Category: Jesus

Shiny Hurting People, Imaginary Umbrellas, and Biblical Authority: Bill Gothard and IBLP

~ Sarah J. O'Connor ~ Leave a comment

It was the summer of ’73, a hot and miserable evening in the San Bernardino Fairgrounds, when I stood from a steel folding chair and placed myself firmly under my umbrella of protection. My entire family had gone to hear the man of the moment, Bill Gothard, at his Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts (IBYC), a week-long seminar for all ages. Young, ignorant, and powerfully zealous, I had no clue that Gothard’s principles would gut my initiative, twist my understanding of the Bible, warp my view of God, or hamstring my future marriage. 

And yet that is exactly what they did.

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They Should Have Known: Jephthah, Southern Baptists, and Sacrificing the Vulnerable

~ Sarah J. O'Connor ~ 9 Comments

Early this year I started penning an article on Jephthah, but I had so much going on that I found it difficult to quiet my mind for writing. Things have settled down a bit now, though, so here goes nothing.

You may recall the narrative. Jephthah was that incomprehensible character who so misunderstood God’s word and his ways that he sacrificed his daughter to fulfill a vow. It’s one of those Bible horror stories that I hate so much, yet somehow feel compelled to decipher. Even when I try, I can’t escape my inner need to comprehend what went wrong and what we can do to avoid falling into the same trap.

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Does Authority Matter?

~ Sarah J. O'Connor ~ Leave a comment

There’s a lot of talk about authority in Christian circles these days – who has it, who does not, who should, who should not. For some it has become a dividing line between truth and error, solid ground and slippery slope, particularly when it comes to who holds authority in the church and in the home. 

More than anything, conceptions of authority govern who speaks and who is silent, who leads and who follows, who decides and who agrees. In extreme cases, authority grants one Christian the right to tell another she must not leave her violent husband. In more run-of-the-mill scenarios, authority justifies affixing “unbiblical” to a marriage where responsibility, decision-making, and initiative are shared, where the hopes and dreams of both are equally cherished. 

On both sides of the deck beliefs about who has authority, how authority functions, and who may sit in official positions of authority define the limits of the pool.

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The Double Standard, Men as Victims of Adultery, Prostitution, and Jesus: A Look at Proverbs 6:26

~ Sarah J. O'Connor ~ 24 Comments

In reading commentaries for my post The Stereotype of the Nagging, Contentious Wife, I ran across an interpretation of Proverbs 6:26 that I’m not convinced is entirely accurate. This is the verse that seems to say it’s okay for a man to visit a prostitute – at least in some English versions – though he’d better stay away from another man’s wife. I don’t know about you, but it would not be okay with me if my husband dallied with any other woman, no matter who she was or how she made a living.[1]

For a prostitute can be had for a loaf of bread, but another man’s wife preys on your very life. (Prov. 6:26, NIV)

The comparison between the toll exacted on a man for having sex with a married woman versus a prostitute appears to imply that sleeping with the second is no big deal.[2] Even though it’s not entirely clear how to translate the Hebrew (it may mean that a prostitute reduces a man to a loaf of bread), becoming a pauper is not as bad as losing your life.[3]

What’s going on here?

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Emotion or Reason? What Coronavirus Teaches Us About Embracing a Full Humanity

~ Sarah J. O'Connor ~ Leave a comment

I’ll admit I’ve been a bit distracted by the Coronavirus crisis. My youngest daughter is a trauma-ICU nurse in Nashville and she’s scared. They don’t have enough personal protective equipment and although her unit is not focused on COVID-19 patients, the physicians move between the emergency department and the trauma ward on a regular basis. One doctor has already tested positive and a few patients are pending. She texted me to say, “You and Dad aren’t going out, are you? You’re isolating, right?”

This sort of emotional response may seem like overkill to some. A longtime friend complained on Facebook about Colorado’s stay at home order, arguing it is unnecessary in such a sparsely populated state. This perspective may come from the fact that at the same time our governor is telling us to stay home, he is also trying to reassure us that only about 10% of cases need hospitalization and only 5% of those are critical. And when Time magazine reports a worldwide case fatality rate of 4% but a U.S. rate of 1.7%, no wonder people are complaining.

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When Forgiving is a Mistake

~ Sarah J. O'Connor ~ 2 Comments

At one point in our lives my husband and I oversaw several small groups at our local church. Our job was to be a resource for the leaders, helping them navigate the challenges they faced as they served God in this way. Now and then one would call because there was a problem.

One time a leader I’ll call Ron contacted us about a couple in his Bible study who had sinned against the group and refused to repent. Since their desire was to forgive the offenders and restore fellowship, Ron asked if we would first meet with him and his wife to understand the issue and then confront the offending couple according to Matthew 18:15-20.

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My Encounter With Jesus-Minimalism

~ Sarah J. O'Connor ~ 4 Comments

I grew up dusting and sweeping and vacuuming around my mother’s seemingly endless array of stuff, vowing to myself from a young age, When I grow up I will never accumulate so many things and I will never-ever-ever spend so much time cleaning. Regularly purging my life of undesirables, I didn’t learn until later how weird my college classmates thought I was for wearing the same cords and the same two shirts (on alternate days, of course) as I rode my bike the eight miles to school each day. It made total sense to me. Yep, from day one I was a minimalist at heart.

But that didn’t make me a Jesus-minimalist.

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