In Defense of Good Fences

We all agree children need rules. "Wait for your turn." "Don’t accept candy from strangers." "Eat your vegetables before dessert." "Always tell the truth."

But do grownups need similar Do’s and Don’ts in the area of maintaining faithful relationships?

Some believe we shouldn’t need to focus so much on boundaries as to learn to live from our inner center, our core values. Cultivate a healthy relationship with God--and with a mature dating or marriage partner--and you won’t find yourself straying. It’s a little like providing cattle with good water and pasture, they say, then not having to worry so much about maintaining strong fences.

There’s certainly some truth to that, but on our farm I remember livestock needing both good food and good fences. Even with lots of green grass on their side of the fence line, our herd would sometimes break into an adjoining field for a feast of even greener looking corn or clover. The results could be ruinous both to the health of the cattle and the condition of the crop.

Sadly, without good boundaries, even some of our church’s trusted teachers and pastors have had affairs with people in their trust. And more and more younger and older folks alike seem to be ignoring other time-honored fences, are hooking up and breaking up in increased numbers. Results of these crossed boundary lines often include not only severe heartbreaks, but career disasters, financial headaches, fractured families and emotionally distressed children.

Experience tells us an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure--or a ton of regret. Thus the Calvary Community Church, a large African-American congregation in Hampton, Virginia, has come up with “Ten Commitments to Righteousness” for its young people. These include unapologetic boundary markers like “You shall not be sexually active until marriage,” according to Glen Guyton, Calvary’s youth pastor.

But defining clear ethical standards like that these days has some folks seeing only legalism. In order to show their open mindedness, they are prone to not only want to move boundaries, but to simply remove them and leave all moral choices up to the individual.

To me, Genesis-old, congregationally supported fences around sex and marriage are at least as necessary as rules governing driving. Should I consider it a violation of my freedom when I’m bound by dozens of common sense traffic laws every day?

For example, I don’t arbitrarily choose which side of the road I drive on. I also obey the stop sign at the end of Hamlet Drive every time I enter the highway. As I head into town, I’m expected to slow my speed to 45 mph, then 35, for everyone’s protection. I’m required to wait at several traffic lights before crossing an intersection. And all the while I display a state license plate on my vehicle, and I carry a driver’s license in my wallet. Just a piece of paper, some say, but one that serves a legitimate and useful purpose.

Somehow I fail to find these rules restrictive. Good boundaries are not road blocks, but are like safeguards and guard rails that give help me get from point A to point B with less hassle--and a lot less risk of having a wreck.

I know a bad one of those could really rob me of my freedom.

More Local Divorces Than Meet The Eye

 Each January I contact the clerk of the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Curcuit Court for the city and county divorce and marriage statistics for the prior year. As a pastor and a marital and family therapist, I am always interested in the direction these numbers are going.

On the face of it, the divorce trends may seem slightly encouraging, in that, like the rest of the country, the numbers have been mostly flat for the past number of years, and actually show a modest decline. But the marriage numbers are also dropping, in spite of a significant increase in our population over the past 15 years, as seen in the above graph.

A decrease in the number of marriage licenses issued, of course, doesn't mean that fewer people are in some kind of wedded relationship. If we were to define the essence of marriage as “leaving father and mother” (forming a separate partnership and household), “cleaving to each other” (becoming an exclusive couple) and “becoming one flesh” (forming an intimate sexual bond), we may find there are more people than ever who are "married." There are always those who engage in purely promiscuous, one night stands, of course, but there are many more couples who are simply in undocumented relationships we once referred to as “common law” marriages. We just don’t have a record of how many.

And when these unregistered couples break up, do they avoid all of the pain and heartache (and legal and other complications) we associate with the nearly 400 registered divorces that took place in our area last year?

I don’t think so. Ending an emotionally intimate “marriage” inevitably results in going through an emotionally painful “divorce.” So just cohabiting without the formality of a license or a ceremony doesn’t insulate people from the gutwrenching grief and betrayal they go through when they tear apart.

My uneducated guess is that we may have at least 25 percent more undocumented “marriages” happening each year than are indicated in the numbers above, and an equally large increase in the number of unregistered breakups.

