[Still haven’t sorted out my ability to put in links. Need to generally go through and figure out all the technology in my life. But part two was yesterday and part one the day before that. The backwards arrow is probably right above these words, if you want to see where I left off.]
It seems to me, from my backwater vantage point, that the culture as a whole has made a thoughtless trade resulting in a basic, if catastrophic, confusion. Truth has been traded off for the tinsel shine of self gratification making it impossible for Goodness and Beauty to be kept tied down to their proper moorings in Order. They founder alone, crying out in the highways and byways for attention. But because truth is no where to be found, they have to make do as best they can alone. Goodness has settled itself down to be whatever an individual thinks and believes. Beauty is whatever a person can manage to buy or consume. Neither have any relationship to objective knowable truth. Whatever you believe is true for you. Whatever you like is beautiful. Whatever you want to do is good.
So let us examine, then, the modern woman who thinks this way. The New York Times did it for men yesterday, producing not the picture of a man but of a skinny hipster. What would that person’s partner in life look like, assuming it wasn’t someone exactly like himself (is that a micro aggression, to call it a him?)? And at the soul of it, would she be beautiful?
The modern woman is capable and educated, probably still paying her student loans. She has a good job and if she feels like having a child, at some point, she does. The child is well loved and well managed, equipped with every perfect and sensory appropriate toy. The modern woman does everything she can materially for this single special child (and maybe a second, if time and inclination permit). The man in her life is also capable, probably, and the two of them, the man and the woman, share everything in perfect equality.
In this rose, I mean taupe, colored dream, let us consider her interior life. Because she is perfectly equal, in distinction and role, everything has to fit in around her. The child is the center of the material space, but he or she frequently has to fall back into the margins of our modern woman’s emotional life because there isn’t enough emotional energy to go around. Emotional Connection is traded away for Physical Safety. Time is traded away for Stuff. She and the child begin to step on each other’s nerves. She has to be on the Internet figuring out how to keep the child occupied and happy because her irritation rises so constantly in her throat. Her friends agree with her that her life is tough.
Because she is perfectly equal in distinction and role, she frequently also finds herself irritated and put out with the man, who forgets things, who is sometimes insensitive, who doesn’t meet her emotional expectations quite the way she had imagined. She finds its so easy to pick fights, to bicker, to take offense. She’s above that, of course, but somehow it occasionally creeps in. After a while, perhaps, the partner for life does something egregious, like falling in love with someone else who, for a season, doesn’t pick at him. Our modern woman is left alone with her frustration and broken expectations.
Her modern friends rally round her and bash the stupid life partner who abandoned her. They all drink margaritas and she gets a new hair color. The child comes back into the middle of the frame only now the sharp edges on both the people in this picture threaten to keep rebleeding the various wounds of abandonment, regret, offense, and lost expectations.
For all appearances, our modern woman is the same strong capable woman, completely equal in role and distinction, that we began with. But what are we looking at really? We’re looking at someone teetering on the precipice of victim-hood. We are gazing into the eyes of someone alone, who has been broken by the actions of others, and who has no power, in her own hands, to undo the trail of offense behind her. She isn’t strong, she is brittle. She isn’t that beautiful because, when you come right down to it, she is still the center of the universe. Everyone had to make way for her and they did.
Now I am going to spin out another kind of woman, a woman who does exist in these modern times but who has a different frame of reference. And don’t worry, it’s not me. Tuck that rage and hatred away, dear, and consider this other woman, who I do happen to know. This woman works too, very hard. In fact, her’s is the income that supports her family. She struggled to have children and was overjoyed when a couple of them came along. She wanted to be home with them but couldn’t, she had to work, but she enjoyed them so much when she was there that they grew up into interesting, kind, respectful, clever people. She doesn’t see eye to eye with her husband on very much. She likes him a lot, though, and prays for him all the time, without ceasing really. She is always smiling. It’s sort of uncanny. Even when talking about something tragic, you can’t help feeling everything is ok while you’re with her. If you walked into a room, you wouldn’t immediately notice her. You would probably talk to a lot of other people first. If you happened to be in conversation with her for a while you would find yourself confronted with the reality of a lot of other people. She has lots of other people on her mind, their needs, their concerns, their troubles. She will probably ask you to pray for someone.
This woman is, in fact, beautiful. She bears many burdens but none of them have shattered her. In fact, her interior life is strong and uncluttered. She is grateful for everything, hopeful about the future, sorrowing over the brokenness of the world. And here’s the key, the clue, even, to the radiating glow of her countenance. I’m going to put it in caps because I know this is such a confusing and difficult concept.
She Takes The Lowest Place.
One more time? She takes the lowest place.
She does not believe her ontological equality with everybody, either in the church or in the world, is something to be grasped, but taking the role of a servant, she spends herself for the good of others. And because this is her manner of life, order and beauty and goodness follow behind her and are the result of pretty much every task she undertakes. There is not a shattered confusion of trouble, offense, and pain swirling around her. Though she does bear real burdens and fights off real anxiety and woe, she is not brittle, she is not shattered by the troubles of her situation. And here is the second key.
She herself takes the lowest place. It is not imposed on her by anyone else. She is not put upon, she is not a victim, she is not pushed into a corner of humility. She is humble because she has chosen to be over and over and over and over again.
How can she be this way? What has given her the strength of mind to take on humility as a way of life? This part seems to be confusing too, so I’m going to say it slow.
JJJJJEEEEESSSSUUUUUSSSSSS.
Jesus. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ came to earth to save people from their sins and to live inside them through the power of his Holy Spirit. But you have to see the first woman as a sinner. She has to be willing to look at the scope and measure of her days and see what a wreck it is. It’s not that the second woman has it all together, that she is inherently beautiful and good, that she herself brings order into her own life, it’s that she has given herself freely to Jesus who gives her the power and desire to take second place, all. the. time.
Sure it’s hard. It’s not glamorous. It is often painful. But in a world full of people who are so at the center of their own lives, a world where jumbled baby parts are being shipped hither and thither, a world where more and more various chemicals and pills are needed just to get through the day, the solution is not more people, not even more women, putting themselves first. The only solution is Jesus. And his solution is for you to go second, whoever you are, which you can only do if you know that he loves you, that he died for you, that he wants to be with you forever.
And on that note, I hope everyone has a lovely weekend. I’m going to go fail in my daily attempt at humility, but I’m not going to worry about it too much, because Jesus does for me what I cannot do. He is sufficient for all he requires.
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