Page 1383 – Christianity Today (2024)

The debate over food stamps continues in Congress this month, and the arguments are as red and blue as we would expect. Republicans, rallying for smaller government, argue for a reduction in the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, which would make 2 million fewer people eligible for the program. Democrats, supportive of government spending, favor the protection of SNAP.

And both sides are quoting the Bible, one saying, "The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat" (2 Thess. 3:10) and the other, "Whatever you did for one of the least of these… you did for me" (Matt. 24:40).

I am a Christian without strong red or blue loyalties, but I do think rising food insecurity—defined by the USDA as lack of "consistent access throughout the year to adequate food"—should concern every one of us. As research continues to reveal the widening gap between rich and poor, many poor Americans struggle to overcome the systemic inequities that restrict their access to the resources necessary for their rescue.

Regrettably, I have only begun caring about the protection of SNAP since my teenage nephew came to live with us this year and began sharing with us his painful childhood stories of food insecurity. I confess to usually affording the insularity wealth buys, my life comfortably sheltered from the struggles of the poor. I am one of the rich getting richer, and borrowing Ron Sider's phrase, I don't often know how to live as a "rich Christian in an age of hunger." And yet I want to learn. I want to grow in generosity and compassion. I want to "do good, be rich in good works, be generous and ready to share," (1 Tim. 6:18).

My nephew, now 18, grew up hungry. Unlike my own children, who, by no merit of their own, landed into an upper middle-class family with two well-educated parents, my nephew (whose father died when he was young) was raised by a single mother who cobbled together an existence from minimum-wage jobs—and welfare. For a while, the live-in boyfriend delivered pizzas and brought in a little extra cash, but it was never enough to feed the little boy whose childhood passed in the quiet anxiety between government checks, as he looked forward to calling the toll-free number on the back of his mother's EBT card to see whether the monthly allotment of $100 been added.

Despite our stereotypes of lazy welfare queens (and some will argue that my nephew's mother, before her death, had been one), 4 of every 5 SNAP enrollees are either working or can't work because they lack access to childcare, suffer from a disability, or are elderly. Like my nephew, they are even children themselves. People who criticize or outright dismiss the food stamp program all have stories of the tattooed bum paying for his groceries with WIC checks (a caricature crassly painted by Daniel Flynn in his piece for The American Spectator)—or alternatively, the young mother giving birth to more WIC checks (excuse me, babies). But these people do not fairly represent the Americans who may have more legitimate reason for relying on food stamps. Perhaps we could even say that the majority of SNAP recipients are the widow, the orphan, and the alien—people whom God rises to defend (Ps. 68:5).

It's in this vein that I favor protection of SNAP, not because I cede what is arguably the Church's responsibility to the State, but because I believe God has instituted the government as a servant for our good (Rom. 13:4). Until the Church can succeed in stretching its hands across demographic divides—rich and poor, black and white, urban and suburban and rural—for the necessary sharing of its resources, it cannot adequately resolve the inequities into which people are born. This necessitates some level of government intervention, including providing food for the hungry. This is why evangelical Christians—Republican and Democrat—should link arms with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Jewish Federations of North America, and many other religious organizations to lobby for the protection of the food stamp program.

Undoubtedly, SNAP is an imperfect program, and some recipients abuse their benefits by exchanging them for cash. As The Weekly Standard reported in August, illegal trafficking is on the rise. However, trafficking rates have significantly declined since the '90s, and the abuse of benefits does not actually cost the government more money, but instead, diverts the benefits from their intended purpose, reports the USDA. Let's be clear: if we're debating deficit reduction, it cannot be achieved by correcting the abuse of food stamps. Saving the government money will only be served by enrolling fewer Americans—a hard cut to make when more need the program.

The solutions we propose for reducing poverty will always provoke an important question: How do we help the poor without creating systems of dependence that inevitably entrap them? Welfare—and work—are both legitimate answers in their own right. As the Church, we will continue to wrestle with how best to live into our calling to "seek justice; correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause," (Isaiah 1:17), but I suggest we might begin, in this time of economic insecurity and rising inequity, by defending the food stamp program, which, for many millions of Americans, is an answer to the prayer our Lord taught us to pray:

Give us this day our daily bread.

Should a blind person be permitted to carry a gun in public? That’s the focus of a court battle currently underway in Iowa. Advocates for extending the “conceal and carry” law to include blind citizens say the visually impaired should not be discriminated against because of their disability. Second, they say a gun is not inherently evil and every American has a constitutional right to own one.

Even if I agreed with each individual statement in this argument, I would still find myself uncomfortable with the idea of a blind person carrying a loaded weapon on the street. While such a law might make legal sense, it just doesn’t make common sense.

I feel the same way about anger. I’ve heard numerous theological and biblical arguments in recent years about Christians wielding “righteous anger.” The term is used to justify the rants of Christians against all manner of enemy. Sometimes our crosshairs are fixed on a politician or party, a social injustice, an expression of cultural immorality, some false teaching, or another Christian we determine is off the reservation. We hammer out a snarky tweet, or we post a rage-filled blog entry, and our outrage quickly kindles a bonfire of righteous indignation via comments, retweets, and likes.

My colleague at Christianity Today, Katelyn Beaty, has written a very thoughtful editorial about the self-righteous impulse behind online Christian outrage. She writes:

Journalist Katie J. M. Baker wrote that one reason she indulges in “hate-reading”—wherein one visits a website just to feel outraged—is that it “never makes me feel inferior. Instead, I’ve realized, it makes me feel superior.”

