There’s been a lot of good stuff that’s happened lately, mostly involving Thayet in one way or another (e.g., seeing Flyboys with her, even if I did forget to invite the Duelist; Jammix, even if she did get hurt; the Halloween Gaskell’s, even if we didn’t go). I could blog about that, but I’m not going to. Instead I’m going to blog about World of WarCraft. Note how I have cleverly made mention of the topics of more general interest before delving into the topic of specific interest.

I haven’t touched Aya Silkrose in a long time, but I’ve been having a blast playing Jasica with my weekly five-man of myself, the DM, Ayudaren, Twilight, and Kathelia. We have an extraordinarily conventional party build (warrior, priest, rogue, mage, and shaman in that order), but our party is far from conventional. Quite simply, we are the most awesome party I have ever been a part of (no offense to Alexander or my erstwhile crew on Hyjal). To give you an idea of how awesome we are, allow me to adduce two simple facts.

Fact the first: we cleared the entire Scarlet Monastery Armory in thirty-five minutes with a party that ranged from level 36 to 38.

Fact the second: we have engaged and defeated nine (count ‘em, nine) elite mobs in a single engagement, all of whom were our level.

If you aren’t well-versed enough in WoW to tell how awesome that is, take it from me, it’s awesome.

I could go on and on about just why we’re so awesome, but that would feel like bragging, so let me take this opportunity instead to set down on paper a few thoughts about tanking, since that’s my role in the party. “Tanking” is a word that I dislike, since the role of the “tank” in a MMORPG does not remotely resemble the role of an armored fighting vehicle, but it’s the only word there is for the concept, so I’m stuck with it.

All combat in WoW, I believe, boils down to two quantities. The first quantity we will call “party resources.” This is a conglomeration of all the party’s assets, which can in turn be generalized as: how much damage the party can take before it dies, how much damage per second it can project upon the enemy. Party resources are reduced in a number of ways: mana can be expended, consumables can be consumed, abilities on a cooldown timer can be used and made unavailable for a while, somebody can die. The second quantity is the enemy’s resources – how much damage per second they can project, how much damage they can take before they die, etc. Players emerge from combat when they force the enemy to expend his resources faster than they expend theirs; the more party resources left over when the enemy’s have been exhausted, the easier combat will seem.

I’m pretty sure that efficient management of party resources is, on an analytical level, what sets Jasica’s party apart from all the others I’ve played in. We almost never expend resources by forcing somebody to do something that isn’t their job. For instance, if the mage has to cast frost nova and then run a few steps away, the party has expended resources inefficiently. He wasn’t supposed to have to do that. He was supposed to be using that mana to kill things, not keep from dying. And he was supposed to use that time killing things, not keeping himself from dying.

This naturally raises the question of what people are supposed to be doing. This is really a question of how they best contribute to the party’s resources and how they best contribute to diminishing the enemy’s. In MMORPGs there is a classic trichotomy of roles: some classes contribute best through “damage per second,” or DPS – that is, projecting force onto the enemy. Some classes contribute best through healing - extending the life of the party. And some classes contribute best through “tanking.”

But what is tanking? It is often said that a tank’s job is to take hits. This is untrue. It is true that the tank has the responsibility of taking hits – i.e., if somebody is going to be hit, it ought to be him - but that is not his job (unless he’s a druid or a paladin). Taking hits, as anybody who hasn’t been indoctrinated into MMORPG-speak can instantly see, only diminishes the party’s resources. Getting hit is a bad thing. All things being equal, a tank would rather not take hits. In fact, a warrior getting hit is a concession to the fact that he doesn’t do enough damage. (Absent thorns, flame shield, retribution aura, a naglering, or something similar, the only benefit to getting hit is generating rage. And getting hit is a very inefficient way to generate rage. For those of you who care about math, from a rage generation standpoint, every 57 points of damage Jasica takes at level 38 from a level 38 opponent could be replaced by an extra 19 damage she inflicts – and given the choice of inflicting 19 damage or taking 57 damage, obviously a tank would prefer to inflict damage). A tank’s job is to generate threat.*

This simple (but all too little appreciated) fact can be seen from the following observations. A tank contributes to the fight in two ways. One, he stays alive (preserving party resources – he’s useless if he’s dead). This is a benefit because he is the cheapest cost avoider for taking hits, as we might say in the legal world. Given that the party is going to take X amount of damage from the enemy, that damage should fall on the tank rather than anyone else because the tank mitigates it the most (by virtue of having the highest armor in the party). There is a net gain to party resources when X gross damages falls on the tank rather than falling on anybody else, and thus a tank getting hit “contributes” to party resources, which is untrue of every other role (again, if somebody has to get hit). Two, the tank contributes to a fight by defining the maximum safe amount of damage the party can inflict. The amount of damage each party member can inflict (or the amount of health each party member can heal) before drawing the attention of the enemy is a rigid and mechanical function of how much threat the tank has generated. Feint, fade, and even feign death don’t change the fact that the maximum safe threshold depends upon the tank’s ability to project threat. Now here’s the trick: there is one and only one of these functions that only the tank can affect. We identify that function, and we have identified the tank’s job.

The entire party contributes to keeping the tank alive. The damage-dealers contribute by killing the enemy – the faster the enemy dies, the less damage the enemy inflicts. The healer contributes by negating the damage the enemy actually inflicts. The tank contributes through his armor and defensive skills, reducing the amount of damage he takes in the first place. And a deficiency in one of these areas can be made up by a surplus in the others. Even a tank with no armor at all can be kept alive indefinitely if the enemy dies fast enough, or if the healer can heal for long enough.

But only the tank can raise the safe threshold. If the tank is not producing threat, the healer cannot efficiently heal, and the damage dealers cannot efficiently deal damage. The more threat the tank generates, the more force the party can project and the more damage the party can heal. And nobody else can contribute to this threshold.

One of the consequences of this observation is that, in my party at least, it argues against ever having an off-tank. It might be different in a party with a paladin (though I doubt it), but in a party whose off-tank is a shaman it is manifestly inefficient to off-tank. This is not because our shaman is incapable of off-tanking. It is because she has better things to do with her time and mana – namely, kill things (which contributes to my survivability and makes efficient use of her resources, whereas if she was off-tanking she would contribute to my survivability but make inefficient use of her resources). This requires that I routinely tank multiple enemies at once, but that’s really not that hard if my focus is on threat generation and not on staying alive (one reason Jasica always tanks dual-wielding unless we’re fighting something that’s easy to tank and will take a long time to kill, like a boss). Tanks need to learn to think about tanking in terms of multiple enemies. Everyone agrees, I think, that any rogue worth his salt should be able to kill two enemies of his own level. If I may be frank, any tank worth his salt should be able to tank two enemies of his own level—really, he ought to be able to tank three. Beyond three, I’m willing to concede that exogenous crowd control may start becoming necessary. But again, if somebody’s going to be hit, it’s the tank’s responsibility to ensure that it’s him. That is the most efficient use of party resources; it doesn’t change simply because there’s more than one foe.

Group tanking is really not as hard as I feel people often make it out to be. If the party is doing its job, the damage-dealers will be focusing on only one of the multiple enemies. The threat mechanics of WoW will then make the following true: the tank will have to generate more threat than only two of the party’s four other characters. Those two are the leading damage dealer and the healer.

Even if there are three damage dealers, as there are in Jasica’s party, it is obviously true that at any given time one of them will be doing more damage than the other two. That person, then, is the one the tank must out-threat. This should not be especially difficult. If a tank can’t generate more threat than his leading damage dealer, there’s either a great disparity in gear quality or the tank should turn in his sword. This just leaves the healer.

The healer is somewhat trickier because, unlike the damage dealers (who generate threat to their target only), he generates threat to all enemies simultaneously. This will mean that in order to stay ahead of him, the tank will have to occasionally hit the other enemies with a major dose of threat (it’s been my experience that trying to tank with nothing more than area-effect threat generators like a warrior’s shouts is a mistake. Those can be useful, but it’s far more reliable to expend the resources necessary to whack the other enemies with a sunder armor, maul, swipe, cleave, or even just a rend, if you do it early enough). Fortunately this doesn’t have to happen too often thanks to the threat math (even for a healer with no threat reducing effects and a warrior or bear with no threat enhancing effects, each point of damage the tank deals is 3.38 points of health the healer can safely heal. With talents that number goes up to 4.52). This can be somewhat difficult because the need to stay ahead of the healer means the tank must divert some of his available threat pool away from staying ahead of the primary damage dealer – which only emphasizes again why the tank’s job is to generate as much threat as possible, and not to take hits or to have lots of armor.

An interesting efficiency falls out of this, once it falls into place: a tank who tanks multiple enemies in this fashion actually makes the entire fight easier, not only on everybody else but also on himself. This happens in two ways. First, the damage dealers are not expending resources (including time) defending themselves, so the enemies die faster (which contributes to the tank’s survivability). Because the enemies die faster, the healer has to heal less, and so generates less threat, and is so easier for the tank to stay ahead of in terms of threat generation. Second, because only the tank is taking damage, the healer only has to heal one party member. This has numerous benefits from the tank’s standpoint. For one thing, it means the healer’s entire attention is directed at the tank, which increases the tank’s confidence that the heals will come through in time. For another, because the tank is the best damage mitigator in the party, it means that the healer is healing the minimum possible amount of damage – and so generating less threat, and so making it easier for the tank to stay ahead of him, and also expending the minimum possible amount of mana, thus prolonging the party’s resources.

Which is why the tank’s job is not to take hits, and not to have lots of armor or hit points. Those are things the tank may have to have or have to do to fulfill his job, but his job is to produce as much threat as possible. It’s a fairly simple observation, but one that a surprising number of tanks don’t seem know. And while I think I’m a pretty good tank in terms of my situational awareness, reflexes, and ability to estimate multiple threat levels on the fly, to the extent that Jasica’s tanking is exceptional, this is why.

* “Threat” is the intangible substance that determines, in a rigid and mechanical fashion, who the enemy attacks. Tanks have a variety of tricks up their sleeve to generate threat. Damage-dealers generate threat primarily by dealing damage. Healers generate threat primarily by the act of healing. Note that for the other two core roles, threat is generated primarily as a function of doing their jobs. So everybody is constantly generating threat; the trick is for the tank to generate threat faster. The math is slightly more involved than this, but for layman’s purposes it works like this: If the tank generates more threat than anybody else in the party, the enemy attacks him. If somebody else generates more threat, the enemy attacks that person – and that person then has to stop what they’re supposed to be doing to defend themselves.

