Umm, so this is my apartment complex. In fact, the building next to mine. I wondered why there were cop cars parked outside for a couple hours....

Shooting death leads to HAZMAT scare

By S.A. REID
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 04/06/08

Atlanta police are investigating the shooting death of a woman on Saturday that also involved a brief evacuation of a Collier Road apartment building.

The victim died at Grady Memorial Hospital, where her boyfriend took her for treatment, said Officer Ronald Campbell, an Atlanta police spokesman. She had been shot in the chest at an apartment in the 1000 block of Collier Road. A call came into police about 3 p.m., Campbell said.

Authorities who arrived later to investigate the death found what appeared to be an inactive methamphetamine lab at that location and called in a hazardous material team and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Campbell said. Substances collected have been shipped to a lab for further testing, Campbell said.

Police have no suspects in the case and declined to release the victim's name until relatives are notified.

My Delight is in Her

I do a weekly study with a group of eighteen year old girls who asked me to teach on what the Bible has to say about beauty and women. I came out of the preparation excited, maybe even exuberant--exuberant enough to want to share what we discussed this morning:

The closest I can come to defining beauty is to say that beauty includes a magnetism. Beauty possesses an attraction that draws us out of ourselves and towards the other--whether that 'other' is a painting, a song, a sunset, or a person. Because of this fundamental quality of attraction, there must be something holy about true beauty. We are drawn to beauty in awe because through that beauty God is drawing us to Himself. Theologian Jonathan Edwards backs me up here. In True Virtue, he says, "All the beauty to be found throughout the whole creation is the reflection of the diffused beams of that being who hath an infinite fullness of brightness and glory." If all beauty is a radiation of God's glory, then the Christian ought to have no hesitation in embracing beauty, in pursuing beauty in all its forms.

But we seem confused on the subject. I don't know of any Christian denomination that denies that God is the source of all beauty. Why, then, do Christians often shy away from the pursuit of beauty? Why does ornamentation in a sanctuary make us nervous? Why does structuring and practicing music for worship make us nervous? Why have churches historically limited or flirted with limiting what women can or can't wear? (By the way, I do have specific stories in mind to illustrate each of these questions--I'd be happy to elaborate, I'm just trying to save space). What are we afraid of? Distraction is the best answer I can find. We're worried that the shadowed beauty of all these lesser things will distract us from the higher, better beauty of our Saviour.

It's more than a simple battle between attraction and distraction, though. We've already established God as the fount of all beauty. One of His core traits is that He is true. "True" is even one of His names in Revelation. So, the battle to discern beauty also winds its way through the battle to discern Truth. Truth and Beauty are different angles on the same face of God. Where we've gotten distracted is in asking the wrong questions: We ask whether an image of Christ the Shepherd distracts us from the Shepherd Himself. Seems noble, but we ought to ask if the image is true, if it leads us toward further apprehension of God. If so, it becomes a tool rather than a source of distraction. We ask whether a piece of music has been rehearsed so much that the congregation will dwell on the beauty of the performance rather than the beauty of the Creator. We ought to ask if the music and musician are true in their efforts. If they're true, then the experience of the music--even instrumental music--will draw listeners toward their Creator.

It's nonsensical to speak of lesser beauty distracting from higher beauty. Lesser beauties echo and shadow higher beauty, and that's the only way we can approach understanding infinite beauty. In this life, we look through a glass darkly, do we not? We couldn't handle gazing full on the face of God. All we see now are reflections and shadows of His beauty.

Distraction comes, not through lesser beauties, but through falsehood masquerading as beauty. Perhaps this is why the writer of Proverbs warns that charm is deceptive: it attracts like beauty does, but to a hollow end. A performer seeking glory for himself, but pretending he seeks glory for God: that's a dangerous distraction in worship. A gilded sanctuary full of opulent chandeliers, encouraging a certain class of people to join the congregation: that's a dangerous distraction from the truth of the Gospel. These temptations entice us away from true worship.

So what does all this have to do with women? Patience. Let's sidetrack for a moment. I've sat through my share of Christian talks on beauty and modesty. They invariably fall into one of three categories, and all three have their favoured Scripture passages:

1. I Peter tells us to adorn ourselves with "a quiet and gentle spirit," so we shouldn't worry too much about how we look. (But it's okay to wear makeup and jewelry, as long as you're not obsessed with them, or immodest, or trying to "tempt your brothers").

