Page 1903 – Christianity Today (2024)

Throughout my life, a bevy of Bible stories have greatly shaped my thinking. Mine is a story-driven faith.

One of those stories is the one in which Jesus and his disciples find themselves in the grip of a raging Galilean storm.

Only once have I been to Galilee, and on that occasion I witnessed the suddenness and the ferocity of the storms in that area. I watched the clouds gather and explode over the bowl-shaped lake. I recalled the many times my Sunday school teachers had spoken of storms over that sea and, with the help of paper figures stuck to a flannel graph board, described the fear of the disciples and the calmness of Jesus.

Years later I would compare that story to John Wesley's experience aboard a ship in the North Atlanta when he observed a group of Moravian missionaries worship on the deck of a similarly storm-tossed boat.

In the days of Sunday school, we children would often dramatize the storm story. Because I was the preacher's kid, I was always cast as the sleeping Jesus in the back of the chair/boat. While the "disciples" lost their calm in the face of the rising waves, it was my responsibility to dramatically rise and shout out, "Peace! Be still."

Years later I came to see another aspect to the storm story that I do not recall the teacher ever highlighted. It was the moment after the storm had ended, the moment where I now imagine Jesus whirling around to the terrified disciples—with the air of a disappointed teacher—saying, "Where in the world is your faith?"

In this context, the question really meant, "What have you learned about yourselves in the last few minutes? Has anything I've taught you taken root in your hearts?" There must have followed an intensive seminar on the inevitability of stormy, even life-threatening, moments in life and the appropriate conduct of leaders on such occasions.

I can almost hear Jesus saying, "You think this was a storm? You have no idea what the future is going to bring. If this is the best you can do …"

The Life Laboratory

The Galilean storm seems a testing laboratory, which the Lord used to prepare the disciples for soul-bending moments that lay ahead. You could say that it was in such moments the progress of conversion was examined.

You couldn't have created such a stormy condition in a classroom—or even in a church sanctuary. Experiences of this kind are not about right words but about right attitude and behavior. These qualities show themselves best in hurricane conditions.

Among my earliest stormy moments was the time when I, a young pastor (age 26), for no discernable reason (except, maybe, the prodding of the Holy Spirit) decided to visit a ranch owned by two of the members of our church. At the time I was preacher and spiritual leader (or thought I was) to a tiny western, very rural, community of 50 people.

As I drove into the barnyard area, I was confronted by a sight that remains fresh in my mind 45 years later: The husband was carrying his wife, obviously dead, the victim of a horse-spooking event out on the prairie.

Talk about a storm! What was I to say to this man who was in shock? What was the next thing to be done? How could I provide leadership (practical, emotional, spiritual) to this suddenly-motherless family that included small children? How would I guide the congregation that would have to come together and offer support?

No seminary class, no book, was able to offer much help in that moment. It was all something to be learned in a "boat."

I would estimate that the life of any leader is 95 percent navigation in relative calm waters (the routines of daily life) and 5 percent sheer terror as we face the unexpected and the uncontrolled. Yet in that 5 percent, much is revealed about the kind of people we have become and are becoming and the integrity of what we say we believe.

In stormy moments, three aspects of one's inner being are likely to be tested: memory, imagination, and will. The first is about the past, the second about the future, the third about the present.

In saying this, I am not trying to write as a psychologist or even as a certified expert in spiritual formation. I'm simply observing out of personal experience and what I often see in the lives of leaders.

Your Inexact Memory

I have often thought of my memory as a library. Here, deep within myself, is a store of experiences and impressions to be drawn on to measure present experiences. This knowledge base is not always accurate. Over time, the stories stored in one's memory can be revised, morphed to become more terrible or more impressive.

I have found, for example, that the older I get, the faster my times become in the races I ran as a young athlete. The crowds I once preached to get larger, the books I once wrote now turned out to have sold more copies, and the mountains I (may have) climbed get higher.

My inner "library" is not passive. It is not like a shelf of books that wait to be discovered and consulted. Bits and pieces of my memory are wildly active, often seeming to leap off my inner shelves and insert themselves into present thoughts whether I welcome them or not.

"I think of my memory as a library … A store of experiences and impressions to be drawn on to measure the present."

For example, the impression of that rancher carrying his dead wife is so seared into my memory that—over the years—whenever I have gone anyplace to visit a person in one of my congregations, I have a moment of dread just before a door was opened or a meeting begun. I kept thinking: will I be confronted by some horrific surprise on the other side of that door?

On the other hand, my memory has served me well as a wellspring of experiences. As I have compiled a personal biography of successful, and not so successful events, I have created a record of experiences and what they meant (some might call this wisdom) that guide me well into the present. The older I have become, the percentage of stupid mistakes has dropped. I am less liable to say or do the wrong thing. I am more likely to offer insights that are not formed in the moment but are the result of dozens of similar experiences in the past, where I learned what was appropriate and what was helpful. There are simply some things that cannot be rushed into the brain no matter how smart or gifted we are. Some things take time.

On other occasions I have written about the discipline of journaling, which I have maintained for almost 45 years. The act of journaling is really the strengthening of memory, not unlike one who builds his or her body through conditioning. Without the journal there is an enormous amount of life experience that I would have forgotten by now. With journaling there is a written record of events, my reflections on those events, and, not infrequently, a word or two about what I should or should not have done.

Imagine a journal entry by Simon Peter as he brooded on the stormy Galilean moment.

"Sailed to Gadera today. Light chop, wind from the south. Teacher exhausted, tried to sleep. Storm halfway across. The worst most of us had ever seen. Everyone threw up. Emptied the boat of all duffle. Teacher kept sleeping (which irritated everybody). Finally, we awakened him. Figured he could help. But he simply shouted at the weather, and suddenly it calmed. How did he do this? He was angry at our panic. He told us to remember this moment well. There would be other storms of varying kinds. We're all wondering what in the world that means."

In recent days I have been going through old files that record church leadership meetings (elders, deacons) I attended as far back as the early 1970s. Several things impress me as I scan these documents that I've not seen for 40 years.

First, how many things, which seemed important at the time, ended up being entirely without significance. Second, how often we dealt with issues that were merely hints of things to come. Most importantly, I was struck by how hard we all worked to maintain an accurate record of our deliberations. Why? Because we understood the importance of corporate memory.

But it would not occur to many in leadership that the "minutes" of one's life are, perhaps, even more important. An accurate rendition of what we believe God has spoken into our lives, what we have learned in each experience, and what could use improvement the next time. Oh, and that for which we must be thankful.

I have a book in my library written by a successful megachurch pastor 30 years ago. His much-admired ministry crashed dramatically because of malfeasance. He owned up to his failures and wrote of his own predilection for "nice things."

In the book he wrote of a moment when he was a boy being raised in makeshift surroundings. One day he was walking a girl home from school. Another boy came along on a shiny new bicycle, and the girl hopped on the back fender of the bike and rode away, leaving him standing alone.

He never forgot that moment of hurt and humiliation. He swore to himself that he would one day be the boy on the shiny bicycle instead of the one left behind. That bit of memory played a part in many later-in-life choices, some of which got him into trouble.

It was in the area of memory where Joseph of Egypt fought some of his greatest battles when his brothers—the ones who had abandoned him—came to town seeking food. It was out of memory that David was able to generate the faith that gave him power over Goliath. Paul was dealing with memory when he recalled his earlier years as a persecutor of Christians.

We make memory serve us when we are careful to repent of all forms of sin, forgive when we have been sinned against, give thanks when we have been blessed, and reflect upon the meaning of events and what God might have for us to learn.

