The series continues.
1. The Memory Verse Approach
2. Adventures in Interpretation
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1. As holiness folk go, my parents really weren't legalistic. In fact, after my mother passed, I realized that she actually wanted to look nice in the 1950s. She and my father both had some stylish hats. While I had thought she had wrestled with putting knee socks on my sisters out of a desire to keep them warm, it turns out they were simpler (and more stylish) than full leggings.
In short, when my mother received Philippians 2:12 from the Lord -- "work out your salvation with fear and trembling" -- it truly was moving them in a direction that showed more leg.
I think I have observed some "young people" (they're less and less young) in holiness churches who follow the dress code but probably aren't too invested in it. They follow the norms because they go to holiness churches and it's the way. But it's really more culture for them than conviction.
I've come to wonder if my mother and father were a little like that in their day in the 1950s. Don't get me wrong. It annoyed my father when our pastor in Florida mowed the lawn in shorts. My mother never wore sweats until she was in her eighties and -- even then -- my sister probably dressed her that way. She had a bun to her final day. (I might add it wasn't a standard issue bun. Her bun was more work than most "Wesleyan wads.")
2. One of my sisters felt a call to ministry and became ordained in the Wesleyan Church. She is by far my most conservative sister, a clear indication that conservatism in holiness circles doesn't cut the same way as conservatism in other churches. I do think that the broader conservative culture did have some impact on her. It seemed important to her in middle age for her husband to get ordained as well. There was a joke among the ordination council that perhaps she felt he was called more than he did.
The driving force on her, I believe, was the husband-headship passages in the New Testament. I believe she felt pressure for him to be ordained so that her ordination would not violate husband-headship. Of course, as I have written elsewhere, the Bible doesn't see any contradiction between husband headship and women in leadership and ministry. Deborah and Huldah are married and yet are higher leaders than their husbands.
When one of my nephews was married in a holiness church, I noticed that the ceremony made a point of the wife obeying her husband. This seemed new for me for a holiness church. The holiness churches of the early 1900s were full of female ministers, but there aren't many female ministers today in holiness circles, I don't believe. I attribute this to broader American fundamentalist influence on holiness denominations.
I digress. My sister was the assistant pastor during some of my high school years. While "standards" of dress and such had always been in my general church environment, her ministry presence would bring them much more to the forefront. Standards and such became a new theme in preaching from time to time. For a very brief time, I even wore sweats to practice track rather than shorts.
Of course, the question of standards impacted women much more than men. If I ever worried about not wearing short sleaves, it was a very brief moment indeed. And I continued to wear shorts to run.
I did not worry too much about what other people did. I have yet to figure out that part of my psychology. My theology told me that others were endangering their eternal destiny if they did not obey God's laws, but it didn't seem to bother me. For whatever reason, I feared for myself, but the destiny of others didn't seem real to me.
I remember at a Key Club convention that one of my high school acquaintances was allegedly in his hotel room with a girl. My theology should have been very concerned for him. But instead, I called his room and jokingly asked him what he was doing. "Are you out of breath, Chris?" I jokingly asked. I still don't quite understand how that part of my brain works.
3. Then I went to college. Being at a college where most everyone was somewhat like me was exhilirating. I had always felt like I was in a foreign land in high school. Although many of my high school classmates actually turned out to be rather serious Christians, they didn't fit my box at the time. I more or less assumed they were all hell-bound.
But the people at Central Wesleyan College (now Southern Wesleyan) were my people. It was like coming home or going to church camp. Of course, they weren't really holiness people. More on that in a moment.
Since no one at my high school was my kind of Christian, there was no one I thought I should date. I had crushes on various classmates, but in my narrow-minded world, I assumed they weren't Christians. But now at college, I could date. It was an incredibly terrifying thought, but my hormones would overcome.
There was a girl I had seen in a traveling singing group before I had gone to Central. I thought she was cute and -- in the most fearsome moment of my life to that date -- I asked her to the Christmas banquet. It was incredibly merciful of her to accept, given what an incredibly awkward, backward person I was. We would end up dating for about a year and a half.
But now all the neurotic tendencies that are Ken would ramp up. In general, it didn't bother me if the women on campus wore make-up, wore pants and slacks, wore jewelry, or cut their hair. Like I mentioned above, my psychology seemed singularly unconcerned about what others did.
However, I feared for my own soul if I were to date someone who did all those things. Would God be angry at me for marrying someone who wore makeup, wore slacks and plants, had earrings, and cut their hair?
Meanwhile, my mother told me not to worry too much about it. God would take care of everything, she suggested. That didn't make sense to me. Dating at a small Christian college was serious -- "get a ring by spring," as the saying goes. I didn't think I should date someone that I wouldn't theoretically be able to marry.
4. I should give some backstory here. When I was eleven, I woke up from a nap at camp meeting deathly afraid for my soul. It's like a switch was flipped in my conscience. I would have bouts of paralyzing fear for my soul for the next ten years. I don't suppose it helped that those where the years of Hal Lindsey and the reel to reel movies they showed in church about the rapture and the Tribulation (A Thief in the Night, A Distant Thunder).
No matter how many times I asked God to forgive my sins, I almost never had peace. There was one or two times when I had peace, and I pointed to those moments as my salvation. Most of the time, I couldn't think of anything I needed to ask God to forgive me for. But then I worried, "If I can't remember a sin to ask forgiveness for, can I ever be forgiven for it?" It was a quite neurotic time, and it would wreak havoc with my dating in college. I merely want to note that I had an overactive conscience in those days.
Given my fearfulness, I finally went to the girl I was dating and said (I'm sure it was unbelievable) that I thought I should stop dating her because she didn't do the things I was worried about. I was quite sincere. I was not expecting her to change, and I didn't mean to pressure her to change. I simply -- quite neurotically -- was worried for my own soul.
