationships

Married to wanting more

Danny Webster 2 Comments

One of the things about writing in public is I’ve got to be careful what I say. Careful so I don’t offend those who I know as well as those I don’t. But also careful I don’t get the sack by saying controversial things or in any other way bringing my employer into disrepute.

And this might tread the line pretty tightly. Sometimes at work I get bored.

I was thinking about this following a post from Ally Vesterfelt about how the idea of a perfect day is perhaps so because of its very scarcity. The same thing, if we had to do it every day would become mundane.

So I love my work, it’s interesting, challenging and most of all for me, it is varied. But occasionally I get bored of it. I look at the things that I need to do and turn and think something else would make my life more exciting. I imagine a roller-coaster adventure where no day is every the same, and when the challenges are just hard enough to tax me but not too hard to give me nausea at the stress I sometimes feel on a Sunday morning.

My mum used to teach me that boredom was a state of the mind. That something was only boring if you let it be so. Maybe, but that doesn’t mean exciting things won’t become normal and the exhilarating mundane. It’s the adrenaline rush affect of life, it’s the incremental desire for more. For something that will lift us out of the situation we are in and onto a better plane.

And as I reflect on this I’m reminded of a few words from this week’s talk on marriage and family as part of ChristChurch London’s Love is a Verb sermon series. I wasn’t intending on writing a piece specifically on it but a few things stood out and resonate as I ponder this idea of something exciting becoming mundane.

I cannot begin to speak for couples who are barely back from their honeymoon, never mind those who have worked through decades of marriage. But I hear the excitement of being together lasts eighteen months to two years. Considering plenty of couples are together that long before they tie the knot it means marriage will quickly drift into normal rather than novelty.

If we are always after novelty we will never be content. If we allow our boredom with how things are to provoke us to change tack we will always be on the move. Sometimes settling down is the hard thing to do. Sticking to a course regardless of the obstacles in your way.

So sometimes I get bored at work. Sometimes I get bored with the friends around me. If I was in a relationship I guess I’d get bored with the person I was going out with, if I was married I’d probably get bored then too.

Maybe boredom is a state of the mind, but that doesn’t make it any less real. Our default response to boredom is change, whereas if I dare suggest, recommitting and accepting that things will never be picture perfect is a more productive way forward. It allows us to step off the hamster wheel that promises something better, but that better thing always ends up disappointing.

Whether it is marriage, a job, or the need for excitement, if we change at the whim of our needs we are within a hairline of turning that desire into an idol. If we think that marriage will answer our problems we place it in a position it cannot retain. If we think a job will satisfy all of our demands it will always let us down. If we put the very experience of adrenaline rushing through our veins as our goal we will never have enough.

What do you think? Should boredom provoke us to change or encourage us to dig deeper? Have you ever tried so hard to get something you think will make you happy and it let you down?

Learning from Jennifer Lopez

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It was one of those evenings. When you get in, picking up your small chips and battered sausage on the way home, grab the bottle of Bulmers which has been lurking in the fridge for an occasion such as this and swiftly fade into the folds of the sofa and absorb whatever the screen before you has to offer.

I could blame it on working all the way through the weekend, meaning I’m a little over halfway through this nine day week. Or I could blame it on a bout of lethargy that stopped me from getting that overdue piece of work completed. Either way I watched back to back films, beginning with Monster-in-Law, a pretty shocking Jennifer Lopez vehicle that weaved its way through her travails with her soon to be mother-in-law.

But like much inspiration it came out of nowhere. And this most unexpected of cultural landmarks offered up something to critique and something to appreciate. Jennifer Lopez’s character was sat shooting the breeze with a couple of friends wistfully describing her ideal man. He would be strong, but gentle, rough but in touch with his emotional side. It was a wish list that soon came true in the hands of Hollywood scriptwriters.

The inspiration came because it more or less echoed a conversation I had on Sunday, I’d rushed back for church from the conference I was at and lingered in the pub for a little while afterwards. Slightly in shell shock from the fallout from my previous post, it was a difficult time for me to be in company, the dissonance between my online writings and my face to face relationships abundantly apparent. The conversation was a critique of what girls look for in guys, wanting the best of both worlds, wanting the strength and the sensitivity. And I apologise because I wasn’t fully engaged in the conversation, but something stuck. And Jennifer Lopez’s words brought it back to mind.