I wonder if at the root of our Internet outrage is the need to show that we are righteous—specifically, more righteous than others. That the ancient impulse to justify ourselves apart from God is driving so much Twitter and Facebook rage (including my own). It wouldn’t be the first time that religious folks “trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt” (Luke 18:9, ESV).

I recognize myself in Katelyn’s analysis. There is a a delicious self-satisfaction that I enjoy when I get angry. As a result, I’ve been on an anger diet. I’m attempting to withhold my outrage, keep my mouth closed, my keyboard off, and focus my attention on blessing, rather than blasting, those I disagree with.

“But aren’t there times when anger is justified?” you may ask. Of course there are. “And didn’t Jesus get angry?” Yes, he did. “And isn’t there such a thing as righteous anger?” Yes, there is.

Like a gun, anger is not inherently evil, but it is powerful. In the wrong hands it can do terrible damage. I believe a theological case can be made for the righteous deployment of anger. In the right hands, with the right training, and from the right heart, anger can be wielded lovingly to bring correction and healing. I trust Jesus to use anger this way. I don’t yet trust myself. I have misfired too many times. I have hurt too many innocent people. I have proven incapable of disentangling my righteous and sinful motives for pulling the trigger.

There are plenty of Christian leaders online who have aggregated large audiences, sold many books, and even built significant ministries through their anger. Outrage is a powerful and effective motivator (particularly when paired with fear). I sometimes feel the temptation to copy these tactics, particularly as a blogger/author/speaker for whom building an audience is how the bills get paid. “Pick your nemesis and unleash digital shock and awe,” the little devil on my shoulder will whisper. “You’ll be doing the Church a service by eviscerating that idea/leader/movement.”

“I would only be doing it with the best of intentions,” I tell myself. Bullies always justify their actions by listing their good intentions. That’s why the road to hell is paved with them. The truth is I can make a strong theological argument for the righteous deployment of anger, but given my own track record and those of others I’ve seen I’m hesitant to endorse the use of anger by any and every Christian against any and every enemy.

Like arming the blind, the use of anger by Christian leaders might make biblical sense, I’m just not sure it makes common sense.

Update (Sept. 16): Concerns continue to mount over measles, with 2013 on pace to become the worst year for infections since 1996, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More than 20 of this year's 159 cases and counting have been traced to Eagle Mountain International Church, now under scrutiny for its past teachings on immunizations.

A former church staff member told CNN that she did not vaccinate her daughter for six years due to beliefs "permeating throughout the church" that vaccines "showed a lack of faith that God would protect and heal you."

However, Eagle Mountain leaders refute such reports, stating the church does not have an "anti-vaccination" policy or attitude and has never preached or advised against vaccinations. Senior pastor Terri Pearsons told the Associated Press that her concerns were "primarily with very young children who have a family history of autism and with bundling too many immunizations at one time."

The church has offered free vaccinations to approximately 220 church members since the outbreak.

—–

[First published on Aug. 27 as "Largest Measles Outbreak Linked to 'Health and Wealth' Megachurch"]

(RNS) Measles is making a worrisome resurgence across the U.S., with at least 135 documented cases this year—most recently at a Texas megachurch.

Measles, once a common childhood infection that killed up to 500 Americans a year, has been officially eradicated in the Western Hemisphere. For many years, the few dozen measles diagnoses in the U.S. were "imported" cases in individuals who traveled from countries where the virus remains common. High vaccination rates largely halted the virus at the North American border.

The country's safety net has become more porous in recent years. Although overall vaccination rates remain high, communities of like-minded parents who refuse immunizations for their children have been vulnerable to outbreaks.

The latest measles outbreak is in Texas, where the virus has sickened 25 people, most of whom are members or visitors of a church led by the daughter of televangelist Kenneth Copeland.

Fifteen of the measles cases are centered around Eagle Mountain International Church in Newark, Texas, whose senior pastor, Terri Pearsons, has previously been critical of measles vaccinations.

The outbreak was started by a visitor to the church who had recently traveled to a country where measles remains common, according to Tarrant County Public Health spokesman Al Roy.

Those sickened by measles include nine children and six adults, ranging in age from 4 months old to 44 years old. At least 12 of those infected were not fully immunized against measles, Roy said. The other patients have no record of being vaccinated. The 4-month-old is too young to have been received the measles vaccine, which is typically given at 1, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"This is a classic example of how measles is being reintroduced," said William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert and professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville.

The U.S. has had more than twice as many confirmed measles cases this year than all of last year, when there were just 55, according to the CDC. Flare-ups brought on by foreign travel have caused that number to spike as high as 220 measles cases in 2011.

New York City also has battled a measles epidemic this year, with at least 58 cases, mostly in close-knit Orthodox Jewish communities. City officials say the outbreak was started by someone who traveled to the United Kingdom which, along with Europe, has suffered large measles outbreaks in recent years. One of the New York children with measles developed pneumonia. Two pregnant women were hospitalized and one suffered a miscarriage, city health officials say.

Other vaccine-preventable diseases also have broken out in recent years, including whooping cough and mumps. Some whooping cough outbreaks have clustered around private schools with lax vaccination requirements, according to CDC studies.

Measles particularly alarms doctors because it spreads like lightning and kills one in every 1,000 people infected. Officials in Oklahoma—which hasn't had a measles case since 1997—said the Texas outbreak has put them on alert for signs of the virus, which produces a characteristic red rash and high fever, and infects about 90 percent of unimmunized people who are exposed to it. The virus can infect people even two hours after a sick person has left the room.

In an Aug. 21 statement, Lori Linstead, director of immunization services at the Oklahoma State Department of Health, said officials in her state, "are worried about the current outbreak of measles in Texas, because measles is very contagious, spreads like wildfire and can be very serious."

