Page 719 – Christianity Today (2025)

I joined the ranks of fallen pastors in 2005. I will spare you the details of my fall; we have heard similar stories too many times already. This is the story of how God used the train wreck I made of my life and marriage and gave me a new calling to help Christian men, pastors, and their churches who are struggling with sexual brokenness.

Like many other men, I was exposed to porn when I was 11. My dad had magazines in the nightstand next to his bed so it was acceptable in our home. The images from those magazines were burned into my brain, and it felt powerful to see them and to become aroused. My brother and I both had porn of our own as soon as we turned 18.

I learned at an early age to use porn to make myself feel good, and after serving as a youth pastor for 6 years and a senior pastor for 20, this would come back to destroy my ministry. As I strained under weight of pastoring a large church and trying to prioritize my marriage and four kids, I began using porn more and more to escape. I needed to get my fix—although it did not fix anything.

It didn’t stop there. On September 9, 2005, three men from my board came to my office to confront me about a rumor they had heard: that I was involved in an affair with a woman in our church. The rumor was true. I was so ready to leave my double life that I prepared to give an open confession no matter the consequences. I knew I needed to come clean and allow God to do whatever he wanted to do. Had I been a better man with more courage, I would have sought help earlier instead of allowing my sexual addiction to grow deeper and darker for over eight years.

When the truth was exposed, I lost my ministry, destroyed my career, and made my education worthless. I worried I would lose my marriage and my relationships with my kids. However, due to the spiritual maturity of my gracious and forgiving wife, a lot of counseling, and a commitment to walk this out, God carried us through the years of healing.

I Confessed to My Wife and Children

Several things were instrumental in helping me through the early days of recovery. My resignation happened on a Friday. I spent the weekend confessing to my wife and sharing the truth with our kids. I told my wife she could ask me anything and I would tell her the truth. I told our kids that I had been unfaithful to their mother, had become addicted to pornography, and had lost my job. If they wanted to know anything more they could ask me. None of them did, but all of them talked with their mother.

I was in a deep depression and barely able to function. Having struggled with depression since 1986, I was no stranger to its horror, but this was the deepest and darkest hole in which I had ever been. Fear, shame, and anxiety came in constant waves, and I was unable to sleep for a couple of nights. On Monday I went to my doctor and told him what had happened. He doubled my medications of Wellbutrin and Zoloft. It took me about two weeks to feel their effect.

I Took Drastic Measures

My wife and I created some ground rules for recovery. There had to be barriers in place in order for me to stay in the house and continue in the marriage. First, I was to have absolutely no contact with any of the women with whom I had affairs. No calls. No texts. No emails or meetings. Any contact they made to reach out to me, I reported to her as soon as possible. Also, I would have no contact with other women, no pornography, and no masturbation.

About a month into this new lifestyle, one of the women called me on my cell phone. When I heard her voice on the line, I quickly told her to never call me again and hung up. After work I told my wife of the call, gave her my phone, and suggested we switch phones for a few days. After that I got a new number for my phone. This was a pain, but it helped show my wife that I would do whatever it took to stop. I had no passwords on my phone or on the computer. She was given full access to everything.

I Joined a Recovery Ministry

Recovery from this addiction is a commitment to living one day at a time in a strong and growing relationship with God and in constant connection with a support team.

If a man has not hit rock bottom and is unwilling to prostrate himself before God—allowing God to work his will—and walk in honesty and truth, then he will probably fail to recover.

I began to attend a men’s ministry at Vineyard Columbus that helped men who struggle with sexual sin. I was placed in a small group that provided essential weekly accountability. It also allowed me to connect with two men from that small group on a daily basis. Gus was on my right, and Craig was on my left. We locked arms and helped one another walk out of our addictions through daily encouragement.

Our conversations were not about the surface stuff men typically talk about. We shared our temptation and our triggers. We prayed for one another daily and connected through email, text, and calls when we struggled, or we would just call if we had not heard from each other that day. We asked questions like, “Have you faced any temptations today?” “How are things at home with your wife and kids?” “Did you cross any boundaries today, and if so, have you confessed any falls to your wife?”

Most men like this process about as much as a root canal. However, when your tooth is infected and a root canal is called for, it simply must be done. Our phone conversations were times of probing questions, honest confessions, and prayers for healing.

