Call me a Christian, I take no pride. My Lord and Saviour did all and blessed me with a gift so precious I could never purchase an ounce on my own. Call me a Lutheran, again, no work or choice of mine. This Faith that led me to The Truth of God’s Word is the very definition of what I am blessed to be. Call me an American, I probably do take more pride then I should, especially since I gave up more then a decade of my life to defend and protect her and you. Call me a historian, a librarian, or a philosopher, and I will beem with hope of a future vocation. Call me mom, and I am a mix of joy and shame that leans completely on our Triune God. Call me all these and I will be pleased you know me. All of these names are the reason I would do anything I could for you.
Label me with worthless words that split me from those around me and hold me out as something that has a meaning to you that is completely inadequate compared to history or to the broad world around us, and I would weep. I weep when asked what labels apply based on ‘race’. Beyond a simple answer of ‘human’ it is a lie. I weep when asked what I support based on -ist terms redefined in less time often then the time my two minor children have been alive. Oxford defines feminist- “the advocacy of women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes.” Believing you can change meanings for yourself leads to other stark departures from reality. Redefining a term to mean what you think ‘equality of the sexes’ means does not place you on higher ground, it places you on the outside of what both the pro and con side believe. Thanks be we live in a time and place that affords such health and wealth to discuss this problem we share, but it seems less meaningful to those who may really need advocacy on far greater levels.
Honestly, I am starting to understand the age old shift in thinking as we live our lives. The young shake things up, try to find all the new ways and meanings they can and do much good and much ill along the way. Then we age to a point where we start to see how foolish some of our nonsense was, embarrassed by some, and horrified by the lasting implications of others. Yet we can often be very grateful for the good God still used us for. I wonder what new ways I will see knowledge’s role in my life as I continue to run this race. I finally see the wisdom of respecting your elders in a whole new light. At the same time, the foolishness of my youthful self still tugs on me while talking to my own mother! Time to read Timothy yet again.
Yet the staggering truth dawning on me the most is that none of my knowledge or my generation or others was new. Not one bit. New packaging of some. New stench to some errors and evils, but the exact same heartlessness and hopelessness behind it. What change comes from relabeling ‘bad’ definitions, crafting ‘new’ laws to curb the same criminal actions. The same imbalances of power just swing new ways. That women can vote now, !!! radical thought alert!!!, has done what to help us be governed well? We are one more group to be pandered to. We are protected from those who don’t have our gender’s interests at heart. Well, maybe. But that is one heck of a broad stroke to paint all women or all men with. I don’t agree with my own daughter half the time, much less half the population sharing an X chromosome with me. And I do love and respect my daughter!
That fact doesn’t make me a bit hopeless. In fact it renews and restores my hope that God alone is good and will provide all. That none of it is dependent on a single right or wrong action or word from me. I am free to do my best with no fear of being good enough. A fact that still cannot be enjoyed freely in my sinful state of worry and selfishness, but I manage far greater good now that the oppressive doubt of my success is lifting. I don’t have to worry about who agrees with me or who will fail me, but I still worry too much about who understands or perhaps who likes me more then I really should. I turn all these hopes, fears, doubts, questions, all to God and I trust in the wisdom of His Word and the good council He has provided in my spouse, my pastor, and all those He places in my life for such a purpose.
In short, i, trust. Holding, or looking to any label outside of Christ to make anything right in this world is always a failure to understand the One Thing Needful. I give thanks to Him that He has blessed me with daily passion to learn more about Christ.