At the Texas church, the visitor infected not only the congregation and staff, but the church's on-site day care center,according to an announcement on Eagle Mountain's website. Health officials notified the church of the measles outbreak Aug. 14, and the church sponsored a vaccination clinic Aug. 18.

All of the school-age children infected in the Eagle Mountain outbreak were home-schooled, health officials say. Texas requires children be vaccinated before attending school.

In an Aug. 15 statement, Eagle Mountain's pastor, Terri Pearsons, said she still has some reservations about vaccines. "The concerns we have had are primarily with very young children who have family history of autism and with bundling too many immunizations at one time," she said.

Young children are actually among the most vulnerable to measles, Schaffner says. Their tiny airways can easily swell shut. "This is a sadly misinformed religious leader," Schaffner said.

(Liz Szabo writes for USA Today)

Editor's Note: CT has previously reported on vaccines, including a British Christian's denial of U.S. citizenship because she chose abstinence instead of an HPV vaccine and why parents should love their neighbors by vaccinating their children. CT has also reported on faith healing, including homicide convictions for parents who chose prayer instead of medical care for their children and whether faith healing should be legally protected.

CT has also reported on Kenneth Copeland, including his involvement in a long-running IRS and Senate investigation of televangelists (which ended with no penalties), as well as his lawsuit loss against a critical website.

An outstanding collection of essays.

Sometime in your late 20s, you start to notice a change with the invites sitting in your mailbox. The creamy white paper requesting your presence at a wedding transforms into a dainty baby-shower pink or blue. That same friend who just walked down that aisle is now having a baby. I have fun celebrating with my expecting friends, until the inevitable question comes my way.

"So when are you going to have a baby?"

Long before my husband and I married, we talked about having kids and agreed we were in no rush. We both assumed that when the time was right, we'd know. Lately though, we've begun doubt that the right time will ever come. We're considering not having kids.

Neither of us feels any desire to reproduce, certainly not right now, and we aren't scared of a potential future of "just us two." We actually welcome the idea. And while we love our friends' kids, we just don't love all of the things that would come with having our own.

Let me reiterate that: We are not kid-haters. Being around friends with a houseful of kids doesn't cause us misery. It fills us with the same type of awe we get from watching ultra-marathon runners or astrophysicists. It's a glimpse into a foreign world we enjoy visiting.

Truthfully, the entire time we've been discussing this "radical" option, it never occurred to either of us that what we were talking about doing could be seen as sinful. It wasn't until I started researching the church's traditional stance on sexuality that I saw the huge weight placed on procreation.

God's words to "be fruitful and multiply" were not taken by most believers as a blessing for just Adam and Eve, but a commandment for all Christians for the rest of existence. Church tradition holds that the overall purpose for marriage is the creation of children.

But is this true?

Does a married couple need to have children to bring God glory?

Not according to all Christian theologians. James Brownson, professor at Western Theological Seminary says in his book, Bible, Gender, Sexuality:

The command to "be fruitful and multiply" is not given merely to the man and the woman. It is also given to the animals (Gen 1:22) and is thus not a directive given uniquely to human marriage. This in itself calls into question whether the essence of marriage is in view here…

He goes onto say:

Genesis 2, which explores the one-flesh marital bond in detail, does not mention procreation at all. Here, if anywhere in Scripture, the essence of marriage is clearly in view — and procreation is never mentioned… similarly, the most extended meditation on sexual love in the entire Old Testament, the Song of Songs, makes no mention of issues related to procreation at all…"

If the essence of marriage isn't procreation, then maybe we should re-examine the way we treat married Christians who choose not to be fruitful and multiply.

Skipping over a procreative opportunity isn't a rejection of God's purpose for me. When I think of what I was created for, what my purpose on this earth is, I don't think of babies. While it's entirely possible that my husband and I might change our minds in the future and have a child, or accidentally get pregnant and have that choice negated, becoming a mom won't change my purpose.

My purpose is not determined by my ability or desire to reproduce.

It is determined the same way as everyone else's: by gifts, passions, talents, and skills that God has given to use for his glory. Some men and women feel a strong passion and desire to become a parent. They can glorify God by accepting the blessing of children, and raising them with love and truth. This can become their purpose. Other couples might have passions for other things, while still harboring a desire to reproduce. They will find a way to balance a passion for career, or ministry, with the responsibilities of family. Their purpose can be twofold.

When my husband and I think of our passions, we also see multiple things–-but kids don't happen to be one of them. I find purpose through writing, bringing God glory through the stories and ideas that he inspired. Likewise, my husband finds purpose through the many creative outlets that God has gifted him in. When he plays worship music for our church, and God uses the notes and chords to connect with people in the congregation, he's sharing that gift.

We both want to follow God's command to not be selfish with our lives, but to use our passions for others.

We wouldn't be the only married couples to choose a life without kids. C.S. Lewis was married (albeit briefly) and never had children. Neither has Dolly Parton or her husband of the past 45 years. Or Amelia Earhart, the actress Helen Mirren, or numerous other people throughout history who devoted themselves to a life of the arts or science, forgoing children. They didn't have children to share their gifts with, but they had us, who were positively blessed by their talents.

But are these types of blessings enough?

Some would definitely say no. That it is our duty to "raise up the next Christian generation" and to "not reject God's blessing of children." Others wouldn't be so forceful about it, but might struggle to understand why we would reject a potential blessing from God.