She said she prayed about it and that the Lord had told her to stop wearing jewelry and make up and to only wear dresses and skirts. Quite embarrassing to say, but it's important backstory for one of the most pivotal moments in my hermeneutical story. What a horrible thing I inflicted on her for over a year.
5. Wisely, she eventually broke up with me. You can imagine what a psycho of indecision I was. "Am I saved? I'm not sure I've ever been saved." "I love you." "Do I love you?" In all my Spock-like psychology, these are objective questions I needed to gather evidence about and form the most logical conclusions on. It was too much for anyone but a mother to bear.
On my way back to school after a Christmas break, I wrestled with whether I was entirely sanctified or not. I'm sure I had asked for it many times at every camp meeting and church service it was preached. I thought of the sermons on Jacob wrestling with the angel -- "I will not let you go until you bless me."
"If you really wanted to serve God with your whole heart," a voice said in my head as I drove from Fort Lauderdale to Lakeland, "you wouldn't go any further back to school until you were entirely sanctified." So after some wrestling, I told the Lord that I wouldn't leave Lakeland for Central until I was entirely sanctified, even if I had to miss the spring semester.
In that moment, I felt a peace. When I got to Lakeland, I went into the sanctuary of the Wesleyan church there and thanked the Lord for sanctification. Then the next morning, I drove the rest of the way back to school.
Was that really the Lord? Was it the Devil torturing me? Was it some neurotic phase that I eventually grew out of? Perhaps the Lord was merciful and gave me peace despite my freakishness. Or maybe it was a predictable psychological release after a self-inflicted crisis.
6. After she broke up with me, she started wearing pants and make-up again. The earrings came back on. Good for her. It built to a crisis in me, though. At first I was hurt because it felt personal. Hadn't she said she prayed through on it?
At one point, I met with the Resident Director of the girls' hall, then Judy Huffman. She suggested I might fit in better at Kentucky Mountain Bible Institute than at Central. Ouch. That hurt because, in my mind, I wasn't like the people at Hobe Sound or KMBI. I had a little condescension toward them, even though I was playing out their script.
I prayed with Judy. I said, "Lord, if I'm wrong on these standards, please show me." I had no expectation that he would, though. I know I'm right, I thought to myself.
At some point, I went to talk to Dr. Herb Dongell, one of the professors. I knew him to be one of the more conservative professors at CWC. I asked him about things like whether women should only wear dresses and skirts.
I was surprised by his answer. "If you look at the clothing that men and women wore in Bible times," he said, "it really wasn't that different." I suppose his point was that the clothing that is considered male or female changes over time and changes in particular with culture.
There was a verse in Deuteronomy that my sister, I think, had pointed out. It was Deuteronomy 22:5 -- "It's an abomination for a woman to wear that which pertaineth to a man." But Dr. Dongell was indicating that these norms change over time.
7. My wrestling finally came to a head one day in the library. I had run into my former girlfriend and saw that she had a ring back on her finger. In my agony over losing her, a tiny little explosion happened in my brain. "Aw, what does it matter???"
In the end, I really couldn't care less whether someone wore a ring or an earring or pants or a dress or make-up. They were the rules of my culture but, really, they all seemed rather silly things to worry about. For most women, wearing an earring is little different from combing your hair.
When I got married, I had a wedding ring. I had never worn any kind of ring before -- I didn't even get a class ring. I found it very uncomfortable and twisted it incessently for the first few years of my marriage. Soon after my wedding, a more conservative acquaintance asked to see it. I shouldn't have taken it off but I gave it to them. They proceeded to dance around with it as if to portray the spirit with which I must surely wear it.
In retrospect, it is quite funny to me. The complete mistaking of my attitude toward the ring is quite hilarious, actually quite embarrassing for them. They made quite a fool of themselves jigging around. But this is how paradigms work.
In her paradigm, this person couldn't imagine that a person could wear jewelry without manifesting the most ungodly pridefulness. But this is not really true to the attitude of most women. Having a pair of nice shoes. Wearing a tie. Having a nice shirt or a nice jacket. These really are no different that putting on a little make-up or a nice pair of earrings or a necklace.
I was particularly struck my final year at one of the professor's daughters who broke all the rules of my holiness background. She had short hair, wore jeans, had earrings. Yet it seemed to me that she was the most spiritual student on campus. Here I was, the student body chaplain, and she had a joy in the Lord that I had never experienced. It was another bit of what I call "naughty data" that would eventually unravel my paradigm.
7. In my final year at Central, I asked someone to the Christmas banquet who was from Kentucky. She and her sister were sometimes called the "Hollywood girls" in their home church because they wore a little make-up. They only wore dresses, but they had shoulder length hair rather than a bun.
They found the pastor's daughter at their home church a little annoying. From their perspective, she rolled out of bed without combing her hair. Her clothes were wrinkly and unkempt. AND, the church thought she was oh so holy. Their perspective might have been a little less than objective.
However, it struck me that a person can be just as proud about being homely as a person can be proud about how ornate they are. Pride was of course one of the worse sins for my background (Prov. 16:18). But pride is a matter of the heart, not of external appearance itself. A person can dress ornately and not be prideful in their heart. And a person can be proud in their slovenliness.
Human nature truly is remarkable in its ability to twist things. I've seen some buns that were incredibly ornate to me.
I was not wired for such show. If the clothes make the man, I have generally been unmade most of my life. More than once, friends have mocked the state of my shoes. These are partially my personality and partially a hangover from my holiness childhood.
The above is the personal background now for the exegesis that will follow. You see, there are verses to go with these standards. How did I process through them as these changes were taking place in me?
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