Welcome to a smattering of our news.

My hubby arrived home yesterday after seventeen days in India and Kenya. Yay! The India part he did with his brother, and he enjoyed seeing the place for the first time. He brought me beautiful silk scarves, which he said one can find for a pittance in Hyderabad. A highlight of the Kenya part for him was seeing a pride of ten lions in the wild on his last day. Look for some great Wordless Wednesday photos from him in the weeks ahead. Right now all the Kenya kids needing sponsors in the ALIM program are covered. Yay, again! He was in good health the entire trip, which is an answer to prayer.

Ironically, I'm the one in bed sick--aches, cough, weakness, respiratory crud. My daughter went to a youth slumber party and picked up something she shared with me. I'm supposed to speak twice at Stonebriar Church on Wednesday in Frisco before filming something about some opinion I have--on who knows what; I have so many--with my friend Kelley at FaithVillage. Let's hope I rally soon.

While Gary was gone, I took our daughter to get her senior pictures made. We had a blast with the photographer, who did some artsy stuff like setting up a shot with her violin bridge in the foreground. Is it really possible that she could be old enough to graduate in a year?

While G-man was gone, I also knocked out a chunk of my dissertation edits. And with the help of my fab intern, Steve, who can sniff out a typo like a customs dog finds weed, I feel like I've made great progress. Yes!

Just a reminder--if you order anything from books to music to furniture from Amazon, please come here first and access Amazon through the link in the right column. We get back a percentage (no extra cost to you), and use 100 percent of those funds to help our work in Kenya. (Our Amazon account dropped off this month for the first time in a year, perhaps because I failed to issue a reminder? Oops.)

The Gospel Coalition article I mentioned in my last post did get removed and the author issued an apology. Thank you, TGC.  Some bloggers and commenters portrayed the conversation as egalitarians attacking the complementarian position, but those writers who did so portrayed it inaccurately. Many comps were also offended, insisting the article misrepresented their position.

The dictionary definition of "conquer" is to take by force. So when someone says the man's role is to conquer/colonize in the bedroom, the person making such a statement must expect that he will be perceived as condoning rape within marriage. Even if that is not his intention. Because words have meanings. A scene from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass captures what I think happened. Humpty Dumpty is discussing semantics with Alice:

    "I don't know what you mean by 'glory,' " Alice said.
    Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!' "
    "But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected.
    "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
    "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
   
If Humpty is going to make up his own meanings, he needs at least to provide Alice with a lexicon of iHumpty usage if he expects her to understand what he is trying to say. The writer, not the reader, is the one tasked with making word meanings clear where the words chosen vary from normal usage. Telling readers to go back to their ESL classes if they don't understand is not exactly, well, blameless. So--apology needed, apology accepted.

But that is not to say I agree with the original premise as it was intended. Let's say when people make such statements that they don't mean rape in the bedroom, but they do mean authority. Well...those who see a man-in-charge image in Song of Songs are, IMHO, reading their own patriarchy into the text. The only place where the word "lead" shows up is when the female says she will lead her man to her mother's house, if you know what I mean. Elsewhere, she runs out into the streets (initiates) looking for him. She calls out to him.... The part about the female's neck being like a strong tower covered with shields I take to mean long and wrapped in jewelry--considered gorgeous then. I do not see in such imagery an invitation to break down the shields and conquer the tower. Nope, the biblical ideal is not a male-aggressive/female-passive picture of intimacy. True, she invites him into her "garden," but notice she invites him. That suggests consent, not conquest. And while some see "come into" as "possession," one could just as easily see in the imagery a man being enveloped. Even ambushed. See? The metaphors can go either way.

So does scripture ever spell out in literal words what the bedroom power picture looks like? Yes, it does. The apostle Paul states clearly the bedroom dynamics for the mature Christ-following couple. In 1 Corinthians 7 we find that the wife has authority over the husband's body, and the husband has authority over the wife's body. That sounds a lot like an "egalitarian pleasuring party." Whatever else you wish to do with hierarchy in marriage, and we can debate that issue separately, 1 Corinthians 7 and Song of Songs make a clear case for mutuality when it comes to sex. No one is in charge. No one has more power than the other.

One more thing...That the author suggested a cause-and-effect relationship between rape in our culture and second-wave feminism (wait... more rape because women have more social power?)... Dude. Fifteen Shades looks like it's set to earn millions this year; the porn/trafficking industry will continue to reap billions. If we're going to make a link between what people see/read/pick up from culture and rape, maybe we should look at those numbers.