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On Deconstruction: Or, Why Josh Harris Did the Right Thing

Published on by Kimberly

This summer, I was introduced to a term I’d never heard of but understood somewhat intrinsically–deconstruction.

It’s a term many Christians (or former Christians) are using to describe their journeys of systematically analyzing and departing from some or all of their faith. While I’ve never done a full deconstruction, implying a complete re-evaluation of every aspect of my faith, I’m no stranger to systematically taking apart aspects of the Christian religion in an attempt to make sense of them. I’ve come out of these phases with my faith intact–others, however, aren’t so lucky.

I’ve been listening to a podcast this summer called The Liturgists, run by Michael Gungor and Mike McHargue, two men of faith who had dramatic phases of deconstruction and then atheism before slowly returning to belief in Christ. Their stories are incredible, and it’s been such an encouragement to my very cerebral, why-isn’t-there-proof-for-everything soul to hear from like-minded people who have found comfort in Christian Mysticism and the mystery of faith rather than proofs or facts. One of the things essential to embracing mysticism from an intellectual standpoint, though, is having the freedom to ask questions–and this is where we’ve done so much wrong to people like Joshua Harris.

For the newcomers to this conversation, Joshua Harris, author of 21st-century cult classic I Kissed Dating Goodbye, just announced a divorce, support for LGBT+ marriage, and that he can’t consider himself a Christian by his own definition of the term, all in the span of a couple of days. That’s a pretty crazy trip, and not just for those of us reading it. Imagine what it must be like to be Josh Harris.

DON’T QUESTION IT

It’s an unfortunate truth in many Christ-centered communities that, when something doesn’t make sense to you, you’re not supposed to question it. This isn’t the way we’re meant to practice faith.

When Jesus is describing how parents give gifts to their children, I wonder if he had this sort of thing in mind.

“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone?” Which of you, if your daughter asks why the gospels don’t seem to tell all the stories in the same order, will slam your fists on the table and tell her to stop questioning God’s Word?

In the same vein: when God’s actions in the Old Testament suddenly start to inspire fear over love, flipping over to Galatians shouldn’t be a “quick fix” you use to just erase that image of God from your mind. When a verse doesn’t seem to make sense, we can’t train ourselves to throw up mental blockades, ignore it, and chant, “Your ways are higher than my ways” until we stop feeling uneasy.

Rigid faith, when bent, will break.

Of every ex-Christian I have spoken to, all of them, without exception, speak of the pain they felt at not being allowed to ask questions in church. They describe church leaders scolding them, yelling at them, asking them not to come back because of the genuine questions they asked, so heart-breakingly often being told this as children. We are yelling at children who have real questions and training them to either a) mentally shut their minds down whenever something begins to confuse them, which is a tactic cults use to keep followers from questioning, or b) we teach them that their questions aren’t welcome in the church and, as a result, neither are they.

Joshua Harris has got to be in this hole right now, and he inadvertently helped put himself there, what with publishing a book at age 23 that quite literally launched the “courting” movement in conservative Christian circles. His entire brand was centered around a fairly strict set of social and theological norms–to question anything would be to question his entire career. And when you don’t allow someone–or yourself–to have the freedom to change their mind, you risk their beliefs becoming brittle and fragile, hardened by years of “just have faith”s and “God’s thoughts are not your thoughts”, right up until everything shatters.

ASK, SEEK, KNOCK

God made us curious.

We’re commanded to ask, seek, and knock. That’s not just for material things–that’s for answers, for faith, for encouragement.

Exodus 12 tells the Israelites to answer their children when they come with questions: “When your children ask you, ‘What does this service mean to you?’ you are to reply, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the LORD…”

Jesus stayed up with Nicodemus all night, answering questions. Mary was honored for asking, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The Psalms are filled with laments of why and how and where.

God didn’t create us to simply take everything lying down–he doesn’t expect us to sit silently in a pew with our hands clasped for our entire lives. Did the disciples just sit quietly by without questions when Jesus told a purposely vague parable? Would Nicodemus ever have come to faith if he hadn’t come to ask Jesus questions in the night?

The truth is, all the Pharisees unwilling to question their own beliefs and laws were the ones who got hurt in the end.

That is why, friends, when I read about Josh Harris’s deconstruction, the first thing I did was breathe a sigh of relief.

Why?

Because he’s free now. He can ask the hard questions. He’s not being pressured anymore to stay quiet for fear of hurting his marriage, his followers, his public image (well, he is–but anyone trying to shame him now sure isn’t going to get anywhere.) He doesn’t have to put on a facade and live a lie, pretending to happily go to church each Sunday, successfully embittering and further alienating himself from any faith he might have had.

What I’m hoping to illustrate through all of this is simple: if Josh Harris was asking these questions before being open about them, it’s almost guaranteed he was hurting himself more than he was helping anything. Stifling the questions indefinitely is never healthier than asking them.

FOSTER THE QUESTIONS

Now, I’m not claiming I know with certainty that Josh Harris left Christianity because he wasn’t allowed to ask questions. Not even his past close friends know what’s led to Josh’s deconstruction, and they’ve cautioned against speculating on it. Though I see a very large trend of unanswered questions leading to a departure from the faith, questions may have had nothing to do with it: many believers in very open, free-thought-promoting settings still walk away from the faith, and many believers in more heavy-handed congregations learn to find peace in the mystery of Christ.

But what I am saying is that, firstly, the Church is complicit in so many stories like Josh Harris’s–and that, more importantly, deconstruction isn’t the end of the world.

Church, we must foster a culture where questions are welcome. Even if that means we can’t always answer. There is importance in resting in the mystery, but there is also importance in questing for answers. Something I’ve often been told is, “God can handle your questions.” Sometimes, in my mind, that phrase has become, “If God is real, he can handle my questions.” And that’s okay, too–because God can handle my doubts.

