Archive for the 'Christianity' Category

Over the last 2 years, my attitudes towards nakedness and nudity have undergone some fundamental changes.  When I speak of nakedness, I am primarily talking about the the emotional and soul state of nakedness, that of hiding nothing from someone, of being fully vulnerable. I think nakedness has deep meanings, so I’ll also use the word nude to talk more about the state of being physically nude (unclothed).

A couple of years ago you couldn’t have told me I would find myself sitting in a small wooden shack, thigh-to-thigh with 10 sweaty nude men who I had met the day before, in 100 degree heat (Celsius, mind you); each of us running bare-bum to the frozen lake and jumping into the hole we had cut. And I wouldn’t have believed you if you said I’d be loving every minute of it. But that’s exactly where I found myself last New Year’s Eve, getting cultured up in the Finnish sauna experience. Sauna was invented in Finland, and “sauna” is happens to be the only Finnish word imported into the English language. Most people have a sauna in their homes, and use it almost daily. Since moving to Finland in 2007, both my wife and I have been more nude than ever before in our lives, including our honeymoon (which featured heavily in nudity). This is more true for me than it is for me, she recalls bathing with her family and other periods of nudity as a girl, but I don’t personally have any recollection of being nude as a child, except for a few instances that I shall explain shortly. But I’m a bit European now. I wear mid-thigh speedos, and am completely comfortable being nude with members of the same sex. Going to the sauna is one of my favourite parts of the week, we do it at least weekly, those of you who’ve visited us will understand. I find being nude completely relaxing, freeing, and therapeutic.

Being naked, is somewhat of a different matter. Nudity only requires the removal of clothes, but nakedness requires the removal of much more: our personal shields, our walls of solitude, the barriers we put up to keep others at a safe distance. Surely all of who you who are married have been nude with your spouse, but how often are you genuinely naked with each other? How often do you deeply, humanly connect with the essence of who your spouse is? And beyond marriage, how often do we as people deeply, humanly connect with each other? As friends, couples, even family, how often do we let ourselves be truly vulnerable with each other? Last summer I read a book titled “Becoming a True Spiritual Community” by Larry Crabb, and it broke my heart for what our relationships could and should become (the book is focussed on the context of relationships, which make up the body of Christ). Imagine a time/place where our relationships are so honest, so raw and beautiful, so infused with Christ, that we literally pour living water into one another. Not by virtue of TRYING, but by living securely in Daddy’s love, abounding with the grace of his Son, and communing deeply with one another as friends. Just as the three members of The Trinity commune deeply with each other. What a vision.

Anyway, last summer God took us on through this revelation of relationship, as you can see in the pages of this blog. He’s lead us (my wife and son) out of all forms of organized religion and into a dynamic, breathing form of Christianity that we are constantly being challenged by, that my wife and I often disagree, pray, talk, and re-agree on, and are enjoying deeply. We have the gospel freedom to attend what others would call “church” and we do so periodically. We have a few extended families here (and other friends abroad) who are on the exact same page, and when we spend time together it is so life-giving that we dread the leaving. For those who fear that by leaving “the church” we are forsaking the fellowship of believes, that couldn’t be further from the truth! One thing that we are asking God for more of, is people who are like-minded with us in this regard. That is part of what I am writing about here.

In January our first child was born. Raising a child has the tendency to take you on a journey back through your own childhood… as any parent can attest to. Assumedly, your own upbringing was different to your spouses, so you run into all sorts of odd foibles and things that you never realized mattered to you. One topic that Maija and I were talking about recently was nudity in the family. I realised that I had no early experience of male or female nudity that I could recall, nothing in my family interactions or otherwise. Conversation with my Dad has confirmed that my parents were never naked with us, including not bathing with us (me and my 2 brothers). The only memories I have of experiencing nudity as a child, come from “playing doctor” with friends when we were 5-6 years old. Upon being found out and reprimanded, I was embarrassed and ashamed. I know my parents had no intention of shaming me, but having had no safe nudity in their own lives growing up, they had provided me with few sanctioned outlets for my childhood curiosity. I felt shame over my behaviour, which quickly carried over into shame over our bodies. When I went through puberty, I was naturally inquisitive, but still lacking any healthy experience with nudity of either gender, I turned to the internet to teach me about our bodies, where I quickly fell into an addiction to pornography (that lasted 10 years).

