Coming Soon: Iron Man

Yeah, I know the film’s been out a couple of weeks already.  What’s coming is an essay on Iron Man on this blog.  I’ve been looking around for someone else to say what I want to say, but haven’t had much sucess.  Lots of positive reviews, but the film’s most amazing features are either overlooked or where noticed (just barely) they elicit feminazi wisecracks.

Iron Man is just about the most honest statement about male and female and how they are supposed to relate that I have seen in any film in years.  Once Big Thangs this weekend are safely in the rear view mirror (including a dandy Daddy-Daughter Walz in a couple of hours ago; watch for pictures, maybe a video clip, of me and my baby walzing), I’ll try to pull together my thoughts on Iron Man for next week.

What’s in a Name?

Anthony Esolen over at the Touchstone blog Mere Comments ponders  the way we name things and how this affects our perception of what is named, particularly when speaking of women in marriage and family. His meditation was launched by a friend’s lament that among women she encountered at a school reunion, she was the only “stay-at-home-mom.” Esolen first notes that this term “… seems to describe somebody who lacks the imagination to do anything other than stay at home.” He goes on to consider the senses attached to homemaker, house-wife, and mother, as terms used to denote the nature or vocation of women today. He concludes by reflecting on the term hook-up, used commonly today for what a previous generation would have called fornicating.

What Esolen considers here goes beyond simple words. Try using Google  or Live Search  to search for images associated with the terms housewife or homemaker. Be sure to set the sexual filters provided by these search engines engaged.

As you scan the results, you’ll see one strata of images such as the ones in this blog. Homemaker or housewife often find graphical representation that signifies that they are archaic callings, antique avocations, redolent with sights, sounds, styles, and activities of an era half a century or more in the past. And, most such images of housewife and homemaker are rendered in a way that is graphically condescending or patronizing.

Now, what do you suppose happens when a married woman who devotes herself to her husband’s and children’s well-being fills out an application for credit, or a bank account, or an application for insurance, or any of the multiple forms the public schools insist parents fill out. Invariably, there’s a blank line labeled “Occupation.” Read the comments to Esolen’s blog to learn what some women think when confronted with this blank on an application.

There was one ray of hope down in the comments of Esolen’s blog. One woman commented:

I never liked home-maker” because … it makes me feel guilty: it evokes images of a peaceful, orderly haven presided over by a serene woman, with smells of something baking wafting from the kitchen …

In her situation, evidently, seven children contributed to a different effect. But, I cheered because in her mind, at least, was the notion that “homemaker” - at least in its ideal expression - is a serene woman, presiding over an orderly haven. It reminded me immediately of what Paul sets before older women to teach younger wives, and I think this particular woman may find herself one day achieving what looks to her, from the trenches, as a presently unrealized goal.

To get there, she will need to keep that serene woman and her peaceful haven clearly in her mind.  The world despises such women and seeks to redefine the term homemaker for all of us.  

About Beards

A blog I recommend others read, because it is a valued cobelligerant in contending for Biblical sanity generally and in the area of sexuality in particular, recently posted something about beards. It was a snippet from an early Father of the Church, Clement of Alexandria, who offered these words:

But for one who is a man to comb himself and shave himself with a razor, for the sake of fine effect, to arrange his hair at the looking-glass, to shave his cheeks, pluck hairs out of them, and smooth them, how womanly! And, in truth, unless you saw them naked, you would suppose them to be women. For although not allowed to wear gold, yet out of effeminate desire they enwreath their latches and fringes with leaves of gold; or, getting certain spherical figures of the same metal made, they fasten them to their ankles, and hang them from their necks. This is a device of enervated men, who are dragged to the women’s apartments, amphibious and lecherous beasts.

… For God wished women to be smooth, and rejoice in their locks alone growing spontaneously, as a horse in his mane; but has adorned man, like the lions, with a beard, and endowed him, as an attribute of manhood, with shaggy breasts,—a sign this of strength and rule.

… This, then, the mark of the man, the beard, by which he is seen to be a man, is older than Eve, and is the token of the superior nature. In this God deemed it right that he should excel, and dispersed hair over man’s whole body. … It is therefore impious to desecrate the symbol of manhood, hairiness.

Father Clement says a good many other things, which you can read for yourself at the CCEL site linked above. And, all that he says will keep the egalitarian chattering classes twittering for the rest of their lives.