If a question or doubt makes us uncomfortable, that’s understandable, and you can admit as such without compromising your faith. It’s also an opportunity to grow in your knowledge or grow in your faith, not to shut down whatever or whoever raised the question. If we can foster this sort of community, we might prevent the dramatic crises of faith we’re seeing among people who break suddenly and emotionally from the Church.

We must also stop viewing deconstruction as a bad thing. I know that sounds absolutely crazy–but understand that forcing someone to pretend they identify with a belief they no longer hold is never helpful, and allowing someone to question, doubt, and seek answers almost always is. If someone is having an intense wrestling match with their faith, we can’t control that–but we can control how we react and whether or not our reactions are helpful.

Josh Harris’s deconstruction may just be the best thing that’s ever happened to him. “I can’t join [Christians] in your mourning. I don’t view this moment negatively,” he’s said in his post. We can mourn the loss of faith–I know I certainly do–but friends, we shouldn’t mourn the questions, and I’m afraid people are confusing the two.

The questions are wonderful. They’re what makes Scripture engaging, they’re what brings believers together to discuss them, and they’re what has shaped my faith for most of my life. They can also be stumbling blocks that trip us up or even prevent us from going on; but they are vital to faith in Christ.

Josh Harris absolutely did the right thing by being honest about where he is in his faith.

However, I’m not seeing a loving response from so many Christian news outlets or fellow bloggers; instead, I’m seeing people attacking his views on the LGBT+ community, attacking things he’s said in the past, criticizing him for the decisions he’s making in regards to his divorce, and so much more. Debate and theology lessons in the comments are not what this is about. What I wish we were seeing is believers taking this opportunity to commend Josh for asking hard questions and to encourage one another to find answers other than the trite ones we hear over Karen’s meatloaf at the potluck.

Don’t be afraid to ask yourselves hard questions, friends. They aren’t a reflection of unbelief, not being “good enough”, or poor character. And don’t be afraid of other people asking the questions, either. Use them as the diving board for drawing your children, drawing your congregation, drawing yourself closer to the truth–and the truth, as we should be able to quote, will set us free. No matter where it leads, we are in God’s hands.

To join Josh in quoting the Christian mystic Julian of Norwich, “Sin is [inevitable], but all shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

When You Don’t Have an Opinion | CS Pep Talk 002

Published on by Kimberly
To the student who feels like their opinionated classmates know way more than they do:

“Okay, Visual Studio? Way better IDE than Eclipse.”

A furrowed brow. “Okay… uh, what about IntelliJ?”

“Eh,” a pause, “IntelliJ’s okay; but VS’s Intelli-Sense is honestly superior.”

What even is that? And I like IntelliJ just fine!

If you understand that conversation, you know vouching for VS over Eclipse or IntelliJ is… frankly, a pretty dumb hill to die on. (Not that you can’t prefer it over another IDE! It does have good Intelli-Sense/that auto-complete function feature.) But unless there’s like, one specific feature you need for your work that’s only in VS, it’s not something you should reasonably go kicking and screaming over.

Unfortunately–and this is something I encounter a lot in undergrads who are just a bit overconfident–conversations like this where someone is way over-opinionated about something tend to happen from time to time; and I remember when, back in my freshman year, stuff like this would really intimidate me. Am I supposed to know all this stuff? Should I have a strong opinion like that?

If I’m being honest, I still feel intimidated sometimes. As I’m writing this, I’m at the end of my sophomore year*, now with two new languages under my belt–C++ and Scala–on top of ones I’ve worked in before–mainly Java and Kotlin–and… while some of my classmates are comparing language pros and cons regularly, I still couldn’t tell you all of the nuances, benefits, or consequences about each language, at least not to the extent other are. C++ has pointers, Scala has Options and lots of lambda functionality, Java’s compiler is infinitely more helpful for debugging than C++’s… but that’s all pretty basic stuff. I realize, though, that for beginners, even little details like that are concepts you’re just not familiar with yet. But hold on to that key word: yet!

One of the things a lot of people find exciting about coding is that, at first, it seems like there’s a right answer and a wrong answer. Your code either works or it doesn’t, and if you find the things that don’t work, you fix them and then it does. It’s like a puzzle – that’s how I describe it when people ask me why I love programming!

But then, one of the things you start to learn as you progress is that… there’s not generally one “right” answer, and there’s a bajillion ways for it to work and still get it ‘wrong’, too. Classmates start explaining ways they did the homework and you think, “wait… I didn’t do anything like that,” or you realize halfway through your implementation that your solution isn’t going to catch a certain edge case and now you’re back at square one, or… you get the point. This is where I hit my first slump, or period of frustration where I could see there were better ways to code things, but my own ability to code them wasn’t quite there yet.

See this graph from artist Marc Dalessio – you can replace “Improvement in Painting” with “Improvement in [just about any sort of technical skill]” and it works just the same. You start to improve, think you’re doing great, then realize how much you have to improve, grow frustrated, work hard, then start to improve again.

marc graph
http://www.marcdalessio.com/self-portraits-over-the-years-2/

All this to say: as your ability to see better solutions increases, so will your ability to determine what makes them better and why – and this is when you start to develop your own opinions about things. You need to understand how hashmaps work before you can explain why you think they’re a better or worse solution; you need to have worked in multiple IDEs for a little while before you can reasonably explain why you prefer one over the other; and you need to be patient with yourself as you’re growing. Don’t let opinionated people make you feel like you’re capable of less for not having an opinion.

Since knowing more generally results in having more opinions, people tend to think that having more opinions automatically means they know more; but that’s simply not the case.

Humans like to feel like they know a lot. Your classmates and co-workers are no exception. The people who are being loud are likely looking for validation of their own knowledge or intelligence; the people who give their opinions condescendingly are pretty much always trying to boost their own feelings of superiority or capability. The right kind of opinion-sharing should be framed like a piece of advice or a teaching moment, not a cry for attention from the sharer.

