An 85-year-old Kentucky woman is quoted in The New York Times as saying, “If I had my life to live over again, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would go to more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds. I would pick more daisies.”
That just proves what I’ve thought all along: Kentucky is a subversive state. It produces kooks, and they don’t improve with age.
I know a teenage boy who went down to the bluegrass state, to the part that has hills and hollers, on a church-sponsored work project a few years ago. The experience created a major hassle with his father.
“It’s fantastic down there,” he said. “The men play checkers and talk in the store at the crossroads. In the daytime, mind you. Sometimes they play fiddles. And they sit out in their yards, just sit, and rock back and forth, doing nothing. Except think. Far out.”
Going barefoot and picking daisies and dancing and playing checkers and rocking in the front yard are subversive activities to normal Americans. Kentucky is therefore a threat.
In other parts of the good old U. S. of A. you just don’t play checkers at the Safeway, A. & P., or Piggly Wiggly. And you don’t sit and rock in your yard—if you did, your grass would begin to look unkempt, and the neighbors would be ashamed, and then where would your Christian witness be?
So the father gently asked his son why the youth group went to Kentucky in the first place.
“To work, of course. You know that.”
“But why did they need to work? Why did the church have to be painted, the new septic field have to be dug, the new boiler installed?” The father’s tone was understandably triumphant. “Wasn’t it because the men rock in the yard and play checkers in the store during the daytime?”
“Sure,” the son replied. “Isn’t it great how work always gets done if you put first things first?”
The generation gap. Let’s withdraw statehood from Kentucky.
EUTYCHUS VIII
Staff Lift
The editorial, “A Pause for Appreciation” (Aug. 12) was as gratifying as it was surprising. My deepest thanks. It gave the whole Religious News Service staff a lift.
That July 14 was a memorable day. I just couldn’t believe that it was impossible to put out a service, since twelve years ago we had weathered a blackout; we mailed the service out of Washington and Newark during the New York postal strike and begged, borrowed and all but stole typewriters when our offices were burglarized. But this time we were completely stymied.
All too often, non-Christians point to Scripture as the ultimate in degrading women. Your reference to Luke as “showing both a classist and a sexist slant in one phrase” (Editorials, “Prime Time for Evangelicals,” Aug. 12) was therefore careless, and not in keeping with your stance as a Christian publication. Carrying this to its logical conclusion, one is forced to the view that God is also classist and sexist since he inspired the writer, Luke.
The inclusion of this seemingly insignificant statement in Acts 17:4 recognizes the involvement of respected women in the reception of the Gospel. It is important and purposeful. We cannot allow subtle distortions of the biblical role of women to go unchallenged, or to gain a foothold in our theology. Nor should we give credence to anti-biblical views, as this statement might.
As a Christian wife and mother of two girls, I find special comfort in knowing God didn’t allow classist, sexist, or slants of any other kind to enter and diminish the beauty and the character of his Word, even when using human authors.
RENEE OELSCHLAEGER
Springdale, Ark.
The Problem Of Self-esteem
Regarding John Piper’s article “Is Self-Love Biblical?” (Aug. 12) we could not fault his excellent argument, based on his own strong sense of self-esteem, that there is much misinterpretation of the message, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ (Luke 10:27). But the modern so-called cult of self does reflect a deep weakness in self-esteem, for whatever reasons. While Mr. Piper may have few problems in this area, many of us in the modern world do have serious problems of self-esteem, and in order to truly give love to others we must first feel strong in divine love before we can give of ourselves. Otherwise we do not truly have the sense of anything to give and therefore may give for false reasons rather than in truly divine love. False motivations lead not to increased love but actually to hate. Thus it seems imperative that those souls who need encouragement in their own sense of divine worth must find this first before they may fully share their true God-given love with others.
CHARLES MCCOWN
New York, N.Y.
Piper’s article is not a “small vote against the cult of self-esteem” but yet another chapter in the annals of Christian opposition to psychology. His article reflects a common and ancient error of Christians: the difficulty to accept new insights to our world through the sciences. This is evident from his distorted ideas of self-love; biblically it is simply loving that person Jesus died for, be it neighbor or self. This love is not the self-centered, vain self-preservation the author presents, but the true love of 1 Corinthians 13, the realization and acceptance of our position and worth of Romans 8:28ff, the regal elements of our selves and domain of Psalm 8:5–8, and our holy and blameless condition before God of Ephesians 1:4. Is self-love biblical? Indeed, it is.
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SARA M. MOORE
Costa Mesa, Calif.
