I've moved!

Please go to Tatyanastable.com

Thank you!

The Clash of Cultures

Many years ago, I went to China as an English teacher with a team of college students for the purpose of sharing Christ.  My team of ten was led by Mike Kee and his wife, and we were working at a Chinese boarding school in the southernmost province for an entire school year.  For many of the group, this was their first real cross-cultural experience.  I’ll never forget the words of wisdom that Mike shared with us.  He discussed the usual stages of assimilation to a new culture: honeymoon phase, frustration, adjustment, and acceptance.  The reason that all humans go through this process when acclimating to a new culture is usually because, unintentionally, we tend to believe that the way we’ve always done things is the right way.  This is an extremely strong feeling.  There is nothing easy about the process of changing this.  However, as believers, our allegiance cannot lie with our culture.  Our allegiance can only be with the truth of Scripture.

Mike pointed out that when we evaluate the Chinese culture, there are many, many things that are biblical.  They are amazingly hospitable.  When a guest comes in to their home, the guest gets the best of everything.  They practically wait on the guest hand and foot.  What a comparison to American hospitality!  Their loving ways humbled me so much while I was there.  Mike helped us to see that, while there would be many things that would seem odd, confusing, and downright wrong to us, we had to be careful not to judge them according to an American mindset.  There are many, many aspects of American culture that are not biblical in the least, but because it is familiar, we’ve never evaluated it by the standard of God’s Word. 

This is especially difficult for us as a believers because we are used to thinking of America as a Christian nation.  For this reason, we have come to believe that the way we do things is Christian.  The truth is the Christian faith will always be at odds with the culture—even “Christian” culture.  Culture, to some degree, teaches the necessity to submit to the pressures of the group—Scripture always tells us to submit to the sovereignty of God first. 

There have been many times in the history of “Christian” culture where the group has accepted something, such as slavery, that is completely antithetical to biblical doctrines.  It has been the courageous voices of the few, however, who were unwilling to yield to the majority that helped bring about the much needed change.  This legacy goes down through the ages of persecuted believers who stood firm on God’s Word even when pressured by “Christian” or pagan cultures.  

In fact, the way of Christ is the way of the rebel, consistently going against the flow of normal human reasoning that puts its hopes on immediate pleasures and external, rather than internal, success.  And this is our true culture war—the war within ourselves. 

“For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ...”  2 Corinthians 10:3-6 ESV

And yet, these big battles cannot be fought unless we win the smaller battles against our own personal prejudices and fears.  And this battle will not even start unless we accept the fact that we are accountable for what we allow ourselves to believe and act on.  Our warfare is waged by bringing every thought in line with Scripture.  If you are a Christian, this is not optional.  Our actions flow from the truths that we believe.  If these truths do not, in fact, line up with God’s teaching, how can we hope to make choices that reflect Christ?

Oftentimes, those believers throughout history who have let atrocious things slide have done so thinking for some reason that God would not care.  I do not dare to live under that false assumption.  I tremble when I consider God’s righteous, and inevitable, judgment.  And this judgment is necessary, not cruel, for there is no way for all the wrongs in the world to be made right, unless justice is done. 

With the awareness that one day we will face our Creator, we can have no other response other than to make sure that our inward culture matches the culture of the Kingdom of God.  In this vein, our lives are a constant process of re-evaluating our hearts and our attitudes making the small, but cumulative, changes that are necessary.

Music of Our Lives

I’m going to ask you to do a something odd.  First, I want you to click here and play this song.  Then I’d like you to listen to the song while reading this blog post.  It might seem unusual, but please humor me. 

John Dryden, over three hundred years ago, wrote a poem honoring St. Cecilia and her contribution of the organ.  While I’m not a huge fan of the organ, no one can deny its majestic tones.  However, the portion of this poem, I’d like you to read focuses music in on creation:
From harmony, from Heav'nly harmony
               This universal frame began.
       When Nature underneath a heap
               Of jarring atoms lay,
       And could not heave her head,
The tuneful voice was heard from high,
               Arise ye more than dead.
Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry,
       In order to their stations leap,
               And music's pow'r obey.
From harmony, from Heav'nly harmony
               This universal frame began:
               From harmony to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
       The diapason closing full in man.

