Men, Women, and Super Bowl Ads
Yesterday's Super Bowl was pretty entertaining for a neutral observer--more points would have been nice, but the down-to-the-wire excitement made for a great game. Congratulations to the Giants for overcoming the Patriots again! (Now if only my Seahawks could get back ...)
Super Bowl ads get a lot of hype--and understandably so. It's estimated that almost 120 million people tune in to watch the game, so that's pretty great exposure for whatever you're selling. Every year, there are some ads that are awesome, clever, inventive, or creative; and then every year, there are some ads that are lame, flat, or just dumb. And every year there are ads that are sexist and pretty insulting--both to women (by portraying them as nothing more than things to be objectified) and to men (by advertising to them as driven and motivated by a single organ--not the brain).
This year was no different, and I'm not going to grace them by posting them on here. (You can check them out on the recap from Mother Jones at "Twitter Talks Back to Sexist Super Bowl Ads." All I'm gonna say is, "Really, Teleflora?!" And incidentally, I actually switched from gershomsjournal.com to justinbfung.com in order to switch my registration from GoDaddy.com, on account of their ridiculous commercials.)
The topic of men and women is one as old as time, particularly in the church. And I want to point out that we as Christians should be even more vigilant at how the culture we inhabit--and, perhaps more importantly, we ourselves--think and act. As a Christian man, it matters how I think about and treat women. My friend Eugene writes:
the treatment of women is the oldest injustice in human history. It’s so old and so taken for granted, that we don’t quite understand what’s at stake – not just for women, but really, for all of us. In more nuanced and simultaneously graphic ways, women are objects to be objectified and marketed and packaged for consumption. And these messages start early and often in human development and identity.
Moreover, many Christian guys--whether ignorantly and inadvertently or, more tragically and infuriatingly, deliberately--continue to feed into this mindset that women are somehow less than we are. There aren't very many good, genuine role models of what it looks like to be a guy like Jesus, and given that missing paradigm, we can tend to swing to one extreme (emasculated and uncertain) or the other (hyper-macho and equally insecure). Neither of those is a particularly biblical understanding of how men and women are supposed to be in relationship with one another.
Jesus should be the example for our lives, and particularly, for Christian guys, in the way that he interacted with women. I've posted these words from Dorothy Sayers before, but they're a constant reminder to me on what I want to be like:
Perhaps it is no wonder that women were first at the cradle and last at the cross. They had never known a man like this man. There never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged them, never flattered or coaxed or patronized; who never made sick jokes about women; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took women's questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out a certain sphere for women; who never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took women as he found them and was completely unselfconscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its point or pungency from female perversity. Nobody could get from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything funny or inferior about women.
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On a related note, what did you all think of H&M's David Beckham ad? Because it just made want to work out ... but is that a double standard?
Obama and me: a common journey
[Official White House Photo: Pete Souza]
Yesterday morning, I tuned in to watch the National Prayer Breakfast online. I managed to catch the end of author Eric Metaxas' keynote, and then the President's address. I've always resonated with President Obama's expressions of his faith, even from when he was a Senator, and before he ran for president--from his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention to the passages in Dreams from my Father. Yesterday, he drew upon several verses that form the foundation of my own engagement in politics, advocacy, and public life:
"Love your neighbor as yourself."
"To those whom much is given, much will be required."
"Speak up for those who cannot speak up for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute."
He continued:
Treating others as you want to be treated. Requiring much from those who have been given so much. Living by the principle that we are our brother’s keeper. Caring for the poor and those in need. These values are old. They can be found in many denominations and many faiths, among many believers and among many non-believers. And they are values that have always made this country great -- when we live up to them; when we don’t just give lip service to them; when we don’t just talk about them one day a year. And they’re the ones that have defined my own faith journey.