But, I cite Clement here by way of showing how very, very far our culture has moved from its Christian foundations, and to suggest that something so simple as the grooming of body hair by both men and women in Christ’s church shows which way the spiritual winds are blowing.

Consider …

What pastor or christian leader would ever consider a sermon urging the men of his flock to let their beards grow out? If they will not preach sermons to their female parishioners on the womanliness of long hair, the shamefulness of short hair on women (remember, that’s the Apostolic judgment in 1 Corinthians 11!), how shall they ever screw up enough courage to grow a beard, or to urge their brothers to grow them?

Of course, there many reasons modern Christian leaders would offer to avoid the subject entirely. They would include

1. Legalism!! If we preach on the length or grooming of hair, much less of beards, we’d be preaching a legal code. How contrary to the gospel of grace. Right?

2. Majoring on minors!! Or, less than minors!! What about men who can’t grow beards? What about female cancer patients?? And, who’s to say short hair on a woman is shameful anyway??

3. Hearts are far more important than the hair!! God looks on the heart, not on the hair-length. Right?

These and similar defenses against preaching on head-hair are irrelevant to this question — does the Bible, does the New Testament, does the Law of Christ, do any of these have anything to say to Christians about hair length and hair grooming? I’d expect most modern Christians to give a resounding “NO!” to that question.

But, when you point them to such teachings in both Old and New Testaments, a modern Christian leader cannot explain why they are there in the first place. To explain them, he (and, more often these days, she) would need a Biblical theology of sex to explain things like sex-differentiating elements in grooming and fashion, things which both the Law of Moses and the Law of Christ have very clear things to say.

Clement trained his pastoral guns on fashions of dress and grooming that are pretty much the same as what we find today. He warned his flock to avoid the way the world corrupted women and emasculated men. First Century North Africa and Twenty-First Century North America had far more in common than anyone understands. Clement was a faithful servant of his Lord to preach all the Christ had commanded. Modern shepherds rarely do that any more, at least where the the commandments of Christ deal with things like dress, fashion, and — yes–hair length and its grooming, on both men and women.

By way of disclosure, I admit to wearing some form of facial hair since college days (high schools in my day did not permit any facial hair on men). I have worn a beard for almost 40 years now. My children (the oldest is now 25) have never seen me without a beard, except for a photo taken during Marine Corps boot camp, and they did not recognize me at all when they first saw it.

If you’d like to see an entire website devoted to the subject of beards — their glory, their cultivation and maintenance, their lore, check out beards.org. As I pen this blog, it features the fellow at the right, seen in both his bearded and unbearded versions. Beards.org archives all the steps in between this version of Patrick and the bearded version below. In fact, you can see all the versions in between at beards.org, and find all you ever wanted to know about beards, and a lot of what you never dreamed there was to know.

During my 40 years with a beard, I’ve seen beards go in and out of fashion. And, I’ve seen kaleidascopic variation in beard styles, lengths, and grooming. But, in no Christian community I have ever inhabited have I seen even the slightest acknowledgement that the Holy Spirit had any opinion at all about this topic, or that He had shown His opinion in Holy Writ.

That is what is the most startling about Clement’s pastoral exhortations. Most moderns will be shocked at the details of his teaching (he dares to criticize what we nowadays call “waxing” to remove all hair from the face, chest, and other parts of the body).

Beyond the details, however, is the larger framework from which the details take their meaning. It’s this Biblical framework one can sense in Clement’s exhortations. And, once you begin to perceive that framework and to think about the world in terms of it, the world around you begins to look pretty much as Clement was describing it in his day.

Eleven Years Ago

On the anniversary of the death of our third daughter Francesca Louise (aka Cheska), my wife sends out a remembrance to friends and family.  Here is the one she sent out this year:

Francesca died 11 years ago this afternoon. As you may remember I am making it my habit to write short memories about her on her birthdays and death days so that those of us who knew her will not forget what God did in and through her life while she was with us.

Last week I asked Veronica what she remembered most about Francesca. She answered rather quickly. “I remember that she forgot about herself and took joy in God.” Veronica went on to tell a story about a time with they were about 6 and 8. They had a big fight over a coloring book and parted in anger. But in only a minute or two, Francesca pursued Veronica and apologized, saying, “A coloring book is not worth fighting over.” Veronica is still visibly impressed by this show of love all these years later.

