The Sister Books: children's stories for girls I love

By Tilly Dillehay

This one is a very personal project. A few weeks ago, I had ideas for a handful of children's stories, each of which featured one of my four sisters.

Probably got a little carried away. I borrowed a book of old family photos and did illustrations of each girl, printed them up, bound them in sort of a homemade way, and presented them to the girls this past weekend.

We had a sleepover planned with all five girls + Mama, and it worked just so sweetly that I was able to give them all their books at the same time. Now that the recipients have seen them, I thought I might share them here on the blog. You may not enjoy them quite as much as a family member would, but then again... you might.

You know something? I would recommend this kind of an exercise for anybody. Nothing stirs up natural, warm, sisterly affection like turning your heart and mind towards a sibling to remember them when they were young.

And my heart is just extremely full of natural, warm affection for my sisters right now. That's all I can say about that without gushing. I love my sisters! Look at these photos below and you'll see why...

Emma

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Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Emma. Emma had very soft blonde hair and very blue eyes, and a little blue birthmark next to her mouth. She had round cheeks and bangs on her forehead.

Emma liked dogs very much. She liked that they were loyal, and kind, and very very smart. One day, when Emma was still very small, she got confused and began to think that she was a dog. Nobody knew how she got confused (because she was actually a little girl); they just knew that it had happened.

From then on, Emma acted just like a dog.

She ran around on her hands and feet, just like a dog with his paws. Because she was going around on hands and feet instead of hands and knees (like most children do when they pretend to be animals), she could get around very fast.

When her family was eating their dinner, sometimes she would come galloping through the room, and she would get clean through and out the door in just a few seconds. It was very amazing.

She would bark like a dog, too. When her mother asked her to go upstairs and get in the bath, Emma would just whimper like a dog and bark a few times. This signified 'no', but her mother didn't understand it, so Emma had to have her bath anyway. Emma shook her head like a beagle and made very sad eyes as she was taken upstairs.

She would also sleep like a dog. She curled up into a little half-moon shape, in corners and on couches and in her bed, and sort of burrowed into the pillow.

Her family tried over and over again to tell her that she was a little girl and not a dog, but she would have none of it.

Little by little, when Emma was a little bit older, she stopped being a dog. But nobody noticed.

One day when she was even older still—almost a grown up—Emma was getting ready for school one day. She came downstairs for breakfast where her family was, and she had brushed her hair back from her face. She didn't look like a dog at all. In fact, she looked like a blonde and pretty young lady.

"Hey," said one of her brothers suddenly. "Emma doesn't act like a dog anymore!"

And they all looked at her. That was when they noticed something.

Emma was loyal, as loyal as a dog. Emma was kind, as kind as a dog. And Emma was smart... much smarter than the very smartest dog you ever met. Smarter than most people.

"Well," they said. "Maybe she just kept the good parts."

And it seemed certain that she had.



Emma is now 17 years old. She will graduate from high school next year.

Phoebe

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Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Phoebe. Phoebe was a very small girl, with little tiny bones and little tiny feet and little tiny brown curls all over her head. The only thing about her that wasn't tiny was her eyes.

Her eyes were very big hazel ones. Strangely, even though they were very big, they couldn't see very well. You would think that big eyes would be very good at seeing, but that is not always the case.

One of her eyes was lazy, too. This doesn't mean that her eye liked to hang around on a hammock and drink out of a straw and leave dishes piling up in the sink. It means that no matter what little Phoebe was looking at, one of her eyes inched... drifted... and twisted inwards towards her nose.

So even if one of her eyes was pointing at a puppy, or a book, or her mother, the other one was always pointed at her own nose.

Phoebe's Papa and Mama didn't know what to do to help Phoebe see. They bought her some round little glasses, with a rubber frame to stay on better, and big, fat lenses.

She threw them in the well.

They made her do exercises, where she had to wear a pirate's eye patch and look very hard at things that were moving around.

They took her to the doctor, who told them that maybe a surgery would help Phoebe's eye to stop pointing at her nose.

When Phoebe got a little bit older, she started to wear her glasses and not throw them down the well. She did the eye exercises, because she didn't want the doctor to get her and take her in to surgery.

But still, she didn't have very good eyes. Everybody knew it.

One day, when she was even older still—almost a grown up—she sat down in her room and picked up a guitar that she found there. She hummed a little tune. She thrummed a few of the strings. Then, she wrote a song. She put words to it.

"Now what's the use of preaching to your brother
Acting just like you're his mother
Not so nice, it's not so nice
When you don't take your own advice
Not so nice at all
Not so nice..." the words said.

And when she sang the song, everybody found out something for the first time.

Phoebe, who had such very big and very bad eyes, could actually see things that no one else could see at all.





Phoebe is now 21 years old. She is married to Danny Deffenbaugh, and is a musician at The Vespers.

Callie

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Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Callie. Callie was a very unfortunate girl, with whom anybody could sympathize. She'd been born into the Cryar family. The Cryar family was very strange—everybody in it liked to cry.

Papa Cryar liked to cry.
Mama Cryar liked to cry.
Callie's four sisters liked to cry.
And Callie's two brothers even liked to cry—when no one was looking.

But not Callie. Nobody had seen her cry since she was a little bitty baby (and even that time can't be proven, based on spurious evidence).

Callie thought it was silly for people to cry like that. So she crossed her little arms and tossed her pretty straight brown hair and refused to cry ever again. "No, no, no," she said.

She didn't cry when her little dog Tippy-toe was lost forever.