As Maija and I spoke about how we hoped to raise our boy (and future children), we both felt that exposure to healthy nudity in a safe context was important. I’ve spoken with my Dad about my upbringing and his, and he confirmed that he and my mother were not comfortable enough with their own nudity to share it with us, even when we were very young. How convenient though that we live in Finland, where families routinely, and friends occasionally go to sauna together. Public co-ed sauna facilities for adults are not uncommon, though not as widespread as some might assume; these are more commonly found in spa and hotel complexes. Sauna is part of the bathing ritual here, and it is not sexual in the least; I didn’t fully grasp this until we moved here and made it a regular part of our lives. Mixed gender, non-sexual nudity is really a non-issue in most of Europe, but to my New Zealand and North American cultural sensibilities, being naked with members of the opposite sex has been a bit taboo. Beyond the cultural acceptance issue, I couldn’t get around the fact that for me at least, the female form was completely sexualized. Which shouldn’t really come as a surprise. Literally the only females I have seen nude, other than my wife, are from pornography, and if it wasn’t for the porn it would have been the entire culture of sexualized youth-worship that is inflicted upon us all, from the youngest age. From billboards and advertising, from music videos to fashion magazines, to television and film and everything else in between, Western society is saturated with the sexualization of our bodies.

But we’ve been fed lies.

We’re living in the most clothed period of time history has ever seen, but are we any more modest? Are we any more moral? Are family values any more protected? Are the orphan, the widow, and the aged any better off? We reject nudity and say it’s immodest, but clothe our infant daughters in infant bikinis to hide what? We require women to wear shape-accentuating, body enhancing clothing that leave strategic parts to the imagination. As if our imaginations were so modest. Our society rejects those body types that don’t fit the mold sold by Parasuco and others, ignoring the fact that barely any of our population posses these “ideal” bodies. We reject the aged and infirm; heaven forbid our parents get sick and we have to take care of them some day. We’re even suspicious of our doctors seeing us naked; heaven forbid our wives develop breast cancer and have to expose their breasts for medical testing. We’re repulsed by the thought of anyone older than 35 in the nude, regardless of the fact that the median age of the developed world is 39. How unhealthy is our image of aging? How unhealthy is our image of the human body, of our own bodies?

But let’s turn back the clock. The Prophets of the Old Testament were identified by their nudity, and we know about King David being “even more undignified than this.” Athletes in ancient Greece and Sparta competed in the nude. The disciple Peter fished in the nude, and Christ was crucified in the nude (it wasn’t until 500 AD that his loins were covered in artistic renditions). Up until the 700s all baptisms were performed fully nude with mixed attendance, and up until the 1800s the majority of all swimming done by anyone in the world would have been nude. Up until the 1960’s even, swimming at the YMCA was always nude. Have you ever wondered how the Jews of Abraham’s day were so easily identified by their circumcision?
We have developed, thanks in large part to the Puritans and then Queen Victoria’s exporting of Puritan values to the Western world, a complete aversion to nudity in any social context. Nudity has become fully equated with sexuality, and many grow up, myself included, not appreciating the difference. But this is complete bollocks! Tribes still exist today who live in complete nudity, due to their climate. If you take your kids to the zoo, how do you describe why we are the only creatures on the planet wearing artificial clothing? We’re born nude, we bath nude, and anyone who has kids knows that children have absolutely no inhibitions about running around in the buff. If you believe in evolution you’ll appreciate that clothes didn’t attach onto us (and haven’t attached onto anything else). If you believe in Creation you’ll know that God created Adam and Eve nude (and their relationship with God was truly naked, and face to face), up until the serpent led them down a path of shame. The fact remains that our skin is waterproof, it’s flexible and elastic, and it responds over time to harshness, developing callouses as needed to protect the body. It’s covered in nerves that detect temperature change, allowing the body to regulate it’s own temperature. Being clothed is an unnatural state for our bodies.

