Book Review: Love Is An Orientation

The premise of Love Is an Orientation: Elevating the Conversation with the Gay Community (by Andrew Marin) is quite simple; as Christians, we are called to love-- not evaluate or judge-- our neighbors. It is precisely this simplicity that makes Love Is an Orientation such a powerful book for its intended audience-- primarily straight, conservative, evangelical Christians.

Marin fit into the intended audience well and gave little thought to the struggles of those in the GLBT community who were also interested in Christianity....until three of his closest friends came out to him in one year. In response, Marin sought to learn more about the gay community, and he did this by immersion-- spending time in primarily gay bars, just talking to people. Unsurprisingly, he discovered that many had been deeply hurt by the Christianity community. Perhaps more surprising to some, he discovered that many also long for a way to connect with God. What began as a way to understand his friends blossomed into a calling. Marin (now married) chose to move to a predominantly gay section of Chicago, develop relationships and seek to build a bridge between the GLBT community and the Christian Church.

Marin and his foundation have gone to Gay Pride parades wearing shirts that say, "I'm sorry," and holding signs that apologize for the way that the GLBT community has been treated by the Church and by Christians. (Read one account here: "I Hugged A Man in His Underwear, and I Am Proud," and more about it here: "A Different Kind of Demonstration at Gay Pride.")

In this book, Marin helps Christians understand common aspects of the GLBT worldview (as much as this can be generalized), including questions and barriers that prevent GLBT individuals from wanting to connect with Christians, churches or God. He explains common things that Christians say that are particularly upsetting or hurtful to those who are GLBT, ways to avoid arguments (and instead elevate the conversation) and how to build bridges through relationships and unconditional, active love that accepts that people are all on their own complex journeys.

Marin writes about an experience he had during a worship service, accompanied by some gay Christian friends:

I realized...this time of worship...was only supposed to be about him [Jesus]. It was not about acceptance, validation or condemnation of gays and lesbians. It was not about the gay Christian movement, a pro-gay theology or traditional biblical interpretations of Scripture. It was not about differences or similarities or anything that my mind could futilely try to comprehend that morning. It was about Jesus. It's always been about Jesus and I lost sight of that.

For the very first time I substantially knew in the depths of my soul that I didn't have to worry about all of those other things because they were not mine to worry about. I was making it my deal, making it my baggage and making it my worry, and I didn't have to do any of that. When did I become God? When did I have to figure it all out? When did I have to come up with a position point on every single topic ever thought of in the history of mankind? I didn't; and I don't. I am allowed the ability to just trust in the faithfulness of my loving Father to fill in the gaps that I can never understand. (79).

Marin calls for Christians to begin to heal the damage done to the GLBT community by the Church through active love. He writes,

What do these tangible, measurable and unconditional behaviors look like? They are a nonjudgmental safe place-- an environment that fosters a trustworthy relationship with someone else. Love is a walk, a hug, a dinner, an ear, a fun trip-- all free of the condemning and ostracizing that the GLBT person "knows" is coming from Christians. This type of love says that no matter who you are, no matter what you do or no matter what you say I have your back, and I refuse to give up-- whether or not there's "change"-- because my Father will never give up on me. (108-109).

In my opinion, one of the most powerful sections of the book is the Appendix, which consists of three personal essays from three individuals who have found different ways to reconcile their Christian faith with their sexuality. For one lesbian woman, this has meant embracing her sexuality and living as an openly gay Christian. Another man, who previously attracted to men, writes that God has changed his sexual orientation. A third gay Christian believes that God requires him to be celibate. None of these viewpoints are presented by Marin as the "right" perspective. Each is included as a personal testimony of how this particular person is currently integrating his or her understanding of his or her faith and sexual identity.

I think this book is desperately needed, and I would highly recommend it to all evangelical Christians. Unfortunately, a look at Amazon.com shows that it is currently #45,159 in Books.
(To provide a frame of reference, the most recent Joyce Meyer's book is #911 in Books.) This means, it's probably not getting into the hands of those who need it the most. Perhaps the title scares the more conservative? Really, they have nothing to fear. Just as Marin isn't judging the GLBT community, he is not judging conservative Christians. However, he does ask them to re-think their attitudes and behaviors and see if they are in line with what Jesus called the second commandment-- to love our neighbors as ourselves.