There are times when having an opinion is important or perhaps expected, like if you’re at an interview and need to explain when you’d want to sacrifice time complexity over space complexity, but most of the time, you don’t need to have explicit preferences – especially when you’re still learning. I’ve learned that “I don’t have enough experience with that yet to say,” is a perfectly valid answer; so is “I think I prefer that one, but I couldn’t tell you why.” And for things like actual code, where there can be objectively better or worse implementations, that’s just another part of the learning process – if you don’t get why one way is better than the other, you’ll get there in time. That’s just an experience thing.

So the next time you hear someone preaching the glories of VS Code, or criticizing someone’s choice of language, or telling you that light themes are the worst… relax. You’re not a worse programmer for not getting it all yet. Opinions will develop with time – or maybe they won’t, and that guy who really likes VS Code just… really likes VS Code. You go, dude.

(But if we’re being honest, if you’re using a light theme… please, man. Repent. Embrace the darkness.)

* small but important disclaimer: I know I’m not far enough along to be making some of the claims about the workplace that I do; any and all claims I make about the industry have been double-checked by people who’ve worked in SWE for a long while.

What Your Degree is Really For | CS Pep Talk 001

Published on by Kimberly
To the student programmer who thinks their college degree isn’t going to teach them everything they need to know:

Early Spring semester, my professor surveyed how many of my classmates had landed a summer internship already; there were actually a handful in our group of about 30 students who’d known since before the spring where they were headed that summer–and some of the companies included places like Nike and Microsoft.

Imagine that. Imagine landing a job at a Fortune 500 company right out of college because you landed an internship a summer or two before graduation! (Or, if you’re a self-deprecating Millennial/Gen Z like myself, just imagine landing a job!)

Well–disclaimer number one: you don’t have to land a really fancy internship to find a good job after graduation; and disclaimer number two: it’s not guaranteed or even likely you’ll be working on self-driving cars or IBM’s Watson at your very first development job. But. The fact is we tend to place fields like that–and the jobs they provide–on a pedestal of technological godhood.

Reading about graduates at MIT, Princeton, or Caltech being snapped up by companies like Tesla and Google for their novel research and programming skills is, honestly, a little disheartening. It feels like you have to be a genius, or something close to it, to even understand, let alone land a job in, any field that’s new, complex, or both. And then, if you’re like me, you look at your course requirements for graduation and think, How are classes like Operating Systems or Client-Server Interactions going to help me understand machine learning? Or voice technology? Or programming video game physics? Or any of the things people are working on these days?

Like the words say on the cover of life’s most important textbook–don’t panic. You can put away the course requirements. The fact of the matter is, your college degree is not going to teach you everything you need to know.

What your degree is going to teach you is how to teach yourself.

The internship I worked the summer after my freshman year had a small group of college-age interns working to build a desktop version of some mobile software. Only two of us were right out of our freshman year of college–the rest were juniors, seniors, and even graduates who’d worked internships at places like NASA. It was intimidating, to say the least. The first day on the job, they paired each of us off and gave us a small project to work on for two days, a simple desktop application–but with a list of frameworks and tools to use that none of us had ever heard of before.

Going in, none of us knew anything about the language they wanted us to use–Kotlin–or any of the frameworks–like TornadoFX, RxKotlin, and even the Gradle build tools–so we were all pretty much the same level of confused. The only difference was that the students who’d been in school longer had a better idea of how to look for information and get started.

It was usually little things, like someone thinking to use a hashmap over an array (when I, just a freshman, didn’t even know what a hashmap was!) Sometimes they read an article and understood way more of the concepts the first time through. But rarely did anyone say, “Oh, I’ve worked with this before.” Rather, the more experienced of the interns could say, “Let’s try this” and see it work more times than not–not because they knew more, but because they’d learned to teach themselves using the patterns and intuitions you see all across computer science.

And that’s what your degree is for! It is not for you to walk off campus with the knowledge of every language, framework, and operating system under your belt; it is for you to learn the kind of problem-solving and base-level knowledge that will allow you to understand the new stuff that will inevitably be thrown your way.

Maybe you know this intellectually; I think, to a certain extent, a lot of us do.

But tell that to yourself when you see the poster for that AI research grant your classmate worked on where even the research question doesn’t make sense to you. Remind yourself of that when the kid next to you asks about something you know isn’t in the course curriculum. Think back on it when your professor is explaining a particularly niche concept that you know you won’t need to do the assignment but everyone seems to be following along but you.

You’ve got this. You’re learning how to learn, which means you’re right on track. Specialization and deeper knowledge are fantastic, but most people don’t start diving into those until they’re at least a little bit settled in their career. Some peoples’ brains latch right onto this stuff, and those are the classmates you see breezing through concepts faster than others; the pressure to be the same way is always there, I know, but I promise you:

You’re right where you need to be.

Those deeper concepts will make sense eventually.

Focus on the class, not your peers or the research grants or the industry, and you’ll be just fine.

It’s a little trite, but it’s true: everyone starts somewhere. That means that everyone who understands more than you, at one point, only understood what you do now. They worked their way up from there, which means you can and will, too. So don’t let yourself stay intimidated by internships or video game physics or That One Kid’s open source project. It’s not that you will never understand how to do those things–it’s that you’re building your foundation so that someday, maybe soon, you’ll know just where to start.

An aside to the student who wants to get started down a more specialized path:

If you’re interested in a more specialized field of CS and want to start pursuing it, by all means, don’t let the fact that you haven’t gotten your degree or that you feel underqualified stop you! Imposter Syndrome is your biggest enemy–jump in, and the worst that can happen is you realize you don’t quite know enough yet to be able to pursue your interest efficiently. My point above is that it’s okay to not know enough yet–but don’t let the fear of that stop you from at least trying things out.