And she didn't cry when she fell off of her bike and made a big hole in her leg, the size of a baseball.

And she didn't cry when boys made fun of her at school.

One day, when Callie was getting older—almost a grown up—she met a boy named Reed. Reed was very nice to her. He said nice things to her, and he bought her food, and he tried to hold her hand.

"No, no, no," Callie said. She crossed her arms and tossed her pretty straight brown hair. So finally, after he was nice for a while longer, Reed went away.

Callie sat down in her bedroom and thought about it for a while. Her chin began to wobble. Something wet started coming into her eyes.

"I feel..." she said.

"I feel..."

"I feel... "

"...like I want to CRY!"

And that is what she did.

When it was over, she dried her eyes. "Well," she said. "That wasn't so bad after all."

And when Reed saw that Callie had cried, he knew that it was all right to be nice to her again. So he was.




Callie is now 23 years old. She is married to Reed Pittman, and is a musician at The Vespers.

Sophie

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Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Sophie. Sophie had curly hair and the biggest lips of anyone in her neighborhood.

Sophie was a good talker, and sort of bossy.

She bossed her little sisters.

She bossed the dog and the cat.

She bossed the children next door, even if they weren't in her yard.

And when she was done bossing, she would go inside and put a tape in the tape player. (Tapes are like an iPod that only hold 10 songs. That was all they had when Sophie was a little girl.)

She would look around to make sure no one was nearby, and then she would listen to the words that the lady on the tape was singing, and she would sing with them.

She would make her voice sound just like the lady on the tape. Even though she was just a little girl, she could do that. It was very amazing. But no one knew that about Sophie. They just knew that she was bossy.

When she got a little bit older—almost a grown up—she bossed the people at her job.

She bossed her own self... although she never would listen to it.

She even tried to boss her husband... although he never would listen to it, either.

Then one day, she found out that she wasn't the boss. There was a very very big big Boss that she didn't know about, until he picked her up by the shoulders and kissed her on the forehead.

As soon as he did that, a little smile appeared on the corner of her great big lips. It spread wider, and wider, and wider. Suddenly, she leapt up and gave a great big shout.

"I'm not the boss of you!!!" she said.

And the great big Boss said, "No, you're not."

And Sophie was very happy. She was so happy, that she started to sing. She sang and sang and sang. She taught other people how to sing, too.

And the big Boss liked to hear her sing. "I Am the boss of you," said the big Boss. "And you should keep singing."

So that's exactly what she did.



Sophie is now 28 years old. She is married to Jordan Shear, and is a vocal coach at Sophie Shear Vocal Studios.

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Comic Relief: Brian Regan on an Airplane

One of my favorite comedians, and one of my favorite pieces.

3 reasons I stopped being afraid of Ministry Fraud

By Tilly Dillehay

 

One year when I was in college, I agreed to go on a missions trip to Northern Ireland. The trip was an all-girls affair, the only one of its kind in the school’s missions department. There were about a dozen of us who signed on to go, all corralled in and drawn by the charismatic power of the trip’s leader, a girl I’ll call Mary Ellen.

 

Mary Ellen was like a bottle rocket. Shimmering with personality and quip, she drew us all by the sheer force of her will. Each of us had been personally invited, and the effect was irresistible. When she spoke to you about doing something with her, you immediately experienced a sense of privilege. It felt as if you were being invited in on a secret, and you simply wanted to do it, whatever it was.

 

So Mary Ellen had gathered a motley crew for this trip. We were varied, but it seemed to me that most of us were very spirited, interesting girls, pretty girls. Girls with varying degrees of spiritual maturity (or, I would find out later, no spiritual maturity of all).

 

There was a sarcastic, modern-looking girl with choppy blonde hair. There was a shy beautiful girl who never spoke much. There was a thin, zany redhead with an absolutely delightful personality. There were a few preppy brunettes and a few Bible school girls…. And there was me.

 

We were going to go stay in a manor house near Belfast. The mission house was run by a middle-aged Welshman with a round pot belly, who was married to an Englishwoman. Also living in the large house was a young and handsome Scott, who was dating the one temporary female missionary also on the team—an American.

 

The mission house served a small village community. One of their main projects was hosting mission teams like ours; the teams would go out with the staff to do workshops for youth, street evangelism, and Bible camp types of activities.

Before we all left, we were given the task of fundraising. We accomplished this with heartfelt letters, which talked about “the work we intend to do for God’s kingdom, organizing and teaching a workshop for troubled teenage girls in a rural area of Northern Ireland.”

 

We also had the requisite girly late night heart-to-heart talks as a group, during which we all told our carefully curated deepest darkest secrets, prepared for just such an occasion.

 

Then we flew over the ocean.

 

We organized our material, we prepared a workshop for those troubled teen girls, and we waited for them to come. They came, and we taught them about self-acceptance, making them look in mirrors and identify beautiful things they saw there. We taught them about how skewed the culture of beauty is (I brought along one of my CD covers and pointed out to them in detail how they’d been Photoshopped); we led them through ice-breakers and discussions and exercises.

 

We were very very earnest, but none of us noticed that the material we gave them could just as easily have come from Oprah, from any old humanistic self-help seminar. The only real problems we had while delivering this material was keeping our 11-14 year old attendees from sneaking vodka into the end-of-week sleepover, and trying to limit their smoking to fifteen-minute breaks. There was no gospel for the girls to react to, or resist.

 

But we were spiritually on our way, we thought. Missionaries.