We have wish lists. They can be long and they can be short. They can focus on the minutiae or the grand. When I was looking around houses my wish list was fairly short, I was flexible. Mostly, I had decided what I was going to do and that was the most important step. When it comes to relationships we have ideals and hopes and dreams. We manufacture edifices of imagination of what life will be like if it all comes to pass.

We want the strong and the sensitive, the fun and the focused. Whether it is a guy who will be unbreakable until he meets her charms, or the girl whose frivolity fades before the one true guy. We want to have it all.

But what if the most important aspect is not the marks out of ten that we ascribe but the decision that we take to engage in relationships.

This morning before I sat down to write I had my regular check of twitter and top of my feed was this from Lauren Dubinsky:

Whimsical? Probably. Profound? I think so too.

It is about the purpose and not the process. And that’s the part of Monster-in-Law that I appreciated. Amid the candy floss storyline that was always going to come good there lay a overriding decision that she was going to marry this guy. The details of the wedding, the disaster of the engagement party and rehearsal dinner faded before what was in her sights.

Maybe, just maybe, the first step is to decide to engage. There’s a lot of talk about waiting, and I’ve had my fair share. But I’ve also used waiting as an excuse for disengaging. A bit like that conversation after church on Sunday. I was there, but I wasn’t.

Where we end up may be less important than taking that step and deciding to make relationships, of whatever form, a priority. What do you think? Is it too much to just decide one day that it’s time to find a girlfriend/boyfriend, or even husband or wife?

My single confession

Danny Webster 5 Comments

After a sermon on singleness and after Jennie’s story earlier this week I thought it was about time I found a way to tell my story. I’m good at analysing situations, being objective about what is going on, deconstructing cause from effect. I can write about singleness in the church, I can write about dating, I can even write about marriage as far as that might seem from where I am now.

Where I am less sure about navigating my course and finding words to describe and explain is when I am the subject. I used to think it was because I was taking an objective standpoint, unburdened by emotional vagaries.

What I am actually doing is denying that I have any part to play. I pretend I don’t exist. Like a researcher conducting an anthropological study I assume I am invisible, that my presence is irrelevant to whatever may be in my sights.

So when I write about the dynamics of dating in the church I write about other people and not me. And when I think of whether the level of single people in church, and my church in particular, is a problem, I do not write from a personal perspective.

When I write an open letter to the ladies I may use language that conveys emotion, I may come across as honest and brave. But too often these emotions and this honesty is on someone else’s behalf, or in a corporate general sense.

Even now, I’m finding ways around actually telling my story by telling you how I avoid telling my story. The mind has remarkable agility when it comes to finding guises for respectability to avoid what needs to be done.

I am single. And I always have been.

And that’s where my story starts and ends. But a lot happens in between and I should therefore have something to say about singleness. It’s not a category or a label I use very often, perhaps partly to shield myself from having to decide whether or not I am happy with that status. If I don’t define myself in this way I tell myself that I am letting other parts of my life take the leading roles, maybe in my more spiritual days I view this as doing what Jennie speaks of: I am getting on with my life. I have never considered myself to be waiting for life to begin.

Maybe I have done a good job at getting on at life. But I have done this by seeing singleness as a part of my life that doesn’t matter.

It’s not mattered because I have disconnected myself from it. I have stepped outside of my situation and my relationships with others and tried to get on with life.

Whatever attraction or rejection I may feel or have experienced has been categorised as unimportant and more or less ignored. So when I have liked a girl, and not had the guts to do anything about it I have forced myself to get over what I define as infatuation. Or when that girl starts going out with someone else I tell myself that I was never going to make a move so it doesn’t matter.

I told myself that relationships don’t matter.

But I still wanted friends. I still wanted to be wanted and included, and a part of the crowd. I looked on enviously at communities forming and thriving, or relationships that helped each other get better. And while defining romance as an unnecessary addition I still wanted it.