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Almost a year ago (October 30, 2005) I responded to Kalaraen’s comments about chivalry by trying to define Natalian chivalry. It’s a tricky concept for me, much trickier than adventure or romance. I settled for trying to define chivalry in terms of what I think a woman ought to demand of a man when he pursues her. I came up with three general categories of virtue: wisdom, honor, and valor. Roughly speaking, I process those as what you know about God, how God has changed you as a person, and what you do about it. The trichotomy isn’t perfect. In practice, for one thing, those three things overlap to an enormous degree. For another thing, I make no claim that Natalian wisdom, honor, and valor cover all that a man should be. But I still find them useful categories.

I say this because I think the time has come for me to make some attempt at defining feminine Natalian chivalry, and I want my disclaimers clearly understood up front. So the first disclaimer is this: I am drawing distinctions because I find them useful categories, not because I think they’re really discreet things. The second is like it: I may be leaving things out. Third, I am trying to capture a vision in my head, and my verbal grasp on that vision is not especially clear. This post is one attempt to get at it. But even if I were to perfectly capture that vision, let me admit up front that I don’t understand everything about the spiritual realities of women. So the vision itself is likely incomplete.

Fourth, let me stress that I am not trying to define the term woman. I don’t actually have a definition of woman—or of man, for that matter. I have definitions or pictures (imperfect though they be) of what a man or a woman should be, which is what I am trying to get at by describing the chivalric man and chivalric woman, but the wisp of the gender essence itself—what a good woman shares with a bad woman, or how a bad man is different from a bad boy—is something I have no definition for. The Eldredges’ definitions work fine for me, but I’m not sure they’re as universal as one would like a definition of this kind to be. Piper’s definition I’m a little wary of although it has virtue; Inarra Serra’s I think is correct but incomplete. At some point I may need to define those terms, but for now I think the should be is more important than the is. At any rate, I have already tried to define what a man should be—roughly speaking, a knight and a gentleman. This post is an attempt to evoke on paper my definition of the chivalric woman—a lady knight, to use the Natalian shorthand—and no more.

Fifth and finally, I must beg the indulgence of anybody who reads this, particularly the women in the audience. I have no interest in believing that women should be [insert feminist slogan here]. Nevertheless, I would not have it said that my vision of women is weak or subordinate for the simple reason that it is not true. If the lady knight in my post seems overly subordinate or soft, pray juxtapose it with my goddesses: three are great feudal ladies, two are sovereigns, one holds high command, three are career soldiers, two are great commanders of men, four have changed the course of nations, three have defied their home kingdoms and their sovereigns, four know how to handle a sword, three are highly accomplished martial artists, two are natural killers, one is a natural healer, one is a great sorceress, two own fabulous wealth in their own right, two have volcanic tempers, two are painfully shy, one struggles with self image, none are considered great beauties, three are deeply in love with men (and one woman, non-sexually) of their own choosing, who are likewise devoted to them and every bit their matches. And with that said, what do I think defines a lady knight?

A woman should be wise. Does she see things as they are, and not as she wishes them to be? Can she see clearly even through great emotional turmoil? Does she perceive the heart of the matter? Does she perceive her own heart as it truly is? Has her counsel proven trustworthy in both process and result? Does she know the Lord, and does the Lord know her? Does she love the Lord? Does she delight in obedience? Does she love the Word?

A woman should be magnificent. Is she at peace? Is she patient? Are her principles sound, and soundly grounded in the Word? Are her principles invincible against the pressures of culture but held with humility? Does she live by them? Does she reject falsehood and cowardice uncompromisingly and simultaneously inspire to godliness? Is she unpretentious? Is she radiant? Does her presence point to the Lord? Is her character alluring? Does she love to worship the Lord? Is her presence awesome? Does her character make her wrath terrible? Is she self-controlled, mistress of her own thoughts and feelings? Is she wild? Is she beautiful because God loves her and she knows it? Does she value herself as and because the Lord values her? Is the Lord both the foundation and the great fact of her identity?

A woman should be valiant. Does she protect those around her? Is she tender-hearted? Is she fierce when roused? Does she always believe, always hope? Does she forgive as the Lord forgives? Does she act out of faith, and neither out of fear nor bravado? Is she growing in the Lord? Does she love with vulnerability? Does she hold back when it is time? Does she love to serve others? Is her life always inviting those around her to the Lord? Is she a vessel of the Lord’s healing? Is she chaste and scandalous in romance? Does she love to give in romance? Does she graciously receive? Does she support her boyfriend or husband and yet remain his match?

A lady knight is something like that. It is an imperfect picture, I think, but that is just as well—who would want women to be so simple that a picture could capture them perfectly?

Well, I finally went and read The Da Vinci Code, because on the way back from Chicago there was nothing else to do other than listen to my wonderful iPod, which I mean in total sincerity because a) my iPod is genuinely wonderful, and b) I was way too tired to do any writing. I don't really want to talk about TDC a whole lot more, but I feel that fairness requires me to acknowledge I have read it. Fairness also requires me to admit that I enjoyed it well enough. I'd like to skip over the religious part fairly quickly and just discuss it as a book, or an exercise in world-building.

The Christian critique can be passed over, as Antilles has dealt with all of my thoughts on that subject in more than adequate fashion. As far as the way the book treats paganism ... well, personally I didn't think paganism got any better treatment than Christianity, and for essentially the same reason - lack of research. As near as I can figure, both Teabing and Langdon view paganism as essentially doctrinally monolithic, and that monolith basically looks like some sort of cross between Hellenized Egyptian religion and the new-kid-on-the-block religions of imperial Rome only without the pantheons of either (something tells me Artemis would object to being lumped with Aphrodite into a single entity simply labeled "The Goddess"). They also seem to know an awful lot about the actual theology of "paganism," for which I'd be terribly interested to see their primary sources.

But the truth is that the portrayal of religion in the novel didn't especially bother me. I mean sure, I thought it was childishly researched, and I'd be very sorry if anybody took as fact anything material about Christianity, paganism, or history. But there's nothing wrong with taking the current fad for Magdalene conspiracy theories and making an adventure story out of it. I mean heck, Infernal Gaslamp was really nothing more than twisting real people, organizations, or events according to an author's personal fantasy life and using that raw material to tell a story, which is basically all Brown is doing. Except that where The DM told a coherent story, I didn't feel like Brown did. The question I was asking myself through the whole book was, "What catastrophe are we trying to prevent?" There's a lot of talk about the awful power of the Priory's secret - how valuable it would be, how it could topple the Church, even some talk about how it could bring modern religion back into balance. So clearly this secret is supposed to be important. But I just didn't feel like the book established that. Now, mind you, I try to take books on their own terms. So I'm willing to accept, for purposes of reading, every point at which the world of TDC differs from the real world. Even so, what was the great catastrophe? Arguably, the final twist of the book is that there is no great catastrophe. But clearly the book feels that many, many people thought there was going to be one. And I just couldn't figure out what it was. That the Catholic Church - indeed, the entirety of Christendom - would be shown a fraud because Jesus wasn't divine? Well, maybe that's good, but it's never really very clear. Nor is it clear how proving that Jesus had a child proves that he wasn't divine. I mean, even the deluded Christians of Brown's world think that God the Father had a child, and that doesn't seem to have cast any doubt on his divinity. Maybe it would just topple the Catholic Church, because it would prove that the Catholics had killed in order to protect themselves. But that seems pretty far-fetched, and not even Teabing or Langdon goes that far.

Perhaps, though, TDC thinks that bringing the Priory's secret out into the open would not topple Christianity but rather reform it (and perhaps in time all "modern religions," to use the book's phrase) by bringing it in line with the gender-balanced paganism of our forefathers. I think that's really the most likely consequence the book is asking us to accept. And speaking as a writer, I have two problems with that.

First, the implicit converse of this theory (and the book makes this point explicitly at one point) is that gender-imbalanced "modern religion" is a catastrophe worthy of building a thrilling adventure story around. Essentially, the book is asking me to look around and say, "Behold the world as you know it. Isn't it awful?" And frankly, it isn't. Or rather, it is awful, but I don't know that it's so obviously awful that reforming the world as we know it makes for a good thrilling objective (even if that objective turns out to be a red herring). Especially when what we're reforming it to is:

Second, nobody in the book - not even Teabing and Langdon - ever goes on record as saying pagan antiquity was better than the Christian era, or that the areas of the world where non-modern religions hold sway have it fundamentally better than the areas of the world where modern religions hold sway. Nobody ever says that in gender-balanced pagan antiquity women had more rights than they have today, or that there were fewer wars, or that societies were not dominated by corrupt oligarchies, or even that people were just plain happier. And as everyone knows (even restricting ourselves here to the Greek-influenced Mediterranean, as TDC sort of unconsciously does), gender-balanced pagan antiquity was generally a brutish and nasty time to live when people of power did what they pleased, states were far more frequently at war than they are today, and women had very few rights compared to the rights they have today. So it's not exactly clear what beneficial effects gender-balancing modern religion is supposed to have, and nobody ever makes it clear.

So I felt like the book's biggest failing was that Brown took real people, organizations, and events, twisted them according to his personal fantasy life (so far so good; we have the makings of a good novel) and then didn't use them to tell a very interesting story. For most of the book I was asked to believe that revealing the Priory's secret would have some large, sort of cataclysmic effect. And I was never able to figure out just what that effect would be, or even might be. Which left most of the book feeling sort of meaningless to me. It's not that I thought the premise of the Priory's secret was improbable. Infernal Gaslamp certainly had that problem - I consider it extraordinarily improbable that Cthulhu will ever appear on Earth, for instance. The trouble is that, granting the premise, I thought the cataclysm extraordinarily improbable. If Cthulhu ever were to appear on Earth, it is reasonably clear to me the catastrophic consequences which would follow. If it were to become accepted as fact that Mary Magdalene bore a child by Jesus and was intended to found the church rather than Peter who actually founded the church, it is not at all clear to me what catastrophic consequences (or even which beneficial consequences) would follow.

Which, I don't know, strikes me as kind of a narrative failing. Did I miss something?