As I remember Cheska’s last months, there is one simple explanation for how she behaved. She was filled with the Holy Spirit. This explains her joy in tribulation, her quickness to reconcile with a sister, her diligence, and her many godly traits.

Isaiah 11:6 speaks about the peace of the kingdom in which a little child will lead wild animals. In Mark 10:15 Christ says, “Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”

Francesca the child is our example of faith and life.

 

Vile, Mindless Idiocy

 

 

Two things incline a Christian’s heart toward eternity – the lure of heaven and its glories, and revulsion with the world we are departing. The lure is usually fainter, for our glory is unimaginable for our world-darkened minds. But, revulsion with this world is usually never very strong, and so the Scripture exhorts us against loving the world.

 

Two things this week increased my revulsion with the world. If you can’t stand feeling revolted, go away until I post something else.

 

I expect many of you have already encountered the first thing I’ll mention: a story in the Yale Daily News which reports a Yale senior art student’s “performance project” in which she purports to inseminate herself repeatedly with a syringe, and then to induce a series of abortions on the results of her inseminations.

 

Yale officials insist it’s all a farce. The art student insists it’s for real, that university profs and deans supported her project, and she’ll show you video to prove that she’s not making it up. Supposedly, everyone’s outraged, even those who endorse abortion.

 

In the latter case, I wonder why. If an art student at an Ivy League university can conceive such a thing, enlist support of faculty and deans, and carry it out; if she can go forward with plans to “present” the record of her achievements as her senior project – well, what does that tell us about the political, cultural, and spiritual environment in which all this is going on?

 

Second thing I ran across is even more horrific, though most folks won’t think so. It comes from the Philadelphia Inquirer, in a story  about young evangelicals defying political/cultural stereotypes. The money quote runs like this: “I’m not for gayness, but everyone deserves to have a great life. I’m not for killing babies, but I’m pro-choice.”

 

The mind boggles.

 

How about:

 

“I’m not for hari-kiri, but the self-disembowling community deserves to have a great life just as much as anyone else.”

 

I wonder what this nonstereotypical evangelical would say to this:

 

“I’m not for bombing abortion clinics, but I don’t condemn those that do.”

 

Next Time She’ll Wear Skirts

 

Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal is one of the few commentators to consistently analyze the “gender dynamics” of the Democrats’ presidential primary in this election cycle. In her June 27, 2007 column, Noonan put her finger squarely on Hillary’s problem: “Hillary Clinton doesn’t have to prove she’s a man. She has to prove she’s a woman.”

Such irony!  Feminism has triumphed in Hillary Clinton. She epitomizes the fundamental feminist premise, namely that there is no essential difference between men and women, and what differences we see are “merely biological” or socially engineered by men to keep women in their place. To overturn these socially engineered hobbles on females, women must show that they can do the “man thing” just as well as any man.

 

So, Hillary Clinton, in Noonan’s words, creates and projects the persona aptly styled “a person with breasts.” Noonan used that image again in her recent column, commenting on Clinton’s penchant for pant suits that project the same image: “a small blond man with breasts.”

 

Clinton might have done otherwise. Indeed, she has done otherwise when it served her immediate (and narrow) purpose. Even Chelsea joined her in wearing a head-covering – that quintessential marker of femininity and compliance with social convention (cf. 1 Corinthians 11:1ff) – when she met Jordanian King Hussein’s widow Queen Noor in 1999.

 

 Noonan, interestingly, thinks that the next time Hillary runs for President, she will do for her American audience what she formerly did for her very tiny Islamic audience. Noonan makes this prediction :

 

At some future point [in the 2008 Democratic primary cycle] Mrs. Clinton will leave, and at a more distant one she will try to come back. But more than one cycle will have to pass before she does. She’ll need more than four years to shake off the impression she made in 2008. And this is how you’ll know she’s making another bid for the presidency. She will wear skirts.

Death By Blogging

 

On April 6, 2008, the New York Times ran a feature story by Matt Richtel which reported the following:

Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.

 The feature was a fascinating one.  Check it out.