This narcissistic self denial had an impact as I viewed women I liked as out of my reach. I confused attraction with infatuation and thus justified relegating it out of sight. Without making a move, without ever being rejected, I defined myself as rejected.

Because my singleness was a thorn in my side that I needed to ignore. I not only saw it as a problem, but I decided that it was other people’s problem and not mine. I did not want to be viewed that way, I did not want to be needy, or viewed as the reject that I had subconsciously branded myself.

Most of all I was ashamed. I was ashamed at never having gone out with a girl. When I was at school I hid behind my Christian piety, when I grew a little older I learnt that the bravado covered over others in the same place as me. But that was years ago now.

Now it is something a bit more painful. To go with the singleness is a legacy of not asking girls out. Of failing to stand up and man up when it was the thing that good Christian guys do.

My postulating on relationships came at a price. The price that I knew one day I would have to pay. With a post like this that lays it bare. This is my confession.

Singleness is not a prelude

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Today’s guest post comes from Jennie Pollock and continues along the theme of singleness. I hope you enjoy…

© David Hawgood

When I left Uni with a good degree but no job, I followed the promptings of that ‘still, small voice’ and became a teacher on a missionary ship sailing around the Caribbean and Central and North America.

It was a two year commitment, and I had a great time, made some lifelong friends, saw some amazing sights and generally had a great sort of double gap year.

Towards the end of my commitment I was recruited to join a music ministry in the same missions agency (OM). I worked with them first in London then in Atlanta, GA, being effectively a tour manager for a Christian band. We travelled extensively in the US and Europe, and also did tours in Canada, South Africa, Australia and Turkey.

I loved it. I was totally in my element: loving my work, loving my boss, loving the team, loving the travel, loving the new friends I made around the world. It was so much fun, and all for a great purpose, which made it even more worthwhile.

I did it for eight years.

And somewhere in the middle of it all I suddenly realised something: I was still treating it like a gap year. I was thinking of it as the thing I was doing before my life really started.

The life where I was married, living in England, paying the mortgage on a nice little house in a suburb somewhere, taking care of our 2.4 kids. My real life. The life I had always expected and wanted.

I realised that because I thought this wasn’t really it, I was letting it pass me by and not really making the most of it or engaging properly with it. Everywhere I went, everything I did, I did like a tourist. I absorbed the experience without letting it touch my life – and without my life touching it.

Why am I telling you this? Because I think our cultural attitude to singleness – particularly within the church – is similar to my attitude to my life in OM: it’s fun, but it’s not the real thing. It’s the phase you have to get through while waiting for your real life to start.

Sorry, but I have news for you: this is your real life. You need to start living it.

When I pitched a post on singleness to Danny, I was going to call it ‘Waiting Well’. I was going to talk about how while you are single you should not be consumed by the desire for a relationship, because that can easily slip into idolatry, seeking a mate with all your heart instead of seeking God. I was going to advise you to focus on becoming the person God is calling you to be, not only because it is the most satisfying path and a generally good thing to do, but also because when you do meet that special someone, you’ll have something genuine to bring to the relationship. This is all still true and worth mentioning.

I was also going to say that the best thing you can do is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbour as yourself. This is always worth repeating.

As I thought about it though, I felt my emphasis was wrong. Calling the post ‘Waiting Well’ implies a preparation phase before the real thing, and that’s how many sermons on the subject tend to approach it, but that is not a helpful mindset. Marriage is not the thing that will ultimately fulfil you. It is wonderful, and I look forward to mine, in faith that God will keep a promise made long ago, but your wedding day is neither the end of your story (as Hollywood tells us) or the beginning of it.

It is a transition, sure; a major scene-change, the start of a new act with new characters and new scenarios, but the months or years of singleness before it aren’t prelude. They are not the bit where the orchestra warms up, playing notes and scales you don’t really have to listen to before the real thing starts. They are the real thing.

If your perception is this is just a phase you have to get through, marking time before the real thing starts, you won’t engage with it properly, and are liable to wake up one day, as I did in Atlanta, and realise life has drifted by.

If you are single you are living in God’s best for you right now. You’re not missing his will for your life. You’re not in the second-best role. You aren’t waiting for his plan to start; this is it, it’s started.