I love the image of “the tuneful voice” singing to creation to bring life in to lifeless matter.  “From harmy, from Heav’nly harmony this universal frame began” reminds me of Narnia’s creation from the music of Aslan’s roar (possibly one of the most amazing scenes I’ve ever read).  Tolkien also depicted this in the Silmarillion where the angels joined God in singing the song of the world.  Dryden goes further in his final stanza to suggest that creation not only begins with music, but the end will conclude with music also:

As from the pow'r of sacred lays

         The spheres began to move,
And sung the great Creator's praise
         To all the bless'd above;
So when the last and dreadful hour
   This crumbling pageant shall devour,
The trumpet shall be heard on high,
         The dead shall live, the living die,
         And music shall untune the sky.
The final words sound like a line of music itself: “and music shall untune the sky.”  It’s easy to picture the unraveling of the world set to the winding down of a piece of music.  This beautiful poem is worth reading in its entirety, slowly so you can savor its message. 

There’s no denying it—music is powerful.  Music brings unity and continuity to the random events of life.  Good Morning, Vietnam, a movie set during the Vietnam War with Robin Williams as a DJ, sets the movie to the songs of that era beautifully capturing the heartbreak of the war.  Just as intentionally as music can be used in this movie to depict a time period, the lack of music in a movie is also telling.  The effect of a music-stripped scene is jarring and disquieting; it seems disconnected and lacks the cohesiveness of a story.  The silence builds tension that isn’t resolved until the music plays again.

I like to imagine one day we will see the story of the world laid out in the melodies of time, and our tension of silence will be ended.  There would be soothing adagios of peaceful scenes, jarring and bombastic staccatos of great strife, menacing and discordant songs of evil, and soaring and pounding crescendos of heroic deeds. There would be moments when we wept, and cried aloud with shame and horror, but there would also be tender moments of awe and wonder as we beheld the simple beauties of life.  My greatest hope is that the end of the story will including a weaving of those dark and disruptive pieces of music in to a symphony of exquisite depth and restoration.

Can you see it with me?  Can you hear it?

What about your story? Your song? Do you have hope that God is beautifully composing a masterpiece or do you doubt the vision that inspires our Master Conductor? 

As you listen to the song that I provided, notice its texture--the changes in tones and moods, the build up and the ending.  It's one of my favorite pieces of music and never fails to move me.  It's beauty testifies to the brilliance of the composer--one who saw the whole message of the song, and expertly brought the notes together. 

I pray that my life, and yours, will adequately display the talent of our Composer. 

Two Become One

I remember when I was a teenager watching the show Life Goes On which centered around a Down syndrome character named Corky.  I enjoyed the show and thought it was neat that the show was about Corky, and I felt it helped me with my own misconceptions about people with Down syndrome.  The show also tackled other difficult topics such as AIDS when Corky’s sister Becca dates a man diagnosed with the virus.  However, the episode I want to discuss isn’t about either of these two challenging areas. 

The show that I remember most vividly from my teenage years was an episode in which Becca turns 16 and is making a decision of whether or not to have sex with her boyfriend (prior to the man with AIDS).  I haven’t seen the episode since I was a teenager, so I might get some details wrong, but I remember really wondering what she was going to do.  At one point, her grandmother makes it clear that this is her decision to make and, though she is in the house, she is not going to interfere.  The show leads up to the romantic, candle-lit scene, but, at the end, Becca decides she doesn’t want to do it yet.  When I read about the episode online to refresh my memory, the actress who played Becca stated about Becca’s decision, “I liked that because at that time, there were so many kids on TV (like Doogie Howser) who were losing their virginity that we wanted to show there was another option. I think it's important for teenagers to know that you can have love and romance without sex."  Ironically, as a teenager who didn’t know Christ, that wasn’t the message I received at all.  All I got from the show was that it was my decision to make and that if I felt that I liked the guy enough then I should go ahead and do it.  It really only raised, but didn’t answer, the question about what sex really was about.  At the end of the show, I didn’t feel like sex was really as special as they were hinting that it was.  After all, if it was a decision any teenager could make then maybe it wasn’t as much a big a deal as I thought. 

As time has progressed, TV shows and movies have increasingly portrayed sex as another appetite to be filled.  Rarely is there any reference to possible pregnancy or need for birth control.  And while, for the most part, sex is between people who have some kind of emotional connection, increasingly we are seeing sex portrayed as a casual encounter, divorced from any kind of committed relationship. 

This leads to a very confusing mindset towards sex.  Women are encouraged to believe that when pregnancy does occur, it is some kind of surprise punishment.  I was reading in an article about some of the effects of having a tubal ligation.  One of them was that the woman would most likely be more relaxed now that she didn’t have to fear pregnancy.  Fear pregnancy?  What?  Is it a disease or something? 

We have somehow come to the conclusion that sex doesn’t naturally, and wonderfully, lead to pregnancy, or that this act unites two people in a deeply personal way.  It seems that we no longer understand the purpose of God’s gift of sex.  Like all of God’s good gifts (food, emotions, relationships), Satan has done his uttermost to twist and warp it, turning it into addictive and life-destroying vehicles instead of life-giving vehicles.  The only answer to this attack (as to all of Satan’s attacks) is truth.