In a previous post (July 6) I submitted that Scripture says there is a unique headship/submission relationship between husband and wife, and that that relationship is mandatory, but that it does not extend beyond marriage. That is, every husband is the head of his wife, whether the two of them like it or not—that’s inherent in the meaning of husband. But it does not follow that every boyfriend is the miniature head of his girlfriend whether the two of them like it or not; that is not inherent in the meaning of boyfriend (or if it is, Scripture has declined to inform of us this fact). I think you can see added support for this in the Biblical conception of courtship—essentially, there is no Biblical conception of courtship. The Bible seems perfectly okay with total strangers getting married, no evaluation period and no practice for headship/submission. If that’s true, then it seems to me that it must also be true that even though our society has instituted this evaluation and practice period we call dating, it must be okay to have a dating relationship without treating it like a miniature marriage. Dating is not a miniature marriage; that’s the whole point. Let me hasten to add a caveat: I think that a boyfriend and girlfriend can and should covenant to form a miniature headship relationship. I don’t think Scripture commands it, but I still think it’s a good idea. Sure, a man can go from boyfriend to husband and start being head then with no practice. A woman can go from not submitting at all to her boyfriend’s headship and start submitting to her husband’s headship cold turkey. But that just seems like making things a lot harder on both people than it has to be.

Such, at any rate, is my understanding of the Scriptural order of things as it stands right now. But in my last post I glossed over the question of what exactly we mean when we say that a wife should submit to her husband in all things and that a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. It is a question I find perplexing despite much modeling and much teaching, but I think it deserves to be addressed.

Let me start by observing (as did Thayet, if you go back and read the comments) that this is a very specific subset of human relationships. The general rule for relating to people, which I think is much more important, is to love your neighbor and be humble. Among Christians specifically, that means submitting to one another (Eph. 5:21). These things are far more important when it comes to how we ought to relate to one another than observations about husbands and wives—and, significantly, they apply to husbands and wives just as much as they apply to total strangers. A Christian husband is the head of his wife, to be sure. But he is still called to submit to her.

So let’s start with husbands. The husband, Paul tells us, is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, and is to relate to her as such. He goes on to discuss Christ’s death on behalf of the church and the fact that the husband and wife are (if I can follow C.S. Lewis in putting it this way) a single organism.

I hope that it is clear from what has been said so far that this is not an authoritarian picture, but in case it isn’t let me say so explicitly: this is not an authoritarian picture. Yes, Christ has complete authority over the church. But the analogy between Christ and husband will break down if we push it too far, just like any analogy, and Paul does not focus on Christ’s authority. He focuses on Christ’s sacrifice. That is the take-home point of the analogy. Husbands sacrifice for their wives. Husbands love their wives—they love their wives so much that they should place their very bodies, if need be, between their wives’ sin and their wives.

At the same time, Scripture commands wives to submit to their husbands “in all things.” Let me be the first to admit that this is a troubling passage. My goddesses are not damsels in distress. They are Alanna the Lioness, Cimorene, Honor Harrington, and Keladry of Mindelan—strong, independent, dangerous women who lead, inspire, kick ass and take names. And I still think that is what a woman should be: valiant, magnificent, and wise (I know I’ve mentioned this before and have still failed to elaborate. Maybe I will at some point in the future). Of course, at the end of the day my concern is not what I think should be. My concern is what Scripture says is.

At the same time, I think my opinion is consistent with the Scriptural picture. So here is what I think is going on here. I do think that Scripture is being literal when it says that a wife submits to her husband in all things. I don’t think we’re talking about submission in merely spiritual things. That would be silly if husband and wife are really as fully joined as Scripture says. If they’re joined for all purposes—and that, I think, is crystal clear—then there’s no basis for not taking Paul at his word when he says “in all things.” But I think translating hupotassô as “submit” may get us into trouble here. It’s not a bad translation, but in the marriage context specifically the English word “submit” carries a lot of baggage. Perhaps it would be helpful if I observed that hupotassô literally means “to arrange under.” And then let us remember that while the wife is to “arrange all things” under her husband, her husband is to sacrifice his last breath for his wife.

To me, this makes things clearer. I do not think the picture here is of a wife asking her husband’s permission every time she wants to go out, or buy gas, or go shopping. Indeed, the very concept of asking permission seems out of place to me. The church does not ask Christ’s permission to do things. Christ liberates the church; he doesn’t restrict it—and so, I submit, it should be between husband and wife. Now of course at the same time the picture is not of a wife doing whatever she pleases without regard to her husband. This too is like the church: Christ liberates us, yes, but the church does what Christ likes because we love Christ (and if you don’t think that’s liberating … well, you’re wrong). The wife is the central [earthly] fact of the husband’s existence just as the husband is the central [earthly] fact of the wife’s existence.

I think this picture also clears up for me the troubling hypotheticals. One might ask, for instance, what a wife is supposed to do if her husband is abusing her—or abusing their children, perhaps. Let’s make the hypothetical even sharper: suppose a husband orders his wife to come over to him so he can abuse her. What then? Is she to obey, on the theory that she is to submit to her husband in all things? Or suppose that a wife is abusing her husband—is he to walk over, on the theory that he is to sacrifice everything for his wife? By no means! Mê genoito!

Now, let me make it clear that I do not think these relationships are conditional. A husband does not stop being the head of his wife because she refuses to arrange all things beneath him. A wife is not freed of that obligation because her husband refuses to sacrifice for her as he should. Scripture does not say that a husband is head of his wife if she submits to him, nor that a wife is to submit to her husband if he is her head. But I do think that what it means to submit—or to be head—changes as the other spouse’s behavior changes.

In the case above, for instance, I think the abused spouse should follow all of the usual procedures. The last thing s/he should do is walk over like a lamb to the slaughter, and I really have no problem with employing physical force in the protection of endangered children, if the situation should call for that. In fact, I would applaud the use of physical force in the protection of endangered children. That’s what physical force is for. But the husband should not give up on his wife, nor the wife on her husband. And (while keeping herself/himself safe, of course, and removing herself/himself from the abusive situation) s/he should do everything in his/her power to bring his/her spouse back. Maybe things are so bad that s/he can’t do anything but pray. The point is, whatever her husband is doing, she finds a way to arrange her life “under” him. Whatever his wife is doing, he finds a way to sacrifice, to interpose. The rebellious spouse remains the central [earthly] fact of the other’s life, even if common sense requires that they be separated.

This “central [earthly] fact of the other’s life” is, I’m pretty sure, the most important thing about how marriage is different from other relationships. As Paul says in 1 Cor. 7:32-33: “The unmarried man is concerned with the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord—but the married man is concerned with the things of the world, how he may please his wife; and he is divided.” And he goes on to say the same thing about the married woman and the unmarried. The centrality of the spouse’s existence in the other’s life can be seen by remembering the unmarried man is called to love all people as Christ loves them and to submit to all believers. And evidently Paul thinks the spousal relationship is significantly stronger than that. So we have centrality. I think that’s the most important thing. But there are two other things that I think deserve to be mentioned: authority and initiative.

First question: leadership. We might well wonder, does the husband have any unique authority in marriage? I don’t mean cultural authority; I mean Scriptural authority. Does the husband have any unique authority over his wife regardless of his culture’s conception of marriage?

I think the answer is a qualified yes. I’m willing to admit that authority is to some extent inherent in the concept of “head.” I mean, after all, it’s a pretty evocative word to use to describe the husband’s role. So yes, I think that at the end of the day the husband’s vote is deciding. But I think it is important to remember that even as the husband has this “authority,” he is first called to serve his wife, and is still called to submit to his wife as his sister in Christ. So the picture I get from that is still not authoritarian. It’s a little bit like a lieutenant who has a very close relationship with his platoon sergeant—sure, technically the LT is in charge, and yes, that does mean something, but a lot less than you might think if you’d never seen them work together. And along the same lines (lest we have any would-be chauvinist dictators out there), there may come a time when the sergeant will refuse a command—not in a spirit of insubordination, but out of love for the lieutenant and respect for the chain of command.

Second question: initiative. Do husbands have a God-given responsibility to take the initiative? I don’t mean occasionally; I think it’s perfectly plain that both spouses (indeed, all people) are going to have to take the initiative at least occasionally. The question is, does the husband have a responsibility to take the initiative most of the time? And if so, in what ways? Praying at dinner? Conversations about the family’s spiritual life? Planning dates? Maintaining the household? Initiating sex?

Again, I think the answer is a qualified yes. It is true, of course, that Christ took the initiative for us spiritually—that he died while we were yet sinners; that he loved us before we loved him. It is also true that in a sense Christ took the initiative for us with respect to our entire lives—because he took the initiative spiritually, our whole lives are changed. And to some extent, as we know, every action we undertake is a spiritual one.

But if you push that line of reasoning too far I think your claims start sounding absurd. Because Christ took the initiative spiritually, a husband must plan most of the dates with his wife? That seems rather silly. Because Christ loved us before we loved him, it is spiritually wrong for a wife to initiate sex most of the time? Come on.

I’m willing to grant you that a husband bears primary responsibility for taking the initiative when it comes to the family’s spiritual life. I think that flows pretty naturally from the analogy between Christ and husband. Most other things (including, in my opinion, who prays most often) are governed by the principle of loving one another. I think who plans what proportion of dates, or who does what proportion of household chores, and all things of that nature, should be determined by what is most loving. If a wife is best loved by her husband planning most of the dates, I think he should do that. If a husband is most loved by her doing most of the household economics, I think she should do that. And if their two preferences conflict, I think they should resolve them in a spirit of love and humility.

One of the little pleasures I’ve had over the past year has been discovering Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia trilogy. For those of you who are more gaming-literate than I am, this is a new trilogy of games that bears no narrative relation to the original. I suppose if you’re a certain kind of fan that means they’re an abomination. I am not one of those kinds of people, and if you yourself are you’re missing out.

The new Prince of Persia titles (Sands of Time, Warrior Within, and The Two Thrones, in that order) have a number of things to recommend them. At the time Sands of Time came out, I think they were primarily touting the … er, well, the sands of time. You may remember them from the cautionary Penny Arcade comic—not to be abused. The sands give the Prince a number of amusing tricks, which can be categorized as rewinding time, slowing time, and slaying enemies in various ways the specifics of which depend upon the title you’re playing. Do not be fooled. As cool as it is to rewind time in the middle of a fight (and I won’t lie, on occasion that’s ridiculously cool), the sands of time are not the best thing about these games.

The best thing about these games is the movement system. For those of you who were enamored of the Aladdin game for the SNES, I might say it’s like that only better. These games are about running along this wall so you can leap to that column and climb to that pole so you can swing to that ledge so you can run up this wall so you can reach the switch. The movement is fast, fluid, and incredibly fun (nor have I found any problems using WASD and a mouse instead of a joystick, so don’t worry about that even though these were originally console games). There are lots of good things about these games but I think the movement is the most unique.