 

And then something happened, on the second to last night there, that shook my perception of our undertaking. Late that night, in the large room full of bunkbeds that all of us slept in, I was awakened.

 

Female voices were raised.

 

I sat up just in time to catch a glimpse of Mary Ellen, shouting into the face of our spunky blonde team member. She was just finishing a retort, which was returned with a screamed profanity from the blonde. She returned in kind. The two of them shot two final arrows at one another before Mary Ellen took off into the darkness, slamming the door behind her. She ended up outside the house (against the rules), wandering around in the surrounding highlands. A few hours later she returned, sullen.

 

I never did learn what had happened between them, or how things had escalated to such a point. Nevertheless, I was called on the following morning. A meeting was held between the two warring girls, the one faculty member who had come with us on the trip, and a staff member from the house.

 

They asked me to attend this meeting as a sort of mediator. I don’t know why—I hadn’t heard the argument escalate, and was not in any position of leadership. I can only guess that it was because of my face. I think I have one of those deceitfully wise faces; something about my face makes people think that I am mature and responsible, empathetic and understanding.

 

The two girls obviously didn’t want me sitting there, offering soothing words when I could think of them and trying to look patient. But this meeting proved to be an important moment for me.

 

As I sat there, listening to the girls sharply defend their positions, something struck me between the eyes:

This trip is a fraud. We are not missionaries. I’m not sure if we are Christians—I’m not sure if I am a Christian.

 

We are on a glorified chick vacation.

 

And that was a devastating thought. Because it made the mission seem petty, suddenly, spiritually bankrupt. It punched all sorts of holes in my missional vanity.

 

They ended up inviting me to stay on at the house there, as a short-term staff missionary, but in the end I refused. I slunk off home with the rest of the group, because I knew the truth about us—about me. I had no business doing ministry.

 

I was a Ministry Fraud.

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This experience—almost a decade ago—came back to bite me last year, when I was in the process of starting a ministry to the local jail in my town.

I was about three years into my Christian walk. I’d been married less than a year.

Regularly, my job took me into this jail to get stories. One day while I was there, I encountered a woman who had been on the front page of the newspaper for her involvement with a drug ring. Loudly, she observed to her friend (glaring at me) that the newspaper loves to print the bad things about people, but we don’t go after the stories of people being exonerated and declared innocent. Actually, she said, we don’t care about people at all—we just care about selling papers.

This incident, while jolting me awake and evoking a protest, also confirmed a growing desire that I’d already been ruminating over.

I wanted to get inside the jail and start a ministry there.

It had nothing to do with the paper and how it was run. I was simply tired of printing the names of these women, week after week, and never connecting with them as human beings. I’d begun to feel parts of my heart that were closed off towards them, that regarded the people in the mugshots as belonging to some other world than the world I occupy. How could I stop this crawling hard-heartedness without finding a way to meet and serve them?

But this problem does nothing to describe the urge to get inside that jail—how can I describe a conviction? It was the sense that I would never get comfortable until the thing had been started; a restless knowledge that in order to mature as a Christian, this thing had been laid on the path in front of me.

The thought was to do something that was more interpersonal than the services that were sometimes held in the jail already, something with an element of Biblical counseling. I wanted to talk about Jesus Christ with them, and the power and authority of scripture in their lives. I wanted them to know that I was dirty, too. I wanted to see what the power gospel looks like in Macon County, TN, when it is offered to people who have already burned bridges and lost children to the System and done damage to their own bodies.

After this conviction came to rest with certainty in my heart and mind, another three or four months expired. What was I waiting for during this time?

I was afraid.

I was afraid of the Ministry Fraud. I was afraid of watching myself quit another thing, walk off the set of another good intention. Flakiness. Immaturity prevailing. My own sin and unbelief complicating the work of the ministry. My moods, shooting holes in the gospel even as I tried to relay it.

It wasn’t messiness of the women that I was afraid of—I romanticized those things. The dramatic things that might occur when you get mixed up with drug addicts and petty thieves and women with three dangerous ex-husbands. Those things were almost part of the draw (and this shamed me to know)—because for some reason, people raised in Christian culture are fascinated by ‘gritty’ things.

I was afraid of the ordinary stuff. Of 3:30 on a Monday, hours before I drive over to the jail, realizing that there’s just barely enough time to cook dinner for my husband and finish printing off outlines for the lesson. Of logistics and tiredness getting in the way. Of the excitement from new connections with the women giving way to relational laziness and comfort.

Even, on some level, of screaming fights in the middle of the night—or my version of that, which would be polite passive-aggressive arguments about curriculum with my fellow ministry volunteers.

Even worse, I was afraid I had seen enough of my own reliability to wonder whether the idea would last. Would we start this thing just long enough to get tired and quit, leaving the ladies in the jail with another miniature abandonment? Would I get into it for bragging rights—because it’s a nice Christianese tool, to be able to say ‘my ministry to the blah-blah-blah?’ Did I feel a true conviction to go and do it, or did I simply feel yet another moment of obsession with a romanticized idea of living on the cultural edge and making friends with criminals?

Did I, in fact, care about connecting people with the gospel? Did I, in fact, care enough to go do so, week after week after week?  Was I, in fact, setting myself up for another chick trip to Northern Ireland?

It took months of this discomfort and indecision for me to see that the idea was a conviction, rather than a fancy.