So how is our community impacted by an estimated total of, say, 500 divorces, each of which, according to novelist Patrick Conroy, involves the “death of a small civilization”?

If there is an average of even only one child per divorce, that means we have 500 children in our community each year whose lives will never be the same. The impact of their parents breaking up is, for many, equal to the death of a loved one in the family. With lots of nurture and support, many children of divorce recover reasonably well from such a loss and go on to have a good life, but who would want to wish such a "death" on a child, or to be the cause of one?

And what about the 1000 divorcees involved in these numbers who, along with their parents, their siblings and their friends, also suffer the painful “loss of a loved one.” Physical deaths are usually due to an unavoidable tragedy (except for suicides), and those left behind savor the bittersweet memories of all of the good times they once enjoyed together. But divorce is more often experienced as a form of “wed-icide,” a preventable tragedy associated with raw feelings of anger, bitterness and betrayal.

In any case, closure is difficult. There are no funeral or memorial services, no burial rituals. Few friends or family members bring casseroles, send flowers or offer cards of condolence. The grief is palpable, and is much the same for documented and unregistered marriages alike.

If we had 500 school dropouts in our community each year for every 1000 students enrolled, we’d be forming blue ribbon panels to do something to help prevent this trend. Admittedly, in cases where partners are guilty of unrelenting abuse, addiction or adultery, a separation or divorce can be justified. And ironically, children may actually recover more easily in those cases than when their parents are equally loved and seen as good people who simply can't learn to get along (as they always insist on their children doing!).

The Harrisonburg/Rockingham Community Marriage Policy has been officially adopted by over 50 congregations in our area, and is one example of people trying to help prevent divorce and strengthen marriage, following the lead of over 250 other communities across the US with similar agreements:

Local clergy and congregations who support the CMP agree to the following:

a) for couples to be married:

 • To encourage a courtship of at least one year before marriage.

 • To guide engaged couples through an intensive marital preparation process involving individual or group educational sessions dealing with religious, financial, relational and intimacy issues and utilizing some form of premarital inventory. 

b) for all congregational members:

 • To promote premarital chastity and faithful marital relationships.

 • To encourage enrichment opportunities to strengthen existing marriages and provide intervention and support for marriages in distress.

 • To train mature married couples to serve as mentors to engaged couples, to newlyweds, and to those experiencing marital difficulties.

 • To cooperate with other congregations and agencies to share resources and to create a positive climate in which all marriages are helped to succeed.

Let's all see what we can do to strengthen marriages and spare adults and children alike the stresses associated with their demise.

Note: For a pastoral response to couples in undocumented marriages, you may want to check out the following: http://harvyoder.blogspot.com/2010/11/undocumented-marriages.html

Saying No to War

There were 51,000 Civil War casualties at Gettysburg
alone.

“As disciples of Christ, we do not prepare for war, or participate in war or military service.”
       
This succinct statement taken from Article 22 of my church's "Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective"  sets us apart from all but a small fraction of other Christians around the world, although I am heartened by more and more individuals and denominations, notably Quakers and the Church of the Brethren, supporting this position.  Yet the above was embraced universally by believers in the first and second centuries, and by most Anabaptist-minded (later Mennonite) Christians since the 16th century.

To cite two of many examples, Tertullian, a leader and theologian in the early church expressed this vision when he spoke of the church as a people who “join to beat their swords into plows, and their lances into sickles.”  Origin of Egypt, a contemporary of Tertullian’s said, “Nor do we ‘learn war any more,’ having become children of peace, for the sake of Jesus, our leader.”  

To them, Jesus spoke the final word from God on issues of war and peace.  War was simply over for Christians, a thing of the past. Menno Simons and other outspoken leaders and martyrs in Anabaptist and other renewal movements simply helped revive this conviction. Menno himself wrote, "True Christians do not know vengeance... their hearts overflow with peace... The regenerate do not go to war, or engage in strife...  they are the children of peace, who have beaten their swords into plowshares."

Sadly, few followers of Christ over the centuries have maintained such positions, which has resulted in Inquisitions, Crusades, multiple wars among so-called Christian nations in Europe and elsewhere, and Christians defending and participating in every kind of military adventure imaginable, all in the name of God and country, and each case defended as a "just war." And there has been a gradual erosion of anti-war conviction among Mennonites as well, members of a small “peace church” that has maintained for most of 500 years that military membership and church membership are incompatible.