In the garden, before the fall, God created Adam and Eve to be together.  Adam’s first words upon seeing her reflect this sense of unity that should be experienced (Genesis 2:23) calling her “flesh of my flesh.”  The next line of Scripture emphasizes this point by stating that a man should leave his parents and “be joined” or “cling” to his wife so that they would become “one flesh.”  One of the features of this union was that they would be naked, but they would not be ashamed.  There would be a sense of commitment that would negate any insecurities.  Paul, later on, uses this very text to explain why sexual immorality is a sin.  It is a sin, not because God “doesn’t want you to have fun”, but because a deeply spiritual and unifying act is occurring.  For those of us who are believers and who are one with Christ, we also recognize our bodies are the temples of God.  With whomever we become “one flesh”, our God does too.  “Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For ‘the two,’ He says, ‘shall become one flesh.’” (1 Corinthians 6:18).  At the end of the day, we must reaffirm with the next generation of Christian teenagers that the reason we tell them to say no until marriage is not because sex is deemed as wrong, dangerous, or sinful.  It is because we deem sex to be a highly important, and yes, spiritual, connection that supersedes even our own understanding of it.  Instead of focusing on the negatives—you’ll get pregnant, you’ll get a disease—we need to emphasize what they are waiting for.  They are waiting for God’s original design for sex—one where two separate people humble themselves before one another to join their bodies, hearts, and souls as an act that can lead to the creation of life. 

Furthermore, in Genesis 4:1, it says: “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, "I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD." [bold mine].  The Hebrew yada can be translated in a wide range of English words from had relations with, understood, cared, etc.  The basic overarching theme is clearly intimacy.  There’s a sense that more than just a physical act is being perpetuated.  The act of sex is meant to be in a committed relationship because you are giving away more than just a few minutes of pleasure.  A bond is being created that will not easily be broken.  This is meant to be something that you don’t do with any other person on Earth other than the one you have committed your life to.  It is in the context of this life-long covenant that the greatest miracle occurs.  Life is begotten from love.  The beautiful by-product of this connected relationship is another human being to love. 

Pregnancy is God’s blessing on the union.  It’s the ultimate display of God’s trust and God’s hope when He allows us to be the vehicles through which life is brought.  The Bible tells us, “Behold, children are a gift of the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward.” (Psalm 127:3).  That I have been allowed to be an agent of life humbles me beyond words.  And, even better, my children are here as a result of the love my husband and I have for each other. 

Have you ever really thought about it?  God could have separated sex and pregnancy.  We could have been like some other animals that fertilize eggs in some random spot.  Instead, He intentionally linked the two together to communicate an important point.  It’s not just about us.  It’s not just about getting our needs met.  It’s not just about feeling good. 

For many of you reading this, I’m not saying anything new.  However, that doesn’t mean that we are immune from wrong-thinking in regards to this important issue.  For some, pornography and other sex-debasing mediums have tainted thoughts.  Through exposure to the act stripped of its purpose, a twisted, selfish and ugly image is created.  For others, the distractions and busyness of life have removed the wonder of the gift.  The intimacy of marriage must be protected, and God has given us the best way to connect a man and a woman.

A wrong view of sex has turned our culture into a culture of death.  Women are encouraged to abort their babies so that they can control their lives and futures.  Instead of seeing this precious life as a gift, it is considered a curse and so these children are paying the price for our culture’s misconceptions.

As believers, we need to communicate this elevated view of sex.  We need to reaffirm that purpose for which God created it to preserve the intimacy of marriage and to celebrate the blessing of created life. 

The Problem of Opinions

In the last 20 years, we’ve seen a great backlash against the danger of bullying. Many stories of kids who have taken their lives over bullying have prompted parents to sue schools and school districts in order to bring this issue to light, so much so that bullying is now a legal term and cannot be used lightly.  In fact, at school, we cannot even call the bad treatment of one student to be bullying because of the legal ramifications of this term.  This is good in some ways—we hope that students will realize how serious it is to treat others unkindly.  However, there is another backlash with this increased vigilance.

We are teaching our kids, to some extent, that people should always be nice to us.  We are also teaching them that adults are wholly responsible for making them feel good or safe.