The other good things these games feature are their character interaction, their fighting system, their aesthetic, and their puzzles (the story is a coming-of-age, so I lump that in with character). You can get them pretty cheap and if you’re the sort of person who takes these kinds of recommendations I recommend you get all three and play through them in order, so as to get the maximum story benefit. If you aren’t, or if you just like reading my game posts, here’s a quick breakdown of the three titles:

Sands of Time is the first of the games and a stand-alone title I’m not sure they ever expected to support a franchise. Sands of Time is heavy on character interaction, aesthetic, movement, and puzzles. Well, none of these games is heavy on puzzles, but Sands of Time is heaviest of the three and its puzzles are most like real puzzles that require spatial visualization and the like. Character is one of the game’s charms, both in the Prince’s voiceover narration (which surprisingly I would rank high on the list of the game’s virtues) and in his Han-and-Leia bickering with his love interest. The love interest is a big part of the story here, and I think they do that whole bit with rather greater skill than video games normally do. The environments are creamy, alabaster-and-sandstone Arabian Nights, which I think works well with the whole tone of the game. The movement system, as noted before, is a lot of fun. It is not a big challenge, which can be both good and bad. On the good side, you don’t have to have mad twitch skillz to make the Prince do cool things; the actual gymnastics are pretty hard to screw up unless you’ve got time pressure or traps to avoid or the like. On the bad side, in my opinion at times the movement puzzles get a little too easy. The worst part of the game, in my opinion, is the fighting system. It’s not that it’s bad; it’s not. It’s just not as clever as the rest of the game, which in my opinion is highly clever. The Prince can use his environment in a fight somewhat (e.g., he can run up an enemy’s face and vault over him to attack from behind) but not as much as you’d expect from the range of movement options he has with his environment.

The Warrior Within is kind of the redheaded stepchild of the series in my opinion. I agree with the Penny Arcade assessment: there’s a good game under there, but it’s obscured by some bad design decisions. For one thing, the aesthetic has gotten much darker and Castlevanian, which they have a good excuse for but can still wear thin after a while. Character is the big weak point in this game, as the Prince has no love interest to have witty banter with and the narration is inexplicably gone. The Prince himself, meanwhile, is either a generic tough guy (“I smolder with generic rage”) or a petulant child with a sword, depending on how you look at it. If you want to see the secret (and most interesting) ending, the one The Two Thrones assumes happened, you have to pick up all nine life upgrades hidden away throughout the game. Personally I had no patience for that, and consulted the internet. On the plus side, the already excellent movement system is essentially the same (with one or two minor upgrades), which is a huge part of the game’s appeal, so I can’t stress that enough. The movement puzzles are significantly more demanding, which I personally think is a good thing given that most of the movement puzzles in Sands of Time looked awesome but were virtually impossible to screw up. And the fighting system has been completely revamped, which is all to the good. Fighting in Warrior Within is much more on par with movement now in terms of fun and is about five times as fun as fighting in the previous title. Largely this stems from the fact that the Prince can interact with his enemies in many more ways. Two flaws in the fighting system remain: the Prince has an “I win now” move in one-on-one duels, and the most efficient way of slaying your foes is frequently dual-wielding. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like dual-wielding as much as the next guy. But given the choice between a six hit handstand combo and manhandling my enemies, my preference is for manhandling every time. One just wishes that hitting a guy six times with a sword wasn’t so darn effective. And then there’s the boss battles. As Archimedes has pungently observed on more than one occasion, giving a boss more hit points does not make it more interesting. Unfortunately, that’s essentially all there is to the boss battles in Warrior Within—more hit points. For a game that’s built on kineticism, you’d think their boss battles would be … I don’t know, clever. But they aren’t, and there’s just no way around that.

The Two Thrones is, in my opinion, the best of the bunch for a number of reasons. The aesthetic isn’t quite back to the dreamland of Sands of Time, but it’s gotten interesting again after the Temple of Doom drear of Warrior Within. And the character interaction is back, in the form of both narration (not as good as in Sands of Time) and banter (better than in Sands of Time). I also admit to being very impressed at the aplomb with which they managed to take the generic rage that suffused Warrior Within and turned it from crass marketing ploy to a genuine step on an integrated coming-of-age story arc that explores the Prince’s descent into and redemption from childish hubris. The fighting has more depth to it, and the automatic win move has been changed so it isn’t an automatic win anymore. In a stand-up fight dual-wielding is still the way to go, but they’ve added a “speed kill” mechanic that allows you to manhandle your enemies in satisfying, highly effective ways if you can sneak up on them. The movement system has been expanded in ways that make it less automatic but not more difficult (translating into more fun), and the lethality of the movement puzzles has been scaled back a bit to what I consider pretty much the optimum level. Spatial reasoning puzzles feature a bit more strongly than in Warrior Within, although I will admit the game could probably do with a bit more of those. Most satisfying from a design standpoint is that they’ve crafted boss battles that actually fit with the game’s overall feel. That is to say, the boss battles are actually interesting, as opposed to requiring mere staying power. While the final boss battle in Warrior Within was the most tedious, the final fight in The Two Thrones is the most satisfying in the game. In fact, it may be the best designed boss battle I’ve ever seen in any game of any genre.

Yesterday I made it to Friday Night Waltz for the first time in almost a month. It was a very happy time. Things that made me particularly happy:

* Thayet (on several levels)
* Infinite pivots with the TD (soooo good!)
* Trying out a new radvin polka variation with Anachoron
* An exhausted but very satisfying last waltz
* The aftermath, even if it wasn't particularly cold

Things that made me not particularly happy:

* Forwardness is appreciated in moderation in the context of a deliberate dating relationship. It is not appreciated otherwise.

The aftermath was particularly good. I don't know what it is about the aftermath of a dance that makes for such good God time. Maybe the utter exhaustion helps to lower some of my natural defenses, so I am less guarded. Maybe it's akin to the closeness that follows a good worship session ... after all, dance and worship aren't that different. Whatever it is, I'm not giving it up if I can help it.

Two of the things that happened on Friday got me thinking. One was trying out the genuflection transition with Anachoron (it almost worked ... I'll get it one of these days). The other was infinite pivots with the TD (by "infinite" I mean that we were canter pivoting a true 180 degrees each time. For those of you who don't know, most of the time even really good pivots don't travel 180 degrees so eventually you have to stop pivoting or you'll curl back into traffic and collide. In theory each pivot should be 180 degrees so you should be able to pivot indefinitely, but that almost never happens.). Anyway, both these events worked up quite a sweat, and made me wonder what I like so much about polka.

Polka is definitely my favorite dance (although if you count "waltz" as a single dance that beats it out). I think the reason for that is that it's ... exuberant is the wrong word. It's like this. The reason I never drive in Meilissa with the windows down is because I like to sing, and I like to sing loudly. I like to roar Disney songs so my stomach muscles quake. I like to let my body go to the limits of what it can do and ride that, like a hang glider riding an updraft or a surfer riding a wave. Or I like to act a song, let it carry me away so my eyes burn or my heart shrinks in sadness. I like to let go, but I like to do it privately. One day I'll find someone I can share that with on a regular basis, perhaps, but for now it's an intensely private thing.

Polka - or any athletic round dance - is kind of like that only less private. The athleticism is a kind of silent roar, the simple joy of stretching my muscles in the same way that singing can be the simple joy of stretching my lungs. There's more to it than that, of course, such as the musical interpretation, and goodness knows I have a fondness for things that are technically difficult, but I think the core of it is the simple joy of letting go. No other dance I know is so unfettered - even lindy hop is too, well, too intricate by comparison. It may be creatively unfettered, but polka is more physically free. It's still a fairly private thing, I suppose, but it's inherently less private. It feels good to share.

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.
- Eph. 5:22-24

But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.
- 1 Cor. 11:3

Man is the head of woman … what does that mean? I don’t mean, “What does the Bible mean by submission?” which is a fairly rich topic in itself and one that perhaps does deserve a blog post at some later time. But that topic has gotten a fair amount of play already in various sources. What I’d like to discuss today is a topic that I feel has gotten significantly less play: when is man the head of woman? Or, more specifically, when should a woman submit to a man?

Hitherto I have generally held a vague and uncritical belief that because a wife should submit to a husband in all things (and, therefore, because a husband should lead a wife in all things), it follows that a boyfriend should lead a girlfriend somewhat less, and that any given adult male should lead any given adult female in lesser degrees according to their specific relational context; I would bear a greater leadership responsibility with respect to Blue Rose than I would with respect to a female attorney at work, to whom I would bear a greater leadership responsibility than I would with respect to a woman I met on the street. There is something kind of pleasingly intuitive to this kind of move, which tends to see male-female relationships on a more or less unbroken continuum of intimacy with “strangers” at one end and “married” at the other.

However, it is a move, an exegetical maneuver. Nowhere does Scripture inform me in so many words that I must lead my girlfriend somewhat less than I must lead my wife, and that I must lead my girl friends somewhat less than that. And while the move is somewhat pleasingly intuitive, it becomes less so if one considers certain scenarios. Rose is dating a man now, for instance – does the Bible envision her submitting somewhat more to him than she does to me, but submitting nonetheless to both of us? What about my own mother? One might suppose she falls closer on the intimacy scale than any of my female friends, but it is not at all intuitive to me that my mother should submit to me more than they should. The move from “wives should submit to their husbands” to “women should submit to men” has a fairly good pedigree, but it’s not the only position out there with a good pedigree, and I’d like to discuss whether that’s what Scripture actually teaches.

To begin with, then, it’s worth pointing out that Koine Greek has no distinct word for husband or wife. Once upon a time Greek did have such words, but by the first century those words had long fallen out of general use and surfaced only occasionally as archaisms in poetry. Koine expresses the concept of husband by using the word man in a way that makes the distinction clear from context, and similarly for the concept of wife being expressed by the word woman.