To me, a weakening of any church’s position on this kind of witness represents a crying shame.  Surely there is a need for at least a remnant of people somewhere who consistently teach and demonstrate that Christians, by definition, are people who will not harm or kill under any circumstances, not even in a time of war, not even their enemies (and certainly not their fellow believers) anywhere in the world.

I see this as not about some sectarian “peace position,” but about an “agape position,” about Jesus's followers being a people defined by their passionate love for God above every other love or allegiance, and by a compassionate love for neighbor--friend, foe and foreigner alike. 

And lest we reduce agape to being a mere sentiment, an attitude of niceness, or as simply a benevolent feeling toward others (one that still allows us to engage in their destruction under certain circumstances), the New Testament makes clear that God's kind of unconditional love is defined by its actions, not merely its motives or emotions.  Thus Jesus, in explaining what loving ones neighbor actually means, tells the story of a Samaritan binding up the wounds of his mortal enemy, a Jew.  And Paul, in Romans 13 (the very passage that urges respect, rather than armed resistance, toward even the occupying, crucifying, terrorist Caesars) makes it clear that love will "do no harm to a neighbor." Period.

As Ghandi once observed, Christians seem to be the only ones who believe Jesus and the New Testament are not absolutely clear on these points: Do no harm.  Return good for evil.  Take up the cross, not the sword.  Follow Jesus’s personal example of a completely nonresistant life, who taught, "My kingdom (government) is not like those of this world. If that were so my servants would fight."

If, in our baptism, we receive a missionary commission to evangelize and reconcile God’s enemies to God and to each other, how can we accept a military commission to harm them?  And if we are convinced that in Jesus God’s future kingdom has already been inaugurated, how can we also pledge, under oath, to become a part of an enterprise committed to harming or coercing others “in the national interest”?

Clearly, most decent people, Christian or not, would renounce the following as immoral and unacceptable:

breaking and entering
lying and other forms of deception
physical, psychological, or other forms of torture and abuse
armed robbery
malicious wounding
organized acts of terrorism
using racial or other demeaning slurs
using explosives to destroy people or property
destroying land or other natural resources
stabbing or strangling
forcing people from their homes or communities
committing mass murder

Without question, most believers would speak out against members of churches engaging in such behaviors--and would disapprove of their supporting or belonging to any groups or organizations that do--yet raise no objections when military forces routinely encourage, train and/or command people to do all of the above and more.  Thus we are in danger of accepting, on a mass and organized scale, what we could not accept or allow on any other basis. Unlike legitimate police force, necessary in human societies to maintain order within national boundaries (and intended to preserve life and bring individuals to justice under laws designed to protect individual rights), military forces have a long history of plundering and destroying without benefit of such civilized restraints.

True, we pacifist Christians must repent of the many "beams" of self righteousness, materialism, and cowardly indifference that interfere with our moral vision. Because of these we may not always “see clearly” to lovingly help remove any specks of militarism from another’s eye.

But remove them we must, all of us, lest history write off the church as having been irrelevant and mute in one of the most pressing moral issues of all time.

I like this piece by Edna St. Vincent Millay:

CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall; I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba, business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle while he cinches the girth.
And he may mount by himself; I will not give him a leg up.
Though he flick my shoulders with his whip, I will not tell him which way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where the black boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not on his payroll.
I will not tell him the whereabouts of my friends nor of my enemies either.
Though he promise me much, I will not map him the route to any man's door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living that I should deliver men to Death?
Brother, the password and the plans of our city are safe with me; never through me
Shall you be overcome.

Should We Ever NOT Forgive?

Recent killings by deranged gunmen bring up the question of forgiveness for people who commit terrible crimes of that kind.

When a similarly deranged shooter killed innocent Amish children at the Nickle Mines School in southern Pennsylvania in October, 2006, that religious community instinctively responded with grace and kindness. Everyone saw their actions and attitudes as amazing examples of Christian forgiveness.

I wonder if their response shouldn’t simply be considered an incredible form of “give-ness,” the giving up of any revenge or hate and the demonstration of a truly Christlike and unconditional love for an enemy who had harmed them in the most terrible way possible.

