Last month, we blogged about Lady Gaga’s new single “Born This Way,” noting that at least one blogger interpreted the song as nothing less than the good news of the gospel.
To me “Born This Way” sounds less like an anthem than a peppy exercise song. When the chorus gets going, I always want to jump up and work those ab muscles or something.
Is parenting more than the sum of 18 years worth of peanut butter sandwiches and thrice-weekly soccer practice? Often, for parents deep in the trenches of grass-stains and sibling conflicts, the ultimate goal of parenting gets buried under the details.
Last year, in an article for New Republic, Mark Oppenheimer described his experience as a parent at a toddler's birthday party:
One mother was trying to keep her daughter from eating a cupcake, because of all the sugar in cupcakes. Another was trying to limit her son to one juice box, because of all the sugar in juice. A father was panicking because there was no place, in this outdoor barn-like space at some nature center or farm or wildlife preserve, where his daughter could wash her hands before eating. And while I did not hear any parent fretting about the organic status of the veggie dip, I became certain there were such whispers all around me.
And parents aren't just fretting about food and hygiene. Rosa Brooks wrote recently for The Washington Post: "today, parenting has become a full-time job: it requires attendance at an unending stream of school meetings, class performances and soccer games, along with the procurement of tutors, classes and enrichment activities, the arranging of play dates, the making of organic lunches and the supervising of labor-intensive homework projects."
For his part, Oppenheimer thinks parents themselves are complicit in the detail-obsessed anxiety-inducing character of modern parenthood: "[they] have allowed lifestyle decisions about what they wear, eat, and drive to entirely replace a more ambitious program for bettering society. . . It's enough that they make their midwife-birthed children substitute guava nectar for sugar." Others, like Brooks, see frantic parenting as the imposition of a culture with high expectations but few supportive resources.
If you are a parent, whatever your politics, you probably share some of these frustrations.
Many modern moms and dads feel tension between the tyranny of life's details and a broader vision for parenting. In the introduction to her new book, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenting, Jennifer Senior writes: "Today parents pour more capital—both emotional and literal—into their children than ever before… Yet parents don't know what it is they're supposed to do, precisely, in their new jobs. 'Parenting' may have become its own activity (its own profession, so to speak), but its goals are far from clear."
Rather than directing us, our parental to-do lists seem to be confusing us, prompting us to assign equal urgency to choices about our children's breakfast and their character development. Like the biblical Martha, we are busy with many things but cannot seem to identify "the one thing [that] is necessary." (Luke 10:42)
Set against the clutter and chaos that is modern parenting, Gloria Furman's new book, Treasuring Christ When Your Hands Are Full: Gospel Meditations for Busy Moms, is refreshingly single-minded. In a series of 11 loosely connected meditations on the gospel and motherhood, Furman sets aside the daily details in order to help mothers more clearly see their goal. "At the end of every day—chaotic and mundane alike—" she writes, "motherhood is about the adoration and enjoyment of our great God."
Furman's point is simple. Frazzled mothers don't need more time, or better strategies, or even renewed resolve. They need more of the gospel—the good news that God sent his Son to die for sinners so that their sin might be forgiven, their guilt atoned for, and their souls reconciled to God. Treasuring Christ intentionally does not read as a how-to parenting book, but still appeals to women in many circumstances through a gospel focus, which transcends culture and life situation. Single moms, adoptive moms, step-moms, even—I dare say—a few dads will here find food for the soul.
Those who read Furman's first book Glimpses of Grace (a winner in The 2014 Christianity Today Book Awards) will already be familiar with many of her themes in this book: God's grace in ordinary circumstances, freedom from pharisaic legalism, and new identity in Christ. With Treasuring Christ, she applies them specifically to the work of mothering. In one chapter, Furman shows how the redemptive purposes of God free mothers from having to orchestrate their children's lives. In another, she highlights the power of God as it works in even our weakest moments. And always she reminds mothers to adopt an eternal perspective.
This is particularly useful for modern moms. Recently, for The New Yorker, Andrew Solomon summarized the dual perspective of parenting this way, "All parenting involves choosing between the day (why have another argument at dinner?) and the years (the child must learn to eat vegetables.)" Furman goes one step further, repeatedly urging her readers that mothering is about nothing less than eternity. "Our children are so much more than just potential adults who will one day contribute to society," she writes, "Our children are people made in God's image, and they have eternal souls."