Your best resource is going to be your professors. Figure out what you’d like to look into, and then present that to them with the question, “where should I get started with this?” They’ll likely have some great resources for getting started. If they’re not sure, or if the resources they provide don’t prove very helpful, find someone working in your field of interest, reach out, and ask them. It’s a little bit of networking practice, and since it’s for finding resources rather than a job, it’s much less nerve-wracking. LinkedIn is a great way to do this, and your professors might also know recent alumni or colleagues working in the field you’re interested in.

And while I’m no expert, I’ve taught myself some of the basics in a few fields I don’t have any actual coursework in, like web dev and cybersecurity, so I’ve got a few resources for getting started in those areas among others–don’t hesitate to reach out if you want my input through my Contact page or at ki****************@gm***.com!

soli deo gloria

Why I Love Computer Science

Published on by Kimberly

“Are you sure you can do this?”

At the concerned look on my friend’s face, the signed Change of Major form burned my fingertips even as my stomach turned to ice. This was his first reaction to my new major? I hesitated for a moment before giving a strained shrug.

“… Yes?”

Not exactly the most promising start to my computer science career.

It’s a good thing, then, that my career actually started over a decade ago with a flamboyantly late-90s children’s book titled Make Your Own Web Page – for Kids. A family friend had dropped off a box of old books for my sister and me to look through, and the title instantly sparked my attention. I coded my very first lines of HyperText Markup Language (HTML) along with Elena, the book’s “main character” who learns to build a web page along with the reader as the book progresses:

<html>
<head>
<title>Kimberly's Webpage</title>
</head>
<body>
Hi! My name is Kimberly Horton, and I live in Washington.
</body>
</html>

I was hooked.

I carried the book with me everywhere like a prized possession, even when there weren’t any computers around to code on. I distinctly remember bringing it with me to church once or twice (though I had to leave it in the car – my parents’ rules!) After working through all of the lessons the book contained, I recall avoiding reading the very end because I didn’t want it to be over – and I never actually ended up completing the final step of uploading my files to a server. This didn’t stop me from designing and creating web pages locally on our clunky Dell laptop; the coding was so fun to me that I didn’t feel the need to put the sites up publicly, and once I discovered free web hosting sites like webs.com it was merely an added bonus.

I created websites for my Girl Scouts troop, a Biology Project, and a club my sister and I formed with our close childhood friends (which I can’t find, unfortunately.) They’ve got some ‘wonderful’ table layouts and broken image links, but the poor design choices were  certainly nullified by the fun I had in creating them.

After switching my major, I fondly recalled the little book that started it all. I found it for pretty cheap from a used book store on Amazon, so I ordered it to keep on my shelf and remind me of where I started.

Where it all began. 🙂

In classes at college, we’re not doing much front-end. I went into my first class wondering if I’d still enjoy “real” programming like I did HTML; and after my decision to continue on in the coursework (“maybe I’ll get a minor in it,” I thought, “this is pretty fun”) and months of my school’s CS professors playfully haranguing me to switch my major, I finally caved; and the “are you sure?” scenario I detailed above transpired.

Am I sure now?

Absolutely.

I love programming. I didn’t realize it back then, but I was hooked on HTML for the same reasons I’m hooked on Java and Python now; and it wasn’t just because I wanted to become Tank from the Matrix or that I liked graphic design.

Programming is a study in logic. Computers are perfectly algorithmic. As a professor of mine roughly said it,

If the computer isn’t doing what you’ve told it to, it is doing what you told it to–you just don’t know what you told it to do!

In terms of functionality, there is no subjectivity–your program is going to do the same thing every time (except for those mornings when you open your IDE and discover everything you did last night has gone haywire…) There might be more than one solution to a problem, but each solution is consistent, 100% of the time.

When I run into a problem, there’s pretty much never a time I can blame the computer. It’s always me–and then it becomes a challenge to find out where I went wrong.

Along that line of thinking, programming is a puzzle. Albeit it’s a lot easier to think this way when there’s not a deadline breathing down my neck, but whenever I hit an error, it becomes a really engaging scavenger hunt across space, Stack Overflow, and time to figure out what isn’t working. Isn’t this the most frustrating part of programming? Well, yeah. It is, not gonna lie. But it’s also 1) the part that engages your brain the most and 2) it’s the most rewarding.

In his book Geek Sublime, Vikram Chandra describes the feeling of code working as “a little jolt of joy”. If you’ve ever programmed–even just printed “Hello, world!” to the console–you know exactly what he means. There’s just something undeniably satisfying about finally nailing down the problem and fixing it; there’s fun amidst the fury.

Both Mary Poppins and I are firm believers in gamifying tasks–making work feel more like meeting game objectives–so I like to use her words: “In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun; you find the fun and–snap!–the job’s a game!”

Image result for and snap the jobs a game gif

Programming is brimming with possibilities. For heavens’ sake, its possibilities have possibilities!

I realize the word “possibilities” has been relegated to a rather vague buzzword these days, but it is what I mean–the possible places you can work, the possible problems you can solve, languages you can learn, apps you can write, sites you can design… in such a computer-saturated world, programming can put you nearly anywhere doing nearly anything. Remote positions aren’t all that rare anymore, so you could be travelling the world, if you wanted to!

And to those of us who prefer a little novelty, the thought that my career is pretty much guaranteed to morph over time is actually an exciting prospect. It’s not as though I’ll pick a language or two to use, settle down at a cubicle, and churn out the same thing for the next 50 years; languages improve, projects change, job descriptions upgrade, and it’s truer than ever that just getting your foot in the door can open up opportunities in different departments or even fields.

So programming means you’re always learning. Whether it’s a new CSS attribute to play with or a whole language to learn, or even puzzling out how to use features you already know how to implement, programming is constantly learning and re-learning skills that will make your work dynamic and engaging for the rest of your career.

