Christianity

Modesty and cultural sensitivity

/ edebock / 4 Comments

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Screen Shot 2016-03-18 at 11.07.24 PM 3Visitors who dress immodestly will no longer be allowed to enter Cambodia’s famed Angkor Wat temple complex, the agency that oversees the site announced last week. Beginning August 4th, all tourists will be required to wear pants or skirts that fall below the knee and shirts that cover their shoulders.

When I read that, I immediately went back to our photos from Jan 4, 2009 to see what we were wearing the day we visited the UNESCO World Heritage Site that is also Cambodia’s biggest tourist attraction. Would we meet the new standard, I wondered.

We got up at 4:30 a.m. the day we toured Angkor Wat so that we could be there in time to watch the sun rise over it’s towers. It was still a bit chilly when we arrived and at that point, dressed in a warm fleece hoodie and capri pants, I would definitely have met the new dress code.

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Richard would not have, however, as he was wearing shorts and later, in the heat of the day, I wouldn’t have either.

I almost hate to post that picture because I look so frumpy, but please keep in mind that we were basically backpacking through southeast Asia. We had just traveled the length of Vietnam by night bus and we were staying in a $12/night guesthouse that wasn’t much more than a roof over our heads. I may not have looked great, but I was having the adventure of a lifetime and fashion was the farthest thing from my mind!

The question here, though, is what is modesty? My tank top may not be particularly attractive, but is it immodest?

In 1 Timothy 2:9, the apostle Paul advises women to “adorn themselves in modest apparel, with propriety and moderation” but he doesn’t give a lot of detail about what that looks like. He does go on to say, “not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing” but to understand what he was getting at, one needs to look at the culture and the context. In this passage, Paul was advising women on how to dress for church, telling them to adorn themselves in a manner that was considered appropriate for worship. In Ephesus, where his protégé, Timothy, was pastoring at the time, the elite of that culture were known for their gaudy and extravagant wardrobes, their elaborate hair styles, and their expensive clothing that communicated extraordinary wealth. Paul’s description of immodest dress conjured up a picture of someone preoccupied with appearance, fashion, luxury, and perhaps even sexual prowess. He was simply advising the Christian women of that time and place not to mimic that behaviour, but to dress in a way that showed that they desired attention to be on God, not on themselves.

Dictionary definitions of modesty include “behavior, manner, or appearance intended to avoid impropriety or indecency” and “the quality of behaving and especially dressing in ways that do not attract sexual attention.”

In discussing dress codes, it’s important to note that modesty must involve cultural sensitivity. We don’t find the wearing of shorts or sleeveless tops offensive here in North America,  but Cambodia is a completely different culture. Angkor Wat was the spiritual centre of the Khmer empire that dominated that region from the 9th to 15th centuries. It’s a symbol of great national pride and is depicted on the Cambodian flag. As such, it is worthy of utmost respect. If, to the Cambodian mind, that means a certain manner of dress, then visitors definitely need to honour that.

Though it’s unlikely that I will return to Angkor Wat (only because there’s so much world that I have yet to see), but if I do, I won’t be wearing a tank top. If you haven’t been yet, I would definitely suggest adding it to your bucket list, but make sure you pack accordingly. After August 4th, those who are not dressed appropriately will be turned away or required to change their clothes before being allowed to enter.

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Mezuzah

/ edebock / 11 Comments

If you come to visit us, you’ll notice something on the doorpost at the entrance to our home that wasn’t there before our trip to Israel.

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Four inches long and made of brass, it is a mezuzah container. Hidden inside are two tiny slips of paper, one in Hebrew and the other in English.

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Mezuzahs are fastened to the door frames of Jewish homes to fulfill the Biblical commandment to write the words of the Shema, the command that is central to the Jewish faith, on the door frames of their houses. (Deuteronomy 6:5-9)

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” 

If ours were a true Jewish mezuzah, there would be just one scroll inside. It would have been handwritten by a certified scribe with specially prepared ink on kosher parchment made of thinly shaved hide. If we were a Jewish family, we would have several mezuzahs, not just the one on the outside doorpost. Every doorway that leads into a proper room, except for the bathroom, would have its own mezuzah. Each of our hotel rooms in Israel had one.

A mezuzah is permanently affixed to the right doorpost, on the lower part of the upper third. It is traditionally hung on a slant, as shown in the photo above, with the top pointing inward. A special blessing is usually read or recited prior to affixing each mezuzah.

