The Importance of Chocolate Cake Content
A weekly missive on what Love is Blind teaches us about being a person, growing in capacity and original art
Happy Sunday Dear Friends!
This past week marked the beginning of the return to a normal weekly rhythm for us with youth group and all our other commitments starting back up. I’m ready though. It’s been a lovely break and I’m raring to go – just one month until youth camp! Please pray for us!
This is Dave and I’s eighth year youth pastoring and it feels so very different to when we began. Although there is lots to do to launch the year the drama is almost gone. We now have an amazing team, great systems and a ton more experience. At the beginning of last year God gave us the words ‘light’ and ‘easy’ for our ministry for the year. At first I was like ‘the diet food delivery company?’ but no, of course those words are from Matthew 11:28-30.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Matthew 11:28-30
This word for ministry was a big perspective shift for me – God’s desire isn’t that I’m constantly stressed and overwhelmed. Constant hustle and urgency does not mark great ministry. And the words rang so true throughout the year – there was this new sense of ease and joy as we led, both because we are learning to walk at the pace of Jesus and because our capacity has grown a lot. It’s all entirely more sustainable!
I’m encouraging myself with the thought that motherhood is like this too. It’s a skill, something I will continue to grow into. My capacity will expand. Even now, keeping on top of the house work is not the drama it was a year ago. And I’m trusting that in the future I won’t be thrown into a flustered, confused tailspin when my toddler hits someone – I will know what to do a little bit better. If we can learn how to deal with vape dealing at youth without breaking a sweat, we can learn this too!
Crafting a Well Balanced Content Diet (or why I watched Love is Blind Sweden this week)
I mentioned last week I was on a crazy reading tare. I read so much last Saturday I actually got sick of reading. My brain feels overstuffed with ideas and ideals! And when that happens, there’s only one thing for it. Every good meal of steak and veggies must be balanced with some chocolate cake.
I am a very staunch advocate for high quality content diets – great books, thought provoking podcasts, quality TV and movies. The information we take in shapes our minds! Stories shape our souls! They influence how we see the world, ourselves and God! So we have a responsibility to take in what is beautiful, true, good, fun, inspiring, lovely and what is serious, deep and challenging.
But I also think we must be allowed some ‘junk food’ in our diet. My particular flavour of junk food content happens to be the Netflix reality TV show Love is Blind. Do not take this as a recommendation, more as a confession of a guilty pleasure! It’s low quality on many levels (season 5 of the US version is so low quality it is unwatchable) but as silly as it is, I admit that I enjoy it. What is it about watching people meet and fall in love in strange circumstances that we find so interesting?
The occasional episode of Love is Blind while I do the dishes is gives my brain a break. It helps me understand my generation better. And it whets my appetite for more substantive content. Because after all you get sick after too much chocolate cake… I think I’ve just about hit my Love is Blind limit already.
Okay, but actually there is one important thing about Love is Blind…
In saying all of that, I do find Love is Bling genuinely compelling and thought provoking for one reason. It’s a fascinating exploration of what a person is. The way the show works (if you are wise enough to have avoided it) is a group of singles date each other in ‘pods’ where they can chat with the other person but not see them. If a couple falls in love and gets engaged, then they meet in person for the first time.
The idea underlying the show is that who a person truly is can best be discovered in utter isolation from their life, their family, their work and even their body. To fall in love with someone’s ‘soul’, many in the show argue, is the ideal. Everything else is a distraction that gets in the way of the real thing. This is a very ancient, and I would argue, utterly wrong way of conceiving of a person.
This idea is reminiscent of the heretical teaching of the Gnostics who were around even in Jesus’ day and who the writers of the New Testament made a point of opposing. The Gnostics believed that the spiritual was good, created by a good god and the physical was bad, created by a wicked god. Humans were essentially good spirits trapped in disgusting flesh suits. Your true essence is an ethereal soul and everything else about the world is meaningless at best, wicked at worst. (The Gnostics were particularly horrified by childbirth and, by extension, women. Miserable, misogynistic wretches!)