If you think about it, this is not especially strange unless you live in a culture with an appreciable number of single adults. Unfortunately, since we do live in such a culture, it presents certain interpretive difficulties for us. The key texts to consider, I think, are 1 Cor. 11:3 and Eph. 5:23. If you take a look at the Ephesians verse in context, I think you will agree with me that we are justified in translating the words man and woman in that passage as husband and wife. Without spinning a philological argument here, notice that Paul speaks of a man loving his own woman and a woman loving her own man in verses 22 and 28. He clearly meant husband and wife in those verses, and since he had to rely on context to make the distinction clear in the first place, it seems unlikely that Paul would suddenly switch back to meaning man and woman in verse 23. For the same reason, it seems rather unjustified to translate 1 Cor. 11:3 as meaning husband and wife. If you look at the rest of the passage, Paul doesn’t seem to give any linguistic clues that he means a specific man (i.e., a husband) or a specific woman (i.e., a wife). And the point he’s making is about propriety in worship, which certainly doesn’t seem like the sort of topic that’s unique to the husband-wife relationship.

And there, I think, is the rub: it is in 1 Corinthians that Paul says man, generally, is the head of woman. But he does not go on to elaborate what he means by that, except that it has some sort of implications for modesty. It is in Ephesians where he talks about submission, and he never says that women should submit to men. He only says that women should submit to their own men - and this despite apparently believing that man, generally, is the head of woman, generally. Whatever that means.

I admit the case is not airtight, but I see no explicit Scriptural warrant for the proposition that girlfriends should submit to boyfriends, and so on down the continuum of intimacy. I don’t see any explicit Scriptural rejection of that proposition either, but as Archimedes said, you’ll have to walk me through the argument. So far I can’t think of an argument that is more convincing than the plain reading that the only man a woman must submit to is her own. And since the idea that men should lead woman is implicit in the concept of submission in Ephesians, it follows then that the only woman a man must lead is his own.

This is not, of course, to say that these are the only men and women a man or woman can lead. Principles of leadership and submission are, I think, absolutely inescapable in social groupings. A supervising female attorney does bear a responsibility to lead me, and I do bear a responsibility to submit to her. But I submit that that responsibility is contractual, as it were, and not an ineluctable fact about the universe. If I want that responsibility to terminate, all I have to do is not be under her supervision. Nothing will terminate my responsibility to lead my wife. And when it comes to boyfriends and girlfriends, this isn’t to say that it’s not a good idea for a girlfriend to submit to her boyfriend in some limited capacity, and for a boyfriend to lead his girlfriend in some limited capacity. The entire boyfriend-girlfriend relationship is socially invented, after all, and if we’re going to defend it I think it has to be on the basis of preparing the dating couple for marriage. If that’s our justification, then it certainly makes sense for the two to start practicing leadership and submission to one another while it’s still voluntary. But that’s just good sense. Nor am I proposing that it is bad for people to relate that way if they are inclined to do so and they can do so without causing anybody else to stumble.

Why, then, is this relevant at all? I think it’s a question of expectations and demands. If it’s true that women generally are to submit in all things to men generally, then there’s something wrong when that doesn’t happen. Every woman I know ought to demand that I lead in our relationship; egalitarianism is not an option. And of course since every woman I know ought to demand that every man they know lead in their relationship, we will in all likelihood have to develop an elaborate and extra-Biblical system to govern who submits to whom in what circumstances. Now of course you can do that, and to a certain extent I think people already have. But if women are to submit to men generally, then it’s wrong if we haven’t. I mean, is that really what we’re called to? I’m inclined to think not.

Having left out the discussion of what it means to submit to a husband in all things, I think I have skipped over some of the nuances here – obviously there is a sense in which women are supposed to submit to men, inasmuch as we are called to submit to each other. But I think you get what I mean, and I’m curious as to what you think about the matter. I can’t promise to respond to everything (I’m not necessarily looking to get into a debate here), but I would like your opinions. And more importantly your Scriptural interpretations.

If you read my game posts, you may recall that back when Aya first hit 60 I was kind of disillusioned with the prospect of running instance after instance, which is more or less all that the endgame of World of WarCraft offers. Sure, there are some endgame quests (many of which involve running instance after instance), but the truth is that the MMORPG is a lousy genre for storytelling because, almost uniquely among computer game genres, nothing ever changes. The world is static. Without a leveling mechanism to help ensure you don't go back to an area you've already quested through (which, at best, turns the game into a gigantic dark ride), your ability to tell a convincing story is severely curtailed as compared to other genres.

You will notice that these are basically story-based concerns. Which is probably why my opinion on instances has changed. I now actually enjoy running instance after instance (although the prospect of raid after raid is one I'm still chary of). Last week's Wailing Caverns run is a good example (there have been previous good examples, perhaps better examples; I just don't have blognames for all the key participants). There have been a few fundamental shifts in my outlook to make this possible. One is that I am looking at instances more as familiar and almost cozy places rather than attempts to wow me with grandeur and mystery. I suppose calling the Scholomance "familiar and cozy" may seem a bit strange, but think of it this way: Pirates of the Caribbean is not cheapened if I watch it a thousand times. It's familiar and cozy. The second, and most important shift, has been that I look at instances as chances to work as a team.

Team-based online gameplay has been a holy grail of game developers for close to a decade now, and by and large I'd say that the project has failed thus far. It's not precisely the developers' fault. The critical failing is not a lack of infrastructure - command maps, waypoints, voice over IP, all that jazz. It's that the players themselves don't know how to play as a team. For some reason, it seems to work better in World of WarCraft. Even when I'm playing in a pickup group; some of my most satisfying WoW moments have been taking (or wresting) command of a party of strangers and forging them into a fighting unit using nothing but communication. I mean, come on.

And when I'm playing with people I know ... well, that can be satisfying on a whole different level. When the party is firing on all cylinders and we really are fighting as a single unit, there's a thrill I experience beyond mere competence. It's the thrill of knowing that somebody has my back. Knowing that I can stand there and heal in the direst circumstances, because Alexander will rescue me. Tanking without even looking at my health bar because I know the priest will not let me die. Not giving up even when we're fighting eight mobs, because we trust each other to stay frosty and do our jobs - trust each other that because nobody's going to panic, we will come through alive.

Those instances of teamwork - and they are more frequent than I would ever have expected - are the really satisfying part of WoW for me these days. And the fact is that only instances are challenging enough to really encourage teamwork. So I no longer mind running instances over and over.

I read a number of Christian "men's" books a month or so back, and I noticed that there was a tendency across authors to worry about when a boy becomes a man. One of the things they tended to talk about in the communication of manhood from father to son was whether the father had passed on some manly skill to his son, like fishing or hunting or automobile maintenance. I read that and I thought to myself, "Gosh, what did my father pass on to me?" A few thoughts.

Thought the first. To the extent that we care about actual manly skills, I can name two. Dad taught me to shoot, and he taught me to command men in battle. Now, please understand that I am very well aware of how much I don't know about shooting, and especially how very much I don't know about command (i.e., nearly everything). But for present purposes, what I do know will serve. If command doesn't seem on the same macho par as hunting or fixing a car, I remind you that Geoffroi de Charny considered it the highest form of knightly prowess. That's good enough for me. I'd much rather know about command than about football or hunting, and here's why. To the extent that any of these activities have spiritual value, I think that value lies in training us to see spiritual realities by familiarizing us with visible analogies. Analogies of trust and community and stepping up to the challenge. Learning the joy of sharing adventures with other people. Learning how to encourage your fellow adventurers, and seeing the results that can bring. And above all, I think, learning the relationship between trust and love, and what it means to really lead. Just games, of course. But not devoid of value all the same. And I wonder if many of the most satisfying moments in hunting or sports aren't essentially analogous.

Thought the second. I agree that a man will have a very hard time of it coming of age without a father. But I think it is a mistake to ignore the role of the female in making a man. And I don't mean the role of the female in nurturing a boy to the threshold of manhood. I mean helping him cross it. As Heinlein says, "The last thing a trooper hears before a drop (maybe the last word he ever hears) is a woman's voice, wishing him luck. If you don't think this is important, you've probably resigned from the human race." In Pericles' Athens a boy became enrolled in the militia when his mother or sister passed him his shield over the altar. It was not a Spartan father who so famously exhorted his son. And I think there is a spiritual basis to this. If man is the head of woman, then at some point a woman is going to have to submit to him. Some woman is going to look him square in the eye and say, "I trust you." Aladdin starts to become a man the moment Jasmine steps on that carpet. Now, I know (and hopefully she will know) that even the best man can only be trusted as far as the grace of God can throw him. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm saying that a woman's trust and submission is just as important to establishing masculinity as a father's example and guidance.

Thought the third. Notwithstanding the foregoing, I think it is a mistake to focus too much on when or even whether a boy has become a man (or a girl has become a woman). Yes, there are thresholds in life to cross. They're real. They matter. But they aren't the most important thing. And it absolutely will not do to place your faith, when your masculinity is under assault, in the memory of that one moment when you think you became a man. No matter how much that moment may matter, it can't sustain your faith. No moment, no initiation, can do that. And the thing to do is in any case the same whether one has "become" a man or not: press on. Seek God more.

Thought the fourth. While I certainly agree that gender is part of one's identity as a Christian, it doesn't do to focus on it too much either. To be sure, a person is lacking something important and significant if they don't have ownership of their gender. But gender is not the most important thing we have. And ultimately, I wonder if it isn't like all the other aspects of life in this respect: When I was small, and asked my parents about the horoscope, they explained that whether I was a Taurus or not is insignificant compared to the fact that I am a Christian, because whatever power the stars (or, more precisely, the spiritual forces behind them) have over my life is surpassed by the power that Jesus has over my life. If you want to be provocative and silly about it, I am not a Taurus. I am a Christian. And that point - that the most important thing about your life is Jesus' lordship over it - I have noticed is true in many other areas of life. Even ones that are highly unlikely to be animated by demonic subterfuge. Am I smart? Sure. But the fact that I am Christian far surpasses the fact that I am smart. Or even the fact that I am kind (if I am) or I am loving (if I am). And, I suspect, the fact that I am a man (if I am). If I am not a man, or not much of one ... well, that matters. But not nearly so much as the fact that I am my Beloved's and He is mine. Nothing really matters much compared to that.

There's packing and moving and all manner of less tangible things to do before I say good bye to this year, so there isn't a lot of time to blog. However, I wanted to drop a quick word about The Da Vinci Code. I haven't read it, and after both my mother and my sister found it unentertaining I have no desire to read it. This means I cannot really speak to any controversy surrounding it with. Normally I don't care much when the part of Christendom that the media feels like covering does something stupid, and I really don't care normally when someone like Dan Brown decides to air his personal problems with religion in public. I mean really, most of the people I know have enough education and enough awareness of the perennial popularity of church conspiracy theories in literature not to take seriously the controversial stuff in any church conspiracy literature. Or so I thought. But Twilight's father (a man who is very dear to me) apparently did take some of it seriously. To me that's like wondering why nobody has cloned dinosaurs after reading Jurassic Park, but hey, I haven't read the book. Oh yeah. And as a Christian, I am either part of the conspiracy or a willing dupe.