Mezuzah cases come in a variety of sizes and materials. Ours is a Messianic mezuzah made specifically for a Christian home. The symbol at the top is the Hebrew letter “Shin”, the first letter of Shaddai (Almighty), one of the Biblical names of God. Below it is the Messianic Seal of the Church of Jerusalem which incorporates a menorah (seven branched candelabra), a distinctly Jewish symbol, and a fish, which has been used as a symbol of Christianity since its very early days. The triangular base of the candelabra and the tail of the fish tie the two symbols together and form the Star of David, the national symbol of Israel.

The mezuzah at the entrance to our home will long be a reminder of our amazing pilgrimage to Israel, but also an expression of our faith in God.

“As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”  Joshua 24:15

Welcome to Canada!

/ edebock / 8 Comments

I spent one afternoon last week working as a volunteer in our local second hand store. As I looked around the tiny shop, I couldn’t help noticing how the face of our small community has changed. Like almost every other rural community across the Canadian prairie, the town we raised our children in, just a few short years ago, had one Chinese family running a restaurant. There was also a doctor of East Indian descent who originally hailed from Ghana. That was about it for multiculturalism. The rest of us could trace our ancestry to various parts of Europe, but that’s no longer the case. In the shop that afternoon, there was my friend, Karen, a temporary foreign worker from the Philippines and over there, a young Asian couple. I’m pretty sure they were Korean. Another Korean family lives kitty-corner from me. In the shop, there was also a young Mexican Mennonite man, one of many who have made this area home over the past few years, and two women from one of the nearby Hutterite colonies. I live around the corner from a family from South Africa and another family of newcomers bought the house at the end of our street. The wife is from Honduras and her husband, El Salvador. Yes, our community has changed. It has opened its arms and welcomed the world and I love it!

Now we’re faced with the current refugee crisis and our government’s decision to open our country’s doors to 25 000 Syrians. Sadly, many are responding in ignorance and fear.

There are fears, perhaps even legitimate fears, that terrorists may hide themselves in the masses and infiltrate our peaceful nation and fears that jobs may be lost to these newcomers, but as I watched the news last night and looked into the faces of the sixteen weary Syrians who arrived at the Calgary airport yesterday, I saw people, real people, some with fear in their own eyes. Imagine for a moment what they have been through, what they’ve sacrificed, what they’ve left behind to begin a new life in a new and very strange land. They are not here to make our lives worse, but to make their own lives better and in so doing, they can make our country richer if we give them the opportunity. Who are we, born in Canada through no effort of our own, and benefitting greatly from the hard work and sacrifice of those who came before us, who were themselves newcomers from foreign lands looking for a better life, to close our doors and our hearts to these whose very lives have been torn apart by the atrocities of war? Who do we think we are?

Sadly, I also see racism in the response of some of my fellow Canadians. Canadians like the elderly man working the till at Walmart yesterday, who, during a few moment’s conversation while checking and bagging our purchases, complained bitterly that he’d soon be out of work because “one hundred of those Syrians are coming to Camrose and they’re going to take jobs from all the good people!” Perhaps I should have asked him where his people came from. He certainly didn’t appear to be of First Nations descent!

Much of the fear stems from the fact that these newcomers are Muslims, descendants of Esau, betrayed and robbed of his birthright by his twin brother, our spiritual ancestor, Jacob (Genesis 25-27). They are Muslims, painted with the same brush as the extremists who behead Christians on the beaches of north Africa and who strap explosives to their bodies and blow themselves to smithereens in the public places of Paris, killing and maiming hundreds of innocent bystanders. Are these the Muslims who seek refuge in our country? I don’t think so! That’s like saying that all Chinese Canadians are like Vince Weiguang Li who beheaded a fellow passenger on a Greyhound bus on the way to Winnipeg in July 2008 and ate some of his flesh!

It would be naive to suggest that there won’t be any problems involved in opening our borders to such a huge influx of refugees and I join my voice with others in urging our government to use wisdom and diligence in choosing who will be allowed to come, but how much worse will the problems be if we greet these newcomers with fear and animosity instead of extending a hand of compassion? The government has promised intense and rigorous security checks of each person who arrives in Canada and there is every reason to believe that this current wave of refugees will face the same scrutiny and review as all those who have come before them. For more information on that process, you can go here. Our new Prime Minister has already delayed the December 31 deadline for allowing the 25 000 to enter the country in order to “get it right”. The three families that arrived in Calgary yesterday all escaped war-torn Syria a year ago and have been waiting in Lebanon for permission to come to Canada where they were greeted by family members already living there.