The makers of Love is Blind are not exactly modern Gnostics! And there is something to be said for going beyond shallow attraction in choosing someone to marry. (Originally I thought it was a good idea, the reason I ever watched the show in the first place.) But the old idea that who you are is your soul, disconnected from any practical reality, seeps into the show, particularly at the very beginning. Many freshly engaged participants declare that ‘it doesn’t matter what they look like, nothing matters except our love!’
But as the show goes on it becomes clear that ‘connected souls’ is not enough. Most couples fall apart, some as soon as they see each other. Those who last do so because they have genuine, whole life, whole body compatibility. I would argue that this is not a defect, but a reflection of the reality of personhood.
Biblically speaking, you don’t just have a body you ARE a body. You aren’t a ‘spiritual being having a physical experience’ (see how Gnosticism creeps even into the church…) you are a body, soul and spirit in an inextricable unity. The opening line of the Nicene creed was a direct rebuke to those who would call the physical world evil.
‘We believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.’
God made this world, God made our bodies and so they are fundamentally good.
And God isn’t just concerned with our soul – he asks us to offer our bodies to him. (Romans 12:1) Jesus came in a body, giving our embodied existence great value. (John 1:14) Many spiritual disciplines are disciplines of the body – fasting, solitude, silence. Baptism involves all of us, bodies included, being sanctified unto the Lord. Paul teaches that the Spirit of God takes up residence in our very bodies. (1 Corinthians 6:19)
And beyond that, no man is an island. Who I am is not me alone in a room. I am inextricably connected to my family, my nation, my culture, the work of my hands, my community and the land that I live on. When I chose someone to marry, I wasn’t looking for a floating soul but a whole person, a whole life. (Good thing, Dave and I would never have gotten together via the Love is Blind model…)
I think the echoes of Gnosticism are still causing all kinds of mischief both in the church (disconnection of spiritual and physical, lack of understanding of disciplines involving the body, devaluing of jobs that aren’t ‘religious’) and outside the church (transgenderism, materialism, sex debased to a purely physical act). We need to return to a healthy, wholistic view of personhood that unites body, soul and spirit.
In the end I think Love is Blind illustrates season after season, that who we are as people is far more than an isolated soul. If people have eyes to see it, it’s a good lesson to learn.
Something to Read – Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster
Don’t let the terribly 2008 cover deceive you. This book is modern spiritual classic! Richard Foster is known as the Father of Spiritual Formation in the modern era. This book, first published in 1978 brought the ancient practices of Spiritual Disciplines (aka. Practices) to the modern church.
Each chapter looks at a different discipline (prayer, fasting, service, submission etc.) through a historical and Biblical lens, showing how these disciplines open us up to the working of the Spirit in our lives.
I am just about done with the book and I feel I probably need to read it every year as a reminder! It is slightly dated, but I’ve so appreciated the depth and wisdom it holds. I would very much recommend!
Some Art to Enjoy – Kristen Mason-Elliott
Wesley is the proud owner of his first original artwork bought from local artist Kristen Mason-Elliott! He calls Red Sands ‘horsie beach’ because of this gravel loader which means he LOVES this piece. So we bought it for him to have as his own!
We all have something we’re stubbornly picky about. Mine is that I have a strong preference for original art over mass produced prints. The vast majority of the artworks in my house are originals, collected along the way. God deeply values art and creativity – the first person in the Bible to ever be described as being filled with the Spirit of God is an artist/craftsman who was designing the tabernacle. (Exodus 31:1-5)
I feel like one of my mini callings in life is to support and celebrate local artists. And Kristen is amazing! She’s a printmaker and I love her current series, focussed on local places. You can see her work at @kristen.masonelliott.art on instagram or at www.kristenmasonelliott.com.
I would love to hear - what is your content ‘junk food’? And have you read anything actually great lately?
May you have a great week this week! May your content diet be well balanced, may you value your body well and may the grace of God seep into all the broken and aching places of your life.
Lots of love to you!
Rachel
This is great! making me hungry for chocolate cake! So interesting how we are learning similar things here too!I have not heard of that showI will have to check it out! sending love and hugs!