Embrace it. Enjoy it. Stop waiting and start living. What are you going to do with the time God has given you?

Jennie Pollock is Editor for New Frontiers UK Media and Communications and is a little closer to 40 than 22. You can find more of her writing at http://jenniebeanbag.wordpress.com and while you’re at it, follow her on twitter.

Singleness and the church

Danny Webster 1 Comment

This is not another post with tangential references to a Leonard Cohen song, I was going to title it ‘A bunch of lonesome heroes‘, but in the end went for something more self-explanatory. It’s about singleness in the church, and in particular in the church in London.

London is a peculiar place. And the church in London is somewhat of a outlier as well. The church is younger than in the rest of the country, even taking into account differences in the overall population it is still astonishing that 57% of people in their 20s who attend church do so in London. This creates one problem for the church outside of London – the lack of young adults, but it also creates problems for the church in London that are not as often recognised.

For churches in the centre of London there is frequently a distinct lack of older people, families and even married couples. That’s not to say they’re absent altogether, just that young single people make up a disproportionately large block. A while back a theory of church growth was in vogue, it was know as the homogeneous unit principle, and it came with its very own acronym: HUP. The idea was that people felt at home around people like them so it made sense for churches to reach out to people who were like them.

This isn’t a post about church growth, but I’ll say this: sometimes it works, we like things to be comfortable and therefore are inclined to go where the path is smoothest and when the congregation is like us there are less obstacles to us feeling at home. The problem is that this could descend down a road of ever intensifying stratification and the end point of that would be an infinite number of churches with a single preacher/worship leader/pew filler: me, or you. But not both of us. At its more practical it means that churches develop that are mono generational or mono cultural. This comes to the fore in London with churches that are young and hip. That means the church family becomes slightly dysfunctional.

It means that churches in central London have a high proportion of single people. For my church the natural affect of being based in the centre of the city is aided and abetted because it was planted only eight years ago, so most of the newcomers are students or young professionals moving into London.

This does two things, firstly it means that the members of the church suffer from not having the full range of people to interact with and learn from. In particular there is a gulf where father and mother figures should exist to provide wisdom and guidance to the younger generation. Secondly, it means that a culture of singleness is fostered as normality.

And this becomes enshrined in all sorts of aspects of church life, whether it is the make up of small groups or the type of social activities that build community around the more formal parts of church life. Added to this is the occasional fallout of relationships that do occur: how friendship groups are rent by couples splitting up. This all makes life a lot easier when a comfortable culture of friendship between groups of guys and girls is the norm.

Into this climate we import a further demographic trouble maker: the disparity between men and women. This isn’t as bad as sometimes it is presented to be, it’s roughly 60-40 in favour of the ladies, or the guys if you’re thinking of prospective dates. While the norm for relational dynamics is the friendship group and the limited dating activity is partly attributable to not wanting to disrupt this, beneath the surface many people remain discontent with the status quo.

It goes something like this: the girls look at the guys and think they need to sort themselves out and ask girls out, in the back of their mind lingers the fear that if the odds stay the same a chunk of them will stay on the shelf. And the guys return the looks, slightly paralysed by the pressure to make a choice and make the most of the favourable proportions. Guys know they ought to do something but don’t want to get it wrong, girls want the guys to ask them out but think it’s too forward to make this desire clear.

Without the wisdom of elders and the frank conversations between people at various stages of romantic liaisons, this becomes a secret minefield out of which the culture of singleness thrives.

This is all a bit detached and technical but I wanted to try and tease out some of the reason singleness has became an issue in the church, and identify the particular form that it takes in churches in London.

I’ll write more later in the week about my own personal experience of singleness. Of all the issues I write about it is perhaps the one which I have the greatest personal experience to draw on, but perhaps something I have dwelt on the least.

What do you think: is singleness an issue in the church? If so, why, and what can be done about it? Do we really believe that single people are equal with those who are married?

Dating by numbers

Danny Webster Leave a comment

Some time ago Portsmouth University advertised its courses with the slogan: “What comes after the Internet?” Unfortunately the answer does not lie in any of their courses, or those of any other university. Innovation cannot be taught, only inspired and encouraged.