Your Imagination For Tomorrow

God has not only given us a memory of the past, but he has provided us with an imagination—the ability to create scenarios of the future and test their viability. The mind is not only a library; it is also a stage. And on that stage we are able to place ourselves and others and act out choices and possibilities. We can make informed guesses as to outcomes.

Like the library, the imagination can be inaccurate, quite unreliable. This is a good reason why we pray that God's Spirit will superintend our imaginations and help us to imagine with greater clarity and purpose.

The imagination, of course, can easily get out of control. It can conjure things that are dangerous, destructive. It can take us into areas of thought that are devastating to our soul. Knowing this, many people decry the imagination and see it as a troublemaker in one's thought life. Fantasies of relationships, of achievements, of acquisition can be spiritually poisonous.

But there is a powerful side to the imagination. You can see it work in the dreams of Joseph, the young brother who-rather unwisely, I've always thought—told his brothers of his imagination that one day his brothers would bow to him. The good news: he had the instincts of leadership brewing in his heart. The bad news: he should have kept it to himself.

Being an artistic and rather introverted person, my imagination has been an enormous inner stage. Were it not for key people in my life who regularly jerked me back into reality, I would have found it easy to remain on the stage of my inner self rather than living life out in the reality of the world. My inner stage was more fun, more malleable, more under my control (at least sometimes).

On the other hand, it was on the stage that I conceived my desire to write. It was there that I gained a vision of myself as a preacher. On that stage I replayed a million times my worst mistakes and why they were made. In the course of time, there were many mistakes I avoided because I tended the options on the stage before acting them out in reality.

Your will for the Present

The third-the middle area between past and future—could be called the will, or the place of resolve. It lies between the memory of the past and the imagination of the future. It's the control room (forgive the rather mechanical analogy) of one's life, the place where one engages in choice.

This will is a remarkable thing. It seems able to weigh options, even for a part of it to act contrary to another part.

"What shall I order for dinner?" I ask myself in a restaurant. These conditions are prevailing: I'm hungry. The restaurant serves excellent food. Another person at the table has already made it clear that I am their guest and will not be paying the bill. And, finally, my wife is not present to serve as a living reminder of good eating habits.

In the control room, the various "Gordons" bid for control of the choice. Gordon One lobbies for a large sirloin steak. The ever-cautious Gordon Two argues that red meat is not that healthy for a man my age. The penny-wise Gordon Three is setting forth the premise that, just because it's not my money, does not mean that I have the right to take financial advantage of the person who will pay the bill. And, finally, the compassionate Gordon Four is reminding me of those in the world who do not eat well, and, just because the food is available to me, does not give me the right to indulge myself in all of it.

From these "Gordons" must come a winner, the one who will determine the choice of the moment.

If the memory of past experiences of overeating (or eating too richly) is not strong, and if the imagination that often deals in perceived consequences is not in appropriate action, it is altogether likely that the will (the decider) will choose badly. All three parts of me must work in tandem to produce a responsible conclusion.

I see this sort of dynamic in the life of our Lord when he approaches his disciples in the Upper Room. Parse the comments of John as he describes to us the inner thoughts of Jesus:

"Jesus (knew) that he had come from God." That's memory.

"Jesus (knew) that he was returning to God." That's imagination.

"Jesus (knew) that the Father had put all things under his power." That's present thought.

"(Jesus) got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet." That's what he chose to do.

Isn't it incredible that the rabbi would do that for his disciples? How could one so fully humble himself in a culture where footwashing took on far greater implications than we can ever imagine?

But he did it out of a fully functioning inner life where memory, imagination, and will were in perfect alignment.

Gordon MacDonald is editor at large of Leadership Journal.

Copyright © 2011 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

It’s no secret that more and more college students are graduating with crushing student loan debt. And with a job market that is less than favorable to the 20-something job seeker, some college students and graduates are looking for innovative ways to tackle the high cost of education and subsequent debt.

Enter the sugar daddy.

Reporter Amanda Fairbanks recently chronicled the lives of young women who seek relationships with older, wealthy men in exchange for large sums of money. “Sugar babies” are either drowning in college debt or facing the dire prospect in the near future. So they have taken action in the form of selling a most precious commodity—themselves. A handful of websites are devoted to securing “sugar daddy/sugar baby” relationships. They promise companionship for the men and financial gain for the women, all coordinated by a man from cyberspace. Before we start to think of these as friendly arrangements for old, rich men needing someone to talk to, as Fairbanks suggests, there isn’t always a whole lot of talking going on in these relationships. While not all these young women are selling their bodies to anyone who offers, many are exchanging sex to a select few who pay a hefty price.

It used to be that women in need of financial security would simply marry up. We called them gold diggers. These ladies would prowl around looking for an unassuming rich man to buy them fine jewelry and launch them into society (think Breakfast at Tiffany’s). But sugar babies don’t seem to be after marriage. And as the saying “why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” goes, the sugar daddies aren’t rushing to the altar either, though the proverbial milk isn’t exactly free. In many ways, this is simply an exchange of goods, but with far greater consequences.

There are a variety of opinions about whether these relationships do long-term damage to the women involved; some are questioning the legality of it all. But the phrase “sex sells” couldn’t be truer when you have a loan bill the size of your rent check due in seven days. For these women it’s a necessary trade.

It’s easy to condemn such practices and label sugar babies as high-priced prostitutes. But while these arrangements are not the norm for most women, Christian women can just as easily fall prey to the same tactics. Trading benefits for “pay” might look different in our more polished church circles, but many Christian women in relationships regularly face the temptation to trade commodities for physical, and even emotional, pay.

Like so many sugar babies, many Christian women (and men) are handed a mountain of debt along with their college diploma. The Christian woman facing a payback plan that spans into her 30s may feel tempted to trade something for pay as well. While it probably won’t look like selling sex, it could be something more normal—like marrying a man primarily because of his financial security. Or she might spend her single years thinking very little about her debt because she knows that Prince Charming is going to come on his white horse and sweep her off her feet and make her debt a thing of the past.

The idea of trading certain benefits for some form of payment or need is quite common in many relationships. The woman who has been in a dating relationship with the same man for five years may feel tempted to trade physical intimacy for the payment of the emotional intimacy she desperately desires, rather than holding out for a marriage covenant. When the proposal never comes, she is left wondering what she did wrong. She has given up so much, and her return is lacking what she most desired.

Consider the single woman who desperately desires marriage, but no real prospects have come along in years. She may be tempted to forgo a godly marriage in order to get the pay she thinks she needs most: companionship. As fellow blogger Gina Dalfonzo so strikingly noted in “The Good Christian Girl: A Fable,” many a woman has thrown conviction and standards to the wind in exchange for matrimonial bliss.

Regardless of their means, the women in each of these situations are seeing the desired outcome as more important than the path that led them there. Rather than seeking contentment in singleness, a plan to pay down the bills, or abstinence in a relationship, they are looking for help outside of God’s direction and provision.

Thankfully, the sugar daddy/sugar baby craze hasn’t crept into Christendom, and I highly doubt it will. But we all could learn a lesson from these college women seeking financial relief. The temptation to sell a piece of ourselves in exchange for something we desire is one that none of us can ignore.

What are you willing to sell for relational or economic needs? It’s a question I asked myself over and over again in my single days. Sometimes the answer surprised me most when I was tempted to give a little in order to get what I wanted. This sort of arrangement is so far from the heart of God, who offers us abundant grace freely despite the fact that we give him nothing in return. This payment—this debt removal—is what all of us, from the sugar baby in Manhattan to the church single’s-group regular in the Midwest, need more than any seemingly overwhelming financial or emotional crisis.

Courtney Reissig is a pastor’s wife and freelance writer/blogger. She has written for the Gospel Coalition’s book review site, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. She blogs regularly at In View of God’s Mercy. She reviewed Give Them Grace (Crossway) for Her.meneutics last month.