My husband and I don't see it that way, though. While we do see children as a blessing, we see them as a blessing that God gives to some people, not all. Some people don't have kids because they never marry. Some have to face heartbreaking infertility and can't have children. And others might not have kids because God blessed them with passions and gifts that give them the same sense of fulfillment and joy that their friends get from their children. There is nothing wrong with finding your main purpose in being a parent and raising children. But there also is nothing wrong with finding your purpose in something else.

The decisions we make related to our own wellbeing can be considered "selfish," but choosing not to have kids doesn't have to be. This choice can also be God-glorifying, particularly if made to devote more time and energy to the gifts that God gave you, for the sake of his kingdom. Not many people accuse priests of being selfish for not marrying and having kids. Maybe it's time we stop accusing other people, with not so high of a calling, of the same. God created us all for his glory. As long as our concern is honoring him, shouldn't there be freedom in how we choose to do that?

Emily Timbol is a blogger and author who writes faith, life and humor related essays. Her work can be found on the Huffington Post, The Burnside Writers Collective, Red Letter Christians, and RELEVANT magazine online. She is currently seeking representation for her first book, Leaving the Religious Lifestyle. Find her on her blog and on Twitter at @EmilyTimbol.

I recently received the ultimate backhanded compliment. It came from a former colleague from my first church ministry job. Back then I was a 25-year-old seminary graduate plotting revival everywhere I went. Now I am a 34-year-old pastor asking her for a recommendation for a hospice chaplaincy. She expressed surprise at my interest in the job. I explained that the chaplaincy would allow me to grow as a listener and to be with people in painful but potentially sacred moments.

"You certainly are different from what I remember" she said.

It was meant kindly. I felt like she had just handed me a trophy for "Most Improved Pastor" engraved with these words: You're not the hard-hearted, un-teachable egomaniac you used to be. You should never be a senior pastor, but we can probably trust you not to bring about the demise of Christianity in this country.

If there were an awards banquet for the Most Improved Pastor trophy, I would tell the crowd what I told my former colleague that day: "Thank you. I've been in a lot of therapy." And I would mean it.

Tangled Threads

After only the spiritual disciplines and my marriage, I would give the greatest credit for my personal and pastoral growth to the numerous therapy sessions I have received over the last seven years. Whenever I interact with young pastors or those aspiring to pastoral ministry, my first suggestion is to find a good therapist. The recently publicized statistics on pastoral burnout, depression, and job turnover have convinced me that the sooner pastors make themselves comfortable on the therapist's couch, the better it will be for them and for the churches they serve.

When I consider the effect of therapy on my life, the word "unraveling" comes to mind. I began therapy because my life was full of knots, which (although they held my life and self-understanding together) choked off my connection to my true self. When threads are tangled together, it's almost impossible to differentiate one from another. They overlap and interweave and you cannot see where one thread starts, where it stops, and what path it takes to get there.

Our motivations get lost in our choices, our presents get confused with our pasts, and our conscious behaviors get entangled with our subconscious desires. It's all but impossible to identify these threads and how they interconnect when they're knotted together. Counseling has been a space for me to slowly pull apart those knots and to lay the threads down side by side. I can then identity and evaluate them with an expert who is trained in thread management.

The threads of many pastors' lives are entangled in two major areas: their calling into ministry and their relationship with their congregation. In conversations about the hazardous effects of pastoral ministry, I think these threads have been under-emphasized. But they are critical to reversing the trends.

A charge and a prescription

The call to ministry is both a charge and a prescription. My foundational belief about pastoral ministry is that God calls us to it not only for the sake of leading others, but also for the sake of healing us in and through our service to others. Young pastors usually dive into ministry with all the idealism and passion of youth, equipped with a master battle plan for saving the world and fixing the church, only to discover that their need to be saved and fixed is just as great. If we're honest with ourselves, those of us who are drawn to pastoral ministry are compelled by mixed motives. This is not hypocritical or contradictory. It is simply part of God's healing prescription for us. We are invited to view leadership positions as places of healing.

Near the end of my denomination's lengthy ordination process, when everything seemed to be moving in the right direction, I had an unsettling moment of self-discovery. I realized how much of my ministry was motivated by my desire for the approval and praise of others. My headlong pursuit of "relevance" in my teaching and in our church's engagement with culture was too often fueled by a need to stand out from other pastors.

I found myself tangled in the knot and knew of no way to extricate myself. That was when I first called a therapist.

New pastors may be working out of unmet childhood needs. If we have been given the message that we are not good enough, our feelings of inadequacy may play a role in compelling us towards pastoral ministry. After all, who is more worthy than a minister? If I succeed as a pastor, then I will finally be okay, right? Maybe if I can rescue others from their pain, then I will find the solution for my own. The attention and admiration in the early stages of ministry feels validating, but it cannot fuel a long ministry marked by freedom and joy, nor can it impart those qualities to others. Once you re-discover your numerous inadequacies in the course of ministry (and it won't take long), disillusionment, burnout, or worse consequences will follow. Even the most lavish praise from your congregation will never heal your wounds.

Counseling is also valuable for helping pastors unravel the complexities of relationships with people in their congregations. Transference is common in ministry—when people re-direct emotions, desires, and expectations from their childhood onto someone else. Some members transfer their childhood issues onto pastors, subconsciously viewing them as parents. A pastor, after all, is an authority figure who speaks to lives and hearts, much like parents, and in some traditions church leaders are even called fathers or mothers. Transference too is a result of unmet emotional needs seeking satisfaction. Even though they mentally and physically mature in a normal manner, those who experienced physical or emotional trauma as children, or were wounded by other unhealthy family dynamics, may find their emotional development arrested or delayed.