Anyway, I found Antilles' thoughts on the subject of The Da Vinci Code and Christendom eminently sensible. His thoughts are a bit long, but they are the best thoughts I have heard on the subject to date, and as they come from Antilles I feel no compunction about linking them. If you are interested in a sensible Christian response to the controversy, I commend his thoughts to you.

I've held off posting until Archimedes can get back to my previous post as promised, but there are so many theological discussions in the air (besides life) that I think I'm going to just have to go ahead and post anyway. Besides, my new Google comments will actually stay with the blog, so you can always go back. For those of you following the discussion, I'll let you know when it picks up again. Along those lines, though, Vonsus said something at RUF the other day that I thought was worth repeating. He was talking about the importance of the Word, and pointed out that whether God speaks in other ways or not, we all agree that he has revealed himself in Scripture. Wanting God to speak to you in some "miraculous" way and ignoring his written revelation is like God telling you, "I'll meet you at Fourth and Main" and us feeling stood up when we show up at Tenth and Broad and he's not there. A truth well worth remembering whenever we start getting too hung up about "personal revelation."

I've been wanting to blog about World of WarCraft for a long time, but unfortunately I still don't have blognames for some of the major players involved, so my musings on the spiritual side of Sanctorum's, Hkakashi's, and Aya Silkrose's adventures are going to have to wait.

Which is in no way related to the main topic of this post, which is seduction\\modesty. I was at Gaskell's the other day and enjoying the spectacle of people's dress, which of course is a major reason to go to Gaskell's, and I was thinking about different standards of modesty. It was interesting to note that the gowns I found most attractive were also the ones I found the most modest. I found the girls in those gowns the prettiest - and the sexiest - girls at the ball. Side note the first: I hope I hardly need to say this, but let me point out for the record that "modest" does not mean "least revealing" or "least form fitting" or "least fashionable."

I was recently edified by the discussion at Girltalk on modesty, which I think is a pretty concise restatement of the basic principles of modesty and need not be repeated here. But it got me thinking about that Gaskell's experience, and about something the Eldredges have to say in Captivating (thanks to Thayet for turning me on to this book's existence). The Eldredges have this idea of "seduction," which is their name for the process by which a Christian woman invites a man to live as God intended, and which they particularly contrast with "nagging." As they say, "The beauty of a woman is what arouses the strength of a man. He wants to play the man when a woman acts like that."

Acts like that? Well, of course - beauty is active, a lifestyle. And one of its actions is modesty. Modesty, I can say from my own experience, is not just serving your brothers in Christ. It is not just removing a potential stumbling block from their path (what kind of incentive is that, anyway? Who wants to be the girl who does nothing more than sweep the road for the guys?). Modesty is an active edification; an invitation; and yes, a seduction. Which is the point I wanted to add to the Maheny girls' discussion. Modesty is not just attractive. It is attractive, spiritually as well as aesthetically. But it is also seductive ("becoming" is the Natalian term). Modest dress - and more importantly, a modest heart - makes me want to hang out with a girl more than immodest dress or an immodest heart, no question. But it also makes me want to act like a man (yes, I know that wanting and doing are different - but still). This is not just sweeping the path clear in front of me. It's warm and alive and inviting.

Inviting to what? The Eldredges maintain that the central question of the feminine heart is "Am I lovely?" Predictably, there is a segment of Christendom which finds the Eldredges' books little more than thinly veiled humanism. If you will permit me to be tart, those are probably the same people who think Starship Troopers has a fascist government. It's important to keep in mind when reading this book that the Eldredges' central theme is that God and God alone can answer a woman's deepest question (side note the second: I defy anyone to refute from Scripture the proposition that Christ finds his adopted sisters lovely.) A modest woman is not focusing attention on herself at all, but she is focusing attention somewhere: on Christ. Yes, I am looking at her. Yes, I find her captivating. I wish some of you had known the Hawaiian - you would know in an instant what I meant. But when I look at her relationships, or her carriage, or her skirt, or the way she wears her breasts (I don't mean to be rude, but breasts are part of an outfit and you know it), she is pointing me to Christ. And when I answer her question and say, "Yes, my sister, you are lovely," I am saying, "You reflect the heart of God to me." And that is, in a lot of ways, what it all comes down to - fixing our eyes upon Jesus. Which is why I value modesty so much.

Because modesty is seductive. But it does not seduce to the girl. It seduces to Christ.

Pursue love, and desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy ... How is it then, brethren? Whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification. ... Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others judge. But if anything is revealed to another who sits by, let the first keep silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, that all may learn and all may be encouraged. And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. For God is not the author of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints. 1 Cor. 14:1, 26, 29-33.

One of the things that strikes me as interesting about Paul is that on the one hand he feels like the stodgy asexual intellectual, and on the other hand he was clearly what we would label a charismatic or Pentecostal in modern parlance (c.f. 1 Cor. 15-19). He was convinced both of the necessity of the Scriptures for the health of the church and of the necessity of revelation. Now, I don't know who reads this, but odds are good that one of you just hackled at that. Do I deny the sufficiency of Scripture? Am I not glorifying man over God? Those are precisely the things I wanted to talk about. Let me set you straight right now: I believe in the supremacy of Scripture over private revelation. In fact, I don't believe in private revelation unless it is consistent with Scripture.

Scripture is full of the Word coming to people in ways that are merely incidentally recorded - Abraham, Moses, Nathan, Oded, Hanani, Micaiah, and Peter all received revelations that are recorded in books that are not about their revelation, to name a few. In the case of Oded and Hanani and men like them, it is difficult to believe that the only things they ever heard from God are the few sentences written in Scripture. And Scripture also contains references to times when the Word came or will come without being recorded in Scripture at all: Iddo, Jehu, the book of the kings which contains "many oracles" concerning the reign of King Joash and "the words of the seers who spoke to [King Manasseh] in the name of the LORD," and the prophecies which Paul says occurred in the church of his own day (if some of those references are unfamiliar, go back and read 2 Chronicles).

Now, in the case of the Old Testament unrecorded prophets (by "unrecorded" I don't mean unwritten; I mean that God evidently did not see fit to preserve those written records for the church throughout the ages) we are essentially told that they heard from the Lord, but Paul says something much more interesting: "Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others judge." In other words, just because somebody has heard something or seen something supernaturally doesn't mean it's from God, and the church is commanded to discern. I find the way in which we are to discern quite illuminating.

First off, a few ways in which we clearly cannot discern. One is whether or not the vision or revelation comes true. The spirit by which the Philippian slave girl foretold the future seems to have told the truth, but it was nevertheless a demon (Acts 16:16-19). Another is by appearance, or our own gut reaction. The enemy is perfectly capable of appearing holy (2 Cor. 11:14), and even a cursory study of Scripture will reveal that the presence of an angel (let alone of God) is terrifying beyond description. So let us prattle no nonsense about how it felt.

Instead, how are we to discern? "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God" (1 John 4:1-2). Now this "confessing" is clearly more than aping mere forms of words. Jesus confronts plenty of demons who admit that he is the Son of God. But confessing that Christ has come in the flesh is the formula we use when we pray for salvation, when we accept him as Lord and Savior, and Jesus didn't meet a single demon who did that.

Implications. First, I absolutely affirm that in Christ we have the authority to directly demand of a revelatory spirit that it confess Christ as its Lord. But all of this - the hearing itself, as well as the kind of interrogation I just mentioned, happens internally. And here you might have another objection: aren't I really just playing games in my head - elaborate games, to be sure, but ultimate centered on what I think, what I feel? Well, I hope not. He who trusts in his heart is a fool (Prov. 3:5-7, 28:26), but wisdom and safety are found in a multitude of counselors (Prov. 11:14, 15:22, 24:6). Indeed, Paul does not command us to judge our revelations, individually, but to share them with the Body and let others judge.

And judge, I think (although I am open to correction on this point), not just by having them go through an internal interrogation process. Judge by the yardstick of the rest of Scripture, the written Word, the revelation of which we are utterly certain. I do not think John was thinking just of speaking to spirits. I think he also meant, "any spirit which does not essentially re-proclaim the Gospel is not of God." And even if John didn't mean that specifically, it is absurd to imagine that God would speak something inconsistent with what he had spoken in the past. Men are inconsistent; God is utterly consistent. I don't know what the Lord spoke Iddo. I do know that it was nothing I couldn't get from the rest of Scripture.

If revelation is really nothing more than re-proclaiming what has already been proclaimed, what then is the point of revelation (what we call "the speaking voice of God" at the River, and denote with the Greek word rhema at The Church on the Way)? One might ask the same thing of sermons, which are also nothing more than proclaiming the Word of God, and the answer would be the same. Not just that it is good to proclaim the Word for its own sake (although it is). But that the Word ought to be proclaimed in a way that applies it to the current lives of real people. Yes, a good sermon does nothing more than proclaim the Word. But only somebody who has never heard a good sermon would think that you could get the same thing by reading a leather-bound gold-leafed book in your bedroom.

I have found the same thing to be true of revelation in my own experience. I think people who don't come from charismatic churches tend to have the idea that charismatic services (or more specifically, services in which charismata are exercised) are weird or unusual. They're really pretty mundane. I've heard more prophecies spoken to the church than I can count, and they've always been things that basically re-proclaim the Gospel (the reason I count them as prophecies from the Lord is precisely because you can point to Scripture and say, "the Lord said exactly the same thing in this passage here. This is fresh but it is not new"). Here is one of my favorite visions:

It is at the killing fields of Thermopylai. I can see only the hand of a man fallen on the dirt, which is stained red with blood. The hand is riven and covered with blood as well. A sword lies in the hand, but the hand does not grasp it. The man whose hand this is has fallen, and his sword has half tumbled out of his grip. I know that the hand is mine. A hand - is it visible or invisible? I cannot tell, but I know it is a hand - closes my fingers around the hilt of the sword. And then my fingers grasp it. Life is returning to me.