2. It's better to be holy than pretty, but God made you; and if he made you, then you're beautiful. You're a child of God. Celebrate your beauty. Look in the mirror and tell yourself...It comes off sounding like Christina:
You are beautiful no matter what they say
Words can't bring you down
You are beautiful in every single way....

3. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. You should take care of it, and be healthy. Presenting yourself well is part of "respecting the image of God" in you.

I don't want to demean any of these approaches. All three reach for the proper attitude towards the beauty of a woman. Again, all beauty flows from God, its one source. The deepest, truest forms of beauty must include the beauty of grace extended to the undeserving and the beauty of a 'quiet and gentle spirit.' The beauty of sacrifice possesses a magnetism that no face could nearly equal, because of the degree to which it reveals the nature of the God we serve. All of the approaches I've listed recognize the higher priorities of purity and holiness.

But none of these teachings satisfy me. To resort to psychobabble here, they're all a little 'conflicted' on how we ought to view a woman's beauty. Logically, the first approach doesn't leave room for things like braces or bracelets. But we're not willing to give them up, so we force them in. The second approach contains an element of patent falsehood. I may be a child of God, but I definitely see flaws when I look at my face and body in the mirror. It's not a lack of self-confidence speaking here, it's just true. I'm seriously flawed. So is every other woman's body on the planet. Even Audrey Hepburn probably had some unpleasant mole somewhere, or maybe she didn't like her hair. Whatever it was, I guarantee she wasn't any more satisfied than I am when she looked in the mirror (though she had much more grounds to be satisfied!). The third approach seems difficult to dispute, but what's missing here is the joy or the celebration of beauty. Respect is different from delight, and this third approach doesn't leave much room for delight.

How should we women view the pursuit of beauty in our bodies, then? What's the truest way? Do we refuse to use makeup? Or blow dryers? Or maybe we draw the line at cosmetic surgery? There must be some principle we can apply, right? Or is the Bible itself conflicted ont he issue of beauty? Esther spends a year (speaking of high maintenance?!) preparing her body for Xerxes, but Paul instructs us in I Timothy to adorn ourselves with good works, saying that women ought to learn quietly with all submissiveness. Biblical beauty is not simple. Hannah and Rachel certainly attracted their husbands physically, and they're not condemned for it. Leah certainly didn't attract her husband, and God had compassion on her.

The most profound clues, I think, come from a passage in Isaiah 62, which addresses Zion as if the city were a woman. Zion is told, "You will be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give. You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight is in Her, and your land Married, for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married."

A crown and a diadem both proclaim a king's authority, his position. God takes Zion, which is called Forsaken, and gives it a new name: My Delight is in Her. That action of re-naming proclaims His authority as King of creation. God chooses to redeem unlovely Zion. That's exactly what God does with us women! We are unlovely, with unshaven legs and pimples and bed head and extra weight and freckles and and and...but God calls us My Delight is in Her. We have become his proclamation to the world. Any beauty we possess is derived from our position as a proclamation of God's power to redeem.

Marriage, too, changes when we see it through this lens. If and when I marry, it won't be because I've finally managed to trick some guy into thinking I'm beautiful. It'll be because a man sees me, knows me, and chooses to call me My Delight is in Her, despite my flaws. Humbling thought. Paul seems to agree with this view in I Corinthians 11, when he talks about woman being the glory of man. Wives become crowns and diadems for their husbands.

I've never thought of beauty in quite these terms before: If all creation is groaning for redemption, then so are our bodies. The smallest pollution of sin makes us fully sinful in God's eyes. Why wouldn't the same be true of beauty? So we're not beautiful here on earth. We shouldn't expect to be. We're supposed to look at our bodies and recognize that something's missing. As we get older, more and more goes missing in the way of physical beauty. Recognition of our lack of beauty ought to drive us to worship God for delighting in us, for promising to totally redeem us some day.