Three ideas helped with this:

1.      If you doubt that you’ll finish something you start, you should START by doubting whether you’ll finish the biggest thing you’ve ever started. The Christian walk, after all, is the longest-running, scariest commitment you’ll ever make. You're already in. If God has put himself in charge of your sanctification (a miracle), then surely he can be trusted to take charge of keeping you faithful to a little local ministry.

      Remember: God gives the increase (1 Cor. 3:6). He ensures the growing process, the flowering process, the harvest. He is also in charge of the planting.

2.      The question of time was another doubt for me, but these were also sifted away. Yes, I realized, I work full time and have a husband, but I’m also childless. There will always be a reason to say no to things. Many of them will be better than the ones I have right now.

3.      I understood, finally, that I was actually in need of a means of strengthening my faith. The desire for this was the final push.

I needed to practice the feel of the gospel in my mouth. I needed to see ‘proof’ of the work of the Holy Spirit in my life and in the lives of others. I needed to keep growing in my belief. Isn’t that part of the reason we are commanded to speak the gospel to others? As you talk about something to new people, your love for that thing grows. They are not the only beneficiaries.

It was spiritual blessing that I was looking for—and relief from that nagging pressure of conviction that I, this year, for as long as I am able, need to be with the women of the Macon County Jail. In the end, it made me bolder to see that the only stakes riding on this small town endeavor were exactly the same stakes that ride on every Christian’s endeavor to live the Christian life, every day that they wake up.

You get up, you make coffee. You try to do it to God’s glory. You kiss your family, you go to work. You try to do it to God’s glory. You sin, you repent and confess, you realize that something was learned. You try to go on to God’s glory. Over weeks, months, and years, you  look behind you and see that something has been done. You realize that something supernatural has sustained the whole thing. God has accomplished something in you.

And your faith is grown again.

So you get up, you make coffee. You go to work. You make dinner for your husband, you print off your lesson, and you drive to the Macon County Jail...

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“Likewise the spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”

-Romans 8:26-30

The ignorance and humility of Jesus

by Justin Dillehay

Have you ever laughed at a joke you really didn't get, because you didn't want to look stupid? Have you ever found yourself spouting off on a subject you knew perfectly well you were too uninformed to speak to?

I have. More times than I care to remember. You wanna know why I do such silly things? Easy. Because I'm a braggart. Because I'm prideful. Because I don't want to appear more ignorant than I actually am.

But as with all my other sins, I find comfort in this: Jesus endured this same temptation, yet without sin.

Jesus knew what it was like to be ignorant, and yet he never shot off his mouth despite his ignorance.

Jesus wasn't a braggart.

"But wait a minute! What do you mean 'ignorant'?! Was't Jesus God?" Yes, he was. "Then doesn't that mean he was omniscient--that he knew everything?" No, it doesn't. If you don't believe me, just read Mark 13:32, where Jesus says, “But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."

"But if God is omniscient and Jesus is God, how could Jesus not be omniscient?" Because Jesus wasn't just God. He was also man. When the Word became flesh (John 1:14), he not only took upon himself a real human body, he also took upon himself a real human mind. And real human minds are not omniscient, just as real human bodies are not omnipresent.

And Mark 13:32 is simply the tip of the iceberg. We ought not to think that this was the only factoid that Jesus was ignorant of. On the contrary, given what the Gospels tell us about his Incarnation--how he began life as a baby and then "increased in wisdom and stature" (Luke 2:52)--rather than assuming knowledge until ignorance is proven, we would do better to assume ignorance until knowledge is demonstrated. Our default question shouldn't be "What all was Jesus ignorant of?" but rather "How did Jesus acquire the knowledge that he possessed?" (See our recent post entitled "Did Jesus have to learn his ABC's?" ).

In addition to all the natural ways he would have learned (his mother and 'father,' his rabbis, the Scriptures, personal experience), Jesus' closest teachers were his eternal Trinitarian helpers, his Father and the Holy Spirit. From his baptism onward, it becomes clear that Jesus was not only God's beloved Son, but also the great Prophet like unto Moses (Deut. 18:15; cf. John 6:14, Acts 3:22). And as a prophet, he was endowed by God with supernatural knowledge. He was truly a revealer of secrets. Just ask the woman at the well, and she'll tell you (John 4:17-19).

Many of us Christians often miss this. We who rightly believe in the deity of Christ often mistake Jesus' supernatural knowledge for infinite knowledge. We attribute to Jesus' divine omniscience what we ought to attribute to the revelation of his Father through the Holy Spirit. And as a result, we miss out on much of the glory of Christ. We fail to see that he lived his life as a man with limited knowledge in dependence on his Father.

And in this particular case, we fail to see how low Jesus stooped for us, and how humble he really was.

Here's what I mean by 'humble.' Think about what it means that Jesus was often ignorant yet always sinless. That his knowledge was limited to what he had learned through natural means along with what the Father had chosen to reveal to him, and yet he never once sinned with this tongue.

How did this happen? What did this demonstrate? In a word, humility.

An omniscient man can pontificate on every subject under the sun without going out of his depth. A man with limited knowledge can't...at least not without being an arrogant blowhard. What this has to mean is that Jesus refrained from speaking on subjects he knew was ignorant of.

And notice I say "subjects he knew he was ignorant of." Remember Mark 13:32? The verse that tells us that Jesus didn't have all the facts on eschatology? Remember who spoke that verse? That's right, it was Jesus himself. In other words, the reason we know that Jesus was ignorant of the timing of his return is because he (and Mark) told us. Which tells us that Jesus was conscious of his limitations.