Now I see a heap of bodies piled high in the narrows of the mountain pass, bodies in grotesque poses in bronze and silk and everywhere there is blood, blood, and the grislier chunks of flesh that bespeak the terrible fight which occurred here. The Greeks have fallen; the pass is lost. The pile of corpses fills the pass. Out of the center of the bodies rises a man, but he is not a man - he is far too huge. Higher and higher he rises, now a giant of a man, now a colossus, and I know it is the Lord. His armor is blasted with blood and his flesh bears many wounds, all to the front. He has been in the thick of the fighting. The bowl of his shield seems to blot out the sun, and in its protective shadow I too rise, dwarfed to insignificance beside this massive and magnificent warrior. The sword in my hand, a weapon of desperation, is gone. Now my fist grips a long spear, a warrior's weapon and one that should have been shattered in the fighting long ago. But it is here in my hand, and my arm is strong as I raise it for an overhand thrust. Now on come the Medes in their endless ranks. The Lord thrusts with his spear, and I fight in the shadow of his shield. His spear is massive, more massive than a weaver's beam - more like a tree, like the spear of Athena Steel Eyes with which heaven's daughter levels battalions of heroes in her wrath. This is the terrible spear of my Lord as he strikes down my enemies by the dozens, by the hundreds. I cannot even tell if my spear is finding its mark as the foe are slaughtered, as we press the bowls of our shields into the very chests of the foe and shove them bodily out of the pass, but I feel his pleasure that I am fighting beside him even if I cannot tell if it is doing any good, such pleasure that it seems my heart will burst. The Lord is laughing. It is a deep, challenging, joyous laugh. He is like a lion roaring in the pride of his strength as he saves his son, and his son fights beside him.

That is a vision I saw some years ago. I invite you to consider whether it is one which essentially re-proclaims Scripture (I might suggest you read Psalm 18:34, 58:10, 59:16, 62:2, Isaiah 63:4, and Jeremiah 46:10 to start). If you believe that it does, and therefore should be trusted as a vision of the Lord, I invite you to consider whether the Lord could have said quite the same thing to my heart by simply directing me to those passages in the written Word.

(edit: "re-proclaim" may be stronger than what I actually think Scripture calls us to. See comments.)

I was just reading Captivating today and came across something that struck me:

"A woman in her glory, a woman of beauty, is a woman who is not striving to become beautiful or worthy or enough. She knows in her quiet center where God dwells that he finds her beautiful, has deemed her worthy, and in him, she is enough. In fact, the only thing getting in the way of our being fully captivating and enjoyed is our striving" (emphasis in the original).

You may recall that a while back I was struggling to come up with a feminine counterpart to my qualities of the masculine knight (by the way, let me state for the record that I don't consider either of those definitive categories, or necessarily Biblical. I'm just trying to parse out Biblical gender truths in a way that actually resonates with my heart).

Anyway, you may also recall that I decided whereas a man should be honorable, a lady knight is magnificent. I never defined magnificence, but of course I don't think it's simply honorable in a skirt (similarly for valiant and valorous, which is why I used different words). The essence of magnificence is exactly what Captivating says. A magnificent woman doesn't need anybody or anything. Of course she recognizes that many things are good, and that God desires many things for her, but she has learned the truth that her sufficiency is in Christ and in Christ alone. If she were marooned on a desert island and had neither companionship nor possessions, it would still be well with her soul because she would have him. This results in a kind of invincible peace, and an invincible confidence. Not that she trusts in herself - the whole point is that she doesn't trust in herself. She trusts in one who is utterly trustworthy instead. She knows that he provides in all things, and she has learned to rest in that truth, so she does not strive. Because her trust is in the Lord, she is unshakable, unassailable.

Let me distinguish this from two things. Natalian magnificence is not the same as indolence. There is a difference between planning and striving. God tells us not to worry about what we will eat, but a magnificent woman still plans ahead to feed her family (Proverbs 31:15). Magnificence is also not the same as defiance. A woman may seem invincibly confident by rejecting the opinions of lesser mortals, however those are defined. But that is not magnificence, it is mere bluster - sound and fury, even if it takes the form of stony silence in the face of that which is rejected. Magnificence is not like that. It is quiet, trusting, and focused not on what is rejected but on who Christ is.

I call it magnificence; the Eldredges call it beauty. The names can make them seem different. But meeting one or two lady knights will clear up that misconception straight away.

I don't really have anything specific to talk about, but while I was home for spring break I dug up one of my favorite quotes. I'm not sure I agree with it completely, but I think it's a sentiment worth chewing on. It won't fit in an away message, so I'm going to post it here (side note: if anybody ever mentions the themes of Starship Troopers without discussing this passage, they assuredly did not understand what they were reading):

"Are a thousand unreleased prisoners sufficient reason to start or resume a war? Bear in mind that millions of innocent people may die, almost certainly will die, if war is started or resumed."

I didn't hesitate. "Yes, sir! More than enough reason."

"'More than enough.' Very well, is one prisoner, unreleased by the enemy, enough reason to start or resume a war?"

I hesitated. I knew the M.I. answer - but I didn't think that was the one he wanted. He said sharply, "Come, come, Mister! We have an upper limit of one thousand; I invited you to consider a lower limit of one. But you can't pay a promissory note which reads 'somewhere between one and one thousand pounds' - and starting a war is much more serious than paying a trifle of money. Wouldn't it be criminal to endanger a country - two countries in fact - to save one man? Especially as he may not deserve it? Or may die in the meantime? Thousands of people get killed every day in accidents ... so why hesitate over one man? Answer! Answer yes, or answer no - you're holding up the class."

He got my goat. I gave him the cap trooper's answer. "Yes, sir!"

"'Yes' what?"

"It doesn't matter whether it's a thousand - or just one, sir. You fight."

"Aha! The number of prisoners is irrelevant. Good. Now prove your answer."

I was stuck. I knew it was the right answer. But I didn't know why. He kept hounding me. "Speak up, Mr. Rico. This is an exact science. You made a mathematical statement; you must give proof. Someone may claim that you have asserted, by analogy, that one potato is worth the same price, no more, no less, as one thousand potatoes. No?"

"No, sir!"

"Why not? Prove it."

"Men are not potatoes."

So I was going to write a long game post about Star Wars: Empire at War, but I lost most of the post so if you want to know what I think about the game you can ask me. And if I had gotten to this earlier I might have posted something about the last Jammix, where I had some pretty fantastic redowas in and around the Kerry sets and Duchess (I still don't like that blogname for her, but it'll do for now) and I worked out of a fun new handhold.

Instead I'd like to talk about something else. Blue Rose and her Bible study are apparently discussing a John Piper article on gender called "A Vision of Biblical Complementarity," which I won't link to because I never did get around to navigating my Stanford web space, but which I think is well worth reading if you're curious about Christian gender roles. I'm not sure I agree with everything in it, but I agree with a lot of it, and I think it's worth reading.

Anyway, one of the things he claims about mature masculinity is that it will seek to provide for and protect women in ways appropriate to his differing relationships with them ((that is, will want to, though circumstances may prevent it from doing so at any given time). I thought that was well said, and not just because it's the sort of thing I wish I had said. Look at the men in the Bible who are held up as examples. How many of them failed the women in their lives? It is a true fact that masculinity oftentimes fails femininity; it is also the true nature of masculinity to come through when it counts, by grace through faith. But that wasn't what got me thinking.

"Appropriate circumstances." I'll be the first to tell you that a man has got to find it in his heart to choose a woman. You've got to dive into her heart, her world - that's what romance is. But that's the extreme, the easy case. A man's duties with his woman are relatively straightforward to articulate, if not at all straightforward to discharge. And this choosing business is, perhaps, something which the Christian teaching of my generation has on balance neglected, so it's good there are people talking about it and I think it's worth talking about.

But of course there is more to it than that. One of my favorite Honor Harrington quotes is addressed to a man who watched Honor's ship be taken by the enemy after she ordered him to escort his convoy away from the battle. Distraught over abandoning his commanding officer - even under direct orders, and even to preserve the freighters under his escort - Captain Greentree is explaining the action to Vice Admiral Sorbanne:

"But I could have tried." The anguished whisper was so faint Sorbanne doubted Greentree even realized he'd spoken aloud, but she decided to pretend the words had been meant for her.

"Of course you could have tried," she said so sharply that he looked up in surprise. "People can always try, Captain, but sometimes a naval officer has to know when not to try. When trying is the easy way out for her, or her reputation, or her conscience, but only at the cost of failing in her duty. I'm certain any number of idiots who weren't there are going to tell you you should have rushed in to rescue Lady Harrington no matter what she'd ordered you to do. No doubt you could have saved yourself all the pain those accusations are going to cause you if you had tried. But you and I both know, however much it hurts to admit it, that it would have been the wrong decision."

Now of course Honor Harrington isn't Scripture, but Sorbanne has her finger on something here. For all men with a fix-it complex (which may very well be all men) there is a strong temptation to choose simply because we think it will help. Because a woman's heart needs to be chosen, and we immediately leap to the conclusion that we should be the one to choose it. That is why choosing an attractive, wounded heart is so much easier than not choosing it. But even John Eldredge will tell you, "[A] warrior is cunning. He knows when to fight and when to run." There are times - both more and less frequent than I would like - when masculinity must know not to choose a woman. I suppose, our race being what it is, that there are probably always going to be times when a man must not choose a woman. But it seems to me that the times are much greater outside of marriage. So what the Piper article got me asking was this: how do I know when to choose and when not to choose my secretary? My classmate? My boss? My friend? My girlfriend? The circumstances are all different, and presumably they require different answers.

The usual Scripture-of-first-resort for these kinds of questions, I think, is Prov. 4:23: "Guard your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life." Well, fair enough. What's that mean? The usual answer is something along the lines of "don't get your heart entangled with X," where X is usually somehow related to gender relations. We aren't precisely making that up: as Solomon says, "do not stir up nor awaken love until it pleases" (Song 2:7, inter alia). But what does that mean? "Awaken?" "Love?" What are the boundaries of those concepts?

When we speak of guarding hearts, or awakening love, we don't usually mean "love" in the deep sense of deliberate and irrevocable choosing the good and life and personhood of a spouse. If we did, this concept would have a very narrow application. But if we choose the broader application (which I think is the correct one) difficult questions arise. Did I "awaken" "love" for Thea before it pleased? What about Princess? Think of all those movie dates and Citiwalk dates ... of a certainty I initiated those because I intended to enjoy the company of my Dragon Girls, and I knew full well that they would, temporarily at least, exacerbate my crushes upon them. Crushes that I had no intention of ever acting upon - and I am firmly convinced that not acting on the feelings I had for Thea and Princess is an example of a time not to try, not to choose. Having thus decided in advance I would not attempt anything romantic with my dear friends, did I fail to guard my heart by deliberately placing myself in situations that would make me attracted to them? Or what about Nala? Or any number of Stanford-era friendships that I will decline to enumerate for the sake of modesty?