This causes an expectation that is highly unreasonable.  We live in a world filled with sinful people, and, even with the best of intentions, we cannot fully protect our kids from unkindness.  As a parent, I cannot stand the thought of someone being mean to my children, but I also know that part of my parental responsibility is to teach them how to handle it in a way that builds independence from me.  With our hover parenting issues, we do not train our children to be independent emotionally.  They instead become dependent on adults to always intervene to protect them.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I do believe that adults should protect children, but I also believe that we do them a huge disservice if we also don’t teach them how to defend themselves emotionally.

We’ve seen evidence of this lack of emotional toughness in many areas.  For example, the military has reported that they’ve had to change the way they do training because they were finding increasingly that the new recruits could not emotionally handle it any longer.*  People have long been critics of the intense boot camp experience whose purpose is to develop emotionally resilient soldiers by first tearing them down and then building a sense of unity within the corps.  However, our emotionally tender youth cannot handle this process any longer. I have not participated in this kind of training, so I cannot offer comment on it; however, I believe it is telling that many from this generation of soldiers cannot handle the training that has persisted for decades.

Recently, we’ve seen this demonstrated in the college riots, particularly at Yale, where the students demanded a safe space.  The idea was that it was the school’s responsibility to make them feel safe and secure.  That is not something any human institution can possibly promise.  There will always be jerks.  Any attempted legislation to curb hurtful words is actually an imposition on the freedom of speech, and college, especially, is meant to be an arena where difficult topics are discussed freely.  It’s a place for adults, not children.

The more this movement grows, the more unwilling the populace is to hear anything that is unpalatable to them.  Just over Christmas break, Michael Moroz, a senior in a Philadelphia high school wrote an article in his school newspaper condemning the Ferguson riots.  Since then, he has received numerous death threats and his article has been removed (however, the opposing article in support of the Ferguson riots was not removed).  The message is clear—any opinion that is not popular is punished accordingly.  To be sure, he is going to have to stand behind his own words and be prepared for the backlash.  However, this emotional reaction to an unpopular view is appalling.  There was no room for debate or discussion on the topic.  He was not allowed to have a view that would be offensive to others.  This, I believe, is extremely dangerous to our country.

The way I see it, it starts with training our children to handle their own conflicts.  We too quickly move in and fix it ourselves or demand that other adults fix this problem for our children, perhaps before we are even necessary.  These actions teach our children that anything that hurts them must be taken care of by someone else.  There is no personal responsibility to take ownership of the situation.

With this mindset, they grow into adults who expect the government to regulate opinions that are offensive.   In fact, a recent survey indicated that 40% of millennials believed “the government should be able to prevent people from saying offensive statements about minority groups” (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/20/40-of-millennials-ok-with-limiting-speech-offensive-to-minorities/).  While I am absolutely opposed to racism, I do not think that limiting free speech will actually fix this problem.  The solution to the problem of racism is actually a renewed respect for the value of all humans, not a government-regulated ban on opinions, however wrong those opinions may be. 

Recently, in my English class, we read a story about a young boy who was trying to impress some older young men by attempting to swim underwater through a very long tunnel.  After an intense training, he accomplishes this feat, but it almost kills him.  The story ends with him realizing that he really didn’t care what those boys thought of him after all.  When discussing this with my class, I encouraged them to choose whom they allow to speak in to their lives.  We have control over what we allow to shape our view of ourselves and the world.  We cannot stop their voices per se, but we can determine how much those voices influence us.  Like the young boy in the story, we can decide whether we care about the opinions of certain people. 

The root of all these issues necessarily comes back to what gives us value and worth.   People’s opinions, whether for good or ill, do not define us.  However, the opinion of our heavenly Father speaks to the deepest parts of our hearts.  A person who has grasped the concept that each person, including himself or herself, is an image-bearer of God understands that his or her intrinsic worth does not come from outside.  This person can walk confidently through the ever shifting sands of people’s opinions firm on the rock foundation of God’s love. 

Our goal as believers must be to make sure we are rooted and grounded in God’s love.  From that secure place, we can face the harshness of the world with confidence, and we can teach our children this lesson also. 

*I was unable to find the article where I read this information.  I hesitated in even sharing this because of this.  If you are familiar with this concept and could send me a link, I’d greatly appreciate it.

The Anticipation of Christmas

The days leading up to Christmas are pure torture for me.  The presents I have bought for my children are still in the shipping boxes that they came in (I do pretty much all my shopping online) sitting there ready to be wrapped and put under the tree.  My children usually each get one special present from us, and we think long and hard about what special gifts to get our children.  The problem is I hate waiting to give it to them.

In fact, I’m so bad that I’m tempted constantly to tell my children what I bought them.  It’s actually a joke with my kids because I will keep talking about their presents and how much they are going to like them.  And then I make up some silly toy (like a Dora bike for Ethan) that they know I didn’t really buy them, and we laugh about it. 