It's not just that he didn't know; it's that he knew that he didn't know! And since he knew that he didn't know, he didn't pretend that he did. He didn't put on a show. He didn't try to appear more knowledgeable than he was.

How different from how we often behave! How often have I found myself making confident assertions about things I don't know squat about (1 Tim.1:7)! How often in conversation have I nodded fervently as if to say "I knew that already" when in fact I didn't. How many times have I "added my two cents," when in reality they were worth much less.

Not Jesus. Not once. Ever.

Not one idle word ever left his mouth. Not one inflated statement. Not one bit of hot air. Not one ignorant, know-it-all boast. Only what he knew he was competent to speak to. Only what he had read in God’s Word. Only what he had heard from his Father. Only what he knew to be true and honorable and just and pure and lovely and commendable. Otherwise, he kept his mouth shut, and let his words be few.

Our Lord was the humblest man who ever lived.

So let this mind be in us, which was also in Christ Jesus. Though he was in the form of God—though he had infinite knowledge of all things, and the right to pontificate on every subject—he emptied himself by taking upon himself the form of a servant, clothing himself in human ignorance and limitations, and governing his tongue as a humble servant of God.

The good news is this:

Jesus wasn't a braggart. And because of that, he can pardon and transform braggarts like us.

   

Are burqas immodest? ...Why unbelieving women dress immodestly

By Tilly Dillehay

Last month, I posted a piece called Are high heels immodest? (read here) in which I concluded, among other things, that sometimes they are. My ‘sometimes’ was predicated on context, individual style and build, and the heart of the wearer.

But that was really more of a side issue in the article; the main points were structured around ‘reasons Christian women who ought to know better dress immodestly’. These reasons included ignorance, insecurity, vanity, lack of love/ruthlessness, eyes full of the world, and yes, confusion about context.

This piece garnered a lot of positive and constructive responses. It also garnered a few that were somewhat less than constructive.*

All of these together have inspired this follow-up post, which is addressed mainly to the same Christian women addressed in the last one. The subjects, however, are different this time:

4 reasons why unbelieving women dress immodestly

1. They are too busy talking about feminism

Feminism as a social idea has affected the way we all think, even (and maybe especially) in the church. Main point for a feminist: men and women should be treated equally. They should get equal rights, equal respect, have equal pay, and stand on level ground when it comes to the sexual relationship.

What this translates into: men and women should be treated the same. Even when logic, nature, and every practical consideration screams men and women aren’t the same.

Good things about feminism: they don’t like when women are abused and men get away with it. They don’t like when women’s bodies are sold for profit (either in prostitution or in advertising) and they don’t like when women get blamed for things that men do. It rightly infuriates them, for instance, that there are women even now being circumcised right out of the ability to feel sexual pleasure—so that they won’t be unfaithful (this is done in parts of sub-Saharan and Northeast Africa, as well as, to a lesser extent, parts of Asia and the Middle East).

Feminists hate this kind of thing (and so, incidentally, do Christians; so, incidentally, does God, more than us and the feminists put together).

But here are other things they hate. They hate when anybody suggests that there are fundamental differences between men and women. They hate when anybody suggests that maybe there are fewer female CEOs because there are fewer women who want to be CEOs. They despise the idea that maybe there is a real sense in which it is healthy for one man to be married to one woman, and for that woman to intentionally and courageously follow the lead of that man.

They really, really hate the idea that maybe men are actually lookers by nature and women are beautiful by nature, and this is the reason (once it’s been twisted out of its good and natural purpose) why women keep selling themselves and men keep buying.

And they have a clear understanding that men are at fault for turning themselves into consumers of women. But they get themselves tied up in logical knots when they conclude that, therefore, women should try to make themselves emotionally and spiritually free to use men in the same way.

Also, in the context of modesty, they conclude that women should be free to go around in anything (or nothing) because it’s the man’s fault if that’s a problem for him.

2. They don’t understand the Fall

It’s natural for the women of the World (in the Biblical sense of the word nature) to believe that men and women are at war. According to the flesh, that’s exactly what men and women are at. It’s NATURAL, in fact, for men and women to be locked in a vice grip of impasse.

Remember the curse handed down to Eve. Not only is she given this awful (and so unfair!) task of painfully bearing children, which the man may or may not even help raise, but she is given this doozy of a curse: “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”

So her desire will be for her husband—the way a spider desires to truss up and devour her mate. But he will rule over her—the way a heavy handed Iranian husband controls and beats his wife.

Is this good? No. It’s sin. But we can’t deny the fact that it is so. Women nag men and long for them and obsess over them, and men control and abuse women. What’s special is not when you find women and men who are behaving this way; what’s really special is when you find men and women who aren’t.

And an unbelieving woman doesn’t just think there is a battle of the sexes going on; she KNOWS it. She sees it and feels it. She’s going to want to win.

So she’s going to use her body, if she can, and if that happens to be her weapon of choice. She may eventually realize, on a practical level, that this doesn’t actually give her an advantage. By this time, however, she’s often already played herself right into the hands of the heavy-handed man.  

But she will never, by nature, turn her heart another way and say “how can I live in such a way that I am NOT attempting to control men with my body?”

It will never occur to her.

3. They see no difference between Christian men and unconverted men

Yes, Christian men are made of dust, like every other man. But we know of another reality,  invisible, living in the chests of men of faith. The Holy Spirit.

There is a difference between the men out there who are Christians, and the men out there who aren’t. We have no reason to tempt any man, but we should be much more concerned about the eyes of our Christian brothers than we are about the Eyes of the World, et al.