In the Forward, Brian McLaren writes, "Whatever your opinion on same-sex orientation, you have to admit that Jesus didn't say, 'They'll know you are my disciples by your firm stance on divisive social issues.' No, he said we'll be know as his disciples for another reason...and that's what Andrew is pursuing in these pages" (13).

For more information about Marin's work, see his foundation's website: http://www.themarinfoundation.org/.

The power of disconnection

A friend of mine posted a link to this New Yorker article about Tyler Clementi and his roommate, Dharun Ravi (by Ian Parker). I see it largely as a story about the power of DISconnection. Whether Ravi is guilty of harassment is something for the courts to decide. (He's clearly guilty of invasion of privacy.) However, I wonder how differently this situation might have played out had Ravi extended kindness to his shy roommate.

In the article, Ravi comes off as brash and narcissistic, a show-off craving attention and scorning those he deemed beneath him. Like many teen guys, he seems a bit threatened by his roommate's homosexuality. According to the New Yorker, his interactions with others seemed to revolve around attempts to impress or mock. I am reminded of these lines from the movie, Crash (2004):

It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.

For all his bravado, I wonder if Ravi was feeling disconnected.

Clementi obviously was. He seemed to have few, if any close friends. In an IM conversation, he confessed his difficulties interacting with others, "“I NEED conversation . . it’s just that i can’t DO it.” Lacking the confidence and social skills to develop meaningful connections, it seems that Clementi instead reached out online and found an older man with whom to “hook up.” It was Clementi’s encounters with this individual that Ravi viewed via his web cam and then invited others to view.

Did this exposure cause Clementi to commit suicide? It’s so hard to know another person’s motivations. It’s unlikely that his suicide was prompted by one thing. However, I’m sure that this embarrassment was another source of pain in a life that may have seemed overwhelming. Clementi left notes—presumed to be suicide notes—but these writings have not been released by the police, even to the family.

According to US Suicide Statistics, “Suicide is the third leading cause of death for young people ages 15-24” (http://www.suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html). In addition, although more women attempt suicide, more men complete suicide. Young men are particularly vulnerable to impulsive acts of suicide. Further, those who are GLBT are at an even higher risk for suicide. Despite all of these risk factors, I can’t help but thinking that this story didn’t have to end this way.

What if these college roommates had acknowledged the mismatch of their rooming together, put down their phones and computers, and shared a laugh, a pizza, a tv show, some humanity? Would they have become best friends? It’s doubtful, but there’s a chance that Tyler Clementi might still be alive and that Dharun Ravi wouldn’t be on trial.

Those Who Save Us

My New Year's resolution for 2012 is to write more. Because that's so vague, I'm making it my goal to update this blog at least once a week. So here we are, six days into the new year, and here I am, updating my blog. Now I just have to keep this up for an additional fifty-one weeks!

One of the most intriguing books I read this past year is Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum. This story centers on a mother (Anna) and daughter (Trudy) who immigrated to the US from Germany at the end of WWII, when Anna married an American soldier. Trudy was only a preschooler at the time and her memories of life in Germany are hazy. Anna refuses to speak of the past and will not answer Trudy's questions about the identity of her father.

These mysteries unfold both through adult Trudy's research as into Germans' experiences of WWII through her position as history professor and also by means of flashbacks from Anna's perspective. Author Jenna Blum's previous work as an historian for Spielberg's Shoah Foundation serves her well, as she weaves a complicated psychological novel that is searing and thought-provoking. Blum shows us that it's easy to judge the past, but often, for those living it, there were no easy answers.

During the war, Anna is merely a teenager with a baby. She lives with a baker and helps smuggle bread to prisoners in the Buchenwald concentration camp, which adjoins her village. When the baker is caught and executed, Anna knows that she will be targetted next. In order to survive and keep her baby fed, she allows a Nazi officer to use her sexually, and he returns to her, again and again, for over a year. Although the sex is sometimes violent and not truly consensual, the officer also brings her and Trudy clothing, food and gifts. Others in the village fear or despise Anna for being the "Nazi's whore."