Last week was the Willow Creek Association's Global Leadership Summit. The annual conference is a convergence of business, government, social, and church leaders curated by the WCA and headlined by Bill Hybels. Past Summits have featured speakers like Bill Clinton, Jack Welch, and Bono. But the buzz surrounding this year's lineup (or "faculty" as the WCA likes to call them) was focused on who would not be there.

Days before the event Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz withdrew because of an online petition launched by Change.org. The gay-advocacy group accused Willow Creek of being anti-gay and threatened to boycott Starbucks if Schultz spoke at the Leadership Summit. The controversy was widely reported in the press, and as 165,000 people gathered at 450 locations around the world for the WCA conference, many wondered how Willow would respond.

The answer? With class.

Bill Hybels' spoke to the Leadership Summit audience about Schultz's decision to withdraw on the first day of the conference. The video is below, and the full transcript of his remarks can be read at Christianity Today. Why do I call Willow's response "classy"? For a few reasons.

First, Willow was merciful. The WCA chose not to hold Howard Schultz to his speaking contract. Speakers at most conferences sign contracts that include a penalty for failing to show-up or canceling at the last minute. Of course exceptions are made for "acts of God" like weather or illness, but not online petitions by political groups. Schultz and/or Starbucks could have easily paid whatever fine may have been levied by breaking the contract, but Willow chose not to accept it. In addition, Willow did not pull Schultz's book from the conference store–a response many would have deemed justifiable.

Second, Willow was reflective. Leaders didn't just point their fingers at Schultz or Change.org for causing this problem. They also reflected on what responsibility Willow must take. In more than one setting during the Summit, Hybels admitted that they had not done a clear or comprehensive enough job communicating Willow's position on hom*osexuality and that this failure of communication led to the "anti-gay" accusation. (For example, Willow Creek discontinued its relationship with Exodus, a controversial ministry that seeks to make gay folks straight, back in 2009, but the church did not publicize this fact.) At the same time, Hybels took this opportunity to clearly state what the church does believe.

Third, Willow was peacemaking. When news first reached Hybels about Schultz's withdrawal he and Jim Mellado, president of the Willow Creek Association, got on a call with the folks at Starbucks. They sought to understand the situation and talk it through. They read the vitriolic emails sent to Howard, and in the end Hybels said that while he did not agree with their decision he did understand it. Likewise, Hybels and Mellado have reached out to the folks at Change.org to communicate more clearly and directly about Willow's welcoming stance toward the LGTB community.

Fourth, Willow was gracious. Hybels went beyond what was required or expected in his remarks when he encouraged everyone at the Summit to buy Schultz's book, send him an encouraging email, and "buy a Starbucks coffee in the next couple days and just show some Christian goodwill."

For a sense of how the news media is reporting Willow's response to Schutz, Starbucks, and Change.org, check out this video:

In an age when Christians are often (and sometimes accurately) labeled belligerent, arrogant, and defensive, the leaders at Willow Creek showed us a more Christ-like approach–one that I hope many others will emulate. Stay classy, Willow Creek.

In the first Republican presidential debate in Iowa, all of the candidates were asked about their positions on issues and their qualifications, and the topic of marriage came up more than once. Only one candidate, however, was asked about her own marital relationship. The Washington Examiner’s Byron York asked Michele Bachmann if she would “be submissive to [her] husband.” York’s inquiry has now become its own debate topic: was the question out of bounds?

York framed his question by asking about Bachmann’s own statements on submitting to her husband. Bachmann spoke at the Living Word Church in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, in 2006. Bachmann recounted how she felt God to lead her into law and, eventually, a career in politics.

York asked:

In 2006, when you were running for Congress, you described a moment in your life when your husband said you should study for a degree in tax law. You said you hated the idea, and then you explained: ‘But the Lord said, be submissive. Wives, you are to be submissive to your husband.’ As president, would you be submissive to your husband?

Bachmann paused (while many in the audience booed) and then answered:

Thank you for that question, Byron. [laughter in audience] Marcus and I will be married for 33 years this September 10th. I’m in love with him. I’m so proud of him. And both he and I…what submission means to us, if that’s what your question is, is respect. I respect my husband. He’s a wonderful godly many and a great father. And he respects me as his wife. That’s how we operate our marriage. We respect each other. We love each other. And I’ve been so grateful that we’ve been able to build a home together. We have five wonderful children and 23 foster children. We’ve built a business together and a life together, and I’m very proud of him.

York has received criticism for asking the question. On Twitter, York said, “Thanks to all for comments on ‘submissive’ question. It’s the kind of question a candidate will have to face, if they go far enough in race…” He later tweeted, “Haven’t talked to Bachmann campaign, but I think they’re happy with her answer. It was a good one, and most human moment of the night.”

This was not the first time Bachmann has been asked about her statements on submission. In a recent Newsweek interview, Bachmann said that as president, “I would be the decision maker.”

Gary Marx, executive director of Faith and Freedom Coalition told CNN’s Belief Blog, “She answered it the most appropriate way in the context it was being asked. She was being asked a deeply theological question in front of millions of Americans. That’s why there was such a strong and visceral booing over the very premise of the question.”

Other conservatives saw the question as appropriate. The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin said Bachmann supporters are “feigning outrage.”

“That indignation is unwarranted. She said it and should be asked about it,” Rubin said. “Moreover, her answer was a home run, not only in substance but in delivery. First was the dramatic pause. Then the smile — no offense taken — and then the conservative feminist grand slam. Whether her answer is scripturally accurate, I have no idea; what matters is this is how she thinks and how she expresses her religious views.”

What do you think? Was the question legitimate or inappropriate?

Image via Wikimedia Commons.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced last week that beginning next year, all insurance plans must provide a wider range of services to women, including coverage for all Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved contraceptives. These include drugs that pro-life groups call “abortion-inducing drugs.” The Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land called the decision “an abomination.” However, since 29 states already require contraception coverage, many Americans already belong to insurance prescription plans that cover these medications.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) passed last year will expand the requirement to the entire country, requiring that all insurance policies provide preventative services. As in the states that already require coverage, preventative services would include all FDA-approved contraceptive methods. The Health and Human Services ruling would go further, however, since insurance companies would be required to provide contraception with no copayment.

The controversy over the ruling mostly revolves around two contraceptives approved by the FDA, ella (ulipristal acetate) and Plan B (levonorgestre). These drugs work by making it unlikely that an embryo will be able to attach to the wall of the uterus.

For pro-life groups, such medications are morally (if not medically) abortifacients, drugs that cause an abortion. They are not abortifacients legally, however. According to medicaldefinitions:

— Pregnancy is a condition of the mother, beginning when the embryo attaches to the uterine wall.

— Contraception lowers the chances of pregnancy; it includes medication that blocks fertilization, but also drugs that prohibit a pregnancy after conception.

— Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy. A drug that works before the embryo attaches to mother is contraception; one that occurs after pregnancy starts is an abortifacient.

Drugs such as ella and Plan B are approved for contraceptive use because they prevent pregnancy. According to the FDA, the drugs are emergency contraceptives that should be taken within five days of “a contraceptive failure or unprotected intercourse.” They are not intended as routine contraceptives. Women who suspect that they are pregnant are advised to not take the drug.

Richard Land from the SBC dismissed such definitions. The issue, said Land, was the ending of the embryo, not the pregnancy.

“The ‘medical field’ is attempting to define something far above its pay grade. God has already made it clear in Holy Scripture that human life begins at conception, or fertilization, and all of the unique, biological characteristics of that particular child are determined at the moment of conception, not implantation (Jeremiah 1:5, Psalm 139:13–16, Psalm 51:5). The use of taxpayers’ money to fund killing such babies is an abomination,” Land said.