Many things in life are not located on any map, there is no guidebook, no ‘x’ marks the spot. They cannot be summed up in a whistle stop visit or captured on a postcard. There is no one hour audio guide available in ten different languages with special versions for children in German, Italian and English.

Romance is one of those things.

We want answers to all of our questions, but the more we look the more we find more questions to our answers. I flippantly wrote my guide to Christian dating recently, it took me quite a while to write and I removed bits I thought were too quirky or liable to misinterpretation. And still a few people thought it was out of line, they were fuming until the humour hit, if it hit at all.

I wrote it because I felt there was a need for clarity in the romantic interactions between guys and girls in church. I’ve got a couple of half written posts stored where I try to bring light to the subject, plus a short story that I hoped would illustrate with ease what I was struggling to say. In the end I opted for satire. I hoped to gentle show the eccentricity of our habits, but inadvertently I think I took on another liability we too easily slip into: wanting step-by-step instructions for every part of life.

I’m currently buying a flat and no one has told me how to do it. All the easy guides I find are either too complicated or don’t fit the specifics of my situation. Everyone I ask adds more factors into the equation. And I end up doing things in the wrong order and then rushing to catch up.

When it comes to relationships I want the idiot’s guide. I want the full colour illustrated edition with helpful footnotes and explanatory captions. I want it to be a dot-to-dot drawing, or one of those paint by numbers kits. I want someone else to do the hard work for me.

The latest talk in the Love is a Verb series focussed on singleness (more on that soon) and dating and the part that hit me hardest was exactly this point. Expect mess.

In the confluence of emotions and attraction between two people there will be mess, and the awkward outworking of this in thoughts and words and actions will not be straightforward. A bit like the reason no one can provide a simple guide for house buying because the exceptions out number the rules, no one can tell me how a relationship can and should pan out.

I tell someone I’m interested, but they are not. As hurt overshadows hope I wish it could be easier.

As the the girl I like walks off with another, I want to know how to stop this happening next time.

But maybe some things in life should be hard. Maybe the challenge and the climb, and the opportunities to bail out make the summit more of a joy.

Maybe the mess of the beginnings will remind us that mess is not washed away by rings and ceremonies and matching bible covers.

Beauty, lust and attraction

QuoteDanny Webster 2 Comments

My view of what makes someone beautiful is distorted. It swings like a pendulum. From beauty in the eyes of media buyers and fashion columnists, to a rejection of physical attraction as somehow beyond the realms of what I am supposed to feel.

Sara, in her guest post focused on the former trend, so I’ll give less attention to this. But I will say a bit because I’m a guy and I see things a bit differently. I guess this is sort of a part two to her post at the weekend.

It will come as a shocking surprise to no one that the way I look and think about women is not always with the purist motives. I could blame it on a culture that has promulgated the Barbie doll image as the best way to get attention, snag a husband, and achieve generic happiness. I could blame it on television programmes that slip sex scenes into disconnected plot lines. Or the magazines that brandish nearly naked women as the way to get ahead. Or I could go the whole hog, blame the internet, it’s turned porn from the furtive acts of men in trench coats to the very next thing you see on your screen.

Last year a survey of Christians in Northern Ireland found that 65 per cent of men under 35 have intentionally accessed porn. It was more prevalent among church leaders, who also had a higher rate of affairs. Gareth Davies has recently suggested it might need addressing in sex and relationship education at schools due to the harm it causes.

Porn does things to your brain. It makes you think something is normal which is not. It provides a go to destination for lust and temptation. But it does something more. It alienates relationships from sex. It offers what you think you want in a way that comes without a cost. So when we look at an attractive girl we see sex, and when we encounter the challenges of living life with other people we opt for the easy casual disconnected option.

In See Me Naked Amy Frykholm tells the story of a man addicted to porn:

“Pornography had provided Matthew a safe place, deep inside himself, for pleasure. But the connection to another human being was part of the fantasy. Images of naked strangers provided the illusion of openness, as if the woman whose photo he looked at was making herself available to him. Pornography had the capacity to make him feel both fleetingly alive and simultaneously numb. Fantasy replaced the nuanced intimacy demanded of him in his everyday life.”