I would like to suggest that we reject the lie that all nudity is sexual, and embrace the principle of good nudity in any safe context. I am not advocating that we become nudists; I am advocating an attitude shift in our hearts and minds towards the human body.

I would like to suggest also, that we reject the lie that we cannot be honest with people, that we must always hide our feelings and intentions, that we will be judged and ridiculed when our true personalities are made known, that we are alone. I want to humanly connect, to be vulnerable, to bring life, and to give and receive healing through my relationships, and I believe this cannot happen without nakedness of soul and spirit.

As my children grow up, I want them to be free from the shame I grew up with. I want their curiosity to have a safe outlet. I want their dreams and desires to be made known. I want them to know spiritual life, I want them to believe in the God of their parents not because we have told them to, but because they have seen, and tasted, and heard.  I want my children to be comfortable in their own skin, and to value and respect the bodies and lives of others. I want my children to understand that their bodies change, and keep changing, and that these changes are good and not to be feared or demonized. I want my family to commune with one another, to bring life and healing and restoration to one another.

And I want to live righteously. I want to appreciate and respect the human form, as God’s finest creation. I want to live a life free from lust and temptation. I want to live a life that perpetuates the truth about our humanity, about out bodies and about our emotions, about our need for one another.

My wife and I wish to pursue nakedness of spirit in our relationships with others. We wish to be rich in our relationships, to be overwhelmed by the love and communion we share with our family and friends.

And we are coming to believe that by sharing nakedness of body in our relationships with others, we may find our friendships enriched, our children raised healthily and our families strengthened, our perspectives on the body and on aging kept wholesome, and the powers of negative self-image, the powers of lust and pornography, and the power of shame, all be greatly diminished.

There’s a great discussion going on over one of nakedpastor’s recent posts, about Jesus talking to the woman who’s daughter was tormented by a demon (Matthew 15: 21-28). Check it out, you might enjoy the conversation.

Persistent Truths | nakedpastor.

Nakedpastor:

I think this sheds light on Jesus learning obedience (Hebrews 5:8). The story begins with him possessing a rather fundamentalist mindset, but ends with him perhaps surprised that faith can be found in other than the people of God as he understood it (”Woman, great is your faith!“). I love this story because it exhibits his humanity… a man forced to come to terms with truth foreign to what he is already certain of. He has to adjust, or amend, his theology because of the arguments of this woman.

A commenter:

Even at 12, Jesus knew He had to be about His Father’s business (Lk. 2.41ff). As He ‘continued to grow and become strong, increasing in wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him’ (Lk. 2.40), I believe that means He matured into His human understanding of His Christological and soteriological purposes that did not need further illumination from a Gentile. That’s why, in my earlier post, I wrote that I would be uncomfortable agreeing with our gracious host’s suggestion of the encounter leading to Jesus amending His theology. But I continue to be fascinated with the ‘Christ of faith and the Jesus of history’ (thanks to faithlessinfatima), which is how I understood the primary direction of Rev. Nakedpastor’s post to take. Certainly at face value, the encounter with the Syrophoenician woman implies a debate with Jesus that ended with Jesus ‘capitulating’ to her request. It is reminiscent of Abraham bargaining with God over the doom of Sodom (Ge. 18.22-33) and Moses speaking to the LORD in a way that God ‘changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people.’ – Ex. 32.14 (NAS) My Reformed Theology friends really have difficulty with that one.

A short piece by NackedPastor resonated with me this morning:

There are no shortcuts to maturity. Someone has an intense spiritual experience, insight, or revelation, and the impression is that this person suddenly will be more mature, responsible and exemplary. This is often not the case. How many men and women have we seen who set themselves up or are set up by others as spiritually advanced or insightful only to find, in due time, that they are just as human and fallible as the rest of us?