Americans United for Life staff counsel Anna Franzonello testified before the Institute of Medicine (IOM), which made the recommendations to Health and Human Services. Franzonello argued against the inclusion of such drugs in the list of preventative services because they may work after pregnancy begins.

“The IOM recommendation would make the abortion inducing drug ella part of the health care coverage that every American will be forced to buy. Despite the fact that ella can kill a human embryo even after implantation, the [FDA] has labeled the drug as emergency contraception,” Franzonello said. “This really was a one-two punch by the FDA and IOM to force all Americans to pay for the abortion-inducing drug.”

According to scientific research on ella (which was approved by the FDA last year), the drug can cause an abortion at a higher dose. At the FDA-approved dose, animal testing suggests that it has a contraceptive effect (i.e., post-fertilization, pre-implantation effect).

The new ruling will require insurance to cover ella and Plan B, along with routine contraception. Most Americans who have health insurance already belong to plans that cover this medication. Most state Medicaid plans also include prescription contraception coverage.

It can be difficult to find out if a particular plan covers emergency contraception. We investigated one large religious-based plan: the health care plan offered by the Southern Baptist Convention. The SBC provides health care coverage through GuideStone Financial Resources. The plans offered by GuideStone prohibit “elective termination of pregnancy by any method.” But ella and Plan B are regulated contraceptives, not abortifacients. According to documents from Medco, which provides Guidestone coverage, contraceptive coverage for the SBC plan included both ella and Plan B, as well as other contraceptives. A call to Medco’s customer service confirmed that the GuideStone plan covered these drugs.

GuideStone said that this was not accurate. It said it considers both drugs to be abortifacients and does not cover them. In a statement, GuideStone told Christianity Today, “Since the outset of healthcare reform GuideStone has been actively engaged in efforts to protect church plans from any requirements that would violate Southern Baptist convictions regarding the sanctity of life and other matters, and we will continue to do so.”

GuideStone, like many religious-based groups, is not required to provide contraception if it runs counter to their beliefs. It is located in Texas, which is one of many states that require insurance plans to cover FDA-approved contraception (which includes ella and Plan B). The state exempts religious groups from providing coverage that goes against their religious beliefs (except in the case of the life of the mother).

Health and Human Services provides a similar exemption for religious groups who oppose contraception. But as in many states, this would not apply to faith-based groups that employ people of different faiths. A Catholic hospital, for example, would not be exempt. The Family Research Council’s Jeanne Monahan called the religious exemption “a fig leaf.”

“Religious groups that provide social services, engage in missions work to people of different religious faiths, religious health insurance companies, let alone religious health care providers and individuals in such health plans are not protected from any discrimination whatever,” Monahan said. “The new rule will force many Americans to violate their consciences or refrain from participating in health care insurance, further burdening an already costly system.”

The new rule on preventive care and contraceptives goes into effect in August 2012.

Related Elsewhere:

Previous coverage of health care, contraception, life ethics, and politics includes:

Reforming Health Care Reform | How states are blocking abortion coverage. (June 29, 2010)

Health Care Reform Enacted—Now What? | Activists react to the new health care law and reignite a movement for immigration reform. (March 26, 2010)

Pharmacists with No Plan B | Freedom of conscience and ‘reproductive rights’ clash at the local drugstore. (August 1, 2006)

CT covers more political developments on the politics blog.

In September 2010, Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, ignited a blogging and media firestorm by arguing that yoga and Christianity are incompatible. "The embrace of yoga," he wrote, "is a symptom of our postmodern spiritual confusion, and, to our shame, this confusion reaches into the church." Mohler's critique went over as well as one might have expected among those who practice yoga either for health or spiritual growth. He reportedly received hundreds of responses, most of them negative.

The controversy regarding yoga wasn't new. In some ways, it rehashed an earlier kerfuffle surrounding emerging church leader Doug Pagitt, who was invited to debate John MacArthur on CNN in 2007. Once again, the battle lines were clear: MacArthur dismissed yoga as a degraded form of spirituality incompatible with the Christian life, while Pagitt embraced it as a way of integrating the body into a relationship with God.

Whatever we make of yoga's relationship to Christianity, it functions as a cultural bellwether within evangelicalism and its offspring. Pagitt and those who affirm yoga do so out of a genuine attempt to cultivate a holistic faith, one that resists a dualistic division of body and spirit. This movement might be understood as an extension of Eric Liddell's famous suggestion in Chariots of Fire: "I believe that God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure." If running, why not yoga? While nearly all evangelicals want to affirm Liddell's sentiment, there is obvious disagreement over precisely which activities are commensurate with it and which are not.

Evangelicals clearly need some boundaries. Yoga (if only for health benefits) has been normalized for most mainstream Christians in the West. But what about the next fitness craze? In late March, ABC News reported that a small but earnest group of women had taken to "Christian pole dancing" classes. "God gives us these bodies, and they are supposed to be our temples and we are supposed to take care of them," instructor Crystal Dean said, "and that's what we are doing." Apparently, Dean didn't see any incongruity in gyrating suggestively to Matt Redman's worship music.

Discovering the Body

The benefit of such controversies is that they force evangelicals to seriously evaluate and articulate the proper place of the physical body within both our spiritual practices and our theology. Dissatisfaction increasingly ripples forth from within the evangelical movement, suggesting that this discussion is long overdue. As theologian Michael Horton has written, "It would seem that the critics of modern American religion are basically on target in describing the entire religious landscape, from New Age or liberal, to evangelical and Pentecostal, as essentially Gnostic." Against those who traffic in "quasi-Gnostic" notions of "salvation of the soul," Horton suggests that genuine Christianity is a "crude, earthy religion."

Such critiques, while powerful, sometimes downplay the unique dynamics of evangelical spirituality and practice. In some ways, evangelicals are more interested in bodies than ever before. Attention to physical healing and physical manifestations of the Holy Spirit's presence has long prevailed within the charismatic wing of evangelicalism. But nowadays, we see a revived concern for corporeal existence sweeping through the broader movement: Consider our heightened sensitivity to the physical needs of the poor and our growing appreciation for beauty and the arts.

This blossoming interest in the body's needs and expression takes many forms. Witness, for instance, the renewed evangelical emphasis on dieting, or the burgeoning awareness of ethical dilemmas in the production, distribution, and consumption of food. Our fondness of sports doubtlessly manifests the seriousness with which we enjoy the pleasures that come from embodied living. What's more, a younger generation's fascination with liturgical forms of worship—Robert Webber spotted this phenomenon nearly 20 years ago—has slowly infused many evangelical churches. Last March in St. Louis, BiFrost Arts—a new organization devoted to thinking through the ways that worship shapes the body—hosted a conference that aimed at liturgically minded Presbyterians, but also drew a number of curious mainstream evangelicals.

Perhaps the most significant indicator that evangelicals are warming to the body is the retrieval of the spiritual disciplines, helped along by writers like Dallas Willard and Donald Whitney. Willard in particular, in books like The Spirit of the Disciplines and Renovation of the Heart, has articulated a scripturally shaped spirituality that infiltrates every part of the human person. This movement has reached the point of gaining institutional support, both inside and outside the academy.

Piecemeal Theology

Renewed evangelical interest in the body has perhaps been most evident—and problematic—in our teaching about sex and sexuality. Starting in the 1970s, evangelicals experienced what some scholars have described as our own sexual revolution. After the publication of Marabel Morgan's The Total Woman, manuals designed to maximize marital pleasure flooded the evangelical book market. Seeking to justify physical pleasure amid stereotypes of prudishness and repression, evangelicals embraced literalist interpretations of the Song of Solomon, arguing not only that God made sex good, but that Christians should have more frequent and pleasurable sex than anyone else—a sort of sexual apologetic, if you will. At minimum, this is an expansive Christianity, a Christianity attempting to move outside the church walls into every part of our lives—especially the body.