I am troubled by the paradoxical nature of John Piper’s article. All that he says about love of neighbor—the need for it, the characterization of it, and the challenge of it—is appropriate. His definitions, however, of self-love are less than acceptable. His blunt, unchallenged statement, “All human beings love themselves,” gets to the very heart of why the self-esteem, self-appreciation emphasis is so strong today. A careful study of the First Cry described in The Five Cries of Youth by Merton Strommen (Harper & Row, 1974) makes it abundantly clear that not all persons, even who have heard of God’s love and care, cherish and appreciate themselves in a positive, healthy way. Self-hatred is the theme of that First Cry. And it is the predominant cry of at least one in five church youth.
The self-love defined by Mr. Piper … has little to do with true self-esteem. Loving oneself by trying to get the best place in the synagogue or to be seen praying on the streets is pathological.… The simple truth is that most people today do not love themselves—not in any healthy sense. Most of the love that most have for themselves is a very conditional love. And that is their understanding of God’s love for them and the kind of love that they are to have for their neighbors.
The question of the article is never quite answered. Of course self-love is biblical. Of course love of neighbor is biblical. Of course love of God is biblical. To question any one of those three important assumptions is less than helpful. To love oneself and not love one’s neighbor, to love neighbor and not love oneself, and/or to love God and to love neither self nor neighbor are all expressions of the misappropriation and misunderstanding of love.
KENNETH G. PRUNTY
Associate Secretary
Board of Christian Education
Church of God Anderson, Ind.
No Help On Homosexuality
As a theological and medical educator, as a pastor, and as a consulting psychiatrist I know of few subjects as perplexing or troublesome in counseling, church work, family life, or institutional development as homosexuality. Unfortunately, John M. Batteau (“Sexual Differences: A Cultural Convention,” July 8) has not addressed the issue in a way that would be helpful either to the homosexual or to the pastor/counselor.
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The author has not handled the current controversy with regard to fact. He begins with a not-so-tacit approval of the Bryant campaign. But can a contributor to CHRISTIANITY TODAY (which is manifestly concerned about truth-as-fact in the inerrancy issue) avoid considering truth-as-fact in the Bryant campaign? By what facts are claims made that homosexuals corrupt children, that they should not teach, or that they are threatening the fabric of home, society, and civilization? Is there any evidence that the incidence of homosexuality has changed since the Kinsey report thirty years ago? While the visibility of the homosexual has increased, the incidence of this sexual variation seems to be stable, and its danger to society difficult to establish on factual grounds.
Batteau’s exegesis of relevant Scripture was disappointing—violating important exegetical and hermeneutical principles. He offered no evidence of reflecting on either the literary or social contexts of the passages cited. Why has he (and others who have published on this subject in your journal) failed to interact with Bailey’s Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition on whom all recent exegetical apologists for homosexuality rely heavily? To label an exegetical position as rationalistic is not quite the same as engaging it in debate. The psychological discussion was embarrassingly naive. Batteau quotes one authority to conclude that homosexuality is learned behavior. But so also is heterosexuality if the reports of a large number of workers are to be trusted. And as for the unlearning of homosexuality—no method of therapy (which is after all an unlearning and relearning process) that has been carefully reported and evaluated cites more than a 25 per cent success rate in changing homosexuality. Jay Adams, whom Batteau cites, has yet to produce a scientifically acceptable account of his methods and results with homosexuality.
Nor does Christian experience alter the condition. An evangelical British psychiatrist, Ernest White, writing fifteen years ago of his clinical experience with fifty homosexual males concluded, “If anyone believes that the experience of conversion will take away homosexual desires and lead to a normal attraction toward the opposite sex, then he is mistaken … I have met no single case of a man being set free from them by spiritual measures.”
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It is sad that evangelical writers can show little pastoral sensitivity to the heartache of families and to the agony of those beset by homosexual fears and temptations, or understanding of the relief and integration (with apparent personal benefits) for the person who finally “comes out.”
From this article, and previous publications, it is quite clear that CHRISTIANITY TODAY regards homosexuality as a serious moral threat. If so, should not the editor demand that writers examine the current literature and interact with such leading Christian writers and thinkers as Thielicke, Smedes, Oraison, McNeill; with gay churchmen; with the biblical evidence in its full context; with the full scope of the ethical issues (including issues of justice and truth as well as issues of genital morality); and with the complex and inconclusive therapeutic literature? Then perhaps we pastors and teachers may have some help and words of wisdom for those who consult us and for those to whom we teach the art of pastoral care.
J. ERNEST RUNIONS
Principal, Carey Hall
Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry
University of British Columbia
Vancouver
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