I Gave Control to God

For the next three years, I felt like I was learning to survive in the desert. At times God seemed distant and life was brutal. I struggled to find employment that would allow us to stay in our home, keep two kids in college, and prepare to send a third to school. Yet week after week and month after month God provided. I worked hard to give God control, and he was faithful.

That is not what happens to everyone. Some men go through divorce and their families blow up. Some, in their insanity, go back to acting out sexually and struggle to leave this behavioral drug that is so effective and accessible. If a man has not hit rock bottom and is unwilling to prostrate himself before God—allowing God to work his will—and walk in honesty and truth, then he will probably fail to recover.

I also know of former pastors who thought that after a period of time they should return to the ministry. They wrapped up their identity with being a pastor even though they had disqualified themselves from the office. Can they be restored to ministry? Yes, but only in the right kind of ministry position and after—I would say—a minimum of five years in recovery and with the agreement of their wives.

God Redeemed My Sin

After three years of hard work in my walk with God and my marriage, God gave me this passage from Isaiah 32:14–15:

The fortress will be abandoned,

the noisy city deserted;

citadel and watchtower will become a wasteland forever,

the delight of donkeys, a pasture for flocks,

till the Spirit is poured on us from on high,

and the desert becomes a fertile field,

and the fertile field seems like a forest.

Slowly I began to experience seasons of growth. Four years into my recovery, in February 2009, Gus and I started our own small group at Vineyard Columbus called 180 Recover. For our first meeting, nine nervous yet brave men showed up to learn about how believers can recover from sexual brokenness and manage sexual addiction.

I thought I would be able to return to ministry after three years, but when I arrived at that mark, I realized I was nowhere near where I needed to be to enter full-time ministry again. Instead, it brings me great joy to serve the body of Christ as a lay person. The men of 180 think of me as their pastor, and one man said, “You get to shepherd all of the black sheep.” Amen to that.

180 is not a quick fix; there isn’t one.

For the last several Monday nights, we have averaged over 100 men coming to 180 Recover. In our eighth year, it has become a place where men receive biblical teaching and strong accountability. 180 is not a quick fix; there isn’t one. Instead it is a long-term committment, where sexually broken believers find freedom from the power of sexual sin through the unconditional love of the Father, the finished work of Jesus on the cross, and the indwelling presence and empowerment of the Spirit in a community of honesty, support, accountability, and prayer.

One of my leaders, who was in that initial group of nine men, says he struggled with porn and acting out daily for 60 years. He is now in his 70s and has experienced years of sobriety.

At 180 we spend time worshiping, listen to one of the videos in our recovery program, and then break into 12 small groups where broken men receive encouragement, support, and individual prayer. We believe and practice James 5:3: “Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”

Helping men who have succumbed to sexual addiction is my calling at this stage of life. I disqualified myself from serving as a pastor, but I want to help you make a difference in your own life and ministry. If you or your church needs help—and I know that is the case—please contact me or find help in another way. God brought about healing and redemption in my life, and he can do the same in your life and the lives of your church members.

John Doyel is a former senior pastor living in Columbus, Ohio, who is now in his 13th year of recovery from sexual brokenness and addiction. He ministers as a lay person in his church and helped start many 180 Recover ministries across the country.

If you or someone you know is looking for help with sexual addiction or you would like to start a sexual addiction recovery ministry at your church, visit www.180recover.com or contact John at doyel@me.com.

This last school year saw a number of incendiary cases related to freedom of speech and freedom of association in the American university. Faculty have experienced what George Yancey calls Christianophobia and student groups, too, have had their fair share of fights on both private and public campuses. At Colorado State University, for example, a Christian organization called Students for Life (SFL) applied for a school grant to bring a pro-life speaker to campus and after their application was denied, filed a federal lawsuit (which they recently settled). SFL joins the growing numbers of Catholic and Protestant student groups struggling to maintain or regain a voice on campuses around the country.

Mary Poplin, who teaches at the Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California, has spent most of her professional career studying education, worldviews, and most recently, the subject of “secular exclusivity,” which in her opinion has played a significant part in the SFL case and others like it. The author of Is Reality Secular?: Testing the Assumptions of Four Global Worldviews, Poplin, along with Barry Kanpol, recently edited a collection of essays titled Christianity and the Secular Border Patrol: The Loss of Judeo-Christian Knowledge.

She sat down with CT in Austin, Texas, to talk about the rising secularity in higher education—and what the church can do about it.

