The lack of “soul care” and grace of God

As I write I’m repeating a Sunday School class on the book “Soul Care,” written by Rob Reimer, a professor of pastoral theology at Alliance Theological Seminary and founder of Renewal Ministries International. The class is being taught by the respective pastors of men’s and women’s ministries at my church.

I bring this up because, as part of the discussion, both have been frank about their struggles with families, their dysfunctions, their own woundedness, especially in childhood. That they had such issues no longer surprises me, although had I heard it decades ago it certainly would have.

I’m not going to go through the contents of the book; that would take way too long. But suffice it to say that I believe that part of the reason that the American evangelical church is ineffective in “reaching the lost” is due to its lack of authenticity — that is to say, its members often aren’t altogether honest, whether with themselves or others, about who they are and what they have to deal with.

Part of that, I would suspect, has do with the emphasis, most notably in the 1980s and ‘90s thanks to media “ministries,” about maintaining an image of a strong family, especially one with a strong father figure. The trouble, of course, was that the image never dealt with the reality of everyone in a family being weak in his or her own way.

To give examples, supposedly a majority of Christian men, even pastors, have problems with pornography. In “complementarian” households — in practice, where men have much more of the power — men are most likely to abuse their wives and children. The divorce rate among evangelicals is even higher than the rest of the world. It’s long accepted that sex outside of covenant marriage is rampant among evangelicals, with not even such pro-chastity programs as “True Love Waits” and the “Silver Ring Thing” having much effect among teens.

I suspect that we’re focusing more on the symptoms because we don’t want to appear weak in a culture that doesn’t agree with what we consider our values. But maybe maintaining “values” is the heart of the problem — in a way, doing so represents a subtle form of idolatry because, if you have “values,” what do you really need Jesus for? (This is why trying to refocus upon getting such values back in the public square can never work.)

One of my favorite books is Philip Yancey’s “What’s So Amazing About Grace?”, and in it he suggested that effective church fellowship should be run like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting — everyone needs what he called “grace on tap.” And when you look at things in that way, you often get rid of the judgmentalism that’s rampant in many church settings.

The pastor of men’s ministry at my church has mentioned that the purpose of the Soul Care class was to deepen “intimacy with God,” and that should lead to a better understanding of His grace. And then that grace can transform lives in a way that edicts and programs simply can’t.

Why the ‘rules’ don’t always apply — one man’s opinion

A few weeks ago I was privileged to counsel a young woman on a Christian singles page on Facebook concerning her love life — she was falling for a fellow member of her church’s worship team whom she always thought of as a brother but simultaneously noted that he was acting strangely and “pulling away” from her. So I asked her a few questions — and discerned that he too was becoming smitten with her. I was frank in telling her that she needed to tell this guy how she was feeling about him.

Of course, she didn’t quite get it at first because she had fallen into the trap of thinking that she should wait for him to make the first move, and frankly, she was scared to death — something to the effect of “what if he rejects me?” She even noted that he was happy being single, was even planning on moving to another country, likely for mission work, and had turned down two other women whose eye he’d caught. Nevertheless, I persisted, telling her that “He may want to take you with him.”

It thus gratified me when she later told me that I had been right all along on all counts. She hasn’t yet mentioned any marriage plans but did hint that for several reasons he was actually afraid in his own right to tell her how he felt about her.

So why do I bring this up? Well, I’m on a couple of other Christian singles pages, and conventional wisdom, at least from women, goes that a Christian man should have the confidence to approach a woman in whom he’s interested and ask her on a date. As a man, I can tell you that it will never work that way.

Why not? Because men who do that are either excellent actors — and, trust me, most of us aren’t — or truly not emotionally invested in having a relationship with a particular woman. In the latter case, asking a woman on a date turns out to be no big deal and he can take or leave her and find another.

I was recently convicted of having done this. Over the past 10 years or so I’ve had a number of short-term relationships that have always fallen apart for one reason or another; though I did and do enjoy dating for its own sake at times, in those cases it was too easy. While I was certainly open to the idea that I had found “the one,” after they collapsed I found that I wasn’t all that heartbroken. Perhaps the amount of time we didn't spend together didn’t lend itself to a more intimate relationship; I can only speculate.

You see, men really do have ego issues when it comes to dating. When a guy sees someone he really likes he often does get tongue-tied or otherwise act unusual; in the case I just described, the guy she liked started wearing cologne, which he had never done. (Think of the old Rickie Lee Jones song “Chuck E.’s in Love.”) Whether women realize it or not, a woman saying “no” to a man’s interest — and I wish someone had told me this when I was younger — is absolutely devastating, and after a few times of being shot down, which most every man’s experienced unless he finds the right one very early, he’s almost afraid to try again. An in a case of irony, he often shuts down his heart and becomes “cool” — and gains interest.

I hope you see where I’m going with this. The very expectation that a man will be strong and confident when he approaches a woman actually can mean a lack of authenticity on his part, the very thing that will turn her off down the road.

I had to laugh when I first saw the meme “I don’t need to flirt — I will seduce you with my awkwardness.” Because if a man turns awkward in dealing with a woman, it’s a sure sign that, to borrow the phrase from the movie, she has him at hello.

A lot of ... silence

Anyone notice the “religious right” lately? I haven’t.

Unquestionably the biggest and most fervent supporters of President Donald Trump, who has continued to “lead” this nation from one crisis to the next with no end in sight, it has had nothing at all to say about his absolute incompetence — pulling out of Syria and prematurely declaring victory over ISIS, shutting down the federal government over an ill-conceived and politically-motivated border wall along the border with Mexico and too many other things to mention here.

Why is that? Well, an article in USA Today last week gave a clue: It got what it wanted in a conservative Supreme Court justice that might — might — overturn Roe v. Wade, “religious freedom” (read: cultural dominance and privilege) laws, a move of the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. As though it cared about nothing else.

That’s just it — it cared about virtually nothing else. Not about kids being separated from their parents at the border. Not about rising income inequality, even though such is affecting its base. Not about the large number of African-Americans leaving their churches because of his overt racism.

What kind of “gospel” does it believe, anyway? Simply being saved personally from sin and to hell, literally, with the world that God created?

I know many people believe in a “top-down,” “strict father” mentality in that if the right laws and cultural values were instituted an increased commitment to faith and cultural stability would result. On the contrary — it actually creates the problem because they do nothing to turn hearts toward God Himself. Indeed, that’s His job and His alone “(No [one] comes to [Jesus] unless the Father draws him”).

That leads to only an empty religion devoid of the Holy Spirit. Basically we have a group of people who want to invoke God but don’t know His heart — and that’s dangerous. Indeed, I would say that He’s being merciful in pulling His Spirit out.

So maybe it’s a good thing that we haven’t heard from the religious right lately. It certainly isn’t speaking for God.