The downside is that evangelicals have sometimes been clumsy in our efforts to see how the Word should shape the flesh. Our approaches to the body have often proceeded in rather piecemeal fashion. Whatever trend happens to be in vogue at a particular moment, Christians readily respond with a "Jesus approved" version. When dieting became the rage, Christian dieting shortly followed. As yoga gained popularity, Christian yoga started up. And as the sexual revolution unfurled its banners, Christians sought scriptural warrants for indulging the pleasures of the flesh.

While Christianity clearly impinges on every aspect of our bodily lives, the piecemeal approach to a theology of the body has significant drawbacks. Beyond the fragmented understanding of the body that comes from attending only to diverse activities and functions, the absence of an overarching theological backdrop risks reducing our ethical teachings and pastoral care to mere legalism. We lose the sense that Christianity proposes more a distinct way of life than a moralizing list of dos and don'ts.

There is a higher good than even pleasure, and that is the mutual relationship of love.

What's more, dividing our theology of the body into separate examinations of sex, yoga, or other experiences runs two additional risks: focusing narrowly on Scripture, we affirm only what its text explicitly allows; or, focusing narrowly on physical enjoyment, we indulge a pleasure-seeking "spirituality" untethered from the biblical witness.

Evangelicals desperately need, then, an ordered account of how Scripture informs our understanding of the human body and its uses. But with few exceptions—like James K. A. Smith and Amos Yong—evangelical theology is still playing catch-up. As Westmont College theologian Telford Work recently pointed out in these pages, the theology of the body is one of evangelicalism's least developed doctrines.

Finding New Resources

The difficulty of moving from practice to theology has never been clearer than in our approach to sexuality. Culturally, sexual pleasure has become an inviolable good that trumps every other consideration when pursued by consenting adults. When Northwestern University sexuality professor J. Michael Bailey recently hosted a live sex act after class for students, he defended it on grounds that he would not "surrender to sex negativity and fear." A measure of negativity and fear has doubtlessly marred evangelical teaching about sexuality, but our unease also reflects a healthy appreciation for humanity's fallenness. We cannot ignore how thoroughly sin has corrupted all of creation, very much including our sexual appetites.

Further poisoning our culture's lust for pleasure is a frightfully egoistic mentality: Nothing, we say, should deter us from sexual fulfillment besides absence of consent or avoidance of bodily harm (and sometimes not even the latter). Unfortunately, many evangelicals have adopted, if sometimes uncomfortably, just such self-centered attitudes. Most prominently, Douglas Rosenau, author of the best-selling book A Celebration of Sex, endorses a "healthy sexual selfishness."

The challenge for an evangelical understanding of sexuality, then, is to articulate the nature of pleasure and its relationship to sexuality such that we become neither libertines nor prudes. We need to develop an account of the body that avoids treating it as an instrument of personal pleasure bound only by a commandment not to harm others. Otherwise, we end up allowing hedonistic, self-centered attitudes to infiltrate our teaching and ultimately undermine our witness.

To develop such a theology, evangelicals should look deep into our own tradition, using the resources we have at hand. But we should not be afraid to consult other sources of Christian teaching. Probably the work that stands readiest for evangelical dialogue is John Paul II's Theology of the Body, a compilation of weekly radio addresses the pope gave between 1979 and 1984. It has been influential within Roman Catholicism, but evangelicals have had virtually no engagement with it. Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family has been something of a prophet crying out in the wilderness. From what I can tell, his 2011 pamphlet from Ascension Press—A Christian Response to the Sexual Revolution: An Evangelical Discovers the Theology of the Body—constitutes nearly the whole of printed evangelical reflection about this unjustly neglected topic.

Learning from John Paul

The challenges of learning from the pope's work as evangelicals are many. Beyond substantive disagreements about the doctrines of justification, the authority of the church, and the contents of the canon—some of which are more applicable to Theology of the Body than others—many evangelicals will balk at affirming the sacramentality of marriage and the pope's teachings about contraception.

But there are benefits to us reading John Paul's work. Perhaps most importantly, it manages to merge theology, pastoral reflection, and practical teaching in a way that orients the reader toward genuine transformation. The pope confronts moral questions without lapsing into moralism, folding them into a broader account of the human body and human sexuality. And he does this precisely to accomplish something beyond a truthful articulation of a theology of the body. As John Paul puts it, "the Christian ethos is characterized by a transformation of the human person's consciousness and attitudes" toward the body and sex. Theology of the Body is a catechesis designed to encourage personal transformation; the text has a meditative quality best appreciated from within. Hence, those interested in coming to grips with the work would be best served by going ad fontes, direct to the source itself, rather than relying on its many expositors.

Theology of the Body provides a way of speaking about sexuality that avoids both profanity and prudish silence. When pastor John MacArthur wrote four blog posts critiquing Mark Driscoll in 2009 for his teaching about sexuality, he contended that Driscoll had turned the poetry of the Song of Solomon into "scurrilous soft-p*rn." Driscoll's approach, which Driscoll has described as "frank but not crass," reflects a pervasive desire among young evangelicals to have candid conversations about sexuality. But while instruction about the technical aspects of sexuality has its place, the church has its own way of speaking about sex—think Genesis 1, Ephesians 5, and the Song of Solomon—that preserves its mysterious dimensions. Theology of the Body provides some resources for navigating that dilemma.

John Paul II provides an account of sexual pleasure from which evangelicals can learn, even if they have difficulty swallowing other elements of his theology.

Perhaps most importantly, John Paul II provides an account of sexual pleasure from which evangelicals can learn, even if they have difficulty swallowing other elements of his theology. There is no hesitation in proclaiming the goodness of sexual pleasure. But he affirms neither contemporary understandings of pleasure nor the deficient theories of human nature that stand beneath them. Instead, sexual pleasure is meant to accompany the more fundamental meaning of the human body, which is "a witness to creation as fundamental gift, and therefore a witness to Love as the source from which this same giving springs."

This love to which our bodies bear witness is one in which "the human person becomes a gift and—through this gift—fulfills the very meaning of his being and existence." This is a radically different way of framing sexuality than the sanctified egoism that limits our pursuit of pleasure only where it harms other people. And unlike the evangelical bestseller His Needs, Her Needs: Building an Affair-Proof Marriage, John Paul doesn't fall prey to describing sex as a need or an impulse within a relationship. Treating sex this way undermines the unique freedom we have through self-mastery and continence, which are essential qualities if we wish to give ourselves away in a relationship of love. By locating sexual pleasure in this context, John Paul defends its goodness without making it utterly necessary to human flourishing, much less the central pursuit of human life. There is a higher good than even pleasure, and that is the mutual relationship of love.

Beneath this understanding of sexuality is John Paul's account of what it means that humans are made in the image of God. Rather than appealing to an individualist notion of the imago Dei, like rationality or even creativity, John Paul moves in a more social direction (as many evangelical theologians have done in recent years). We become the image of God, according to John Paul, "not so much in the moment of solitude as in the moment of communion." The same self-giving love that constitutes the inner life of the triune God is on display in the original created order and through the redemption of the body brought about in Christ's death and resurrection.

In other words, John Paul's understanding of the "image of God" imparts to marriage (and, albeit in a different way, the vocation to celibacy) its sacramental character. The body, in this view, is "a visible sign of the economy of Truth and Love." As the pope puts it, we are a "body among bodies." We belong to the material world. But our awareness of being embodied, and our ability to give ourselves freely in love, differentiates us from all other embodied creatures. Not until the end of Theology of the Body, it's important to note, does John Paul speak of marriage as a "sacrament" in the sense that Catholic theologians use the term today. Much of the early part of his account is given over to highlighting the sacramentality of the body—the way in which, through our self-giving, it makes visible the image of God.

