A Plea For Two-Handed Thinking

 

This year, I have been engaged in a fascinating exploration of different writers and teachers who say that Christians need to understand the first-century context of Jesus and the Gospels. To get a handle on what the gospels contain, we have to give up our Western mindset and think how Christ’s words sounded to His fellow first-century Jews; after all, He wasn’t speaking to 20th- and 21st-century Lutherans, Baptists and Methodists. To do so, one of the teachers said, “you have to think Hebraically.” He went on to say that “thinking Hebraically requires two hands: ‘on the one hand,… and on the other hand….’”

One of my favorite movies of all time, Fiddler On The Roof, has a scene in the film that demonstrates his point beautifully. The scene introduces a character by having him interrupt a conversation that the men of the village are having:

Mordcha – Why should I learn about the outside world? Let the outside world break its own head.
Tevye – He’s right.
Perchik – Nonsense. You can’t close your eyes to what’s happening in the world.
Tevye – He’s right.
Avram – [Mordcha]’s right and [Perchik]’s right? They can’t both be right.
Tevye – You know? You are also right!

When that teacher made his “two-handed thinking” statement, a light bulb went off in my head, but not about Hebraic thinking. Instead, I had a revelation about Christian marriage and sex writing/blogging. Recently, as I’ve been reading different Christian marriage and sexuality writers, I’ve sensed an undercurrent of unease about sex in marriage, but when I heard the line about needing two hands to think Hebraically, I realized that it takes two hands to write about sex in Christian marriages!

Write, React, Redact

Recently, I have observed the following dynamic among Christian bloggers: XianBlogger writes a post about how sex is a) approved/encouraged by God and b) a need for Christian husbands. Then a commenter (or a slew of commenters) will respond with questions and comments about how XianBlogger is encouraging husbands to take advantage of their wives. Then XianBlogger will have to perform a climbdown, complete with apologies, and then do a follow-up post to explain why s/he doesn’t merit the extremist label being tossed about because, after all, s/he doesn’t really lean all that far out-of-accepted-plumb.

Or BloggerXian will write a post in which s/he tells overburdened, over-taxed wives that it is alright to say “No”, that God didn’t mean for sex with their husbands to be a burden, that they have rights to some abstinence, as well. When that happens, BloggerXian starts to receive comments and criticisms about being a feminist and against men. And, again, the dance is repeated.

It’s an wearying dynamic, and one that doesn’t need to happen. The solution is simple. Christian writers and Christian readers need to understand that thinking biblically about marriage requires two hands!

Two-Handed Marriage

Time for me to dispense some very easy wisdom, folks: the most obvious, duh!-statement that can be made about marriage is…

marriage involves two people!

Yeah, I know… duh! But for some reason, I don’t know why, we bloggers and writers sometimes forget that simple basic fact.

Myself, I think it’s that we can get emotionally invested in our core audience, the needs of our readers. It may also be because we feel a call to marriage ministry that can lead us to see marriage and married couples within the sphere of “our mission.” (Okay, I have to raise my hand, here, as I’m pretty sure that I have been guilty of this.)

But whatever the reason, I believe that all too often we internalize the physical/emotional needs/desires of the audience that we have been called to address. This has the unfortunate consequence of leading us into downplaying the needs and concerns of The Other as not being as important as the needs of our peeps.

“It Takes Two To Tangle”

… or “the towels are marked His and Hers, not Mine,” or “it’s not his or her sexlife/marriage, it’s y’all’s sexlife/marriage,” or whatever other pithy aphorism I’ve spouted in the past three years (three years? Yikes, I’ve got to get working on an anniversary post!)

The reality is that there are two sets of physical/emotional needs/desires in the marriage, and if we are unwilling or unable to give credence to the needs of The Other because we give weighted attention to our own, we are doing a disservice of our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Yes, XianBlogger may write to wives and address their needs and concerns, but if XB doesn’t take into account that husbands have needs and concerns as well, or writes in such a way at to give short shrift to those needs, s/he is not going to be helping many marriages.

BloggerXian may write brilliant treatises for husbands (pardon my blush) that dispense manly pearl of wisdom after manly pearl of wisdom, but if BX doesn’t let his guys know that they have to be lovers of their wives, s/he might as well be shilling for the idiotic Man-O-Sphere. (Don’t get me started on that!)

Ultimately BX and XB have to understand that their end audience isn’t their readership, but the marriages that their readers represent. Fellow Christian bloggers, we need to understand that when we write we have to think two-handedly about marriage…

On the one hand, you….
On the other hand, your husband/wife….

CSL