Why?

Because Christian men are attempting to be holy, that’s why. They have a fighting shot. As sanctified souls, they are capable of making a covenant with their eyes. This is why we talk about ‘causing them to stumble’. You have to be standing upright in order to stumble.

One Christian woman responded to my post with a story about her experience in a city where a man harassed her when she was bundled up to her neck in the dead of winter and 8 months pregnant. She raised an excellent point.  

This is why burqas are no more a guard against lust than bikinis, depending on the man. (You could even say that depending on the woman, burqas could be immodest: don’t you think there are Middle Eastern women somewhere in the world right now who are flirting, mincing, and attempting to ‘catch’ some dude... while dressed to the nines in full coverup?)

4. They are concerned with ‘what are my rights?’ instead of ‘how can I bless?’

This is another issue of the Spirit. A man with the Holy Spirit has a weapon against the bent of his flesh towards abusing, using, and cowing to women. He is capable of serving instead of wrecking, loving instead of using, and leading instead of controlling.

A woman with the Holy Spirit can also do things that make no sense in the flesh.

If you are imbued with the Holy Spirit, you will be empowered to think in those terms, just as you will be empowered to excuse yourself from the Gender War, and empowered to see the feminist issue from more than one side.

A non-Christian woman responds to statements about dressing modestly by saying “why do I have to be the one to change? It’s their sin!” It makes sense that she would. This is how three year old children respond when they’re told to share. “Why do I have to be the one? It’s my toy!” It would take a superhuman effort for the average child to do something so unnatural as to yield to unfairness.

Superhuman—or, in other words—Spirit inspired.

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I mentioned the bikini in that last post, and perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned specific items of clothing at all—in a way, it may have distracted from the major point being made. I don’t like them, no. But I have no clear cut biblical warrant for saying that my one piece is more justifiable than another woman’s bikini. What I can say is that we, as Christian women, ought not to let ourselves off the hook easily.

We are responsible to be stewards of these wonderful curvy bodies that God has seen fit to put us in. Responsible in a way that an unbelieving woman cannot even begin to understand.

Let’s take it seriously, and dress as we do all things—unto the Lord. Remember, we seek to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.

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Footnote:

*Examples—Constructive feedback: “let’s talk about the fact that modesty practices are going to look different depending on culture and context, and certain rules shouldn’t be applied to every woman, at every time, in every place.”

Not so constructive: “Nude beaches in Europe are a good illustration of how healthy nudity can be for people, if you don’t make a big deal about it.... also, remember this— JESUS hung naked on the cross!”

I’m sorry, what?  ‘Jesus hung naked on the cross’, as an argument for why public nudity should be embraced? Are you familiar with the historical practice of crucifixion? Surely, if you thought about this for even a second you’d remember that people were crucified naked because they were being shamed. Jesus did not hang naked in order to liberate the nude beaches in the south of France.

How to repent like a prodigal

by Justin Dillehay 

One of the most neglected teachings in the whole Bible today (at least here in the States) is the doctrine of repentance.

How many sermons have you heard about it lately? In some ways, it's much easier to talk about "believing" than "repenting." After all, few people today have a problem with faith (provided they get to choose what they believe and who they believe in). But when you talk about repentance, you invariably have to talk about sin, because sin is what we have to repent of. And in our increasingly libertarian, relativistic culture, telling people to repent of their sin sounds more and more like telling them to give up their liberty or deny their identity.

So I repeat, one of the most neglected biblical teachings today is the doctrine of repentance. This is an unfortunate omission. Because Scripture presents repentance as extremely important, even necessary for salvation (Luke 13:3, 5; Acts 2:28; 17:30; Mark 1:14-15).

But what does repentance look like? Perhaps a story will help.

Jesus provides us with a good illustration of repentance in the parable of the prodigal son (or at least in the first half of it). So let me reproduce Luke 15:11-24, and then close with a few bullet-points on repentance from the story:

And he said, “There was a man who had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.’ And he divided his property between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living. And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.

But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.”’ And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate. (Luke 15:11-24 ESV)

 I want to point out four aspects of repentance that can be seen in the prodigal son.

(1) Repentance was necessary for him to be saved. 
While he was out blowing his dad’s money on prostitutes, the parable says “He was lost.” The parable does not encourage us to think that the prodigal would have been saved regardless of whether he had left the pigpen and come home. And if you’re in a similar position right now, the Bible doesn’t encourage you to think you will be saved regardless of whether or not you repent.

(2) Repentance includes a godly sorrow and healthy self-loathing for sin.
The prodigal was sorry for how he had treated his father, because he knew his father deserved better. You see this when he says “I’m no longer worthy to be called your son.”

Now I call this godly sorrow and healthy self-loathing because there is such a thing as ungodly sorrow and unhealthy self-loathing. Why do I say that his sorrow and self-loathing were godly and healthy? Because he got up out of the pig-pen and went home to his father. He didn’t wallow around in his sin forever. An ungodly, suicidal, Judas-like sorrow would have said, “I’m so wicked that I don’t deserve to be called my father’s son, so I’m just going to stay here and starve to death. I’m not going home because that would be too good for me. I deserve to be punished.”

A healthy, self-loathing, prodigal-like repentance says, “Yes I deserve to be punished! No I don’t deserve to be called my father’s son! But I’m going home anyway.”

