Tag Archives: Cultural Change

Cultural Change

Living in the Spirit
September 17, 2018

Scripture Reading: Proverbs 31:10-31

She rises while it is still night
   and provides food for her household
   and tasks for her servant-girls.
She considers a field and buys it;
   with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard.
She girds herself with strength,
   and makes her arms strong. …

She opens her hand to the poor,
   and reaches out her hands to the needy.
She is not afraid for her household when it snows,
   for all her household are clothed in crimson.
She makes herself coverings;
   her clothing is fine linen and purple. Proverbs 31:15-17, 20-22

My brother, sister and I asked that Proverbs 31 be read at my mother’s memorial service. Except for some archaic words, it describes her perfectly. Her daughters were her servant-girls being mentored in the art of gardening and sewing. (Neither at which I excelled but my sister made up for my lack of commitment in both.) We live in a time of the redefinition of the roles of wives and husbands, parents, and bread-winners. Change happens slowly over time until it appears to be a new discovery. Rosy the Riveters was a force in the redefinition of roles. Many women went to work in male-dominated jobs in support of the World War II efforts and did them well. The advent of birth control in the early 1960’s made a vast difference in families. Besides allowing couples to decide how many children they chose to have, it allowed or forced women and men to deal with female sexuality.

Economic factors impacted role change. If I remember correctly 1973 was the first year a single income household could not sustain a working-class family. Women went to work because they had too.

Vast cultural changes since the beginning of time require introspection and thoughtful consideration of how our faith guides us as we transition from one way of being to another. Sometimes we do that well; other times we do not.  Delving into scriptures written between 2000 and 5000 years ago to help us address cultural changes, requires our seeking the truth of teachings more than picking and choosing among the practices described to find and apply today. We sometimes find the ones with which we are comfortable and project them as appropriate for all other people. For example, the truth says parents need to teach their children self-discipline. However, I do not think stoning children to death for being incorrigible is a proper response*.

Prayer: Lord, guide us to understand the truths woven through our ancient literature that is relevant today. Amen.

*See Deuteronomy 21:18-21

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.

Setting New Norms

Ordinary Time
January 12, 2018

Scripture Reading: 1 Corinthians 6:12-20

Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, ‘The two shall be one flesh.’ But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body. –1  Corinthians 6:16-20

In my book, Houses Divided, I wrote that I thought it was time to revisit the norms of sexual behavior in our culture. Leviticus was written in a time when people viewed wombs as incubators in which the male deposited the seed for a new life. Children often did not live to adulthood and were an economic necessity to staff the work of an agrarian culture. Even in the last three hundred years, my ancestry lists families with twelve to eighteen children. Most families had two or more mothers, because many died in childbirth. My father’s family was a your’s, mine, and our’s family including eighteen children, one dying at birth when her mother was killed in an accident, one dying at age two, and one at nine both of communicable diseases. While such families exist today, they usually have fewer children and are most often the result of divorce. The advent of stable birth control in the mid-twentieth century changed the world as did the availability of immunizations, women becoming more economically self-sustaining, and divorce becoming less stigmatized. Some view these changes as bad and would like to overturn them while most of society accept them as reality.

How do people of faith define the Greek love called Eros (erotic love) and Philios (sibling love) today? How do they intersect with Agape (God’s) love? Paul gives us a great place to start in I Corinthians 13:4-8

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

We need to be less concerned with how the world defines or advertises love and more concern about God’s love as it intersects with all our relationships.

Prayer: Thank you, Lord, for sending Jesus to model love for us. The world is too much with us in our relationships. Free us from its tangles and open our hearts and minds to learning to love in all aspects of love as Jesus loved. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.