As well as being a guy that finds girls attractive, I am a single guy that finds girls attractive. I may have been a little less than serious with my step by step guide to marital bliss, but there are things that are in my mind when I weigh up if I’m interested in a particular lady. And physical attraction is on that list.

Should it be?

Should I find girls attractive, and should I use that judgement to decide who I want to spend my life with? I think so. I think otherwise I am abusing beauty in just as destructive way as the covers of magazines that portray a mirage of beauty painted onto a hollow shell.

Appreciation of physical human beauty is supposed to be off the reservation. It is akin to lust. It is gazing at what causes us to sin. So we should cover it up and avert our eyes. Beauty is not without consequences. I am guilty of only a little hyperbole.

Because when I walk down the street and I see a girl sunbathing in the park my eyes linger longer than they should. When I’m standing in church supposedly singing songs of praise to the God I love, I find my love annexed by the girl I am presently smitten with. My appreciation of human beauty is so often lust, it is so often unhealthy, and it ingrains in me a suspicion of that particular emotional reaction. When I see something that is beautiful I think that it is wrong that I have come to that conclusion based on my instantaneous and almost involuntary registering of attraction.

There is such a thing as lust. But beauty isn’t just found in those people to whom we are attracted to, or to use the infantile but efficacious expression, people we fancy.

Why has my view of beauty become so defined, so contingent on a message that beauty is a sexual thing, and sexual things should be desired after, and if I want something sexual then I should be able to get it? How have I let myself become consumed by a vision of sex that is so commodified and mangled into a shape that serves what I think that I want in that particular moment?

In pursuit of beauty

Danny Webster 4 Comments

This is the 100th post on Broken Cameras & Gustav Klimt and I’m delighted that it’s the first ever guest post. And it’s a stunner from Sara Kewly Hyde. If you want to write a guest post please get in touch. 

What is beauty?

A philosophy? A physical attribute? Something that grows from the inside out? Does the way I choose to define beauty tell you about me, or more about the society I live in?

The ancient Greeks used it in the phrase kalos kai agathos (approximate transliteration), which literally meant beautiful and good/virtuous. But it was also used as a coverall term for the perfect and balanced gentleman. We used to write it in cards to each other in sixth form as a compliment “Carry on being your kalos kai agathos self, I love you” (I then failed the Ancient Greek exam).

The Bible uses the term both to describe physical beauty like Queen Esther’s, and also to point to something much deeper in a verse like Psalm 27:4 “One thing I ask of the Lord… to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and seek him in his temple.” Although the use of the word “gaze”, may still point to something observable.

For my new year’s resolution, I thought that for every penny I spent on my outward appearance, I’d give the same to charity. And in so doing I’d understand more tangibly how much I throw my resources after the pursuit of the external.

I haven’t done it, I was too lazy, too scared. How do I perceive beauty? Is it about my desire to look like Jessie J? Or is it about small moments of kindness, a smile from my baby niece – interactions that make my heart cry out that was just beautiful?

So I believe beauty can be a heart attitude, but I’m going to focus more on the physical, on the external, on the industry. I am a slave to the beauty industry, to 21st century consumerist capitalism. We cannot divorce the ideal of beauty that constantly surrounds us, telling us how to be a woman, how to be human and the huge market forces behind it. I see an image in an advert of a woman. I compare myself to that. I find myself hideously lacking. I spend lots of time thinking about how I could look more like that. I start to turn the thought in to action and buying products and clothes to make me more like that.

More acceptable aesthetically. More likely to succeed. This works for me, I feel momentarily better, I feel more attractive because I am a millimetre closer to her “perfection”. Rinse, repeat. Each image I see feeds my insecurity that I am not physically up to scratch, each product I buy tells me I can fix it with an item acquired by financial transaction and then the bar is raised higher the next time. I know what the ideal is, an ideal that I’d need to be an anorexic with a boob job and permanent real-time air-brushing to achieve. Good-o. The beauty industry laughs all the way to the bank, while we’re left trying to force our bodies to conform to the market’s latest aesthetic ideals and grappling with even bigger insecurities.