When the village is liberated, an American soldier falls in love with Anna, and she marries him and immigrates to the US with Trudy. Despite her husband's kindness, Anna finds it impossible to extricate herself from her memories of the past: "She can never tell him what she started to say: that we come to love those who save us. For although Anna does believe this is true, the word that stuck in her throat was not save but shame" (445).

The Heart of Christianity

Thoughts on the book, The Heart of Christianity (Borg):

If I were to put the "earlier paradigm" and the "emerging paradigm" on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being extremely conservative/fundamentalist and 10 being what Borg believes, I would probably be right around a 6. Maybe a 5...or a 7. Depends on the day. :) Borg covers so many things in this book that I'm not going to comment on all of them. However, here are a few thoughts I'd like to share (with anyone still reading :):

*My favorite chapter of this book is Faith. I really appreciate Borg's assertion that faith means a lot more than "intellectually believe," that it has a lot to do with giving our allegiance

*The chapter on the Bible-- I agree with some aspects of this. I agree that a person doesn't have to believe in a literal-factual interpretation of the Bible in order to be a Christian or to appreciate the Bible. Was Jonah really inside of the belly of a whale for three days? I don't know. It doesn't seem that important to me to know whether that is literally true or metaphorically true. However, to believe in God at all, I have to believe that he could certainly suspend natural laws in order to do whatever he wants. Thus, "fantastical" elements of the Bible are not UNbelievable, simply because they seem implausible. On the other hand, I don't see their literal occurrence as vital to my belief system. As far as the Bible being more a product of human tradition as opposed to Divine inspiration, I'm not so sure. I'd like to hear other people's thoughts.

*Two concepts of God-- I don't actually see these two concepts of God as an either/or proposition. I see God as both a personlike being who is up in heaven AND as the One in whom I live and move and have my being. Borg talks about how seeing God as One who could intervene makes the question of his non-intervention problematic. I have to agree with that. I really don't know why God doesn't intervene in a lot of situations. Borg's answer to this is what he calls panentheism [EDIT: I had originally & mistakenly written "pantheism], with no concept of divine intervention. To me, that doesn't answer the problem. Right now, I'm reading Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? (Yancey), and it addresses this topic too. Still no answers, but some interesting thoughts......

*Jesus-- I disagreed the most with this chapter. My understanding is that Borg basically comes to the conclusion that Jesus was not divine (in any peculiarly special way) but that Jesus was a man who embodied what it means to be Christian. I'm more with Frederick Buechner on this topic (emphases mine):

As everybody knows by now, Gospel means Good News. Ironically, it is some of the Gospel's most ardent fans who try to turn it into Bad News. For instance:
*"It all boils down to the Golden Rule. Just love thy neighbor, and that's all you have to worry about." What makes this bad news is that loving our neighbor is exactly what none of us is very good at. Most of the time, we have a hard time even loving out family and friends very effectively.
*"Jesus was a great teacher and the best example we have of how we ought to live." As a teacher, Jesus is at least matched by, for instance, Siddhartha Gautama. As an example, we can only look at Jesus and despair.
*"The Resurrection is a a poetic way of saying that the spirit of Jesus lives on as a constant inspiration to us all." If all the Resurrection means is that Jesus' spirit lives on like Abraham Lincoln's or Adolph Hitler's but that otherwise he is just as dead as anybody else who cashed in two thousand years ago, then as Saint Paul puts it, "our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain" (1 Corinthians 15:14). If the enemies of Jesus succeeded for all practical purposes in killing him permanently around A.D. 30, then like Socrates, Thomas More, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, Jr., and so on, he is simply another saintly victim of the wickedness and folly of humankind, and the cross is a symbol of ultimate defeat.
What is both Good and New about the Good News is the wild claim that Jesus did not simply tell us that God loves us even in our wickedness and folly and wants us to love each other in the same way and to love him too, but that if we will let him, God will actually bring about this unprecedented transformation of our hearts himself.
What is both Good and New about the Good News is the mad insistence that Jesus lives on among us not just as another haunting memory but as the outlandish, holy, and invisible power of God working not just through the sacraments (q.v.) but in countless hidden ways to make even slobs like us loving and whole beyond anything we could conceivably pull off ourselves.
Thus the Gospel is not only Good and New but, if you take it seriously, a Holy Terror. Jesus never claimed that the process of being changed from a slob to a human being was going to be a Sunday School picnic. On the contrary. Childbirth may occasionally be painless, but rebirth never. Part of what it means to be a slob is to hang on for dear live to our slobbery.
--Frederich Buechner from Wishful Thinking, A Seeker's ABC...or better yet, Beyond Words (which includes Wishful Thinking and a couple other books)

*Social justice-- Somehow, I think that Christian America has largely missed this point, and in my opinion, it's kind of a big aspect of the Christian life. Another great book I'm reading deals with this topic (on a world level): The Hole in Our Gospel (Stearns).