The dead bloggers Richtel spoke about were blogging in the subject area of technology.  And, while Richtel’s observations about blogging generally were insightful, I think most of his insights have nothing to do with blogs like this one.  I observe:

1.  Blogging in the subject area of “gender issues in contemporary Christian theology” is pretty low-stress stuff.  I monitor about 50 or 60 blogs in this subject area.  I assure you that none of them can possibly generate heart-attack inducing stress.  For one thing, their output and frequency of update are simply too low; for another thing, their readership … well, who (except a few bloggers) get that excited about these issues?

2.  Though it is statistically likely that I will exit this world via a heart-attack (since I’ve already had one of them back in 1995), it will be the merest coincidence if that heart-attack should occur at the time I’m working on this blog.  Indeed, this blog competes very poorly with stressors in my environment. 

3.  So, you are safe reading this blog, and I am safe posting to it.  In fact, it’s probably when I am not posting to this blog (since last November, for example) that I am most likely of all to have a heart-attack.

After a hiatus spent stressing over other and far more mundane things (ministry administration, the holidays, the trials and fortunes of family members, income-tax preparation; the usual culprits), I am takingup the blog again, and this post will be the first of (perhaps) a goodly stream of them extending throughout the Spring and Summer. 

Thanks to my readers for checking in.  All is well. 

Jesus’ Sexual Temptation

The temptation of Jesus in the wilderness lays a foundation for later affirmations in the New Testament.  It validates Jesus’ righteousness.  It certifies His worthiness to undertake the mission set before Him.  It demonstrates His moral perfection, validating His suitability to die for the sins of others, as His death could not come about because of His own sins, the temptation attesting that He had none.

A more immediately practical significance of Jesus’ temptation, however, is found in Hebrews 2:17-18:  Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted.

Was Jesus Tempted to Sexual Sin?

That aid is further elaborated in Hebrews 4:15-16:  For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.  Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

So, we are encouraged to seek grace from God our Father in time of temptation because Jesus, our High Priest was tempted in all points as we are, and yet resisted.  So, we count on Him to intercede with His Father for our sakes, when we need divine grace to overcome temptation to sin.

But, wait!  What about temptation to sexual sin?  From the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we see Jesus facing no explicit temptation to sexual sin.  In an age where temptations to sexual sin are thicker than sea-coast fog, (and the First Century was far worse), what do we think of this absence of sexual overture in Satan’s temptation of the Lord?

Yes, He was tempted.  Sort of, that is.

From Hebrews 4 (”in all points tempted as we are”) and Mark’s summary statement (1:13 - “He was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan …”) we might infer that sexual temptation was included in the range of temptations focused on Jesus by Satan.  Luke’s comment - “Now when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from Him until an opportune time” - suggests that the three temptations recorded were only a representative sample, that the whole gamut of temptations (”every temptation”) was trained on Jesus.  Or, that a temptation to sexual sin came later (at an “opportune time”) . 

This latter possibility provided the premise for Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel and Martin Scorcese’s film The Last Temptation of Christ .  In book and film, Jesus faces myriad temptations, including sexual enticements, throughout His adult life.  And, whatever flaws of history or fantasy the novel and film exhibit, their aim is the same as that of ordinary Bible students who speculate that Jesus faced  sexual temptations, which temptations are not expressly recorded by the gospel writers.

Unless …

Sex to the Power of Ten

Jesus said that the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light.  And, though Jesus’ was speaking of the machinations of an unjust steward, His comments sometimes apply just as well to the insights by the sons of this world into how that world works in other areas.  Such as sex.  Just such an insight from a popular son of this world provides a clue to Jesus’ sexual temptation.

The actor Charlton Heston wrote an autobiography in 1995 (In the Arena, An Autobiography) in which he recounts, among other things, the events and personalities that attended the filming of El Cid. In the passage quoted below, he describes the filming of El Cid’s taking of Valencia. “Babieca” is a reference to the horse Heston rode in the film.

[p.255] We had most of the major interior scenes in the can by this time, leaving us largely focused on several varieties and sizes of outside scenes, principally the Cid’s conquest of Valencia and his subsequent defense against the invading Moors.

We filmed his entry into Valencia as bloodless, following Menendez Pidal’s account. The citizens welcomed him in preference to the weak King Alfonso, as the abler soldier they needed against the Moors, offering him the crown of Valencia. The Cid, stubbornly unwilling to displace the king who had exiled him and imprisoned his wife and children, refused the crown, surely one of the outstanding examples of loyalty in history.