Who cares? Why does this matter? We need to ask who is setting the beauty agenda. Who gets to say what is beautiful? We need to wonder why only one kind of aesthetic rules. We need to think about how this impacts upon our treatment of those who lack representation in the “ideal”, the disabled, the disfigured, those unable to afford the right clothes or products to reach the beauty bar. It becomes a discriminatory issue. Getting caught up in a paradigm that privileges the visual, turns women into sexualised objects whose value is solely contingent on their appearance and denigrates many other types of beauty, is a dangerous one-way street to misery. We will never be good enough. Women will punish their bodies in to further conformity. Men will measure women more against the model standards. Our humanity, our capacity to interact, to love and be loved is reduced by the fantasy world projected all around us. We try, we succeed, we fail, we learn. But in a world of perfection, where is the room for failure? For humility? For recognising our brokenness and need of each other?

I say I only want to be a slave to Christ, to righteousness, but if that is true, why do I shave my armpits, worry that my grey hair will render me undateable and my large pores be the death of me? I know too well the verses about God looking on the heart and not on the external and I’m glad about that, but what about my potential partner? How can I focus on developing what’s on the inside when if I went to work in the same clothes every day for a week and no make-up, HR might pull me in to have a word?

We need to be honest about the impact that our visual culture has on our faith. I love the Message translation of Romans 12: 2, it is a constant reminder to be aware of my context at this point in space and time “Do not become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking”.

What happens when the church pursues the beauty myth? We get our priorities wrong in what we are for and who we welcome most.

We spend too much money on assuaging our insecurities when we could be more generous to those who really need it. People get lonelier and we are alienated from our humanity. We need to reclaim beauty, to wrest it from the oppressors and celebrate the beauty in the small, the everyday, in every one who is made in the image of God. I’m still learning how and I’m getting it wrong, but I have to try because Jesus came to set us free.

Sara Kewly Hyde is a theatre maker and thinker who works with women in the Criminal Justice System. Follow Sara on twitter or find out more at www.kewly.org

A guide to Christian dating

StandardDanny Webster 13 Comments

© April Killingsworth

Christians need a helping hand to get on the relationships ladder, and I’m here to provide it.

I look around my church and see many eligible men and beautiful women who are not in relationships. I’m tempted to suggest arranged marriages – either by the wisdom of the elders or drawing of lots – but I suspect that my guide will prove far more productive. This is written for men (although I’m sure everyone can learn from its wisdom) but any offers to provide a companion piece for the ladies would be gratefully received.

Step 1. Find someone you like

There are plenty of girls around but making your mind up can be difficult, so here’s a little crib sheet that you can score potential marks out of ten.

  • Attractiveness – do you like the way their earlobes hang?
  • Personality – how many times an hour do they make you laugh? (laugh-o-meters are available from accredited retailers.)
  • Intellect – can they recite the books of the Bible backwards?
  • Spirituality – check out their prayers for buzzwords: propitiation, justification and atonement in the same sentence counts double.
  • Holiness – how important is God in their lives: do they carry their study bible everywhere they go? (You Version on the iPhone is indicative of a consumerist, easy, faith)
  • Testimony – will your life stories mesh together to provide a beautiful symphony of the Lord’s work?

I will leave to you what counts as a datable score in each category.

Step 2. The after church mingle and other appropriate social contexts

Once you have a particular girl in your sights the next task is to find ways of maximising social contact without disclosing your interest. The most obvious device to use at this juncture is the ‘after church mingle’, I would suggest you use this open social environment to test the waters of your potential date. If you are fortunate to attend a church with many mid-week activities you can maximise your engagement with the opposite sex, and if you diarise with skill you could scout out multiple marks at once.

A particular challenge in this regard is breaking down the inevitable cliques that develop in church. If the girl of your dreams always sits at another table when you go to the pub after church you’ll have to take additional measures. I would suggest segueing into a conversation by inquiring of them whether they enjoyed the prayer meeting last night, or other suitable occasion that provides a spiritual cover for gentle flirting. If there is an opportunity to discover where else you might happen to be in the same place together all the better.

Step 3. The pre-date

Anyone new to the world of Christian dating might be surprised by the tortured agonising that goes on before a guy asks a girl out. In the language of contemporary Christianity this is described as discernment. You have to make sure that the girl likes you before you let her know that you like her.