I have historically held that when one has feelings for a friend, the responsible thing to do is to ignore those feelings (I mean as influences, not as data) for decision-making purposes and enjoy them otherwise (that is, as opposed to feeling guilty and angst-ridden about the fact you have feelings which you very well may not intend to act upon). But of course that will inevitably result in placing oneself in situations where one's feelings may be increased - indeed, as even a first-year psych course will teach us, we may well be suspicious that any contact with the object of our affections will increase them. One becomes fond of a person by spending time with them, after all. But surely we do not mean that a man is to periodically cut himself off from all contact with his female friends for the sake of not awakening love, or guarding his heart - and surely we do not mean that a man is to have no female friends. I don't know enough Hebrew to check, but I find it hard to believe that the case can be made that only a man's wife (or female relations) is to partake of the role of ezer kenegdo. Surely we are created male and female for more than the familial context. And in our various contexts, in which we are created male and female, surely a mature man will seek to provide for and protect his counterparts in ways that are appropriate to each context. Which will mean guarding their hearts, as well as guarding his own.

But how is one to do so? There is so much to learn.

I've got a couple of blog posts I could make, but I should probably let you (whoever "you" are) about the Viennese Ball before it gets stale. I have found that Viennese is a lot like scuba diving: the key to having fun is to never be in a hurry. If you're rushing around worrying that you haven't danced enough or haven't seen enough people or haven't seen enough performances, you're not going to have fun. There's too much friction for that. If you're bent on maximizing your dance time, you'll run afoul of the endless performances, band breaks, and contests as well as all the people you haven't seen in ages and with whom you must catch up, and if you leave your partner ever it will be ages before you can find her again. If you're bent on catching all the performances you won't really get to dance and you'll be enslaved to the schedule. If you're bent on seeing all the people you haven't seen in ages you'll miss both performances and dancing. Just take it easy, float along, and look at all the pretty fish. That's the way to do it.

Since that's what Chariessa and I did, I had a fabulous time. I like dancing with her: she gets the difference between giving weight and helping her partner get around (related, but by no means the same thing!), as well as the difference between pulling her weight and pulling half of our weight. She's also a good date, and we had fun and lots of good dances. I also had the most fantabulous tandem redowa with Gwendolyn (formerly Wendy) to ... I think it was "Breakaway." Omni\\shadow redowa is probably easier, because it has more of a frame, but I have decided that I like tandem redowa better because it feels more like flying, and Gwen's a great partner for it. The trick seems to be that the follow needs to push her (or his) velocity when going forward, or the connection falls apart. We had a great connection on this particular dance, and we also got to shoot some fantastic rapids. I like flashy variations as much as the next guy, but navigation remains my favorite figure of all time.

I also managed to gracefully bow out of the waltz competition, which was a relief. The waltz competition is my least favorite part of Viennese. This is because whenever I think about it I feel like I'm better than the last X couples who won and I should have won instead of them, whereas in fact I've never even gotten to the finals. Leaving aside the question of whether I actually am better than the last X couples who won (and really, who's to say that I am?), the very thought of comparing myself to them in that way makes me deeply uncomfortable. Now, I enjoy having people look at me when I dance, but that's more along the lines of wanting to share my delight in the dance. I can't say why other people enter the waltz competition, but I want to win a waltz competition so everybody will acknowledge how good I am, and I emphatically do not want to become that kind of dancer. If people think I'm good, that's fine. If people enjoy watching me dance, that's great. But I don't want to give place to the small, petulant part of me that wants to prove myself as a dancer, that wants accolades. No sir. I don't need to be that kind of person. So I'm glad there was a graceful way out of the competition, since as it happened there was no graceful way to avoid getting into it in the first place.

One of the things I like about Viennese is that it fits very well with my sense of what dancing is. Dancing is, as it were, an entry into Narnia, but especially when I am dressed up for it. When I put on my tailcoat, I hold my head high and my back straightens. I walk not quickly but with assurance. When I ask a lady to dance, or when I bow to her, I mean it. It's an honest question, and an honest courtesy. When I am armed in tails, I can more easily believe God when he says, "You are my son, and the one true king." And what is more, I can (I hope) more easily act like it. Graciousness, assurance, charity, gravity, and gaity - I assume these things when I put on my tails. And I get the sense that most people at Viennese feel something of that as well. It's a good celebration.

These days even more than ever I get the core social elements (fellowship, teaching, and worship) of my Christian walk from a variety of sources. There's fellowship (by which I mean RUF), and Bible study, and more Bible study, and church, and friends, and family ... and not only that, but the elements themselves are split up as well.

Take worship, for example. The kind of worship that is teaching - that is pulsing deep truths right into your bones - that I can get either at church or at RUF. The kind of worship that is like roaring - that I can get at church or at RUF. But there is another kind of worship that I find fellowships are ill-suited to, and that I have been missing lately.

This is worship that isn't just roaring or declarative - not just triumphant. It's sweet. It can be hard and fast, or slow and tender, and it's not so much about teaching truth as savoring it. The kind of worship that doesn't just dwell on truth, but dwells also on the goodness of that truth. The kind of worship that feeds your spirit in its war against the flesh by strengthening your true self's affection for God. The kind of worship that shatters you before the Lord and doesn't just draw you but seizes you to repentance. This is worship like sex. Okay, so I've never had sex, but I'm 100% sure the analogy holds. Let me put in terms of something I have experienced: this is worship like kissing - the kind of kissing that crushes your beloved into your arms and covers her mouth with yours and is like drinking of her entire person as if she were the first and last spring on Earth.

Growing up at The Church on the Way and being the child of Jack Hayford and Scott Bauer, I am convinced that Scripture teaches the necessity of this kind of worship for spiritual vitality and spiritual victory, both corporately and individually. If I have never found it in an on-campus fellowship, that's no slight to them. I think it is best found in a church. This is, in fact, the single biggest factor that drew me initially to The River. Lately it has been missing. But you know what? We've finally hired a full-time worship pastor, and ... well, man. You should have been there today.

My church is back.

Peter Pan is a very deep movie. It contains what I believe are the most horrifying words I have ever heard spoken by a woman. Peter and Wendy are fighting:

Wendy (angry, shouting): Sir, you are both ungallant and deficient!
Peter (arrogant): How am I deficient?
Wendy (whispering, in sudden realization): You're just a boy.

Watch the movie; this exchange is simply awful (not artistically; artistically I adore it). Of course, the ways in which Peter is just a boy are myriad - he is Peter Pan, after all. But the immediate way in which Wendy means what she says is that he is afraid. She is calling him a coward.

I saw The Vagina Monologues tonight, and their 2006 spotlight is on the case of Japanese comfort women in World War II (I hope that your WWII education covered this, but in case it didn't, the Japanese military abducted or deceived a great many young women for servicemen to use as sex slaves during that war). They had a new monologue about the experience of those women.

If you know me well, it will come as no surprise that that monologue made me think of the servicemen's experience. What had they gone through to precipitate their participation in the serial rape of these women? How did they feel about it now? Were there any heroes among them who had done what they could for these abducted girls? How many of them had a moment of clarity where they recognized the barbarity, the utter smallness of what they were doing, and were driven by other horrors into doing it anyway?

I don't mean to excuse the institution, or the actions of those who participated in it. I do mean to call attention to two facts. The first is that the evils of rape go both ways. It is horrible to be raped. It is also horrible to rape someone. I should not wish either experience on my worst enemy.

The second is that this monologue made me think of something which I have wrestled with for at least a decade now: that people get hurt when men give in to fear. More simply put: cowards kill people. Each of the men who drove their Arrows into those women (thanks for the book, Blue Rose) had their own story. Like as not their psyches were battered by their own horror stories of the awesome calamity that was the Second World War. I expect that many of them, deep down, were driven to these proferred women for the animal comforts of sex and control.

I can sympathize with such a story (even feel sorry for the men in it) but it is ultimately a boy's story, ungallant and deficient. A man does not face his fears and rape an abductee. He faces them and overcomes them by grace through faith.

This basic maxim, that cowards kill people, is the reason that Alanna is one of my literary goddesses. It is the reason that Keladry became one, later on. Anybody willing to be halfway honest with himself can see that the world is full of girls seriously wounded (or being wounded) by the cowardice of one or more men. Men and knights (a knight is not a man, but I think a man will be a knight in all the ways that count) don't do that. As Tortallan knights are instructed: You will be sworn to protect those weaker than you. To wear the shield of a knight is an important thing. It means you may not ignore a cry for help. It means that rich and poor, young and old, male and female may look to you for rescue, and you cannot deny them. You may not look away from wrongdoing. The world is full of males ungallant and deficient, mere boys who never grew up into the Narnian kings they were meant to be. And God help me, I'm one of them.

This is why I say that this maxim has dogged me ever since I first apprehended it. So far as it goes, I think it is merely a statement of truth: cowards kill people. Cowardice (being ruled by fear) pertains to death. Courage (acting despite fear) pertains to life. God has not given us a spirit of fear, etc. But he has not just given us the Spirit of power and love and sophrosune. He has given us the Spirit of Life Himself. So far, so good. But what am I to make of the fact that cowardice pertains to death? The obvious answer is that I must be brave. I might even instruct myself as Alanna was instructed: You have learned the laws of Chivalry. Keep them in your heart. Use them as your guides when things are their darkest. They will not fail you if you interpret them with humanity and kindness.

I have made that mistake often enough to be utterly convinced it is a mistake. For one thing, it's acting out of fear - fear of cowardice, but fear nonetheless. But more importantly, I cannot make myself courageous by act of will or moral effort. Anybody who has tried to be courageous will know the truth of this, and the greatest of the historical knights testify (I know, I just read one of them) that both courage and chivalry come alone by the grace of God. If I cannot be courageous by trying, what then? What is there but to admit that I am ungallant and deficient, and just admit that I'm going to kill people?

I think the answer is that courage - indeed, manhood itself - comes only by grace through faith. Isaiah 35:4-6 says,

Say to those who are fearful-hearted,
"Be strong, do not fear!
Behold, your God will come with vengeance,
With the recompense of God;
He will come and save you."
Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
And the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.
Then the lame shall leap like a deer,
And the tongue of the dumb sing.

Then, boys will be men.