Take Ken Wilber’s article on “The Strange Case of Adi Da”, the Fiji guru who initially had Wilber’s support, only for it to be withdrawn later because of the intense controversy surrounding the “pathological” guru. In another article, Wilber writes:

“Over the years I have made numerous very strong and sometimes contradictory statements about Adi Da, mostly because he is a very strong and sometimes contradictory personality. . . . I called attention to the fact that, even though Da might be highly spiritually realized, he seemed to have several problematic, perhaps even pathological, aspects to his personality and the way he was running his community. . . . Contradictory? Perhaps, but only because Da is contradictory. Contradictory and problematic — deeply problematic.”

This applies to the Christian and church realm too. We see our youth go off to camp or missions or whatever and come back incredibly zealous and inspirational. We love this and encourage it, but we must not put the burden of expectation upon them that they are more mature, responsible or exemplary than they actually are. It is the same with tele-evangelists. It is also the same with the more visible and commendable members of our communities of faith. We must not allow their zeal, intelligence, influence, or vision to blind us to their frail humanity, their solidarity with the rest of the fallen human race. It is not fair to them to elevate them above the mundane work of personal development because of their extraordinary giftedness.

This does not mean we suppress the gifting of individuals. No matter how immature or mature anyone is, their contribution to the community and to the world is encouraged, nurtured, supported and valued. But not at the expense of their own personal growth, transformation and stability. It is possible, and indeed probable, that one can be “highly spiritually realized“, and yet have deep pathological issues that must be struggled with and healed, I think preferably in the context of a safe and healthy community.

I’ve just added nakedpastor.com to my feeds. I read a few of his recent posts and very much enjoy his perspectives. Here’s some of his artwork that I find particularly brilliant:

And a book review:

I just finished studying Frank Viola’s and George Barna’s recent book, Pagan Christianity: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices. I want to start to say what I appreciate about the book and finish with what I think are some concerns.

Reading this book reminded me of the hours of ambitious dreaming and passionate debates that occurred during my bible college and seminary days with other visionary young radicals. It evoked the intensity with which I first went into the pastoral ministry, like a bull in a china shop, like Jesus with a woven whip into the den of thieves. In other words, I agree with almost everything they say. I have a problem with churches owning so much money, property and buildings; I question liturgy and orders of worship; I struggle with the one-man monologue sermon model; I have always wrestled with “full-time paid ministry” pastor positions; I disregard Sunday dress; I don’t like the control of worship music by a select and talented few; I don’t believe in tithing; I question the sacraments, formal Christian education, and our whole approach to the New Testament. In short, I too kick against the system. So, if you want to get an idea of what the authors insist are the pagan roots of most of our religious practices and compare them to the New Testament and early Church, get this book. With the plentiful footnotes and bibliography, it’ll give you enough to study.

But I have some concerns. Even before I got to the substance of the book, I read a line in the forward that concerned me. The following, they say, is their “proposal“…

I plan to get this book. It sounds interesting.

Ed “The Watchman” King and I had the pleasure of leading worship again for TACF’s School of Ministry again this morning. In contrast to last time, it seemed as if everyone was really into it today.

I had a few conversations with people about it later in the day, as some of the staff members had heard the pounding bass coming through the walls, and had come over to take a look. I think I struck a really great balance this time, regarding knowing when to speak and when to let God work through the music alone. I had prayed this morning that I would be sensitive to when Holy Spirit wanted me to speak and when not to speak, and I felt a strong sense of peace about it the whole time. It was great to have Ed take the mic this time as well.

I found it amusing, various people asked very detailed questions about how we did things and why we did them the way we did. I think some found it surprising to hear this is really only the second time we’ve both done this, and we’re still figuring out as we go along. I talked about the general idea though, which for Ed and I is the following:

- Foremost, worship is about the heart. That means words aren’t necessarily required to worship God. (This revelation seems to help people get into it). It also means Ed and I need to be worshiping first of all. The worship leader is the lead worshiper, as they say.

- Second, we do our best to pick music that is uplifting and euphoric. God friendly samples are a bonus, but not necessary. Next, we try and speak into the mic (including but not limited to scripture) in a manner and amount that serves to keep people’s minds and hearts focussed on God. The music gets people dancing, and with your heart and mind dwelling on God, your dance becomes a very natural expression of praise. Add to that the emotional response to the euphoric nature of the music, and people can have an intimate and personal experience of worship.