*Thin places-- I love this description for Christian sacraments and disciplines. It's a perfect visual image. Someone should do a painting with that title & concept. :)

*Pluralism/Exclusivity-- I can best sum up my beliefs on this topic with a quotation from the last book in the Narnia series (The Last Battle):

"Then I fell at his feet and thought, Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him. Nevertheless, it is better to see the Lion and die than to be Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him. But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, 'Son, thou art welcome.' But I said, 'Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash.' He answered, 'Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me.' Then by reason of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, 'Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one?' The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, 'It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites -- I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore, if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child?' I said, 'Lord, thou knowest how much I understand.' But I said also (for truth constrained me), 'Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days.' 'Beloved,' said the Glorious One, 'unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.'" -C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

"For all find what they truly seek." I believe that. :)

Book Review: The Unsayable

The Unsayable (Annie Rogers)-- A child psychotherapist encouraged me to read Rogers's first book, A Shining Affliction, before I started graduate school. Rogers is supremely intelligent and writes in an almost lyrical fashion that is definitely not the norm for case studies! A Shining Affliction chronicles Rogers's early work in psychotherapy. In the course of treating a severely traumatized boy, Rogers's own experiences with trauma resurface and lead to a descent into psychosis and then her ultimate stabilization. In The Unsayable, Rogers delves into the theories of linguist/psychologist Jacques Lacan and combines those with case studies and interviews of her treatment with traumatized girls (especially girls who then become offenders), as well as more of her own story. Interesting book, well-written with some insights, but I wouldn't totally endorse this approach to therapy as it is likely to overwhelm young clients and lead to decompensation, as is evidenced even in the case studies in the book. There are those in the psychology/counseling world who generally believe that clients must get worse before they will get better. I am not of that school of thought. I think that defense mechanisms, now matter how dysfunctional, serve an improtant purpose, and clinicians need to be careful not to pry those away before the client has the skills to proceed. Again, I think this book is fascinating, and many of the visceral depictions of being a survivor of trauma are excellent. However, I think that applying all of the theoretical aspects of the book in a clinical setting could be dangerous. [For an absolutely fabulous book to read AND apply in clinical settings with all types of resistant or withdrawn children and adolescents, check out No Talk Therapy by Martha B. Straus. Her focus is strength-based, which is definitely more my orientation.]

Columbine

Columbine by Dave Cullen

From The Washington Post's Book World (Reviewed by Gary Krist):

Drawing on almost 10 years of research -- including hundreds of interviews, 25,000 pages of documents and the journals, notebooks and videotapes of the perpetrators -- he has assembled a comprehensive account of what really happened at Columbine High School on Tuesday, April 20, 1999. And his conclusion is arresting: namely, that the public's understanding of this supposedly archetypal mass shooting is almost entirely wrong: "We remember Columbine," Cullen writes, "as a pair of outcast Goths from the Trench Coat Mafia snapping and [then] tearing through their high school hunting down jocks to settle a long-running feud. Almost none of that happened. No Goths, no outcasts, nobody snapping. No targets, no feud, and no Trench Coat Mafia. Most of those elements existed at Columbine -- which is what gave them such currency. They just had nothing to do with the murders." Far from feckless pariahs, in fact, the two shooters in the Columbine case -- Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold -- were smart, reasonably popular kids who doled out more bullying than they ever suffered. Their shooting spree was not some precipitous act of revenge against specific tormentors, but more like an elaborately planned theater piece, worked out almost a year in advance, designed to demonstrate their innate superiority by indiscriminately killing as many victims as possible.