The computer science industry is hard.

I’ve wrestled with Imposter Syndrome since my very first day as a CS major when my friend asked me, doubtfully, if I was really sure I could do it. It took a full year of classes and a summer internship of feeling like I knew less than everyone else before I finally started to feel like, maybe, I was worth something in the field, too.

I’ve found a proverb from my debate coach to be incredibly true in this field: “You’re going to feel stupid until you don’t.”

Even now, as it’s internship application season and I stare at some of the big names like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, there’s a little voice that tells me I don’t have a chance at working somewhere like that, not when there’s young, modern-day Zuckerbergs and CalTech undergrads and that one brilliant guy in my class who’s been programming since he was five, all applying for the same places.

But my resume, my classes, my love of the field makes it that much easier to ignore the Imposter Syndrome telling me all those things and to pursue what brings me joy. 

I love computer science! And because of that, because of all the reasons I’ve waxed eloquent on above: the answer is yes. Yes, I’m sure I can do this.

Debt, Virginity, and Tattoos, Oh My! | open letter part two

Published on by Kimberly

In my last post, I wrote an open letter to Lori Alexander regarding the backlash she received due to her article “Men Prefer Debt-Free Virgins Without Tattoos”. I touched on a few general points about the message of her article, but I didn’t touch on the three specific topics in the title: debt, virginity, and tattoos. This is less of an open letter and more of an opinion/exegetical piece, but I wanted to offer my thoughts to bring my response to Lori to a close. If you haven’t already, you can read part one here.

The Church has a lot of buzzwords these days.

There’s just… always a lot of hot topics in the news. Homosexuality. Abortion. Assisted suicide, immigration, capital punishment–we all could go on.

The Church talks about all of these–and then there’s subsets specific to us! We’ve got purity culture (with subcategories of modesty and courting!) We’ve got Calvinism versus Armenianism; we’ve got New Earth and Old Earth; heck, we’ve got people yelling about whether “Reckless Love” is theologically sound and if it’s wrong to sing it in worship. (I won’t go into that one… in this post.)

Recently, blogger Lori Alexander from The Transformed Wife stirred up another heated discussion surrounding a number of different topics; and while one of them, virginity, is practically everywhere, the other two–debt and tattoos–are talked about much less from what I’ve witnessed.

Lori has taken a stand for virginity, for being debt-free, and for being tattoo-less; and since I’m still a debate team member at heart, I wanted to take a look at each of these and flex my exegetical muscles. Let’s dive in!

Debt

Debt? It’s not great. I would love to pay off my student loans soon, and especially before I get married, because it’s not a fun burden to bear. Lori is also not a fan, and she’s stated that “[Jesus] calls debt a burden”–but actually… I can’t find that specific take anywhere in the Bible. In fact, Jesus says in Matthew 5:42

Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

I would agree that yes, debt is a burden, and as such it would be great to not have to bring that into a marriage; but I would not agree that Jesus has said anything to convince us that we must avoid it at all costs no matter what (sorry, Dave Ramsey!) It looks like he’s actually encouraging believers to let others borrow from them. Let’s take a quick path through some logic gates: if letting others borrow from you is recommended by God, it must at least sometimes be beneficial for either you or the borrower–and therefore, debt must sometimes lead to benefit.

Therefore, we can’t teach that debt is 100% wrong or bad at all times; personally, I’d say that, as long as it’s not crippling you or keeping you from following God’s calling on your life, it’s just an inconvenience that would be lovely to be rid of–but having some shouldn’t prevent you from marrying, from pursuing God, or from serving others.

Virginity

Everyone’s favorite topic in the Church, right…?

I’m tired of long, drawn-out discussions, and so are you, I’d reckon, so I’ll keep this short: virginity does not equate to purity, and God only cares about one of those things.

Sisters and brothers, God does not care about your virginity. He cares about the purity of your heart. If God cared about the history of your sex life, even just a little, the implications that has for survivors of sexual assault are horrific. One of my very favorite early Church fathers, St. Augustine of Hippo, has this to say in the very first book in his work The City of God:

…the virtue which makes the life good has its throne in the soul, and thence rules the members of the body, which becomes holy in virtue of the holiness of the will; and that while the will remains firm and unshaken, nothing that another person does with the body, or upon the body, is any fault of the person who suffers it, so long as he cannot escape it without sin. [emphasis added]

What is done to you has no bearing on the condition of your soul. No bearing whatsoever. It hurts to think anyone would suspect God of feeling any differently.

Similarly, God is a God of forgiveness. To believe that possessing physical virginity has any merit beyond that of possessing spiritual purity is to say God’s forgiveness isn’t enough to cover past sins. If sin has been committed in the past, that is where it remains. That is the end of the discussion as I see it–if God no longer considers someone’s past sins, neither can we. If someone is now walking with the Lord, their old self has been put off, and any consideration of their past sin beyond helping them avoid sin in the future or benefiting from their testimony is not acceptable in God’s eyes.

Tattoos

While I don’t remember my parents explicitly talking to me about tattoos or their morality, I do distinctly remember being very anxious as a child when I would see someone with a tattoo. I’m pretty sure I was told by my parents, “We don’t think people should get tattoos, but they aren’t terrible”, but my 5-year-old I-must-agree-with-every-opinion-my-parents-have mindset decided it didn’t like them and that was final. I wasn’t ever told that anyone with a tattoo was evil or not following God–but I remember having the impression that 1) tattoos weren’t good and 2) they made me feel really uncomfortable.

My own thoughts and feelings have since changed entirely; but that being said, I understand why people are still against them today. When you’re raised in a more conservative culture where not many people have tattoos, it’s easy to see someone’s skin marked up with something foreign and feel uncomfortable. I’d say it’s almost comparable to the Uncanny Valley effect; if it doesn’t quite line up with what you picture as human, it seems unnatural or not quite right. Like younger me, others might have been raised in such a way that their natural reaction to a tattoo is, “That’s not right–that makes me feel a little uneasy.”