A decade or so ago dating was rather out of fashion, and the old fashioned notion of courtship came back into vogue. This tendency has now faded and replaced with an exhortation to guys to be direct and ask girls on dates. However, there remains a scepticism about asking girls out on a date with only a cursory post church mingle to ascertain your spiritual compatibility. This is why the pre-date is vital.

The pre-date can takes a variety of forms, the most common is the, ‘let’s meet for coffee before church’, but its more sophisticated proponents would also demonstrate the carefully orchestrated ‘walk to the station together after church’. Such circumstances are vital to ensure that you can savour a few moments of the person’s undivided company. Because of the prevalence of the pre-date and the myriad uses to which it has been put, for example providing friendship and company as well as testing out potential dates you may wish to provide an alibi for your coffee: planning an event or discussing important pastoral issues are common devices.

Interlude

At this stage in the process it is usual to participate in that vital aspect of informal church communications: the accountability partner. Through this sharing of dilemmas you can gently inform other people of your interest and if the networks work to their optimum capacity you can ward other potential suitors off before you mark is aware of your intent.

Step 4. The date

If all of the preliminary stages have been completed with due care and attention the ideal situation is that without having to disclose your interest you reach a point where your mark has provided a cast iron guarantee of their mutual desire for a relationship.

Unfortunately not all situations work out quite this well, which incidentally is the stimulus for an audit of relationships in church with the intended output of sharing good practice. This project goes by the name: Good Operations Statement of Sexually Interested Parties.

It is therefore often necessary to take the step of asking a girl out on a date. I am aware that this is an unorthodox and confusing practice so would like to off so high level guidance on how to do this. I would suggest: “Hi Gertrude, would you like to go out for dinner on Friday?” (If the girl you are interested in is not called Gertrude it might be apposite to use their name instead.)

During the date there are various things to bear in mind. It is vital to allow the direction of the Holy Spirit to function to its full degree so we would suggest not planning too precisely what you do, you do not want to be guilty of quenching the Holy Spirit. Once you have begun dating, everyone in the church will begin checking their diary is free on Saturdays nine months hence, so you don’t want to waste time dilly-dallying. Get to the core issues straight away, I would allow only a couple of preliminary questions before inquiring of the status of their walk with God. Good phases to throw into the conversation at this point include: “God’s calling on your life” or “His Will for your life”. From my vast experience I find that a simple “Tell me about your faith” works well. While prophesying on a first date may seem a little too much, if the Lord is directing you to share your vision of marital bliss I do not wish to stand in your way.

Step 5. The relationship

After a couple of walks around the park praying together and conversing with the Holy Spirit you may wish to start consider this relationship a Relationship. While you may have previously been going out with this delightful lady, only now are you ‘Going Out’. Please remember the important difference, and although you may still go on dates you are no longer ‘Dating’.

It is necessary to carefully articulate the terms and conditions of your relationship as it has been reported that some ladies are unaware they are in a relationship at this phase. One way of indicating this progression maybe through subtle physical gestures, such as holding hands, or even a peck on the cheek if you are feeling brave. As a last resort you could of course talk about the status of your relationship.

It is not essential to start scouting wedding venues as soon as you progress into this stage but depending on your timing, budget and aspirations it’s never too soon to start. As you are a Christian you clearly do not suffer with issues of lust and temptation, so it is not to dispel these urges that you might consider swift nuptials. Instead it is to honour and uphold the biblical command to go forth and multiply. Some things are a burden you must carry for the kingdom.

Step 6. Marital bliss

Once you are married all of your problems are solved.

Broken Cameras and Gustav Klimt blog survey

Danny Webster Leave a comment

I love writing this blog, and I hope you enjoy reading it. I love it even more when people get involved, so now I’m asking for your input.

I’ve put together a short survey with a few questions about the blog in general and then about relationships in particular. I hope that by asking these questions, and by you answering them, I can write better and serve you more closely. They’re not meant to pry, and if they come across like that, just slam your hands on the keys and enter a bunch of junk. That’s what I do most of the time I try and write.

The survey will only take a few minutes and the answers can be completely anonymous.

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