It was also a key moment in the movie; I thought a lot about how to play it. As sometimes happens in film, that wasn’t necessary. It played itself. I led a mounted troup to the gates of the city, real iron gates set in the real stone walls of a medieval city. The sun and the sea were as they’d been a thousand years ago. The gates swung open, two thousand people screamed welcome. I rode through, [p. 256] Babieca dancing under my hand, both of us aroused by the roar “Cid! Cid! CID!” I swung off the horse, down into the welling sound, and climbed the steep time-worn stone steps set in the wall. At the top, I turned, the sea behind me, the city and the people lying below, reaching, entreating, warm and open as a woman. “Cid! Cid! CID!”

You don’t have to act that. You can’t act it. I was there. It happened to me. I know, in my bones and blood, what it is to take a city. Yes, of course, it’s like sex. It is sex - to the power of ten.

As you read this passage from Heston’s autobiography, was there any passage from the Gospels that came to mind? I don’t know about you, but I immediately thought of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness (Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Matt. 4:8-9).

If Heston is right - that such glory as the Devil offered to Jesus is an offer of sex to the power of ten - then Heston has presented us an intriguing validation of the statement made by the author of Hebrews that Christ was tempted in all ways, just as we are; specifically, that when the Devil offered Him the glory of the nations, Jesus encountered a temptation aimed at his human, masculine sexuality, a temptation which cut far deeper than a comparably trivial inducement to “mere” coitus.   

Sex to the Power of Ten in the Bible?

We need, I think, to reconsider what is going on in those prophetic passages which describe the kings of the earth committing fornication  with a city (Rev. 14:8; 18:3, 9; Ezek. 16; Hosea). Ordinary hanky-panky of the carnal sort is exactly NOT what the Prophets are talking about. Nor are the prophets scoring a cheap  rhetorical point by salaciously comparing a city’s allurement to a hooker’s come-on.  Great Kings (and those who suppose themselves to be such) fall prey to a fundamentally sexual enticement when basking in the glory of their cities or its citizens.  Think, for example, of Herod’s deadly error in Acts 12:21ff, or Nebuchadnezzar’s similar folly in Daniel 4.  At its heart, Herod’s basking in the adulation of those from Tyre and Sidon, and Nebuchadnezzar’s pride in the glories of Babylon are no different from Ahasuerus’ pride in Vashti (Ruth 1).  Indeed, Ahasuerus’ display of Vashti’s glory and all the glories of his empire are all of one piece.  Heston’s term for this is “sex to the power of ten.” But, there are no naked bodies.  There is no “sex” in the merely animal sense of that word.

We must also not confuse what is “greater” with what is ”lesser” when comparing sex-to-the-power-of-ten with sex to what is ordinarily conceived by the term “sex.”  Modern notions of sex are almost comically truncated.  One might just as well collapse the meaning of “good diet” to the eating of green beans.  Eating green beans is only one, tiny feature of a good diet.  And, those who understand what a good diet encompasses also understand that a good diet might actually omit green beans altogether. 

So also something like masculinity or femininity.  Among the truly masculine or feminine are those who never (or, who no longer) experience sex as sexual congress with the opposite sex.  A ten-year old boy is often overtly masculine, though he is sexually a virgin.  Some of the paragons of femininity in all history have been virgins.  And, a widow or widower do not lose their overt or their intrinsic sexuality merely because they cease for the remainder of their lives to experience sex as they knew it with their departed spouses.

So, Heston is not the first to understand that sex and all its wonder are driven by powers that easily transcend narrow animal aspects of sex. Before Heston spoke of such a thing, the Prophets of the Old Testament, and the Apostle John after them, spoke to the same point, using the same terms.  Israel’s worship of other gods was harlotry and adultery. 

Christians, regrettably, often suppose Jesus was beyond all this.  The pale, slightly fruity-looking Jesus that peers at us from so many treacley portraits in Sunday School assembly rooms looks utterly deaf to a sexual Siren’s song.

But, if bread is a temptation to a starving man, what is the offer of the glory of the nations to the One by Whom, for Whom, and In Whom are all things, Who is at the time of the offer surrounded by dust and rocks and geckos? And what is it to decline such an offer of such a glory, when that glory is rightfully Yours in the first place?  What kind of choice is it to follow, instead, a path leading to abasement and a humiliating death, because Your Father requires this of You? What shall we conclude about someone who made exactly that choice, in the face of exactly that temptation to chose otherwise? 