This kind of implicit bias reminds me of a famous Harvard study on implicit racism; and the discovery described in Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink on how that bias can be reversed. As told by Gladwell, a man discovered that when he took the Harvard-designed test every day, he consistently had a slight positive bias towards Caucasian people–until one day, he tested for a slight positive bias towards African-Americans. The difference? That morning he had watched the Olympics, a place where people of all different races display their skills in an incredibly positive light!

Seeing something you are biased against in another context of something positive can reverse even the most deeply-ingrained prejudices. Now, that can be something negative; for instance, we’re so used to seeing the media hype up partying and alcohol that often we’re pre-programmed to see alcoholic-level behavior (like drinking to the point of memory loss) as something normal or fun. However, it can also be positive like the racial example above. Why is this relevant to tattoos? Because I want to clarify something:

Just because you have a bad or uncomfortable feeling about a behavior doesn’t necessarily make it wrong.

If we can look at the exegetical arguments surrounding tattoos in this way, we’re peeling back the layers of bias and personal feelings to look at what the Bible really says. And what we find is this:

You shall not make any cuts on your body for the dead or tattoo yourselves: I am the LORD.

Leviticus 19:28

That’s it.

That’s all we get about tattoos. This article does a nice job of analyzing the language used in the passage if you’d like deeper analysis. My own exegesis of this verse is based on the context with which it was written: I believe God has commanded us not to practice anything remotely related to witchcraft, necromancy, ancestor worship, etc., and in the time of the Israelites, that’s what tattoos were associated with.

God does not want his people dabbling in things that are contrary to his nature; it’s why Christ followers don’t generally wear things like pentagram jewelry or anything we see as related to witchcraft or paganism today. This verse is cautioning against that very thing–and since tattoos are becoming increasingly popular and no longer reflect pagan ideas or practices (we don’t see tattoos as spiritually powerful or ritualistic anymore!) I don’t believe this verse is commanding against the practice we have today of simply decorating our bodies with ink.

The Bottom Line

Do tattoos still make people uncomfortable? Absolutely.

Can debt be a deal-breaker in a relationship? For sure.

And is virginity something to be valued? Well, no–but purity of heart certainly is.

But, thankfully, God doesn’t care about those things. What he cares about is your heart–and Lori, as far as I can tell your heart is seeking to follow God! It just seems like you’ve gotten so caught up in your own passions and callings that you’re mistaking them to be the calling of everyone else.

Romans 14 is one of my favorite passages in the Bible when it comes to settling matters of what is “correct” and what isn’t for individuals. Verse 23 reads

But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

This is in the context of Paul believing that sacrificial meats aren’t unclean but knowing that others (mostly former Jews) feel convicted and still don’t eat them–or, more likely, they’re just grossed out by the thought of eating something they’ve always associated with being unclean!* He’s saying that different people have different convictions and comfort levels, so if something troubles your conscience, don’t do it. It’s always, always better to abstain if you’re not sure than to go for it and have to repent later.

I don’t see the Bible proclaiming debt, the loss of virginity, or tattoos as being sins–but I do see importance placed on a person’s heart condition within all of these things. If you still find these things uncomfortable to consider in a future partner, that doesn’t make you judgmental or un-loving; but I would encourage you to think about why they make you uncomfortable and whether or not God agrees with that reasoning.

It’s alright if your image of an “ideal partner” doesn’t have tattoos, debt, or a sexual past; one of those is a physical preference, one is a desire for financial success, and one is hope for a pure heart. What’s not alright is making assumptions about a person’s heart based on these attributes; and I’m afraid that all the heavy-handed teaching against these things is only teaching the church to judge people for factors that have no impact on someone’s salvation.

The bottom line: godly men want women who love God. Godly women want men who love God. And all other physical attributes or worldly traits should fall by the wayside when we find someone else who wants to follow Christ with everything they have and inspire us to do the same, tattoos or otherwise. <3

Thank you so much for reading! If you have any feedback or critiques, I am always happy to discuss. My own exegetical process is always growing, and if you think I missed something (or just want to add your own thoughts!) my email and comments section are always open!

* See Misreading Scripture Through Western Eyes for more on this!

An Open Letter to Lori Alexander (and to those who have already responded) | part one

Published on by Kimberly

For those who might not be aware, a Christian blogger named Lori Alexander published an article that garnered a lot of controversy over the last week on her blog The Transformed Wife. If you haven’t read it already, you can find it here. This is my response both to her and to those who have reacted extremely negatively over these last few days.

Dear Lori,

It’s been a crazy week, hasn’t it?

I am so, so sorry you’ve been so suddenly thrust into the limelight in such an unloving way. I’m certain you’ve read some of the responses; the vast majority of them contain terribly snarky lines such as

“[This article] is in fact a legitimate piece of (advice? wisdom? knowledge?) endowed to us by devout crazy person Christian Lori Alexander…”

“My bad. I have to say as a young woman, I was more striving for a Proverbs 31-type vibe, mixed with some serious fruits of the Spirit.”

and this lovely reaction GIF from a scathing article:

'Men Prefer Debt Free Virgins Without Tattoos'

These are terrible, terrible responses that don’t come anywhere close to the root issues most of us are concerned with. If there’s a way to tastefully correct someone’s interpretation of Scripture, this sure isn’t it. I want to come right out and admit that I don’t agree with the main message of your post, Lori–but I am very surprised, as you probably are, that people are so… well, surprised at what you’re saying.