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It is the response of some of my fellow Christ-followers that bothers me most of all. Yes, the Christian face of our country is rapidly changing, but if God has called us to reach the lost for Christ, how much easier will it be for us if they come to us? Not many of us can “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19) but we can reach out to the ones who move in next door to us with love and compassion and be the hands of Christ to them. It is not only immigrants of other faiths who are robbing our country of its Christian heritage, it is also those born and raised here who have become so self-sufficient and so self-centred that they see no need for a god of any kind and can only express hatred toward those they don’t understand or agree with.

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Photos: Darren Makowichuk/Calgary Sun

No ordinary weekend

/ edebock / 10 Comments

This weekend Christians around the world celebrated the death and resurrection of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, who came that we might have life, and that we might have it more abundantly. (John 10:10) It was definitely no ordinary weekend, but for our family, it was also no ordinary Easter.

Thirty years ago, a heartbroken young grandmother placed her first grandchild in my arms and walked away not knowing if she’d ever see him again. On Saturday evening, she sat across the table from me at his wedding reception. Her daughter, Nate’s birth mom, was at the next table. This was definitely no ordinary weekend!

Nathan was just three days old when he joined our family but there was already an unmistakable twinkle of mischief in his eyes and he has found his soulmate in Colleen, a beautiful and godly young lady with a mischievous twinkle to match his own! The wedding ceremony and the reception, complete with an inflatable bouncy castle in the corner of the hall to keep the youngest guests entertained, were a perfect reflection of the fun-loving and quirky but also very classy personalities of the bride and groom.

My weekend began with a moment of panic on Friday morning when I woke to discover that the five pound block of ground beef in our hotel room’s mini fridge was still frozen solid! I had a rehearsal dinner to prepare for approximately two dozen people and only a couple of hours until I needed to begin putting it together. Where there’s a will, there’s a way they say, so tying the meat into a plastic hotel laundry bag and dropping it into a bathtub of warm water, off I went to breakfast! The novel defrosting method worked wonders and by early afternoon I had three slow cookers filled with lasagna. (No, I didn’t prepare the meal in the hotel room! We transported the meat, along with all the other ingredients, to one of the bridesmaid’s homes.) Though I never want to be a caterer, the meal was ready right on time and received rave reviews. Once that was over with, I could relax and enjoy the rest of the weekend!

From the bride and groom’s self-written vows that reflected both the sanctity of the moment and the humour that permeates their relationship to their impromptu dance on the platform during the ceremony, the wedding was, in the words of one of our dear friends, “a wonderful, classy, down to earth celebration.”

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For me, one of the highlights of the weekend was having all my children and grandchildren together in one place, something that doesn’t happen often. On Sunday morning, with the bride and groom off on their honeymoon, the rest of us gathered at their home to be for a relaxing brunch before having to go our separate ways. The Easter bunny somehow knew exactly where our five young grandchildren would be and ensured that there were chocolate eggs to be found!

After cleaning up and making sure that everything was ready for Nate and Colleen’s return, we headed for home stopping on the way for Easter dinner at my sister’s place. It was also a celebration of my nephew’s 22nd birthday and in his words, “a perfect end to a perfectly incredible weekend!”

Our beautiful children: Matt and his wife Robin, Nate and his lovely bride Colleen, Melaina and her husband Aaron

Our beautiful children: Matt and his wife Robin, Nate and his lovely bride Colleen, Melaina and her husband Aaron

Uncle Nate and Auntie Colleen with our five grandchildren

Uncle Nate and Auntie Colleen with our five grandchildren

What about Halloween?

/ edebock / 10 Comments

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We went to church with a dinosaur this morning; a bright orange Tyrannosaurus Rex named Sam! To the left of us, there were two little pumpkins and to the right, a ladybug and a monkey. A spotted leopard sat in front of us and as I looked around the sanctuary I spotted a ballet dancer, a fireman, a pirate, and a clown. R2-D2 and Princess Leia were there too but there were no witches, ghosts or ghouls. “Let’s be more creative than that,” parents at Cap Church were told last Sunday when it was announced that the Cap kids could wear their Halloween costumes to church today.

Whether or not we should participate in Halloween has become a great debate within the Christian church. There is no doubt that the celebration has its roots in ancient pagan rites and superstitions and it’s also a holy day for those who practice Wicca, a modern religious cult that engages in witchcraft. For most people, however, Halloween is simply a secular day of fun. It has religious significance only to those who give it religious significance. To my mind, if some people feel uncomfortable participating in Halloween activities, then they should refrain from doing so but the rest of us should simply be discerning and avoid those activities that might detract from our Christian witness. It also behooves us to avoid judging those who make decisions different from our own.