We conclude, as the author of Hebrews puts it, that “Because He himself suffered when He was tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted.”  And that most certainly includes being tempted by sex to the power of ten.

Prepare for the Feast

Our Lord’s Birthday deserves a special kind of cake, and He’s worth the expense and time required to prepare this one.  It is not a cheap cake.  Depending on your sources of ingredients, it will probably set you back around $50, particularly if you use a quality brandy.  This year’s pecan crop is huge, but I see that in the stores they’re still going for around $9 a pound for the broken pieces.  If you use the whole nuts (pecan-halves they’re usually called), you’ll pay $12 a pound or more.  This recipe calls for one and a half pounds of pecan-halves.  Using the pecan-halves makes for a very lavish looking cake when it is sliced and served.

Think of the extravagance of the Medieval cathedrals as you prepare this.  Think of the centuries it took to build them, as you lovingly keep the cake bathed in brandy for at least a month before serving it. 

 At our house, we observe Advent as a penitential season (which it is), holding back the feasting until Christmas Eve.  This cake is the first that is served after sundown that day, and we continue to eat from it during the Twelve Days of Christmas.  If you’re so minded to join us, make this cake just before Thanksgiving Day (which means mine will be baked tomorrow).

Brandied Christmas Cake

½ pound glazed pineapple, ½ pound candied cherries, and 1 ½ pound pecan-halves                              

4 cups flour

1 pound brown sugar, 1 pound butter (NOT margarine!!)

1 teaspoon baking powder, yes ONLY a TEASPOON.

1 ½ ounces (3 tbsps) lemon extract.  This will be 1 and 1/2 bottles if you buy the 1 ounce bottles in the grocery store.

6 eggs (separated)

You may use red and/or green marachin0 cherries, but if you use these drain and rinse drain the cherries so that they do not tincture the cake batter when mixed.

NOTE: Other fruit combinations may be used instead.  I’ve had good success with dried apricots and pecans.  Raisens may also be used.  Or dried cranberries.  Ordinary candied fruit for fruitcakes works well, but I prefer other fruit combinations in order to differentiate this cake from ordinary fruitcakes.

1.   Dredge the fruit in 2 cups of flour.  Set aside.  Mix remaining 2 cups of flour with baking powder.

2.   In a large bowl (a popcorn bowl works well), cream the butter and brown sugar.  Add lemon extract and mix well.

3.   Add egg yolks alternately with the remaining 2 cups of flour.

4.   Beat egg whites until firm and carefully fold into the batter.

5.   By hand, carefully fold in the fruit, nuts, and the flour in which they are dredged.  The batter will be very, very stiff.  It will not pour.

6.   Cover the bowl containing the batter tightly with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator overnight.

7.  Grease a large bundt pan with shortening, then dust it well with flour.  Prepare a loaf pan the same way, so you may fill it with any batter left over when the bundt pan is filled.

8.  Press the chilled, very stiff batter by handfuls into the bundt pan, packing it well.  You do not want to have air pockets, and the batter will be so stiff as to have the consistency of cookie dough.  Fill the bundt pan right to the top, and place any remaining batter in the loaf pan you have prepared.

9.  Place a pan of water on the lowest rack of an oven heated to 225 degrees.  That’s right: two hundred twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit.  This is a VERY slow oven.

10.  Place the bundt pan (and loaf pan if you used one) on a rack above the pan of water.  Bake undisturbed at 225 degress for 3 hours.  If the cake rises a couple of inches above the rim of the bundt pan, do not fret.  It will go back down when it’s cooled.

11.  Insert a long stick of spaghetti into the center of the cake.  It should come out free of wet batter. 

12.  Allow the cake to cool in the pan for about ten minutes.  Invert the cake in the pan onto a plate larger than the rim of the bundt pan.  Lightly rap the sides with a spoon until the cake dislodges from the pan.  If the batter has baked “hard” around the top edge of the bundt pan you may need to chip that part off to get the cake out of the pan.

 13.  Let the unmolded the cake(s) cool to room temperature.  Wrap the bundt cake in strips of clean cotton sheeting.  Be sure the bundt cake is on a plate large enough to hold it without the cake overlapping the edges. 