Jesus-Shaped Sexuality

At a minimum, this account of the sexual dimensions of the body has a depth that our sex manuals and pastoral teachings have sometimes lost. But it does so only because it points to the more basic relationship of mutual self-giving at the heart of creation: that between Christ and the church. When Paul expounds the profound mystery between husbands and wives in Ephesians 5, he reminds us that its primary referent is Jesus and his people. Christ has given himself for us, and when moved by the grace of God, we respond with grateful self-giving, to him and to others. While the idea of a "Jesus-shaped" sexuality might sound scandalous, it points the way toward a gospel ideal: men and women, possessed of a servant mentality, freely subordinating their pursuit of physical pleasure to the good of another.

While the idea of a 'Jesus-shaped' sexuality might sound scandalous, it points the way toward a gospel ideal: ?men and women freely subordinating their pursuit of physical pleasure to the good of another.

This account of the body also provides important resources for the single and young, who suffer most when sexuality is reduced to an animal impulse or an essential element of human flourishing. Exhorted to remain chaste within a culture that ridicules chastity as socially and biologically self-defeating, it's no wonder young evangelicals struggle to live sexually upright lives. A theology of the body patterned on the self-giving of the Cross, though, can begin to reframe the conversation surrounding sexuality and human flourishing, suggesting patterns of embodied life in which the single and married can equally partake.

An evangelical theology of the body would also help counteract the sloppy spirituality whose increasing popularity undermines the distinctness of our witness. The way to minimize yoga's appeal as a spiritual practice is to recover an understanding of the body that makes the practices we see in Scripture more compelling. Such a theology could also take on a more evangelistic tone: If ever the dignity and status of the body were in question, it is now, and evangelicals have an opportunity to welcome bodies of all sorts, giving them an intrinsic dignity and worth they may not have elsewhere.

When Paul exhorts the church at Rome to "offer [their] bodies as living sacrifices," he is commending to them a spiritual act of worship. Our bodies, and what we do with them, matter to God. They've been given as a gift—a gift meant to be returned to his service. As evangelicals, the pattern for our sacrifice must be the pattern of the Cross, and the power for our giving must be the power of the Resurrection. Otherwise, our ethics will be moralism and our spirituality will be disconnected from the unique revelation of God to man in the incarnate person of Jesus Christ.

Matthew Lee Anderson is author of Earthen Vessels: Why Our Bodies Matter to Our Faith (Bethany House). A graduate of Biola University's Torrey Honors Institute, he blogs at MereOrthodoxy.com.

Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

A Bible study based on this article, "God has a Wonderful Plan for Your Body," is available at ChristianBibleStudies.com.

Pope John Paul's Theology of the Body is available at TheologyoftheBody.net.

Matthew Lee Anderson's book Earthen Vessels: Why Our Bodies Matter to our Faith is available from ChristianBook.com and other book retailers. Anderson also blogs at MereOrthodoxy.com.

Previous Christianity Today articles on theology, health, and body image include:

Taming the Image | People engage electronic media an average of 8 hours a day. Do they really need more at church? (June 20, 2011)

Christians and Cosmetic Surgery? | Five women discuss the nature of true beauty and "improving" on God's creation. (November 28, 2007)

Yes to Yoga | Can a Christian breathe air that has been offered to idols? (May 19, 2005)

Sex in the Body of Christ | Chastity is a spiritual discipline for the whole church. (May 13, 2005)

The Weigh and the Truth | Christian dieting programs—like Gwen Shamblin's Weigh Down Diet—help believers pray off the pounds. But what deeper messages are they sending about faith and fitness? (August 25, 2000)

True confessions: Zombieland, directed by Reuben Fleischer, is one of my favorite movies from 2009. It was funny and clever and innovative. I loved the sweet, nerdy hero (played by Jesse Eisenberg of The Social Network and Adventureland, for whom I have an enormous soft spot); the blustery but soft-hearted zombie hunter (Woody Harrelson); the tough, funny sisters (Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin).The movie winked and nudged its way through pop culture references and a cheery apocalypse, and gave us reason to root for its characters.

So maybe I’d set my hopes too high for 30 Minutes or Less, Fleischer’s latest. But really: is it too much to hope for an interesting narrative, or a single sympathetic character, or maybe a female who doesn’t exist just as a sort of point of contention between two dudes?

Apparently.

30 Minutes or Less centers around twentysomething pizza delivery boy Nick (Eisenberg) who, by all appearances, has pretty much given up on life beyond watching action movies, playing Call of Duty, and earning a little money. He lives in his native Grand Rapids with his childhood best friend Chet (Aziz Ansari of Parks and Recreation), an elementary school teacher. Nick likes Chet’s sister a lot, but she’s moving to Atlanta for a job, on her way up in the world.

Grand Rapids is also home to Dwayne (Danny McBride), a middle-aged loser who lives with his lottery-winning ex-Marine father and hangs out mostly with the dimwitted Travis (Nick Swardson), the sort of guy who doesn’t know how to tell a “that’s what she said” joke properly. Dwayne hates his father—who, rather reasonably, hounds him to get a job—and realizes that the best get-rich-quick scheme would simply be to knock off the old man and inherit his considerable fortune, then open a tanning salon/prostitution ring.

But of course Dwayne and Travis can’t pull off that kind of stunt themselves. They’ll have to hire a hit man (unimaginatively based in Detroit). But that means they need $100,000. They could hold up a bank, but they’re too scared or lazy or both to do that themselves either. Aha: a better plan—kidnap some hapless loser, preferably a pizza boy, strap a bomb to him, and blackmail him into robbing the bank. You can see where this is going.

One place it’s not going—to play well, that is: In Erie, Pennsylvania, where a similar case occurred in 2003 when a real-life pizza delivery man was killed by a bomb strapped to his chest. The man’s family is nothappy about this film, and don’t find anything funny about it.

They’re not alone. Sometimes, 30 Minutes or Less is funny. Audiences generally like bumbling criminals. They make us feel better about ourselves, maybe since most of us suspect we are either kind of bad or kind of stupid, but not both at the same time. The jokes run fast and furious, as do the often barbed and funny pop culture self-references (the earliest of which has Eisenberg winking at his Zuckerberg role in declaring he “never checks Facebook”). The best bits of the movie poke fun at the way that we—whether in love, or careers, or even crimes—so often rely on what we saw in the movies to give us a script on which to base our actions.

But in the genre of crude comedies aimed mostly at dudes, there are two types: the ones that (love them or hate them) still manage to somehow have a twisted but clear moral center and characters you can’t help but root for (read: many of the movies churned out by the Judd Apatow factory); and then there are the cringe-a-minute comedies that make you snicker like a 12-year-old at sexual jokes and yet are inexplicably yawn-worthy, far overstaying their welcome. This is, unfortunately, the latter. What will happen to everyone is fairly clear by the end of the first act, and all that’s left is for us to wait around for it to happen and hope for some chuckles along the way. Randy humor does not an exciting plot make, nor do this bunch of characters, none of whom seem worth rooting for.

