God's Finger, My Forehead, and Her Intricate, Perfect Ears

[More than 10 years ago, in a seminary workshop outside of Greenville, SC, I heard a speaker read this passage.  Since then I've ruminated on it scores of times, though never remembering its author.  This morning, in a Ken Myers interview of Mary Eberstadt, I was delighted to hear it referred to again - with the author's name attached - Whittaker Chambers!  Enjoy.]

“It was shortly before we moved to Alger Hiss's apartment in Washington. My daughter was in her high chair. I was watching her eat. She was the most miraculous thing that had ever happened in my life. I liked to watch her even when she smeared porridge on her face or dropped it meditatively on the floor. My eye came to rest on the delicate convolutions of her ear — those intricate, perfect ears.

The thought passed through my mind: 'No, those ears were not created by any chance coming together of atoms in nature. They could have been created only by immense design.'

The thought was involuntary and unwanted. I crowded it out of my mind. But I never wholly forgot it or the occasion. I had to crowd it out of my mind. If I had completed it, I should have had to say: Design presupposes God. I did not then know that, at that moment, the finger of God was first laid upon my forehead.”

- Whittaker Chambers, Introduction, Witness

A Helpful Explanation

“We objectify everything and begin to think of our bodies as an achievement… We see the body as a problem, as a hindrance to spiritual life – in order to get to the true self, who we really are, we have to somehow control the body and make it do what we want it to do.  In that way we will finally be who we’re ‘supposed to be’,  ‘who we are’.  Previously secular women have a lot of interest in spirituality.  And what drives this is the idea that spirituality is a way to find your ‘true, inner self’ as seen in opposition to your ‘bodily self’.  In other words, we want to escape the body and the limitations of our bodies by becoming spiritual in a disembodied spirituality.  This comes from Descartes’s mind/body opposition.  What happens when you do that is everything done immediately through the body – your eating, your work, your sexuality - becomes meaningless.  So you can do anything you want to, sexually, or through surgery, or manipulation of any kind that you want.  These things are considered acceptable because you’re just trying to get down to ‘who you really are’ your ‘inner self’.  Now, we are more than our bodies, but we are our bodies.  And we need to think of ourselves and other people holistically – not think, ‘Well, there’s somebody in there who really is who you really are’.  In the Christian paradigm, this is how our faith is supposed to be lived out.”

Lillian Calles Barger, author of Eve’s Revenge: Women and a Spirituality of the Body and President of the Damaris Project

Top 4 Questions a Father should ask a Young Man Interested in His Daughter ...

Gleaned from Pastor Burke Shade after years of family courtship, matchmaking, and counseling:

1. What is your Church experience, background, and practice?
2. How is your relationship with your mother, sisters, and father?
3. Are you sexually pure?
4. What is your work now, plans for the future, and can you provide?

Book List [What I've been reading lately]...

You are what your mind eats ...

The Death of Pretty ...

by Pat Archbold
[abridged]

Pretty is dying.

People will define pretty differently. For the purposes of this piece, I define pretty as a mutually enriching balanced combination of beauty and projected innocence.

Young women today do not seem to aspire to pretty, they prefer to be regarded as hot. Hotness is something altogether different.

Pretty inspires men’s nobler instincts to protect and defend. Pretty is cherished. Hotness, on the other hand, is a commodity. Its value is temporary and must be used. It is a consumable. A consumable that consumes as it is consumed but brings no warmth.

Most girls don’t want to be pretty anymore even if they understand what it is. It is ironic that 40 years of women’s liberation has succeeded only in turning women into a commodity. Something to be used up and thrown out.

Of course men play a role in this as well … But here is the real truth. Most men prefer pretty over hot.

Our problem is that society doesn’t value innocence anymore, real or imagined. Nobody aspires to innocence anymore. Nobody wants to be thought of as innocent, the good girl. They want to be hot, not pretty.

Girls, please, bring back the pretty.

Modesty for Dummies [and their teenage daughters]

Recently, the issue of modesty surfaced in a discussion of congregational life, [as it will from time to time] but with a twist.  The unwitting offenders were young ladies from very solid Christian families – many only being young teens whose fathers are otherwise engaged, devout, and fastidious.  The problem seems to be that these fathers – looking through paternal eyes – simply cannot see the obvious: that their daughters are becoming ladies now in need of a particular level of coverage.  Fathers are notorious for this: “…not my little girl. You must be thinking of someone else’s daughter.” 