On Christmas Eve, I will painstakingly wrap and arrange the presents so that when my children come down the stairs on Christmas morning, they will see a plethora of presents where there used to be emptiness.

It occurred to me the other day that I bet God had this same excitement as He planned to give His best present to the world.  For hundreds of years, He gave us hints in His holy Word (the book of Matthew gives many of these OT prophecies for us).  You can almost imagine that He is just waiting to let it all out.  Not only that, but we see Him meticulously preparing the world for the arrival of this gift: heavenly messengers, John the Baptist’s birth, and a special star to lead the wise men.   Everything crescendos with the angelic announcement to the shepherds.  It’s like God could finally hold back no longer and shouts out, “Come and see what I’m giving you!!” 

And what a gift—a Savior like no other. 

But the crazy thing is there’s more because the anticipation of a great gift is still ongoing. 

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.” Rev 21:1-7

In case you are imagining a future where we have wings and float around clouds playing harps, we have this text that informs us that God will create a new Earth.  An Earth without pain, loneliness, crying, suffering, or death.  Everything that is wonderful in this world is only a prelude to the perfection of our new Earth.  Just like the Old Covenant of Law was a shadow to the New Covenant offered in Christ (Hebrews 10:1), this Earth is only a shadow of what we will experience when everything will be redeemed.

In C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle, after the Narnians have experienced the end of their world, they walk through a door into a world that was like the war-torn Narnia, but somehow more. 

“It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling.  He stamped his right hoof on the ground and neighed, and then cried: ‘I have come home at last!  This is my real country!  I belong here.  This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now.  The reason why we loved Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this.  Bree-hee-hee!  Come further up, come further in!” (213)

You see, the true Christmas, the real Christmas is still ahead.  We are still waiting, but we are waiting in hope with joyful anticipation.  And, one day, when all tears have been wiped away and all wrongs made right, we will have the biggest celebration we can imagine.  Don’t forget this precious gift that is being offered to you.  It is worth the wait!

Why I'm Not Afraid of ISIS

Recently, as I scrolled through social media, I saw a post where ISIS has revealed a list of cities they will target.  The person who posted this was shocked by the seemingly remote and insignificant cites that were mentioned on this city.  I don’t know if this list is true—it could be ISIS propaganda or even a sick joke.  However, I want to boldly say that I am not afraid of ISIS. 

Why am I choosing to not be afraid? 

It’s not because I think I am strong enough to fight them off.  I’m not. 

It’s not because I’m in denial about the real tragedies of life and don’t think this could possibly touch me.  Tragedy is no respecter of persons.

It’s not because I’m so confident God will stop them from getting me or my family.  He’s made no such promise. 

I am not afraid because I have hope in what comes after this life. 

All this life can truly promise is a cycle of suffering and redemption.  As privileged Americans, we sometimes think that we can live in perpetual safety and happiness.  That’s not the true nature of this fallen world.  We can insulate ourselves, but this insulation is not real protection.  The only true protection is a confidence in a redemption so big, we can only see a corner of it. 

My hopes are wrapped up in the following statements:

1)     We are more than bodies.  If you subscribe to the secular worldview that says that you are only a physical creature then, yes, you should be afraid. This is all you’ve got, apparently. If, however, you are a believer in the God of the Bible, we have promises that ensure that this is only the beginning.  In terms of my beloved punctuation, death is a comma, not a period.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16 (NIV)

“For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day." John 6:40 (NIV)

2)     True justice is on its way.  I think we have a great justice system here in America.  Having served on a jury, I was impressed by how each juror took seriously the implications of our judgment.  We were overwhelmed by the responsibility we had in removing the freedom of the defendant.  Even still, we all knew there was a weakness. We didn’t have all the information.  We could only make a judgment based on the information presented to us.  It is not so with God.  All men will stand before Him, and He will judge with true justice because He has all the information, even the intents of the heart.  This gives me confidence because that means that, while we should never stop looking for justice here on Earth, no one is getting away with anything in the long run (including myself).  This hope in true justice reminds me that all evil will be punished.  The evil that ISIS is doing now will be dealt with.

“There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy.” James 4:12a (NIV)

3)     We have the word of hope.  Ours is truly the only message worth dying for.  We, as Christians, follow a long legacy of people willing to die for their enemies—to give rather than take.  We have something precious to give this world. 

“Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” John 20:24 (NIV)

I say all this to remind my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, to not be afraid, but to be ready.  Be ready to share the Gospel, to live out the hope that you have, to stare evil in the face and offer it Christ.  In this way, we will demonstrate that we are true disciples.