I prefer to call that cross-like love. The forgiving part is up to God.

Jewish writer Dennis Prager questions the notion that we “should forgive everyone who commits evil against anyone, no matter how great and cruel, and whether or not the evil doer repents.” He also believes we can only forgive those who have sinned against us, not those who have sinned against others.

“If we forgive everyone (unilaterally) for all the evil they do,” he says, “we have substituted ourselves for God.” Even Jesus, he adds, when interceding to God to forgive those who crucified him, “never asked God to forgive those who had crucified thousands of other innocent people.”

As a Jew, Prager does affirm Jesus’ idea of having us forgive those who wrong us based on their repentance, just as God surely does. He just wonders whether many of us have trivialized forgiveness, turned into something that’s about making us feel better rather than, like the God of the Bible, being concerned with both justice for evildoers and compassion for them when and if they repent and commit themselves to genuine change.

What got Prager to thinking about this was seeing a news article and photo of some students in West Paducah, Kentucky, some years ago displaying a large banner with the words “We forgive you, Mike!” referring to the 14-year-old who had just  shot and killed 3 teenagers at Heath High school. He believes they/we have neither the power or the right to forgive on others’ behalf.

So, should we distinguish between loving evildoers versus pronouncing them forgiven? The first is an initiative toward even the unrepentant, the second is a response based on a complete 180 degree turn on the part of  the one seeking forgiveness.

Please understand, I strongly agree that we should forgive our debtors. But a debtor, by definition, is one who is fully aware of what he or she owes and is unable to repay. A person who denies having committed an offense is not a debtor. Nor is the person who insists the offense is not really their fault, as in, “The devil (or my temper, my addiction, or my bad upbringing) made me do it.”

I have a book in my office with two title pages, one on the front and another on the back. It’s actually two books in one, written by David Augsburger. The first title is “Caring Enough to Forgive” which takes up approximately half of the pages, and the other, reading from the reverse side of the book, is “Caring Enough Not to Forgive.” 

The latter is a jarring title for those of us who’ve been taught that forgiveness is something we grant everyone unilaterally, no strings attached, just proclaim them off the hook. But Augsburger believes the implied condition for all of our “forgiving others their trespasses as we ask God to forgive us our own” is one clearly stated in Luke’s gospel, which says, “If others sin against you, and if they repent, forgive them.”

Meanwhile, for all who choose not to repent, we continue to love, do good to, and pray for them without question. All the while remembering that we are always in need of plenty of forgiveness of our own.

I'd love to have you respond with your thoughts below.

Undocumented Marriages

When it comes to supporting stable, lasting, loving marriages, you can put me down as a compassionate conservative. Here's a letter I had published in the September, 2010, issue of the Mennonite which suggested a more positive approach to dealing with cohabiting couples:

Editor, the Mennonite:

    Thanks for publishing Sandra Fribley's timely article on "Love, Sex and Marriage."

    Without condoning cohabitation in any way, what if congregations respectfully confronted couples who are living together as having already entered into a marital bond, as follows:

    "Whenever you a) 'leave father and mother' (form a separate social unit and become publicly recognized partners), b) 'cleave to each other' (are an exclusive couple committed to fidelity), and c) 'become one flesh' (are sexually intimate), we will hold you to the same standard of lifelong faithfulness we expect of legally married couples. While we acknowledge that the Genesis 2:24 text quoted by both Jesus and Paul predates mandates like a marriage license or a ceremony, we nevertheless believe you should take the step of registering and solemnizing the de facto ('common law') marriage you have entered into.

    "We understand you might see this step as a mere formality involving 'just a piece of paper,' but we consider it at least as important as having a baptismal certificate, a passport, a vehicle registration, or a deed to a new house. But whether documented or not, we see your joining together in the manner described above as a profound and emotionally bonding form of 'marriage.' And were you to terminate your undocumented union, we would consider it a de facto divorce, as implied in the German word for infidelity: 'ehebruch,' or 'union-breaking'.

    "We pray you will choose to have your union blessed by God and by a caring community of believers, and so will be able to celebrate a truly joyful and faithful life until 'death do you part'."