I remember the first time I realized that someone in my congregation looked to me, subconsciously, as a parent. Twenty-five years my senior, he was incredibly successful professionally, excelling in everything he tried, exuding confidence and decisiveness. Yet when he was in my presence, he seemed highly unsure of himself, unable to make eye contact, and deferential on every matter, whether we were talking about the Bible or about what kind of coffee to offer during the fellowship hour. Confused and frustrated with his lack of leadership in the church, I took this matter to my therapist, who helped me see that although this man was in his 50s, his emotional age was far younger. With this new understanding, together we worked on strategies for how I could communicate with this man and motivate him to lead in the church.

Transference is dangerous because it happens without conscious thought and it often leads churches to place inordinate expectations on pastors. People hope that their pastors can fill the emotional holes left by old wounds. They subconsciously want pastors to make up for the mistakes their parents made, to be available where their parents were unavailable, to provide the direction or accountability or compassion that their parents never did. Transference is one reason why church members can take a pastor's failure or resignation so hard. On a primal level, it feels like a parent has disappointed or left them, and they feel vulnerable, scared, and abandoned.

Compounding the issue is the pastor's temptation towards countertransference, allowing ourselves to be caught up in the expectations that people place on us. We can give in and play the parental role, doing our best to meet all of their emotional needs, rescuing them from pain and uncomfortable situations, and masquerading as the spiritual superhero. Or else we can reverse the roles and place our congregations in the position of our parents, desperately hoping to please them and win their praise. In these complex situations, everyone is looking for a parent but everyone is left feeling orphaned.

These are just a few examples of the issues I worked through on the therapist's couch. It's easy to see how the lives and ministries of pastors can be choked by these knots of tangled motivations, relationships, and wounds. We do not have the expertise or the courage to untie these knots on our own.

I'm hopeful that if pastors would commit to unraveling these threads in the safe place of a therapist's office, we could live in the reality that we are being parented and healed by a Father who approves of us and loves us. We could learn to live and serve as we truly are, and not as the person we or others think we should be. That, to me, is the key to joy, freedom, and longevity in ministry.

Adam McHugh is a writer, speaker, spiritual director, and aspiring wine sommelier. Connect with him at Adamsmchugh.com

Copyright © 2013 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

I recently read a quote from Kasim Reed, the young mayor of Atlanta, Georgia. He said "Atlanta has long been known as the city that is too busy to hate .… we must also be the city not too busy to love one another."

"Not too busy to love one another." Seems like that applies to more than cities.

There's another quote on my mind right now. Most of us, Ronald Rolheiser writes, are slogging through our days, "bleeding, less than whole, unconfident, depressed, going through life without a sense either of its goodness or of our own, going through life without being able to really give or experience delight."

He puts a finger on our our wound: "So much of our hunger is a hunger for a blessing. So much of our aching is the ache to be blessed. So much of our sadness comes from the fact that nobody has ever taken delight and pleasure in us."And too often, we who long for blessing spend time in churches where everyone—even the leaders—are too busy to love or to bless.

Blessing as seeing

When God instructed Abram in Genesis 12 to leave his country, people, and household and go to a new land, he said:

"I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you, I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

It's a familiar concept; one who is blessed, in turn used to be a blessing. As you probably know, the word blessing in the Scriptures is used in several different ways. It can be a little nebulous, and I recognize the rich nuance it has. But the type of blessing I've been meditating on isn't hard to understand. Here, I use the word to mean "to speak well of, to say good things about, or to call out the good."

It sounds a little thin at first, but I'm looking at something deeper, truer, wider, and far more powerful than simply being nice. This kind of blessing—speaking to another person for good—can change our lives and our congregations.

Little children have an inborn desire to be looked at. Back when I took my three little kids to the pool, the playground, or (heaven forbid) Chuck E. Cheese's, it was all I could do not to lose my ever-loving mind at the constant demand for attention. "Look at me, Mom! Look at me!"

We grown-ups have this same need for attention, of course, but we ask for it in much more appropriate ways.

Sarcasm aside, the Scriptures reveal this looking as one of the most profound and simple ways God blesses us. Numbers 6 and Psalm 67 speak of God making his face shine upon us and turning his face toward us as part of his blessing.

To bless can be to look. To see. But what I notice in myself—even as a pastor—is the simple failure to truly look at people. Especially folks at church. It's not that I don't want to. I forget. Or I get tired, busy, or distracted.

Perhaps sometimes I'm scared that if I really look at people, I'll notice that they need my time or attention. Or maybe I fail to truly see my church and the people I serve for the very worst reason of all: I feel like I'm already familiar with them.

Looking for the invisible God? Or something else?

Basil Pennington tells the story of a seminary teacher with an incredible impact on his students. He was a greatly loved professor, and many followed him into his field of theology. When asked at his retirement what he attributed his great success as a professor to, he said "I saw the image of God in each of my students, and I worshipped."

Looking and seeing can be two different things. To see, we have to pierce through the exterior (one of our society's greatest idols), looking for God's image in each individual. We often forget that before sin entered the picture in Genesis 3, there was Genesis 1 and 2. We were created in the image of our Creator. This identity is what is most true about us. It is deeper than sin in our nature.

Jesus, of course, returns the image to a new glory. The Scriptures tell us that Jesus is the best picture of God we'll ever get, that Jesus is the very image of the invisible God. As we grow in our understanding and knowledge of Jesus, we will see his image in others, and we will recognize it for what it is. We will see kindness toward the underdogs and the marginalized. We will see goodness, sacrifice, service, humility, gentleness, courage, and strength. We will recognize these things for what they are: God's image imprinted on the souls of those around us.