For such men I have a helpful suggestion [and timely].  Since Christmas is right around the corner, sit down next to your daughter tonight and – after reminding her of this fact – ask her to list for you her top 3 favorite clothing stores [to which she would just love a gift card].  Once she has done this, without missing a beat, hop on the internet and [with her at your side] just dare to open and view the home page of each store, one at a time.  The images that will flash before your glazed eyes will probably be enough to raise your pulse and redden your cheeks, especially with your “not my little girl” sitting beside.  If this isn’t enough, the next time you’re at the mall, take a minute to walk into these stores.  Look around at the posters on the wall; take a gander at the photos they actually print on said gift cards; check out the bags they chirpily hand each shopper to carry around the mall like a walking mini-billboard, slash, status symbol, slash, black & white peep show snapshot.  Sir, if you have a hard time seeing your young daughter for what she now is -  a sexual being, please be aware that Abercrombie, Hollister, American Eagle, Aeropostale, and all the other companies manufacturing her wardrobe don’t.   

Good News!

For Such is the Kingdom of Heaven ...

Evangeline Hope

It's Diversity Weekend in Westminster, but Don't Worry!

(*this article has certain explicit terms abbreviated to keep from tripping content filters that any reader may wisely have in place. You may notice the misspellings, they are intentional.)


As Christ’s disciples, in every circumstance, we are called to be of good cheer.

Recently DW posted a great article about this and I am with him 100% here, but am having a good chance to put some shoe leather on it this week because I was greeted w/ this headline in my local paper: Westminster to hold first Diversity Weekend. (http://www.carrollcountytimes.com/news/local/westminster-to-hold-first-diversity-awareness-weekend/article_2715ac56-9d41-11e0-8f28-001cc4c03286.html) then later: (http://www.pflagwcc.org/)

Of course, by "diversity", we’re not talking about a joyful recognition of how God has made us all “different”, in that some people are big and some small, some people are male and some female, some people are dark-skinned and others lighter. We’re talking strictly about how some people in our town are “different” in that they engage in certain sxl acts that our society has historically viewed as immoral and repugnant.

Start 'em Young

Yesterday, I came downstairs and found my daughter sitting on the floor, flipping through Geerhardus Vos's The Eschatology of the Old Testament.  It was too good a moment to let pass w/o a grainy cellphone snapshot.  Then we took a minute to have our first Tea Party - I figured she could explain a few things to me after a read like that.

And Provoke them not to Wrath ...

"By withholding affection to children when they were young, but also then endeavoring to control their behavior well into adulthood, Victorians were in the very odd position of simultaneously trying to suppress childhood and make it last forever. It is perhaps little wonder that the end of Victorianism almost exactly coincided with the invention of psychoanalysis."

- Bill Bryson, At Home

The VOYAGE of the DAWN TREADER: My Review

I have to admit that this is the first time I can remember having seen a movie made from a book I really like.  My poor wife had to endure about a thousand whispered objections like, "What! ... that's not in the book!" or "This is not how it happened at all!"  But overall, my grade for the movie would be something like a C or ... on a good day, maybe even a bit better.

I fully admit that this score is somewhat lower than it might have been if I'd never read the book, or if I had but didn't really care for it all that much.  As it is though, I love this book and there were a few parts of the film that really annoyed me ... hence, the C.  I tried [in vain] not to be "that guy" who insists on fidelity in every detail.  I refrained from reactions like, "That didn't happen on this island" or "It did but not in that order" or "The bracelet was on Eustace's left arm, not his right [duh!]" ... well, okay, I did mention that one one [or a dozen] times. 

But I realize that liberties have to be taken.  And don't get me wrong, some of the changes/additions were quite fine. 

Beauty, Modesty, and Christ

A Christian woman should seek to be two things in her public appearance -- beautiful and (to all but one) unavailable. One of the fundamental mistakes that women make, when they are falling away from a biblical understanding of femininity, is that of confusing the effects created by signals of availability with the effects of beauty. But this is a drastic mistake. Beauty attracts certainly, in a certain way, but so does availability attract -- in another way entirely. Because Christian women know that general availability is prohibited in Scripture, they are the ones most prone to make this category mistake. They adopt signals from the world, and try to change the meaning of those signals in their heart. But it doesn't matter what those signals mean down inside her own heart.

- Douglas Wilson

Full Daughters

Q: How does a father protect his daughter as she approaches the marriageable age?

A: "The best way I know to put it is:  ‘A father protects his daughter by “keeping her tank full’.’  When your daughter is a little girl, there ought to be a lot of praise and compliments and affection and time with dad.  Dad cares about her and dad takes her out on dates."

-Doug Wilson

[photo: getty images]