It’s not a new idea that the “ideal woman” is one who raises the children, keeps the home, and lives a lifestyle that respects both her husband and God–it’s only recently that Western society has moved away from that. It’s also not a new idea that Christianity values the concept of sexual purity or that society as a whole values money. What is novel is the adamant expression of these ideas in today’s day and age; and Lori, I’m afraid people are reacting more to the certainty with which you’ve expressed your convictions than they are to you as a person, so I am deeply apologetic that so many of the responses have been so personal to you.

You are a beautifully- and wonderfully-made woman striving to follow God, and people certainly aren’t treating you that way. For that, I extend my deepest sympathies. No one should be subject to the amount of ad hominem attack you’ve been sustaining for something as small as a short blog post.

Taking a Closer Look

That being said, the ideas you’ve expressed in your post should be carefully scrutinized, because they’re about God’s word. Anything involving the interpretation of scripture should be taken seriously because God should be taken seriously, so I’d like to do that with some of the points you’ve made and the way you’ve made them.

My first point of interest is just the title and opening statement of your article. It’s clear you were going for something eye-catching and that you knew would be controversial to draw attention–but is that really the right way to present this particular message? When you’re trying to teach women, especially young women, about God’s calling on their life, it’s not helpful nor loving to make girls feel guilty about past failures. It’s also not helpful to frame what God wants in the context of what men prefer. If our motivation is serving God, framing this article under what men want seems like a method to get more clicks and views while lessening the importance of what God wants. All in all, Lori, I don’t think setting your article up as being controversial from the get-go was the proper way to share what you believe about God’s calling for women; if you understand that your message might be hard to hear for some, consider whether the rap-on-the-knuckles approach is appropriate or whether something more loving and understanding will reach hearts better.

My second thought centers around a few of the ideas you’ve shared about biblical womanhood. You state, “Young women learn nothing about biblical womanhood or what it takes to run a home when they go to college.” I actually agree with a bit of that–it’s very true that college doesn’t explictly teach you about how to run a home or how to live out what God calls women to be. However, to say that women cannot or will not learn to serve others or to seek God while at college is to discredit God’s ability to work everywhere.

Keep in mind that a woman with a firm foundation in Christ is going to take initiative to follow him no matter where she is. Pursuing biblical womanhood–regardless of what you believe that is–is not limited to location or vocation. If it was, and we agreed that abiding by God’s calling was limited by physical proximity to somewhere (like a woman’s home) or by a woman’s career path, what does that say about women who are physically unable to do as you’ve suggested and stay at home, a caveat you briefly alluded to but didn’t expound upon (“some young women have no choice but to live away from their families and some have had their hearts broken by men they thought was ‘the one.’“)?

What is Biblical Womanhood?

Lori, I guess we’ve hit a disagreement about what God calls women to. I believe wholeheartedly that God can and does call women to the workforce, to not have children, or to go to college. I’m certain you’ve heard many times over these last few days what others think God’s calling for women is, so I won’t go into many of my thoughts here–but what I will say is that saying God’s calling is limited to a bullseye in the center of a target doesn’t line up with what God has called women to in Scripture. Was Deborah a housewife? Did Lydia work only in her home? Was Abigail loved any less by David because she’d been previously married (and therefore wasn’t a virgin)? We don’t see God confining women to a single calling even in scripture, so I don’t agree that we should today, either.

You’ve said, “I will never understand how women prefer careers over having precious babies”–and you know what? I understand where you’re coming from. I will never understand how some women prefer certain things over others, either. We may never understand a desire that we’ve never had; and that’s okay. You don’t need to understand what having a different calling feels like to support those who are called differently. I’m certain you would support a woman who has been called to serve on the mission field–Jesus himself gave the Great Commission, and we see women like Priscilla in Acts living out that calling. So why should a woman being called to serve in a different workplace than simply the home be any different?

A Call to Better Correction

We see in Acts 18 the story of Apollos teaching at the temple. Scripture says he “was a learned man, with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures”, but that, of the Gospel, he only knew the Baptism of John; so his teaching about Jesus was enthusiastic, but not entirely accurate. When he began teaching these things publicly, it says

He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately.

Church, this is how we are meant to address false teaching from fellow believers! Other passages urge us to take further action when the teaching continues on longer–but when someone is spreading words we believe to be false in the manner of Apollos, it’s so much wiser to pull them aside, to address them personally, and to “explain… the way of God more adequately” rather than slander them or talk badly about them without providing a better alternative. Is there a time for rebuking? Yes. But in this case, when it’s over the internet and towards someone we likely don’t know personally, the proper response is not to take on a role more effectively filled by a friend (Proverbs 27:6).

A Request to Consider

Lori, I really hope what I’ve said so far doesn’t feel like an attack on you so much as a gentle request to consider the implications behind what you’ve said. I hope that, in the manner of Priscilla and Aquila, I’ve been able to explain what I believe is God’s teaching without hurting you personally.

I don’t believe that God’s only calling for women is to stay in the home to raise kids and manage the household; I believe he can call women to that and more–so it concerns me to see your convictions being taught as though they should apply to everyone. A favorite YouTube creator of mine, Katie Emmerson, shared in her own response to your article that the teaching that girls cannot be independent nor voice their opinions was incredibly damaging to her growing up. I would encourage anyone reading this who is feeling discouraged about their own value or worth, especially within the church, to watch her; and I would encourage you, Lori, to consider Katie’s words and realize that the message you’re teaching might not line up with God’s design.

I know a single letter like this likely won’t change your convictions; and I don’t expect it to. I just want you to know that I’m concerned with the way you’ve interpreted God’s calling for women, but I wanted to let you know in a way that was not scathing or sarcastic. I hope that you’ll consider the words of those around you that are asking you to reconsider your take on biblical womanhood.

I’m in the middle of writing a second part to this letter to address the three hot topics you supply in your title–debt, virginity, and tattoos!–that you’ll find a link to below once I’ve finished; I hope you and others might find some of God’s wisdom through that post, as well!