In an unintentional counterpoint to Senior's All Joy and No Fun title, Furman writes winsomely, "Being a mother is wildly fun, yet because of eternity it is serious joy at same time." According to Furman, motherhood is at its best when mothers remember who they, and their children, are in Christ and the future they will have with Him forever.
My one criticism of this helpful and Scripture-filled book is that, in dwelling almost exclusively on what the gospel frees mothers from (sin, guilt, and just condemnation,) it does not present much of what the gospel frees us to (new obedience and fellowship with Christ). Furman frequently refers to spiritual disciplines and motherly good works as opportunities for pretense, self-righteousness, and pride, which leaves the reader with a sense that such things as catechizing children or prioritizing time for personal Bible study and prayer are dangerous prequels to sin, rather than the diligent outworking of a compelling love for Jesus.
Christ's blood shed on the cross purchased not only pardon, but also relationship. The redeemed, per Romans 14:8, "live to the Lord." And I found myself wishing this book had more of the warmth and sweetness which come not merely from understanding our legal standing before a holy God (which is amazing grace indeed) but also from personally knowing, being united to, and intentionally delighting the gospel's central Person—Jesus Christ—the Christian mother's savior, teacher, example, brother, bridegroom, companion, and friend.
Furman is at her best when she talks about the limited scope of motherhood and the limitless privilege of glorifying God. To mothers weary of over-scheduling while seemingly always under-achieving, Furman writes, "The Bible describes motherhood as neither a diminishing of a woman's personhood nor the sum of her personhood…we get bored with motherhood when we obsess over it, because motherhood was never meant to fully satisfy us." Ultimate—and decidedly un-boring—satisfaction can only be found in the message of the gospel.
For the sleep-deprived, peanut-butter-smeared, and laundry-avalanched, for every mother who is overwhelmed by the details, Treasuring Christ When Your Hands Are Full points its readers to big—and grace-filled—truth.
Gaga seems pretty proud of it. “I’m on the quest to create the anthem for my generation for the next decade,” she said during the making of the album, also called Born This Way, “so that’s what I’ve done.”
And while it’s clear from the title single and its accompanying video that Mother Monster wants her Little Monsters to be a “big-tent group” – a race which bears no prejudice, no judgment, but boundless freedom – she’s also taking heat from critics who object to some of her word choices.
The first objections came soon after the single’s release, when people noticed the words she used to describe Latino and Asian people: Chola and Orient, respectively.
“Whoa, hold up. Did she just say Orient?” wrote blogger Edward Hong on 8asians.com. For many, “orient” evokes “Oriental,” a rather outdated term for Asians. “I can’t help but wonder all sorts of crazy questions in my head: Is it okay to call Asians “Oriental” now? Are we back in the 1950’s? Why did I love Lady Gaga again?”
Still, as a longtime fan, he’s willing to be charitable: “I don’t find the words that she uses to be racist in any means,” Hong said, “but a bit ignorant.”
Cholo or Chola, meanwhile, is a derogatory term derived from an Aztec word for dog, or mutt, which a spokeswoman for the group Chicanos Unidos Arizona called as derogatory as the N-word is for African-Americans.
“Are Latinos supposed to be grateful that a white superstar, born of privilege, included a racist shout out to our community?” asks writer Robert Paul Reyes. “Not all Latino ladies are ‘cholas’ in the barrio, some of them are teachers, writers, engineers and nurses and doctors.”
This week, Gaga infuriated a few more people by calling certain criticisms of her title single “retarded”.
When asked about people who accuse “Born This Way” of ripping off Madonna’s “Express Yourself,” she shot back: “Why would I try to put out a song and think I’m getting one over on everybody? That’s retarded.”
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That didn’t go over too well with Gawker. “It’s getting a little difficult to stay sympathetic to Gaga’s divine cause when she casually throws around terms like ‘retarded.’ Last time I checked, the intellectually disabled were born that way, too.”
Quickly realizing what she’s said, Gaga apologized through Perez Hilton’s blog, calling it “a furiously unintentional mistake” and quoting a snippet from the song: “Whether life’s disabilities, left you outcast bullied or teased, rejoice and love yourself today.”
She’s also responded to those already firing snark at her next single “Judas” and calling it blasphemous for its appropriation of Christian imagery: “I feel like honestly that God sent me those lyrics and that melody,” she said in the same interview that featured the R-bomb.
Fortunately, everyone can now take a breather to enjoy her fellow musical iconoclast Weird Al Yankovic’s just-released parody single “Perform This Way,” to which Mother Monster somewhat belatedly gave imprimatur this week.
(edited 4/25)