That's not all. If God calls us My Delight is in Her, then we are free to celebrate our cherished status. Crowns and diadems are adornments. They're pretty, they're glorious, most of all because they proclaim the King. As with every part of our existence, our efforts ought to be directed toward glorifying God and enjoying Him. I want all that I am, inside and out, to help people see more of the nature of God. So I'm free to enjoy the sheer delight of looking pretty for the One who delighted in me first. My efforts should flow out of an identity I already possess, rather than a desire to win over or impress. I can be confident that God looks on me with love. I'm also free to wear simple clothing and get filthy doing work that God blesses like scrubbing the church or taking care of widows and orphans. I'm pretty sure I know which is more profoundly beautiful, but there's absolutely room for both--in the same woman. Both reveal something about the nature of the God who loves us.

For women, then, the real question revolves around who we're trying to glorify in our efforts. Ourselves? Then it's not true beauty and we'll never be satisfied, because we'll never be able to make ourselves beautiful enough. If we devote ourselves to proclaiming the King in all that we are, then we're reaching for Truth, and He'll fill us with His beauty, His attraction, from the inside out, and we'll shine! Isaiah 54 promises us perfect security: "For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you."

I spent Saturday sitting on my sofa (futon, technically, but sofa sounds more sophisticated) contemplating this one simple question: If what was dead in me has come alive in Christ, why do I still sin? Yes, it's not a very original question. I know this. In fact, the apostle Paul seems to have been pretty familiar with the question himself (witness Romans 7). But it bothers me. Intensely.

Why is the sin in me so strong? Why does it win so often? Why do I not long more passionately for holiness and purity? Where is the life in me? Augustine puts it more profoundly than me: "For what reason have I been brought into this dying life, or is it living death?"

I'm teaching a Sunday School class right now, trying to integrate theology and psychology. I'm learning a great deal more than I'm teaching, I think. My Saturday picking apart this eternal question of death in life was all in preparation to deal with the question, "What is the structure of human nature?" Through the week, I read a couple chapters in systematic theology textbooks that debate the dichotomous (body and soul) and trichotomous (body, soul, and spirit) views of the human being. Lists of scripture texts support both views. I followed along, went back to the texts myself, and decided that yes, I am indeed a dichotomist. I do believe that the soul holds our intellect, our emotions, and our wills, and that we commune with God on all these planes.

By Saturday morning, I thought I had it all together, and "preparation" would just mean jotting down my thoughts in order. I even knew how I wanted to tackle it: 1. What do psychologists say is the structure of human nature? (present their views) 2. What do theologians say is the structure of human nature? (present their views) 3. How do we tackle this question? (present my personal favorite theologian, Jonathan Edwards)

I zipped through the first two sections of planning: Freud lays out this internal, eternal struggle; Jung has this fascinating concept of the collective unconscious, the behaviorists, blah blah blah.....so far, so good. Then I hit the, "How do we tackle this question?" part. Jonathan Edwards wrote this fantastic book called Religious Affections, in response to the Great Awakening he witnessed in the 1730s. He wanted to figure out a way to know true religion. Don't we all? He argued that the soul (including intellect, emotions, and will) possesses two primary faculties: perception or understanding of reality, and then an inclination or response to that reality. He called the latter the "affections" of the heart. Affections drive us to act. For religion to be true, the affections must be true. And our affections become true only through the action of the Holy Spirit in our souls. The Holy Spirit causes us to experience true zeal, love, compassion, sorrow, devotion....

Edwards makes so much sense. I quickly began drawing all sorts of diagrams to try to illustrate the soul before and after regeneration, only succeeding in paralyzing myself. The thing is, it's not that hard to understand what a person is, to comprehend the parts of being human, even if we don't know their precise location in or out of space. What's far more difficult is to understand what, precisely, is wrong in our state of sin, and what exact remedy is applied at conversion. Is it an instantaneous transformation? In some way, it must be: before, I was without the presence of the Holy Spirit. Now, the Holy Spirit dwells in me. That's a qualitative shift, and a huge one. But if the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead now dwells in me, why do I still feel so trapped by sin and death? Am I simply not "naming and claiming" the victory? Is my stubborn will the problem?

Enter the sweet, living words of Scripture: Ezekiel 36 speaks of God removing the heart of stone from the people of Israel, and giving them a heart of flesh. Ezekiel speaks of God placing his Spirit in our hearts, to enable us to keep the law. Again, I did some reading around. The Hebrew word for heart is lev. In Hebrew, the heart is the seat of all that drives us to action ( in other words, Edwards' affections). So, God will remove our polluted, false affections, and give us new, pure affections. I don't feel so pure, though. So at this point, I still wasn't comforted, but at least I had a picture of what actually takes place when we 'come to Christ' or 'take the step of faith' or whatever other idiom you want to apply.