I remember watching my eldest daughter when she was in high school. In looking for obvious religious behavior, I completely missed her selfless acts of kindness and grace towards one of her classmates who had joined the military and was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder because of his mission. I was blind to her being the very picture of Jesus to a friend because I was looking for something else.

Sometimes we don't see God's image because we tend to overlook the simple things. We don't look and don't see the faithful nursery workers, the volunteers who persevere with a small group of junior high boys, or those who visit shut-ins as living into God's image within them.

Sometimes we don't see God's image in others because we are too busy trying to make them all into our image. We extroverts fail to see our introverted friends as image bearers; we bold evangelists fail to see our prayerful friends as image bearers; and we contemplatives fail to see our activistic brothers and sisters as true image bearers. And in our failure to see, we fail to bless.

Blessed by the image

One man in my church, an introverted college librarian, is a deep stream of faith. Our church is bustling and noisy though, and he's quiet. The ways he shows us God are often overlooked.

But a while back, we started to pay more attention. As we looked, we saw a man of serious faith. As he made his way through a leadership class and served on a spiritual growth team, several of us began to see God's unique image imprinted on his life. We began to name his gifts, to delight in who God had made him to be, and to ask him to serve.

"Your faith story is so valuable and will resonate with so many. Will you share it at our Sunday services?"

"Your knowledge of theology, your habit of reading broadly, and your quiet authenticity are just what we need for our Ash Wednesday homily. Will you speak?"

But those two experiences pushed him to the very edge of his introvert's ledge. While he did very well, up-in-front teaching wasn't the right outlet for his gifts. But looking deeper, we saw a knack for organization and editing that paired with his passion for Scripture. And for the past several years, from the quiet solitude of his basem*nt office, he lives into the Imago Dei as he oversees a ministry that provides daily Scriptures to over 1,000 people. It fits. And it's beautiful.

Once we turn our face toward someone and see the image of God in them, we need to tell them what we see. To affirm, in a conversation or a note, the places we see God in them. We can bless someone by looking at them, seeing the image of God, and telling them that both we and God are delighted by that image, that original glory.

The ultimate goal of blessing people is not to make them feel good about themselves. It is so they can move into the rest of their life in God's strength, with God's power. It is so they, being truly blessed, will be able to bless others.

Imagine with me what could happen if we were not too busy to love one another. If we exchanged silence, blindness, and exhaustion for what people deeply long for: to be seen; to be blessed. Imagine what will happen when pastors and church leaders become known as people of blessing in our world; filled as it is with people who starve for it.

Alice Shirey is a teaching pastor and a leader in spiritual formation at Orchard Hill Church in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

Copyright © 2013 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Editor's Note: We can't all make it to the Toronto International Film Festival (which is too bad, since it's where some of the best films of the next year are shown). But CT has had the next best thing: daily updates during the Festival from our critic Ken Morefield. All this week, we've had capsule reviews and reflections on some of the festival's most important movies. You can get to them all via the links at the end of this article.

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and Her, directed by Ned Benson1982, directed by Tommy OliverFaith Connections, directed by Nan Palin12 Years a Slave, directed by Steve McQueen

Clocking in at just over three hours, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby is really two movies played back to back. Him follows Conor (James McAvoy), a man trying to keep his failing restaurant afloat while he deals with his wife's depression. When she leaves, he tries to wait patiently, tries to get on with his life, and fitfully tries to reconnect with her. Her follows Eleanor (Jessica Chastain) as she tries to deal with the root causes of her depression and start over after a family tragedy and a personal breakdown.

Eleanor Rigby's conceit—I'm tempted to say "gimmick"—is that it shows their two stories back to back rather than interweaving or cutting between them. Thus it becomes both a Rashom*on story and a meditation on how we make and preserve memories. The films are designed to be played in either order, with one screening at TIFF flip-flopping to give us Her and Him.

I liked and esteemed the film a lot, even though the gimmick was the only part that didn't work for me. After twenty-five years of marriage, I get that people remember things differently. And I appreciated in the film that some of the differences in the shared scenes were subtler than they often are in "he said/she said" situations.

Given that those shared scenes comprise maybe 15% of each narrative, however, it's not so much that those scenes rendered more ambiguous, but that the others are destabilized. In literature, one can have a reliably unreliable narrator, but I didn't see any stylistic indications that the scenes where the married couple is not alone are meant to be anything other than third-person omniscient. Thus the discrepancies between the shared scenes feels more like a cheat than an insight, as though the audience might not be able to restrain itself from taking sides even if it knew that what it knew was not the whole truth.

The film is at its best when some new piece of information illuminates and forces you to rethink what has happened before. Yet those moments are undercut with the small but persistent reminders that what is being illuminated might not have actually happened. Because, really, the difference between "didn't happen that way" and "didn't happen" is just self-justifying semantics, isn't it?I expect there will be people who like it even more than I. Some might accuse me of over-thinking it; some may be willing to out-overthink me. I found both individual stories compelling, and I actually wish the powers-that-be had the moxie to release them simultaneously as two separate movies. But barring all that, the Rashom*on differences between the two narratives grated, but not enough to ruin the film. They pointed to emotional truth: we all see the world—including others' behavior—through the interpretive lens of our own experience. If the film had allowed the characters to realize that for themselves and learn how to deal with that reality instead of being trapped in it, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and Her easily could have found a way on my end-of-year top ten list.