Personally, I applaud the approach taken by Cap Church. In an article published in recent church bulletins, Pastor Emeritus, Paddy Ducklow, wrote about what he called “the issue of how our faith impacts our culture and neighbourhood, or how surrounding values harm our kids.” He wrote first of safety, urging parents to teach their children how to be safe in an unsafe world. He also advised them to show the closeness and care of God by being with their children. He encouraged Christian men to exhibit a “father’s heart” during a potentially scary time by going door to door with their children as they trick-or-treat. He recommended that parents use Halloween as an opportunity to help their children make righteous choices, staying away from images of witchcraft, death and violence. I especially appreciated his recommendation that parents make Halloween an opportunity to know and enjoy their neighbours. Rather than being aloof, avoiding contact with our neighbourhood on a night when many are out and about having fun, Halloween is a great opportunity to engage with them.

I would love to know where you stand on this contentious topic. If you do choose to comment, however, please show respect for those who express an opinion different from your own. I’d love to see a lively conversation develop but no personal attacks.

The great t-shirt debate

/ edebock / 3 Comments
photo credit

I’ve been debating all weekend about whether or not to enter the great t-shirt debate that’s been raging across Canada for the past week. After reading the latest update in this morning’s news, I can’t hold back any longer.

First of all, a little background for my many non-Canadian readers. (I love the fact that WordPress now shows us where our readers come from. I can’t help checking the little map on my Stats page several times a day and I’m delighted every time a new country lights up!) Last Monday, William Swinimer, a grade 12 student in Nova Scotia who had repeatedly worn a bright yellow t-shirt  with the slogan “Life is wasted without Jesus” on it, was suspended from school for 5 days.

Christians across the country have been decrying the fact that William was suspended for wearing a t-shirt with the name of Jesus on it. Not so, folks! If we, as Christians, want to be listened to and taken seriously we need to get our facts straight. Swinimer was suspended from school for defying authority. After being told by the school principal that other students found the t-shirt offensive and asked not to wear it to school anymore, this young man who was apparently in the habit of telling his fellow students that they were going to burn in hell, chose to wear it to class every day for several weeks. (I hope he washed it in between!) His defiance earned him a series of in-school suspensions and ultimately the 5 day at-home suspension.

While I admire William’s desire to share his faith and his willingness to stand up for his beliefs and in no way support the principal’s initial request that he not wear the shirt to school again, the Bible clearly tells us “Obey your leaders and submit to their authority.” Hebrews 13:17  Swinimer says that by continuing to wear the banned shirt to school, he was standing up for his rights as a Canadian citizen. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the right to freedom of religion, conscience and expression to all Canadians. Religious freedom does include the right to speak about our beliefs and to share them with other people but I cannot applaud a student for harassing his classmates or defying authority. If we truly hurt for the people we believe are lost, we won’t win them over to our way of thinking by being obnoxious, rude or confrontational.

While I was mildly annoyed with those who failed to look below the surface and immediately jumped to Swinimer’s defence hailing this as another example of a Christian being persecuted for his faith, it wasn’t until I read this morning’s news that my blood began to boil. Swinimer was due to return to school this morning. Rather than attempting to sweep the situation under the carpet and pretend that nothing untoward had happened, the school scheduled a series of forums to begin today that would encourage open dialogue on how students can express their beliefs in respectful and non-discriminatory ways in a multicultural public school environment. They tried to turn the fierce nationwide debate into a learning experience. Swinimer was invited to participate and was even told that that he could wear the bright yellow t-shirt. The pastor of his church agreed to take part in the discussions.

Then came this morning’s news. William Swinimer arrived at school with his father, John. Waving a New Testament at reporters, John Swinimer announced that he was pulling his son out of the school!

“The taxpayer is paying for him to learn his academics as well as the other students and I am not standing for any of this stuff,” he told reporters. “He will not attend this school unless they are having reading, writing and arithmetic, good old-fashioned academics. When they’re having forums, when they’re having other extra curricular activities, he will not attend that school.” When asked by reporters whether Swinimer will come back to the school when the talks are over, John responded, “I’m making a statement here, I’m not answering questions.”

Whoa!! What kind of parenting is that? Instead of supporting his defiant behaviour, William’s parents ought to be teaching him to show proper respect for authority and how to share his faith in appropriate and respectful ways. Unfortunately intolerance and rudeness breed intolerance and rudeness.

Today, having heard the rest of the story, I have sympathy for young William. Sadly, it’s easy to predict what the future holds for him. He lives in a town of little more than 2000 people. You can’t be anonymous in a place like that and a bad reputation is hard to shake. He’s still going to be “that boy” years down the road. Who wants to hire a young man who’s been taught that he doesn’t have to do what he’s told; that his rights are more important than anyone else’s?

I do hope his life isn’t wasted!