14.  Drizzle the sheeting with brandy until it is well drenched.  If there is some brandy pooling in the plate around the edges, this is fine.  Do not use cheap brandy.  Your cake will taste like you tried to go on the cheap.  Don’t do that.  It doesn’t have to be a $100 bottle.  Christian Brothers brandy works well and is not extravagantly expensive. 

14.  Cover the cake well in plastic wrap, bringing the ends of the wrap under the plate to seal out any odors from the other parts of the refrigerator.  Place the cake in the refrigerator.  Check the cake every two days.  If the strips are beginning to dry,  drizzle more brandy onto the strips wrapping the cake until the strips are wet.  Then rewrap the cake and plate well in plastic wrap.  Continue this procedure for at least a month.  It will not be unusual if you use anywhere from a half to a full 750 m. bottle of brandy. 

This cake is extremely flavorful and rich.  Serve it in thin slices with coffee, hot chocolate, hot tea, or spiced cider.  It will easily serve 50 - 60 people at a Christmas buffet.  Or, a smaller group of people may snack on it during the twelve days of Christmas (that’s what we do).  Make this cake once, and you’ll make it every Christmas as long as you live.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Over at The Scroll, the blog for Christians for Biblical Equality,  Megan is cooking up something  wicked for the Spring 2008 issue of Mutuality.  CBE’s editors are ambitious to deconstruct two millennia of Christian “home economics” as it relates to the contemporary Christian home and then to reconstruct the whole idea of home economics to suit egalitarian tastes.  No more of this “woman’s place in the home” stuff.  Indeed, it appears they think “home” in the Christian sense needs a full invasion by men, and that men’s work and women’s work ought to be anyone’s work.

Consider (The Scroll’s text is quoted in red; its meaning, provided by my experience in reading egalitarian prose, in black):

Mutuality  is now accepting articles (and discussion surrounding the issue) for the Spring 2008 issue on ‘Home Economics.’ Topic ideas include, but are not limited to:

You see, after trashing that Neanderthal Paige Patterson and his Southwestern Sexist Seminary  for offering a humanities degree with a concentration in home economics for the wives of the men training for pastoral ministry, CBE now wishes to take the next step: to reconstruct what they have mocked along trendier, feminist lines.  Hence the upcoming issue of Mutuality.  From what Megan’s requesting, it’s fairly clear what they’re aiming for.

• How convictions about biblical equality and gender justice apply to every day home life

You know, if the Biblical equality they’re asserting were really there in the Bible, you’d think that the Biblical men and women would have figured out whether or not “gender justice” has any expression in the home.  But, you see, the Bible is just chock full of the very thing Megan thinks needs to be corrected: women working inside the home, men working outside the home, everyone feeling just fine about gender justice - as far as we can tell from their lives over the 1500 year time span of the Biblical record.

But, no.  Megan will have none of that.  It’s patriarchal, dontcha know.  And we all know that patriarchy is bad, bad, bad.  When it shows up in the Bible … well, it doesn’t belong there, so we’ll just ignore it.

• Biblical reflections: Christ as the head of our homes; being part of the family of God; Proverbs 31 woman

Let me decipher this for you:  “Christ as the head of our homes” means “nobody else is the head of our homes.”  In other words, this stuff about the man being the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the Church is just more of that patriarchal trash we need to sweep out the door.  To hear these folks, you’d think that a good patriarchal family is denying that Christ is the head of the home!  Of course He is, because the man is the head of the woman and Christ is the head of every man (see 1 Cor. 11:1ff for details). 

Similarly, “being part of the family of God” is code for “there is no set pattern for family.”  It’s sexist and patriarchal to think “family” means a man and a woman and children.  Why, just look at the Church, they say.  It’s got all sorts of folks in it - never marrieds, marrieds, divorced, remarried, widows and widowers.  Any of these, in any combination, can be called family if the Church can be called a family.  Away with this patriarchal narrowness.  Paul was just crippled by his patriarchal bias when he urged the Church to copy the family.  Instead, the family should copy the Church.  And since the Church is so domestically diverse, then we shouldn’t be so narrow-minded as to use the term “family” as it has been used for so long.