Tommy Oliver's 1982 could well find itself on several such annual compilation lists, assuming enough people see it. It's superbly acted, carefully observed, compassionate, and heartbreaking in a way that transcends the racial boundaries that will surely frame too much of the discourse surrounding it. Drugs and family cross all racial boundaries, uniting us as humans by the indisputably identical wounds we carry from them. Hill Harper plays Tim, a man who has tried to do everything the right way, only to find his life turned upside by his wife's addiction. Alternately trying to protect his daughter and make her understand, he finds himself as powerless in the face of the addiction as the user herself.

Having been raised with too many vigilante movies, audiences may half expect (or even want) a Death Wish-style showdown between Tim and the pimp, played by Wayne Brady. This is a familiar story. The impact is in the telling, not the plot. Tim is a human being, not a movie hero. In the Q&A, Oliver said that although the film was inspired by his life growing up with an addict mother, Tim's character was a composite of several people, and what he often wished had been there to help him. So it's possible he could easily have been too idealized, as well.

Yet Oliver also stated that he gave Harper (and all the actors) wide license to adapt dialogue and scenes to what felt authentic in a search for the truth of the story. That decision is richly rewarded: the actors deliver some indelible characters, including one who is bound to join the ranks of Atticus Finch and Giuseppe Conlon as one of my favorite movie fathers.

In one of the film's most powerful moments, Tim responds to his mother's direction that he "trust in the Lord," letting just the right mix of rage and bewilderment shade his reply of "What's the Lord doing for this family right now?" Those questions also transcend race and should inform our interpretation of Tim's subsequent decisions.

Usually each year at the festival there is one film (The Way, Tyrannosaur) that bypasses my critic's brain, grabs my heart, and won't let go. They may or may not be the "best" films, but they are films I find myself most wanting to tell people about, most wanting to share with the people I love. Having the opportunity to find those films is what makes sitting through all the hours of Grown Ups 2, White House Down, and Hansel & Gretel Witch Hunters worthwhile. So if 1982 opens near you, see it, and try to give it a big enough opening that somebody will pay Oliver to make another movie. If it doesn't, find it on DVD or streaming. You won't be sorry.

Pan Nalin's Faith Connections is a chronicle of the Kumbh Mela, considered by some to be the largest religious event in the world. Every three years, scores of millions of Hindus make a pilgrimage to bathe in one of three holy rivers. Nalin's film looks at a cross-section of those who go and explores what motivates them.

Christianity Today will shortly have a full review of Steve McQueen's stunning 12 Years a Slave, so I won't repeat my encomiums here. One of the strange and wonderful things about a film festival is the way films dialogue with each other, bringing into relief themes from one another like notes in an invisibly conducted symphony. Both The Police Officer's Wife and 1982 were about parents trying to shield children from painful truths. Both The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby and The Past were about the differences between fixing another's problems and empathizing with their pain. My festival began with The Last of the Unjust and ended with 12 Years a Slave, both films trying to grapple with historic realities that are incomprehensible, yet disturbingly familiar.

The poet Percy Shelley once called the imagination the "great instrument of moral good," for it is through that imagination that we go outside of ourselves and identify with our neighbor, which is the first step towards loving him. The last ten days have been a feast for the imagination. I only pray Shelley was right, for if he was, that feast will not merely have been for my pleasure but for our collective good.

On deck: 355 days until TIFF 2014 . . .

Day 1: Closed Curtain

Day 2: The Last of the Unjust and Mission Congo



Day 4:Watermark, Can a Song Save Your Life?, and Belle

Day 5: Devil's Knot, Night Moves, and The Dark Matter of Love

Day 6: Friends from France and Under the Skin

Day 7: Ladder to Damascus, Kill Your Darlings, Walesa. Man of Hope, and Jodorowsky's Dune
Day 8: The Police Officer's Wife, A Promise, Blind Detective, and A Wolf at the DoorDay 9: The Face of Love, The Liberator, and Therese

Kenneth R. Morefield is an Associate Professor of English at Campbell University. He is the editor of Faith and Spirituality in Masters of World Cinema, Volumes I & II, and the founder of 1More Film Blog.

Streaming This Week

Last year's independent film Safety Not Guaranteed did not receive nearly enough attention. So if you're looking for a simple romance with a little profundity and deadpan humor, check it out on Netflix. For some fascinating (and inspiring) history set in New York City, watch Man On Wire, a documentary about Philippe Petit's walk across a high wire between the Twin Towers. And families may enjoy J. J. Abrams' Super 8, a hopeful story that feels like a less abrasive mix of Sandlot and Indiana Jones.

Critics Roundup

Critics aren't raving about The Family, whose target audience seems to be everyone but actual families. The New York Times' Stephen Holden says it "might be described as screwball noir." Thanks to abrupt tonal shifts and abandoned subplots, Holden finds that only the "hot performances" of De Niro and Pfeiffer salvage the film. But other critics found nothing at all; USA Today's Claudia Puig called it "bland and bloody," saying "the film might have included funnier culture clashes, but instead, it goes for obvious gags and running jokes that fall flat."

The marriage of violence and horror in Blue Caprice, a film about the lead-up to the 2002 shootings in Washington D.C., garnered praise from critics. Director Alexandre Moors, according to Keith Phipps of The Dissolve, is not as concerned with what happened as much as how, as the story unfolds in a way that "finds no clear answers, but that suits both the horrific event and this haunting, elusive film."

Movie News

Prequels are hot in Hollywood.

Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling is teaming up with Warner Bros. for a new film franchise set in the Potter universe. She's writing a screenplay for the first movie, titled Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. This time the magic is found in New York City, 70 years before Harry Potter goes to Hogwarts. Her screenwriting debut will not involve Daniel Radcliffe's famous spectacled character this time; it will focus on Newt Scamander, the grandfather of Luna Lovegood's eventual husband.