And while we're on the subject, repentance confesses its own sin, not the sins of others. The prodigal didn't point out the failings of his father. He didn't confess his older brother's sin. And he didn't come home with a sense of entitlement, as though "He is my dad, after all, so he really ought to let by-gones by by-gones. After all, no one's perfect!" This is not how true repentance talks. True repentance says "I am no longer worthy. Make me a hired servant."

(3) Repentance resolves to walk differently in the future. 
He left the pigpen behind and made plans to work as his father’s hired servant. In other words, he wasn’t planning on going back. He didn’t keep the pig farmer’s address or the prostitutes' phone number. He turned his back on it all, and staked all his hopes on being received by his father.

(4) Repentance is accompanied and enabled by faith in the Father's goodness
What made him think repentance was even a possibility? Why did he feel like going home was even an option after what he had done? Answer: he was trusting in the goodness and mercy of his father. Even his hired servants have more than enough bread!

He said to himself, “My father ought to run me off as soon as he finds out I’m coming, but I know what he’s like and I don’t believe he’ll do that. He’s good. He’s merciful. He treats his hired servants with kindness. So maybe, just maybe, he’ll be willing to let me work for him as a hired servant. He might let me pay him back slowly all the money I blew.”

Repentance without faith is presumption. If we understand how holy God is and how offensive sin is to him, then we will never dream of repenting--unless, of course, we also see the light of his glory in the face of Christ Jesus. If God were not holy, then sleeping with prostitutes would be nothing to repent of (which is why many people think they don't have to). But if God were not merciful, there'd be no need to waste our time trying to repent.

The Law shows us why we need to repent, but only the gospel shows us why we can.

God has a Son, too. And that Son was no prodigal. But in love God gave that Son for ungrateful, fornicating sons like you and me. And in love that Son left his home and came to the far country of this world, becoming obedient unto death.

This is the gospel. This is the warrant for repentance. Not that the Father doesn't mind his sons being prodigal, but that the Father has dealt with our sin in the person of his Son.

So feel compelled to repent. And feel free to repent. Whoever leaves the pig-pen and comes home will never cast out.

If you want to see what repentance looks like, then look at the prodigal son. If you want to see what God's mercy looks like, well, there's a man in that parable who runs to meet his son in a very undignified fashion...

5 things I wish I could say to every 16-year-old Homeschooled Girl

By Tilly Dillehay

When I turned 16, I had been homeschooled my entire life. I was finished with my high school work, and preparing to go to college in the fall.

I bought a car with cash that I’d saved myself; I’d already worked at several different jobs. I was ambitious and creative, and had been given an academic scholarship to a private institution.  I had never kissed a boy, although I was a heavy crusher from an early age.

The day my parents helped me move my things into the dorm, I felt that my entire life was about to embark, building into one great big crescendo. I thought that I was about to overachieve my way into a distinguished and exceptional life. I had vague ideas in my mind about popularity, taken from movies, and had decided it was both possible and necessary to change my personality and become an ‘it’ girl.

Freshman year was hard on my beliefs about myself and the world. Sophomore year was harder. Graduation, at the age of 20, with no job prospects, no fiancé, and nothing on the horizon, was much worse.

I could fill a book with the things I didn’t know at the age of 16, as, I suspect, could most of you—homeschooled or not, male or female.

But there are a few false ideas that tend to clump around the minds of homeschooled girls in particular. Here are five things I wish I could say to every 16-year-old homeschooled girl:

1.       You’re going to need a skill.

When parents make the (commendable) decision to homeschool their children, “protection” is often one of the implicit reasons. They want to have control over their kids’ education, and they want to have more time to help them build a worldview. They want a more family-oriented life, and they don’t want their kids to waste time standing in line and doing busy work.

These are all wonderful reasons to homeschool. And homeschoolers are more likely, on average, to be skilled in things like cooking and cleaning and maybe even entrepreneurship.

But you might also find out at some point, homeschooled girl, that you have an underdeveloped work ethic. You are used to being able to do things on your own schedule, or at least on your parents’. You’re used to studying in pajamas, maybe. And I know you probably know how to work hard and are smart and efficient and self-motivated. But you’re used to being the exception to rules that apply to other people—other people have to get on the bus. Other people have to be at school eight hours. Not you.

You probably say things like ‘I just want to be a wife and mom’. I’ve said the same, and for the record, this is still my favorite plan for my life. But there are two reasons why you cannot let this goal get you off the hook for learning other skills:

a.       You don’t know if God is going to give you a husband and children. You just can't assume things that haven't been promised. 
      
       Also, I don’t want you or anybody to get married simply because this is your only career aspiration and time is running out. That is a recipe for bad decision making—and everybody knows that when we don’t have something interesting to occupy us, we are bound to get more desperate (and more hasty). Yes, I know you’re probably courting, and yes, your dad is going to help you with your decision making. But he can’t make you appear interesting, productive, and engaging to a man if you aren’t interesting, productive, and engaged.

b.      Even if you do get married, exactly at the age you intended, to exactly the sort of man you envisioned (unlikely, on all counts), you will need something else to occupy you. I want you to be the sort of woman who can do business with other people, who has friends and interests of her own, and (yes!) who has the ability to make money.

Maybe you were raised in a family where mom was at home and dad worked. I was. And maybe this is how you’ll end up. I hope to. But in the meantime, do this math: your childbearing and rearing years will be only about 20-30 of your total lifespan. Your lifespan will probably be 70+ years. Do you understand that that means you’ll have to find other ways of occupying yourself for 40-50 years of your life?