And, I will wager the farm on this:  whatever Mutuality publishes on the Proverbs 31 woman is going to validate her professional career as a Realtor outside the home.  In fact, they’ll urge all women to get out of the house and into the world, based on this woman’s purchase of a field.  It’s so easy to cherry pick your way through that chapter, elevating what you find useful and ignoring everything else.  After all, anything patriarchal about that passage is bad, remember?  And, we should ignore that kind of thing.

• How Christian convictions about women’s equality have transformed culturally-specific family models (e.g. polygamy, female infanticide, education of women and girls)

Here’s an interesting factoid:  Christianity did all of these things for the West.  Indeed Western culture became Christian culture in a way that has never been replicated anywhere else in the world at any time.  And in Western Christian culture, it is Christianity that reformed marriage, abolished infanticide of both men and women, and opened the doors to the education of women.  And, all of this proceeded for the past two millennia while remaining thoroughly patriarchal. 

So, what’s to complain about, unless it’s the fact that all these advances proceeded in the patriarchal West under the tutelage of those regretably patriarchal Prophets and Apostles?  This section of the Spring 2008 Mutuality ought to be really interesting to read.

• Examples of sharing responsibility in the home; non-traditional divisions of labor (e.g. men who sew or cook; women who fix the car)

Here where we get closer to the meat of Mutuality’s matter.  You see, traditional divisions of labor in the home must NOT be considered a sharing of responsibilities IF that sharing is determined by a sexual criterion.  And, so the traditional divisions of labor (women cooking, men fixing the car) simply MUST be an evidence of gender injustice and inequality.  In a culture ruled by gender justice and gender equality, there would just as many women fixing cars as men, just as many men cooking all the meals as women.  The only way to measure “justice,” according to egalitariains, is by counting noses and making sure that there is no gender disparity in any activity one finds in a marriage or family.  That’s how the Civil Rights enforcement division in the Federal Attorney-General’s office does it.  So, that’s how it needs to be done in the Church.

You see, it’s not a question of who can or cannot do this or that task.  I’m sure women could be auto mechanics just as well as men.  Men could cook just as well as women. I cook much better than most women, for example; the United States Marine Corps taught me to cook, and they did a far better job than most mothers do for their daughters these days.    

Here’s the rub:  food preparation is a domestic duty if there ever were one, unless you contract out that duty (restaurants, TV dinners, etc.).  And, if a woman’s focus is the domestic scene, then food prep will routinely land in her lap.  If a man’s primary focus is some extra-domestic vocation, food preparation for the family will routinely NOT land in his lap.  One problem perennially debated on the contemporary scene is this very domestic duty when both husband and wife are employed in the extra-domestic workplace 40 or more hours each week. 

May a man cook recreationally?  Many men do.  Which reminds me, I need to bake that pecan-apricot bundt cake this week, so it can be resting in brandy-drenched strips of muslin for the next six weeks before the Christmas Eve buffet.  But, this would not, I’m sure, satisfy those who seek gender-justice in the kitchen.

• Home economics for singles, roommates, and communal living situations

To request articles under this rubric is just another way to fudge the meaning of “domestic,” so that it loses all anchoring to the husband-wife-children nucleus.  See the similar point above.

• Critique of the model of husband as head of the home; critique of traditional ‘for women only’ approaches to home economics

Here Megan drops all pretense that her enemy isn’t patriarchy.  Why critique the model of husband as head of the home unless you think such a model is a mistake?  Why critique “for women only” approaches to home economics unless you’re opposed to such approaches? 

• Faithful Christian examples of stay-at-home dads, working mothers, single parents

Again, the premise is that stay-at-home dads, working mothers, and single parents are as right as rain.  One might produce, of course, any of these who are faithful Christians.  But, that is not the point here.  The point is to say that faithful Christians will applaud, support, promote, and endorse stay-at-home dads, working mothers, and single parents.  Can’t let that old patriarchy - with its stay-at-home mothers, its provider husbands - remain the norm. 

In fact, if you want to check the demographics, it’s not the norm any longer, and the feminist revolution in the West is barely 30 years old!  Still, Paul says older women are to teach younger women to … well, we can’t have that, right?  It’s sooooo First Century.  This is the Twenty-first Century.

If Megan’s view of the Bible’s home economics is correct, we’d do best to rewrite the whole Book, and be done with it.  If, on the other hand, that Book and its persistently patriarchal view of home economics is valid … in that case, from Megan’s kitchen something wicked this way comes.