And a prequel spinoff from TV's Breaking Bad is in the works, focusing on the backstory of Saul Goodman, Walter White's lawyer. The premiere of the final episodes of White's saga held a record high of 5.9 million viewers, and so it's safe to guess that Better Call Saul will seek success with the same crowd, even though Walter White and Jesse Pinkman won't be featured.

Taylor Lindsay is a fall intern with Christianity Today Movies and a student at The King's College in New York City.

Editor's Note: We can't all make it to the Toronto International Film Festival (which is too bad, since it's where some of the best films of the next year will be shown). But CT has the next best thing: daily updates during the Festival from our critic Ken Morefield. Stay tuned for the next week for capsule reviews and reflections on some of the world's most important movies.

The Face of Love, directed by Arie PosinThe Liberator, directed by Alberto AveloTherese, directed by Charlie Stratton

Friday featured a trio of great performances in (only) good movies.

Arie Posin shared with the audience that The Face of Love was inspired by an incident that happened when his widowed mother saw a man who looked like her deceased husband. Posin's mother didn't follow her deceased husband's double, but the film imagines Nikki (Annette Bening) doing so. She eventually finds Tom (Ed Harris) working as an art instructor at a local college. So far, so good; the situation is ripe with possibilities.

Unfortunately, the one the script chooses is a tired movie cliché: the lie at first sight. For the next hour, they develop their relationship only to have us (and Nikki) wonder if he will find out the truth (you think?) and just how much it will hurt their relationship when he does.

In order to accommodate behavior that even the script seems to realize makes no sense whatsoever, the film forces Nikki to move from grief to Vertigo-like obsession. Why? Tom is direct, accepting of emotional complications, and clearly willing to help Nikki heal if that is what she wants. What does she want? She tells another character that she "needs" him, and the film hints that her premature jettisoning of all artifacts relating to her former husband has retarded her grieving process. So how does having a living picture help?Harris and Bening have charm to burn, and the best scenes are the ones in which they talk honestly about their feelings and what it means to love at a certain age. A movie in which she told him straight off would have opened the door for a frank and tender examination of the interplay between love and grief. Instead we get television-like near misses as the neighbor (Robin Williams) comes to use the pool and Nikki's daughter calls while Tom is in the shower.

It would be nice to see a love story about people over fifty, would it? The Face of Love could have been that if it hadn't been so afraid of letting Nikki, like Tom, speak the truth.

Édgar Ramírez is terrific as Simon Bolivar in The Liberator, Alberto Arvelo's biography of South America's most revered founding father. It's hard to live in a place for any length of time and not come to love it just a little, and my three years growing up in Bogota complicated my emotional response to the film. Most Americans won't know the names of the places where battles are won, and I expect the film relies a bit more than it should on the expectation that names like Boyacá and Carabobo come with the same prefigured significance and emotional resonance as Gettysburg and Agincourt.

In some places they do and will, but The Liberator wants to at least make a play for audiences in Norteamerica, and that requires either giving Bolivar a personal (rather than just political) history or boiling down South American historical politics to something recognizable and embraceable, akin to William Wallace shouting "Freedom!" The film tries to do both, and maybe it succeeds. Early on we are told that South America will never unite because there are too many factions and they don't trust each other, so there's your thirty second history class. Another structural problem is that the film ends in a very strange place, meaning that those who have only assimilated the boiled-down history the film has given them are likely to leave scratching their head about just what Bolivar achieved.

Elizabeth Olsen anchors Therese, Charlie Stratton's adaptation of Émile Zola's novel. She is married, more or less against her will and definitely against her desire, to a sickly cousin with who takes her to Paris with his domineering mother. One day he brings home a handsome and expressive family friend. And if Therese falls for him, well, who wouldn't? Olsen has to convince us that Therese has a backlog of passion just waiting to erupt and do so without making her come across as either a tramp or a victim. She acquits herself nicely, laying the ground work in the first half of a film for the second by giving us a woman who has gone too far but can't quite abandon all boundaries no matter how much she tells herself that she can't control herself.

What happens in the second half is a bit of a spoiler, though I can say that the plot gives us a Godfather-like cautionary lesson about how one sin leads oh so easily to the next, until that which was previously unthinkable acquires a perverse sort of logic. I suspect Therese may play a bit better to some Christian audiences than Leconte's A Promise (the festival's other historical adultery drama), because its morals are more conventional, even if its sensibilities less restrained.

What keeps it from being great? A subplot involving secrets overheard tries to inject artificial dramatic tension where none is needed. This is one of those stories where the characters' greatest danger is not getting caught, it is not getting caught. I was more interested in what happened to Therese's soul than to her body, and that question, while suggested through Olsen's performance, was left a bit more ambiguous than I would have liked.

On deck: Ken sees the same movie back to back—sort of. Is 12 Years a Slave your Academy-Award frontrunner?

Day 1: Closed Curtain
Day 2: The Last of the Unjust and Mission Congo

Day 4:Watermark, Can a Song Save Your Life?, and Belle
Day 5: Devil's Knot, Night Moves, and The Dark Matter of Love
Day 6: Friends from France and Under the Skin
Day 7: Ladder to Damascus, Kill Your Darlings, Walesa. Man of Hope, and Jodorowsky's DuneDay 8: The Police Officer's Wife, A Promise, Blind Detective, and A Wolf at the Door

Kenneth R. Morefield is an Associate Professor of English at Campbell University. He is the editor of Faith and Spirituality in Masters of World Cinema, Volumes I & II, and the founder of 1More Film Blog.