This is not the year 1905 anymore. Keeping house is not an all-encompassing job anymore. We have dishwashers and vacuum cleaners, so when you’re done cooking a meal and cleaning the bathroom, you’re still going to have about twelve hours a day of work and leisure time.

What are you going to do with it?

Why not find a career that you are actually interested in and pursue it? Not half-heartedly, not as a ‘backup’, but as a way to bring value to the world around you? Your husband will delight in your resourcefulness. Your life will be richer and fuller. You will experience the satisfaction of knowing that you have done excellent work, at an ordinary job, for a long time.

Work is sanctifying. Take it seriously.

2.       You’ll need to guard your heart—but there are no rules which will ensure this if you don’t care about defrauding men.

I was raised with the understanding that I was going to do courtship, rather than aimlessly dating. And I like the courtship model of accountability and intention, although I don’t particularly care what it’s called. (When my husband and I started getting to know each other, I’m pretty sure we called it dating. Turns out, this didn’t kill the purity of the relationship.)

But as many times as it was pounded into me growing up—“guard your heart” “guard your heart” “guard your heart”—there was another side of the coin that I somehow missed.

I was never taught about treating the men well.

I wasn’t concerned with treating men well; as far as I knew, this was beside the point. The point was me—my heart, my needs, my rules. I was concerned with feeling good. I was concerned with not crossing certain lines—these lines were almost arbitrarily chosen, and had to do with physical contact and verbal commitment (‘don’t tell boys you like them’ ‘don’t date boys’ ‘don’t kiss or hold hands’).

So I would spend long “platonic” hours with boy after boy after boy, but—with no concern for their well-being—I had no reason to choose aloneness and boredom over excitement and game-play.

Disclaimer: at my level of overall immaturity and spiritual blindness, little could’ve been done to protect me or the young men who came around. But what bothers me about this time is how very self-righteous I was. I thought that because I never told these boys we were dating, and because we never did this or that physical thing, I was a pure girl. In reality, I was about as emotionally defrauding and cheap as any run-of-the-mill flirtatious girl you ever met. My rules failed me, and utterly confused a long succession of guys.

And my girlfriends weren’t fooled. They knew a flirt when they saw one.

3.       You’ve been mercifully protected and allowed to grow—but don’t respond by worshipping safety and comfort.

Homeschooled girls are usually raised under a philosophy of protection. This is as it should be; the World is a beast and will happily eat women alive. Even feminists know this (although they respond by preemptively throwing themselves to the wolves... more on that in another post).

So yes, I support the Biblical mindset that protects children until they are grown and protects women under male headship. But there is a healthy flipside to this that needs to be remembered, encouraged, and cherished.

Remember boldness.

Boldness is a one of the great Christian virtues. There is a kind of valor that gets lost and crushed a little bit if a girl hears for a lifetime that ‘getting hurt’ is the worst thing that can happen to her. ‘Getting hurt’—for the right reasons, and in the right ways—is one of the great glories of the Christian life. We are promised to be reviled and persecuted; ‘getting hurt’ for the faith is sometimes a litmus test of our genuineness.

Sometimes, it seems to me that the conservative homeschooled vision is a screen for laziness and the idolatry of comfort. Women and girls hear for a lifetime that they are under the protection of men, and they use it as an excuse to cultivate timidity, cowardly forms of love (see one example in #2, above), and ignorance.

What will happen if you decide to go to the mission field, Christian homeschooled girl? Will you be able to reconcile your vision for your life with the physical and emotional dangers you’d face there? Do you think, honestly, that if you choose to live your life as an evangelist at home instead of a missionary abroad, that your life ought to be dramatically safer and more comfortable? Do you think that you won’t need the power of the Spirit if you live in the shelter of well-kept home?

When it’s your turn to parent, remember the point of protecting your children: protect them only AS PART OF THE TRAINING PROCESS that will prepare them for battle.

4.       Don’t assume your salvation.

I’m not trying to turn you into a morbidly introspective navel-gazer, but I don’t want to breeze over this point.

You are the daughter of parents who homeschool. That does not mean that you are a daughter of the King.

You have been self-identifying as a Christian since you could lisp the words that your parents taught you to say.  You have always wanted to please, and you have always wanted to do well. You believe in God, probably. Perhaps you believe the Bible is true.

Don’t assume that your heart has been transformed by the gospel until the scaffolding (your family) is off and you see what the fruit really looks like.

That’s all I’m saying. Don’t assume you aren’t ‘real’ just because you’re under your parent’s roof still. Don’t act like nothing you do matters now because you aren’t out there, inspecting your own grown-up fruit.

Just don’t assume at all. If you are a transformed follower of Christ, it is just as much by a miracle of grace—and just as much a process of Earth-defying repentance—as when a prostitute turns to Christ and is redeemed.

5.       You’ll always be a Homeschooled Girl, on some level... but you won’t always feel like one.

This is a minor point, but I just wanted to mention it.

Right now, being Homeschooled is probably one of the top five things that define you. It’s one of the first questions you get asked when you meet new people, and you carry it around with you—for good or for ill—as a major facet of who you are.

I just wanted you to know, 16-year-old, that you’ll always feel an instant connection to other people who love the things you’ve loved from girlhood: your Annes of Green Gables, your Secret Gardens, your Elsie Dinsmores, your American girls, and your Jane Austens.

But you also won’t always identify yourself as The Homeschooled Girl.

In ten years, this will be more like a random fact about yourself that you tell a friend months after meeting her. “Really?” she’ll say. “I didn’t know!”

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