They're the ones that have defined my faith journey as well, which I shared when I graduated from Fuller Theological Seminary. I got to be one of the speakers at Commencement, and shared a little bit of my own journey:
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Meanwhile, over at the Sojourners blog, Wes Granberg-Michaelson, former General Secretary of the Reformed Church in America, shares his thoughts in a great response. Notably:
Money controls who gets elected and controls how laws and policies are made, I think, in utterly dangerous ways. More than ever, for those who gathered in prayer Thursday morning, money is power. And it’s the power of money in politics today that must be confronted — by people of faith — as a moral issue.
So I wondered (and prayed), where is the William Wilberforce of today, a leader who will take the message of the Bible to heart, rise up to confront the ways in which money enslaves our modern political life, lead a movement to end it, and then, one day, be celebrated for his or her courage and faithfulness to the gospel at a future prayer breakfast?
Even as we celebrate a common faith and shared values, we need to continue working to see these worked out in the world we inhabit.
Mandela on Leadership
Hans Gedda/Sygma/Corbis
This TIME piece on Nelson Mandela was recently brought to my attention. It was actually published back in 2008, but Madiba's thoughts remain challenging and very interesting to consider, particularly for me at this time as I step into a new position of leadership at the church.
As Richard Stengel (who helped Mandela write his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom) concludes:
Ultimately, the key to understanding Mandela is those 27 years in prison. The man who walked onto Robben Island in 1964 was emotional, headstrong, easily stung. The man who emerged was balanced and disciplined. He is not and never has been introspective. I often asked him how the man who emerged from prison differed from the willful young man who had entered it. He hated this question. Finally, in exasperation one day, he said, "I came out mature." There is nothing so rare — or so valuable — as a mature man. (emphasis added)
The gospel
As good and succinct an answer as I've found to the question, "What is the gospel?":
The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope. This is the only kind of relationship that will really transform us. Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it. God's saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us.
Tim Keller, The Meaning of Marriage, 48.
God at work: $100,000
This past year, I've had a front row seat--indeed, I've been fortunate to be in the thick of the action--as God's been at work: in my life, in the lives of those around me, and in The District Church. Here are some examples:
- God's been at work through prayer in my small group, where we've prayed for jobs for four guys (including myself)--each of them is now employed; and we've prayed for housing for four more (including myself)--each of them now has a place to live.
- God's been at work in my small group period, where today we commissioned three new small groups out of the one I'd been leading. I felt blessed to have so many servant leaders in my group, and am so excited to see all of them stepping into what God has for them.
- God's been at work in our church, growing our small community until we're now stretching the space we've been meeting in. We wanted to find a larger space but none of those options worked out, so starting on September 25, we'll begin having two services on Sunday morning! This is such an exciting time and we believe this is a time God is calling us, to use an analogy from 2 Kings 3, to build ditches in preparation for the rain.
And most exciting of all ...
Last Sunday, we commemorated the 10th anniversary of 9/11 at our church, and in his message, Aaron spoke about how "True Awakening Leads to Reform" (we're currently doing a sermon series drawn from Habakkuk and Acts, entitled "Awaken"). He expanded on the op-ed he'd written in the Washington Post to mark the occasion, in which he'd written to the Muslim community to apologize for the ways that we as Christians had allowed our pride and prejudices to cloud our witness. And so on Sunday, as a small act of reconciliation, we took up an offering for our Muslim brothers and sisters who are suffering from the famine in the Horn of Africa--Somalia, hardest hit, is 99% Muslim. Through various other movements of the Holy Spirit, we had offers to match whatever we raised by up to 7 times. Still, we were conscious of our size--we're only about 150--and so we were ready to be thrilled regardless of the amount raised.
I suppose I should have left this email untitled to maintain the surprise. But when all was said and done, we as a church raised almost $15,000, and with the matching donations, we were able to raise $100,000 for famine relief efforts.
This was such humbling and spine-tinglingly exciting news, such an encouragement for me as a leader of a community of such amazingly generous people, and such a reminder that God is at work, doing great things even in the face of great suffering and tragedy.
May we all (continue to) see God at work in all things.