Then there's Paul, my friend Paul, our church's namesake. He shared my not-so-little problem of struggling with sin: "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me." Aha! Hallelujah! There's hope! The difference with true religion is that my sin actually bothers me. It plagues me. I want to be free of it. You could easily point out that a lot of people feel plagued by their sin and work to be free of it. This is true. Here's the difference: I've given up. I'm clinging desperately to the hope I have in Christ's victory over sin. My own battle with sin will not be over until this earthly life passes. But I now have concrete hope of victory, and a great protector in the Holy Spirit. As the Spirit works to cultivate a heart of flesh in me, I hate my sin more and more, and sometimes I'm even able to resist temptation.

Edwards reaches the point where he's able to identify three qualities of a regenerated heart, none of which involve an entire lack of sin. However, they do make me wince, almost in despair at my hard-heartedness. Edwards says that these are the marks of true religion:
1. Through the undeniable truth of its affections, it exposes the falsehood around it.
2. True religion makes the beauty and desirability of God apparent to all.
3. Suffering only causes true religion to be purified and to intensify, rather than killing it.

By the end of my Saturday reflections, I was laughing at my diagrams and structure and all the twelve-letter words I had found. Jesus knew how to deal with the questions of human nature much more intuitively than I do. He said, "A farmer went out to sow his seed....." You all know the parable. It terrifies me. Every time I read it, I start praying, "Jesus, please let me be good soil. " What struck me this time, is that we don't even get to be the plants. We're just the dirt. Never really thought about that before. The life is all in Jesus and the good news he brings. We are the ground in which he works. And I want so much to be open to that work, that beauty.

I wonder what delightfully plaguing dilemma awaits me this week, as I prepare to discuss this question: What role do relationships and community play in human living? Hm.

Hm. Who knew that there was such a thing? And that the Prince of Orange would deliver the keynote address.

Check out the logo in the top left corner of the page. Pretty crafty, if you ask me.

I received this email from a store in India where I bought some jewelry for my family. Happy reading:

My dear Friend

Merry Christmas and happy New Year

I will join with you to your festival. I am sure we are speaking different name of the God but the God is only one in all over the world.

All people of the world are preying to the God in different name.

I wish to you and your family a wonderful new year full of joy, peace, energy and lot off love. I hope you fell funny and enjoy in Christmas holidays.

My beast wishes for happiness and good luck for the 2008 for you and your family from India.

I am glad to see you are in touch.

Many thanks and kind regards.

Yours sincerely,

This is Sewa-Ashram, an organization that our church is beginning to support. And reading this description of a day there, among the poor and the dying, makes my life seem suddenly overwhelmingly selfish and trivial.

We sang Bach's, "Break Forth, O Beauteous Heavenly Light and usher in the morning..." last Sunday. Sometimes, the darkness of this world, with all its suffering, becomes too much to carry. Too hopeless. All I can do is beg God to break forth in light, and surrender myself again to be part of the breaking, part of the redeeming.

Found this in preparing to teach my Psychology classes this week:

"Religious ideas are...illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest, and most urgent wishes of mankind. The secret of their strength lies in the strength of those wishes. As we already know, the terrifying impression of helplessness in childhood aroused the need for protection--for protection through love--which was provided by the father; and the recognition that his helplessness lasts throughout life made it necessary to cling to the existence of a father, but this time a more powerful one. Thus the benevolent rule of a divine Providence allays our fear of the dangers of life; the establishment of a moral world-order ensures the fulfillment of the demands of justice, which have so often remained unfulfilled in human civilization; and the prolongation of earthly existence in a future life provides the local and temporal framework in which these wish-fulfillments shall take place."
--Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, 1927.

The funny thing is, apart from his assertion that these wishes are illusory, he perfectly describes the power of our image of God the Father. I say, yes, God absolutely fulfills the oldest, strongest, and most urgent wishes I possess.

One more, from Voltaire this time:
"I want my attorney, my tailor, my servants, even my wife to believe in God, because then I shall be robbed and cuckolded less often." He once silenced a discussion of atheism until he had dismissed his servants, just in case they lost their faith and so their morality.

We are so confused, so often.