This is a fascinating and highly readable book which I would recommend especially to those in mental health, education and law enforcement. Cullen paints a picture of two seemingly normal teenage boys who spend a year plotting not just the shooting, but the destruction of their school. (Shooting was actually the minor part of their plan. They had placed bombs that-- had the bombs detonated-- would have pushed the death toll to upwards of one thousand. Dylan and Eric just planned to shoot the students who fled the inferno. Thankfully, the bombs never went off.)

According to Cullen's research, Dylan was primarily depressed and suicidal. He was rather unmotivated, and although classified as gifted, he was an underachiever. (Interesting tidbit: Dylan was accepted to the University of Arizona in Tucson and had sent in his deposit to secure his space.) Without the influence of Eric's friendship, it is unlikely that Dylan would have done anything like this. Dylan was interested in death, but primarily his own.

Eric, on the other hand, can best be described as a psychopath: "Psychopaths are distinguished by two characteristics. The first is a ruthless disregard for others: they will defraud, maim, or kill for the most trivial personal gain. The second is an astonishing gift for disguising the first.... The come off like Hugh Grant, in his most adorable role" (240). He killed because he wanted to and to prove his superiority. He found it interesting. He looked forward to the extinction of the human race. Ironically, it's quite possible that Eric couldn't have pulled his plan off without Dylan either:

Rare killer psychopaths nearly always get bored with murder, too. When they slit a throat, their pulse races, but it falls just as fast. It stays down-- no more joy from cutting throats for a while; that thrill has already been spent.... An angry, erratic depressive and a sadistic psychopath make a combustible pair. The psychopath is in control, of course, but the hothead sidekick can sustain his excitement leading up to the big kill. "It takes heat and cold to make a tornado," Dr. Fuselier is fond of saying. (244).

So...what makes a psychopath?

"Early in his career, Dr. Hare recognized the anatomical difference [in how the psychopath's brain processes emotion]. He submitted a paper analyzing the unusual brain waves of psychopaths to a scientific journal, which rejected it with a dismissive letter. "Those EEGs couldn't have come from real people," the editor wrote.

Exactly! Hare thought. Psychopaths are that different." (242).

Functional MRI (fMRIs) have further highlighted this difference.

As with many psychological conditions, the debate continues as to whether psychopathy is the result of nature, nurture or a combination of the two. There is compelling evidence that at least the propensity for psychopathy is inborn. And, although the parents of Eric Harris have generally eschewed the press and the police, there is no evidence that Eric's home life was anything out of the ordinary.

Unfortunately, psychotherapy generally makes psychopaths worse because it teaches them how to more effectively manipulate and con people. However, Dr. Hare is working on a program that helps psychopaths adapt to society: "The program he developed accepts that psychopaths will remain egocentric and uncaring for life but will adhere to rules if it's in their own interest" (246).

What we really want-- a specific reason why the shooting at Columbine happened or a way to screen kids and know if they're harboring this kind of hate-- we don't have. However, Cullen offers two main clues that should not be ignored (323).
1) Advance confessions-- In school shootings overall, "81 percent of shooters had confided their intentions." Pay special attention to specificity and any action taken to carry out the plan.
2) "Preoccupation with death, destruction and violence" (323)-- He advises adults not to freak out about every story, poem or drawing with death-related imagery but to keep an eye out for persistence, pervasiveness, "malice, brutality, and an unrepentant hero."

In addition to describing the psychopathology of Eric and Dylan, this book also offers portraits of impressive resilience, represented by all those who survived the shooting, as well as the families, churches and community that have resisted being defined by this one awful day.

Patrick Ireland is one of the critically-injured survivors of the shooting. He was in the library when Dylan began firing and was shot in the head and foot while trying to apply pressure to the wound of a friend. When Ireland regained consciousness, he dragged himself over to the shattered window (the only escape he could see) and tumbled out from the second story while the SWAT team scrambled below to reach him. Despite severe damage to his brain, Ireland worked tirelessly in physical therapy, returned to school and graduated as one of his class's valedictorians. He gave this speech at his commencement, just over a year after the shooting:

It had been a rough year, he said. "The shooting made the country aware of the unexpected level of hate and rage that had been hidden in the high schools." But he was convinced the world was inherently good at heart. He had spent a year thinking about what had gotten him across the library floor. At first he assumed hope-- not quite; it was trust. "When I fell out the window, I knew somebody would catch me," he said. "That's what I need to tell you: that I knew the loving world was there all the time" (302).