It’s a shame, because given the talent behind it, 30 Minutes or Less clearly could have been a funnier, innovative comedy, had it exercised some imagination and stretched past what it ended up being: a pastiche of familiar Hollywood tropes, laced with vulgar humor, that leaned far too heavily on puerile wink-wink bawdiness than actual cleverness. Or, maybe, it could have at least attempted to throw audiences a bone with some compelling characters. As it ends up, 30 Minutes or Less is just another forgettably disposable raunch-fest.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. Dwayne is looking for an easy way out of what he sees as his problems. Have you ever hatched a plot to solve your problems that went out of control? What did you learn from that experience?
2. Have you ever had a friendship that fell apart, like Nick and Chet? How did you patch it up?
3. The film is funniest when it comments on our reliance on pop culture references to understand our own lives. What parts of your life are governed by the movies you’ve seen? How does that affect the way you relate to the world around you? Is this a positive or negative effect?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

30 Minutes or Less is rated R for crude and sexual content, pervasive language, nudity and some violence. The profanity is pervasive, including many f-bombs and a barrage of graphic references to a variety of sexual acts, both euphemistically and explicitly. A scene in a strip club includes some close-up female toplessness. Women exist primarily as sexual objects. The actual violence is more discussed than performed, though one character is shot in the neck with a pen-gun, another in the stomach with a real gun, another in the knee, and two are torched with a flame-thrower (one peculiarly realistically). Cars get hit by other cars. The premise hinges on a character hiring a hit man to murder his father for his money.

Photos © Columbia Pictures

Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Was the late Ayrton Senna—one of the greatest drivers in racing history—a humble man who loved God and, like Eric Liddell in Chariots of Fire, one who drew closer to the divine as he ran faster and faster? Or was he a co*cky, almost reckless personality who spoke his mind and ticked off many of his competitors and race officials?

Yes. And yes.

Senna is a documentary that shows both sides—and more—of a complicated man who was a three-time Formula One world champ, a national hero in his native Brazil, and a legend considered one of the greatest drivers in racing history. Directed by Asif Kapadia (2001’s The Warrior), it’s a winner for both F1 enthusiasts and newbies. Almost entirely comprised of archival footage from Senna’s 1984-94 career, with voiceover comments from family, friends, and racing experts, the film captures the excitement and danger of the sport while also depicting Senna’s rise to success—and his tragic end. Senna was killed in a crash while leading the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix.

He’s depicted as a modest man who loved God and country, who saw racing as his way of drawing closer to God and following his will. The film shows him attributing God for his success and for calming him before races. Though a specific passage is never referenced, the film indicates that Scripture gave Senna the courage to participate in a race he was reluctant to run—the one that proved to be his last. And he demonstrated his faith by donating millions to his homeland to combat poverty.

The film is being marketed to faith-based audiences, but it doesn’t go deep enough in exploring Senna’s beliefs. Most of the scenes in which he references his faith involve his quest for perfection—for example, “seeing God” when he’s in the zone. Is it a humble faith or a selfish faith? A couple scenes tell us Senna was humble and charitable, but it’s more telling than showing. In contrast, Senna isn’t exactly humble, charitable, or forgiving on the race track or in his attitude toward others in his sport.

We learn that Senna started out racing go-karts before working his way into F1 racing as a young adult. We see him make a big impression at his first F1 race in 1984, though he didn’t win. His first victory came the following year at an event in Portugal. Some of Senna’s races are the sort of drama you would expect from a Hollywood blockbuster—the 1988 Japanese Grand Prix, for example, is thrilling from start to finish.

The racing footage is the highlight of this film. If you think the in-car cameras for NASCAR racing is exciting, check out the mounted cameras used in F1. NASCAR racers may drive faster, but they generally move in a circle. Here you’ll follow Senna around the twists and turns that come with F1 racing, and it’s enough to probably make some viewers queasy. It’s amazing footage considering that some of it is 25 years old.

Senna was a daring and calculating driver, but that also made him a little ruthless on the track. He pushed his speed to the limit and cut corners with precision. He had a reputation for racing better in wet weather—he was probably the only racer who wanted it to rain, either because he was that daring or because it caused other drivers to back off.

Such unique driving techniques contrasted sharply with many of Senna’s colleagues, perhaps most prominently with his friend and nemesis Alain Prost. As part of the same racing team, the two are initially shown to be cordial—at least outwardly—but it’s obvious that things were terse between them, and their professional relationship takes some remarkably unprofessional turns. The movie Senna goes out of its way to paint its subject as the good guy and Prost as a whiner—and yet, as mentioned in the film’s postscript, Prost would go on to serve as a trustee for one of Senna’s charities.

The film illuminates the tension between Senna’s aggressive style and the rules of the sport, especially in a prickly interview between Senna and racing legend Jackie Stewart. In one of the featured races, pride costs Senna in a big way. But the sport also gets political when the racing officials are willing to compromise safety for the sake of “respecting the distance” of the race. It’s a shame the film doesn’t dig a little deeper here, because it’s evident by the end that this debate would arguably lead to Senna’s greatest contribution (and sacrifice) to the sport.

Senna was a complicated man, though the film tries to oversimplify him. A dramatized film/biopic might have resonated more deeply—or at least on a different level than this straightforward documentary. Senna helps viewers better understand Formula One racing while recapping an amazing reign in sports history. Senna burned brightly in a relatively short span, leaving a legacy that forever changed his sport in more ways than one.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. Why did Senna drive? What do you think drew him to racing? What need does sports fulfill in our lives? How does it enhance our faith and how can it overshadow it?
2. Describe Senna’s faith from what it is depicted in the film. In what way did he rely on it and how did it influence his driving? How did it help calm him?
3. What do you make of his pursuit of perfection? Was it his way of drawing closer to God or was he foolishly pursuing something that cannot be obtained?
4. What are Senna’s contributions to his sport of Formula One racing? How did God use his death for good (Romans 8:28)?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

Senna is rated PG-13 for some strong language and disturbing images. The profanity is limited in the film, but it does include a few f-bombs, some uttered by Senna himself—for what it’s worth, you’re more likely to read the profanity in the subtitles than hear them. There’s archival footage in a few scenes involving car crashes with rescue crews pulling bodies from the wreckage; it’s not graphic, but it is real death caught on camera. There are also a couple adult references in conversation, suggesting Senna was something of a ladies’ man. And there are a few scenes of women in skimpy clothing.

Photos © ESPN Films/Lionsgate

Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Movies about issues as tragic and uncomfortable as sex trafficking are tricky. You can make a wonderfully crafted, informative film—that no one comes to see. Moviegoers may know they should, they just don’t want to.

That’s just one of the reasons the story of Kathy Bolkovac is so amazing. Her story provides a somewhat palatable entry point into a horrifying reality. We like stories of whistleblowers. We root for these lone soldiers fighting the system. They appeal to us in a time when we often feel at the mercy of bigger forces beyond our control—the national debt crisis, the gridlocked political system, the wildly fluctuating DOW.

Bolkovac, a real woman, was a Nebraska cop who took a job as a U.N. peacekeeper in Bosnia in 1999. Her ex-husband had gotten a job out of state and was taking their daughter, whom he had custody of, with him. Unable to find a job in that area, Bolkovac decided to try the peacekeeping gig for six months to earn some money—$100,000 tax-free, to be exact—and buy her some more time to find employment near her daughter.

Bolkovac went to this war-torn land with noble intentions of helping to restore order. And when she got there, she quickly learned that the even greater need was rescuing young women from the sex trafficking industry.

Bolkovac joined forces with the Women’s Rights and Gender Unit, and began to investigate the trafficking rings operating out of the local bars. As if the horrors of young Eastern European women being lured to Bosnia under the auspices of legitimate jobs in hotels and then forced into prostitution and kept in slave-like conditions wasn’t bad enough, Bolkovac discovered that their customers included U.N. peacekeepers and international military forces—the very men who were supposed to be protecting these girls.

As Bolkovac continued to investigate, gather evidence, and voice her concern, she was met with greater and greater pushback from independent security contractors, peacekeepers, and military personnel. Thankfully, this resistance didn’t soften her outrage or her resolve.