God bless you, Lori–and all of the others who might be reading this!

Sincerely,

Kimberly Horton

[part two: in progress]

Featured on CollegeInfoGeek (!!)

Published on by Kimberly

CollegeInfoGeek has been one of my favorite online content sources since mid-high school; it’s got ‘college’ in the name, but the site’s productivity tips and advice on acing classes were huge wells of inspiration to me.

I can’t remember how I found it, but it must have been early high school; my first blog has an Impossible List on it (which I should really migrate over here, now that I think about it), and I recall months and months of working the kinks out of my morning routine, trying the Cold Shower challenge, and reading books like The Power of Habit, all at site founder Thomas Frank’s suggestion. For my very last Christmas before college, my parents bought me hosting and a domain name to host my personal site, which I created by following Thomas’s guide – and here you are looking at it!

Well, back in March, Thomas asked for some examples of personal websites and/or portfolios on Twitter; and I meekly shared this one:

I barely remembered mentioning it–but imagine my surprise when I went to take a look at the article and discovered that I had been featured in it!!
Untitled picture

I’m absolutely flabbergasted and beyond honored to have made it onto a list containing the likes of John & Hank Green, Andrew Huang, and Cal Newport. What in the world? Granted, this site is listed under the student section–meaning it’s not something professional or ready for the working world–but I’m so excited to look through the examples I’m listed alongside to get more inspiration for making this site even better!

Thank you to Ransom and all of the CIG team!

See the full list of personal websites and portfolios here.

On Failed Resolutions

Published on by Kimberly

Another year, another swarm of resolutions, gym memberships, and eventual disappointment come mid-January (or early February, if you’re really dedicated!)

… this is never how I want to see my New Years Resolutions going, but another year has come and gone with zero goals met once again. I’m guessing if you’ve glanced at what your ambitious pre-2017-self wrote down last year, you’re asking yourself the same question: what went wrong?

My 2017 began in an ideal setting – my family was in the Cameron Highlands (a highland area in Peninsular Malaysia) for a quiet, do-nothing-on-purpose time away before jumping back into school and work. Days were spent reading, praying, and peacefully relaxing: the perfect opportunity to reflect on the previous year and look ahead to the new one. I read New Years blog posts, made New Years lists, and prayed a lot of New Years prayers, reflecting and asking God to guide me as I stepped into 2017.

I set four goals, hoping a smaller amount would be less ambitious and therefore more attainable:

  • Be in bed by 10:30pm each night
  • Wake up by 6:30am each morning
  • Be in the Word each day
  • Don’t use social media until ALL work is finished
    • Bonus: find more productive break time activities

This was supposed to be easy, right? Sticking to a bedtime and wake-up time, reading the Bible, and getting homework done – that’s not rocket science. And yet here I sit, staring 2018 in the face with no regular sleep schedule, a Bible-in-a-year plan only 3 books in, and the same procrastination habits as before. Why?

It strikes me that I am an idealist.

I listen to productivity podcasts (my favorite is College Info Geek!), read books like Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit, and (attempt) productively creative endeavors like keeping a bullet journal. I love to picture this made-up character called my Ideal Self; I love to consider what habits my ideal self keeps, the sorts of hobbies she enjoys, the trendy clothes and the healthy diet and the immaculately clean desk she has. I may or may not have a Pinterest board for productivity-related things. If you’re reading a blog post about someone else’s New Year goals, you’re probably an idealist, too.

We spend so much of our time picturing places we want to be, habits we want to be building, business we want to be doing; and we don’t stop to consider the stuff we’re already doing, just doing poorly. What does that mean?

I have a lot of homework to do; but I try to work with friends or in noisy places or at my job, and it doesn’t get done very quickly. I keep a bullet journal to stay organized; but I don’t pull it out regularly to actually check the things I need to get done. I eat three meals a day in my university’s cafeteria; but I don’t make the healthiest of food choices a vast majority of the time.

And it strikes me – why am I trying to add things to my life when I should be focusing on the things that are already a part of it?

We get so distracted setting shiny new goals – work out three times a week, read my Bible every day, post on my blog at least once a month – that we forget to focus on making the most out of the time we already have. My 2017 goals were left in the lurch as soon as something else looked more fun to try; so instead of getting better sleep, getting my work done, and reading my Bible, I tried and failed to eat healthy, tried and failed to keep a blog active, tried and failed to hit my Goodreads book goal… I tried and failed at a lot of things.

As I write this, February stares me in the face, her cold winds chilling me to the bone as I consider my shiny new 2018 goals come and gone (bedtime, Bible, and going Paleo for the month of January – all three unsuccessfully implemented). I could sigh and resign myself to forever chasing after fun new productivity hacks and exciting lifestyle trends; or I could concentrate of what’s already here to change.

So my new New Years’ Resolution? No more new habits. No more new self-induced pressures to do things. Just… focusing on what’s already in front of me.

Will I still try things? For sure. I’ve always wanted to be a wake-up-early-bird; maybe I’ll try a 6:30 am morning routine (and probably stop after a week.) Maybe I’ll get some friends to drag me to the gym every once in a while. Maybe I’ll try Paleo for 3 days again. (Yeah, I only lasted 3 days…)

But whatever I decide to do, I’m not going to put pressure on myself to stick with it. For now, it’s about the life I already have. 🙂

So farewell, Ideal Self – hopefully I’ll see you someday!

“Why do you love music?”

Published on by Kimberly

“It’s because… like… well, I’ve just… music has always been a huge part of my life, and I don’t… Why can’t I think of anything to say?”

I stood rigid, wringing my hands in front of my teacher’s desk, baffled that I couldn’t put my passion into words.

“I’m guessing no one’s ever asked you that question before,” Mr. Ramos said with a knowing sort of smile.

He’s right. I don’t think anyone has. Continue reading ““Why do you love music?”” →