After having done a somewhat similar thing with the Toronto Groove Collective, and Nightwatch, I was challenged to never underestimate what God can do through music alone. As I said, I really felt peace about it today, and was actually off the mic more than last time.

I’m excited to see where this goes. A lot of people told me today they were really blown away, and that it was a totally fresh form of worship for TACF. Hearing that really hits me, as that same kind of mind-blowing worship is what got me into DJing in the first place.

So I’m stoked. Next up, Peter Lazar offered us the services of an opera singer. I’m not thinking too much of operatic trance, but if she’s got a good voice it’ll be interesting to see what comes of it.

Maija and I just finished watching North Country, with Charlize Theron and Sissy Spacek. Man… very powerful movie. Maija’s still wiping the tears from her cheeks, but at least they’re smiling cheeks (due in part to my kisses, naturally).

For those who don’t know, the film is set in Minnesota in the 1970s, and is the story (based on true events) of women mine workers and their struggle against sexual harassment. It’s directed by Niki Caro, the New Zealand born director of Whale Rider (if you haven’t seen Whale Rider, rent it soon time). Also staring is the ever excellent Sean Bean (who once sued Rowan Atkinson for his Mr. Bean character).

I’d give this movie 4.5 / 5 stars. It’s truly a well made film, doesn’t pull it’s punches, and is an important message to get out. It was surprising to my naive self to hear that up until the mid 70s, no women were employed in any of the mines. Cause the 70s AINT that long ago.

My lovely wife and I were discussing rape, and payback, two themes that are prevalent near the end of the movie, and she asked what I would do if someone was assaulting her (not rape specifically). It’s certainly not a pleasant question to answer, as a husband and a man who knows (on the good days) right from wrong. I told her that if I encountered someone assaulting her, or was made aware of a person assaulting her on an ongoing bassist, then that person’s number was up. However, if I hunted down someone who had assaulted her, to exact revenge on said person, I believe that is wrong. I would be loth to continue the cycle of hate and sin that the enemy only wants me to continue, but I would also hate for my wife to feel that I am not/would not be protecting her.

Where do you think that line is drawn? No really… where?

I just downloaded Free Download Manager. I downloaded it using my current download manager, Download Accelerator Plus, which I have been loyal to for many years ever since I stopped using Getright back in the 90’s. (Hehe, that sounds funny.)
I wonder how DAP feels – if it knows that I just used it to download it’s replacement. Given that knowledge, I wonder if it would have behaved differently: downloaded faster, used less advertising. Who knows? Truth be told I just wanted a smaller footprint.

On a vaguely similar note (which is actually what this post is about) my wife and I had a discussion about what it would have been like to see Jesus. Specifically, given the knowledge that this man was in the process of saving your sins and changing mankind’s relationship with God forever, what would it have been like to have seen him with your own two eyes? We came up with a few interesting thoughts.

Firstly, what if you could travel back in time with the knowledge you have now and see Jesus – see it all playing out. If Jesus saw you, what would he say? What would the Son of God say to someone travelling through time, possibly the only person who really understood what He was about to do? Would Jesus feel a sense of kinship in your shared knowledge, or would he rebuke you saying that there’s plenty you need to focus on in your time period so leave the time traveling out?

Given the possibility that no one else understood, I have to ask, did anyone alive at the time really understand Christ’s mission? The disciples didn’t seem to, for the most part. John the Baptist maybe? If John the Baptist did, then he was truly gifted with focus because he continued on his God appointed task, and didn’t follow after Jesus the whole time. I’m pretty sure if I knew what was about to go down I’d follow Jesus like UV rays follow the fair-skinned.

If someone alive at that point did understand, what a rush that would be. Imagine having been born, say 20 years before Jesus, growing up in a world where there didn’t seem to be any quick way to be forgiven, and God was a distant and possibly volatile Great-grandfather, rather than a Daddy. Imagine hearing about Jesus, understanding the Scriptures and seeing crystal clear what he was here for and what meant for the human race. What a trip that’d be!