The Whistleblower captures most of this drama—some of the horrific abuse and degradation softened, some of the names changed for legal protection. Of the countless victims Bolkovac investigated, the filmmakers chose one to represent the whole. We see Raya, a young teenage girl living in a poor town in Ukraine, intrigued by the prospect of good money in a hotel job in Bosnia, brokered by a trusted local.

The next time we see her she is badly beaten up, sleeping on filthy mattresses on the floor of a bar’s back room with about a dozen other girls. Photographs on the wall of the bar hint at the degrading treatment they’ve all endured, the sexual acts they’ve been forced to perform for money they are told will eventually pay off their “debt,” a false hope some of the girls hang onto with frantic desperation.

Raya pings back and forth between custody, captivity, and an odd limbo in between—a victim of police raids done for show, and a legal system ill-equipped to handle the intricacies of trafficking. There’s no safe house for her to stay in once she’s free and tentatively agreeing to testify. There’s no shelter to treat her wounds—both physical and psychological. And so she is recaptured by her traffickers, and brutally punished for getting away and speaking with authorities—made an example to prevent the others from fleeing as well.

Make no mistake, The Whistleblower isn’t an easy film to watch. But the horrors aren’t in your face. And Larysa Kondracki, the director who spent two years researching the film in Eastern Europe and working closely with Bolkovac, walks a careful line between showing us the devastating realities of trafficking and then offering us hope in Bolkovac’s dogged attempts to blow the whistle on all the corruption around her.

The talented cast also keeps us engaged. Rachel Weisz is wonderful as Bolkovac, a no-nonsense civil servant who is stunned at what she walks into. Vanessa Redgrave is a needed touch of strength and warmth as her mentor Madeleine, and David Strathairn is at his government thriller best as Peter Ward, an Internal Affairs agent. Raya is heart-breaking as the young victim.

I was disappointed that Bolkovac, at least in the film, carries on a relationship with a married man. I certainly didn’t expect her to be perfect, but it’s unfortunate that she seems to take sex—with someone else’s husband—so lightly when she’s combating sexual crimes. There is also some uneven pacing, a couple overdramatic scenes, and a few heavy-handed moments—all somewhat understandable given the magnitude of the case and the nature of the crimes.

You will walk out of The Whistleblower angry—that U.N. peacekeepers needed only a high school diploma and to be over the age of 21, that domestic violence wasn’t considered worth prosecuting in Bosnia (and still isn’t in many countries), that your tax dollars helped support the corrupt security firms involved in this scandal, that trafficking wouldn’t exist if there was no demand for cheap degrading sex with young girls, and that human beings could treat each other with such astounding inhumanity.

As I drove home from the screening, I found myself staggered by the fact that people can separate sex and bodies from any sense of the person involved—a God-breathed individual with hopes, talents, fears, loves. As I was wondering how these things could get so separated and distorted, I passed a billboard with a picture of a woman in a bikini on it—selling light beer. A piece of the answer, to be sure.

But The Whistleblower will serve its best purpose if it moves us not just to anger, but to action. Eilis Kirwan, one of the film’s writers, remembers some of her first impressions of Bolkovac: “She’s funny and she’s a mom and she has weird ringtones on her phone. She’s not some … self-righteous lady. She’s just somebody who was in a situation who saw something was happening that she didn’t think was OK.” In the face of whatever injustices we encounter, may we all be inspired by Bolkovac’s courage.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. What is your reaction to this kind of deplorable behavior? As Christians, what do you think our response should be?
2. How do you think these men are able to treat young girls so brutally? What are they seeking from these interactions?
3. Throughout the film, who are the victims and who are the perpetrators?
4. What do you make of the fact that these crimes are investigated under the auspices of the Women’s Rights and Gender Unit? Do you think sex trafficking is solely a “women’s issue”?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

The Whistleblower is rated R for disturbing violent content including a brutal sexual assault, graphic nudity and language. Take all of this very seriously. This is a difficult movie to watch, made even more difficult by the fact that these violent, brutal things actually happen. In one scene a character is raped with a lead pipe. Though the camera focuses on her face and not on the violence, it’s an excruciating scene. Photographs in the bar show half-naked girls tied up, with men—many of them security guards or military personnel—taking advantage of them in horrible, degrading ways. Though Bolkovac is an admirable champion for justice, we do see her sleep with one of her coworkers, presumably on a first date. When she discovers that he’s married, she jokes about going to hell—but the relationship continues. This is an important film, but it’s certainly not for young or sensitive minds.

Photos © Samuel Goldwyn Films

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When a 15-year-old rape victim from Poughkeepsie, New York, took the stand to testify against her father last summer, she wasn’t alone. In the witness box, at her feet, sat Rosie, a golden retriever, who snuggled up close to the girl as she reported how her father had molested and impregnated her, The New York Times reported this week, and when the girl hesitated, Rosie pushed her gently with her nose and encouraged her to keep talking.

The father was eventually convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison. But his team of lawyers are launching an appeal that could send this case all the way to New York’s highest court. Their reason for the appeal? Rosie.

Citing “prosecutorial misconduct,” the defense’s lawyers say that allowing the dog into the courtroom was emotionally manipulative. “Every time she stroked the dog,” defense lawyer David S. Martin told The New York Times, “it sent an unconscious message to the jury that she was under stress because she was telling the truth.” Having a dog on the stand in this case, Martin feels, prejudiced the jury to side with the prosecution and compromised his client’s constitutional right to a fair trial.District Attorney Kristine Hawlk, who handled the case, says that’s nonsense. And “testimony enablers” such as therapy dogs are becoming more common, according to the advocacy group Courthouse Dogs, which claims that the presence of a trained therapy dog not only can help bring comfort to child victims, but can humanize the courthouse process overall. Comforting child victims through the emotionally fraught process of testifying in court is not without precedent; in 1994, a New York appeals court ruled that a young child could take a teddy bear along to the witness stand.

Reading through the article, I noted the repetition of the word comfort. “Rosie is a golden retriever therapy dog who specializes in comforting people”; she “comforts traumatized children”; some prosecution lawyers argue that “courtroom dogs can be a crucial comfort to those enduring the ordeal of testifying, especially children.” Perhaps because I recently attended a worship planning meeting and am thus already thinking about Advent and Christmas, I have had John Ferguson’s anthem “Comfort, Comfort Ye My People” playing through my mind all day. Humming the song and re-reading the article, it seems as if Rosie and therapy dogs like her are standing in some very dark places as symbols of the comfort God longs to bring to his children.

But what happens when bringing someone comfort violates another person’s rights? Our Founding Fathers believed that the rights they wrote into the Declaration of Independence were scriptural: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” If someone’s comfort is on one side of the scale and someone else’s unalienable rights on the other, and you ask me which way the scale should tip, I think I’d go with unalienable rights just about every time.

Make those “unalienable rights” the rights of a father who raped his teenage daughter, and the “comfort” a furry, four-footed therapy dog helping a young girl through unspeakable trauma, and all of a sudden I feel a whole lot differently.

I’m not swayed by the dog. If anything, should I happen to be on a jury where a comfort dog is present in the courtroom, I’d have to watch that I wasn’t influenced against the prosecution, as I’m not fond of dogs. I know I’m in the minority here, but a dog on the witness stand would have me tucking my feet under my chair and scootching just a bit further away. I recognize that the average juror doesn’t share my aversion, though, and I see how having a dog on the witness stand could sway the trial.

But I can’t get John Ferguson’s setting of Isaiah 40 out of my head.

The State of New York will have to decide if Rosie’s presence in the courtroom during the rape trial violated the defendant’s constitutional rights, and the outcome of that decision will be precedent-setting. I’ll be watching the news to see what happens. In the meantime, I’ll keep singing Isaiah 40.