How would you define “secular privilege,” a term introduced by David Hodge in one of the essays in your book?

Here’s a great example. When [US Senator] Dianne Feinstein interviews a candidate, Amy Barrett, for a judgeship, she presumes that she herself is neutral and that this candidate is not neutral just because she’s an orthodox Catholic. Bernie Sanders did the same to another appointee. But, of course, Feinstein has a worldview, too. Barrett doesn’t believe in abortion, she’s been active in Catholic organizations … all that gets brought up. In the interview, Feinstein asked the question: How can [Barrett] make good judgments if she holds a religious worldview?

So the purpose of the book is to make explicit that secularism is a sort of umbrella of ideologies defined by its exclusion of religion, primarily of Christian voices, certainly in the US and Europe. Secularism defines itself by what it is not; it has no agreed-upon moral compass, so it’s an umbrella for anything from the far right to the far left and everything in between—as long as it’s not religious. As Stanley Fish says, secularism has survived by pretending to be neutral, but it’s anything but neutral.

What about the reverse scenario? Private Christian universities get accused of religious exclusivity, so how is that any different than secular exclusivity at non-religious schools?

Any private campus can define itself any way. That makes sense to me—as long as you tell people who you are.

So you’re okay with secular exclusivity on a private campus.

If the school actually says, “We’re committed exclusively to a secular worldview,” that’d be one thing. The problem is, secular universities don’t actually say, “Hey, we’re secular.”

It’s an issue of transparency, then?

Yes.

What about a public university? How do you think about secular exclusivity in that context?

That would be much harder—again, unless the university can say, “This is who we are” and get away with it. But the problem of secular exclusivity is that it’s unconscious. These universities don’t identify themselves and in some cases, don’t know that they’re being exclusive. That’s the biggest issue. They think they’re broad, inclusive, pluralistic, and open.

In the book, you say, “radical secularization of the academy has produced five major problems that are bankrupting the academy and, in turn, the culture.”

First, the university used to think of itself as the free open marketplace of ideas, especially after it left its Christian origins. But it’s the free marketplace of certain ideas and the closed marketplace of other ideas.

Second, the university says it is pluralistic, but it has lost that pluralism.

Third, it sends students out who are unprepared to face a world that is still primarily religious in one form or another, with Christianity being the largest religion. It treats everything so secularly that students are getting a distorted picture of the world—they don’t see it the way it really is.

Fourth, it creates speech codes. You can say this but not that.

Fifth, what the university has done to placate religious groups is they’ve created these interfaith spaces, and in these spaces, they all just go out and do good social work together. It dilutes the idea that religious frameworks are actually distinct. Nobody really gets to work within their own frameworks.

Do these problems manifest at Christian schools, as well, or are you strictly talking about secular state schools?

On some of these issues, they’re pretty similar. Some of the colleges that call themselves Christian are not distinctly working on the difference between secular and Judeo-Christian thought.

The problem is, everybody who gets a PhD pretty much has to get it at a secular school. So a Christian scholar comes out of grad school and starts with the assumptions they’ve received in their secular PhD program, and then they try to add or integrate in a little bit of Christian faith. But the textbooks you’re using, the research articles you’re reading—they’re still coming from a secular standpoint. That was the intent of the so-called integration movement: You have to integrate Christian thought into your work. But of course one has to deconstruct the secular narrative first; it has to be done really carefully.

What’s the solution, then?

The people who are doing the most effective work to solve this problem are doing worldview training. I hate the word “worldview” [laughs]. But they are training people to look at things through more critical lenses.

The Christian colleges that’ll have the most trouble are those that have given in to the culture. For Gordon and other schools like it that are maintaining their Christian identity, they need to continue what they’re doing—make sure they’re teaching students and asking—what are the ideologies out there that we’re not supporting and why? And how can we help students think through them? I think they’re going to be the colleges that survive. Other smaller Catholic colleges like Thomas Aquinas or Ave Maria—I think there will be more demand for them.

What does worldview discussion look like in your own classroom?

I feel morally obligated to present students with a wide range of options. When I’m teaching pedagogies, I teach critical theory—Marxism, feminism, etcetera—and I also teach a Christian perspective. I present the alternatives because I’m at a secular university. But even if we were at a Christian university, I would want the students to know the range of explanations in epistemology or pedagogy or whatever. What are the options here? The problem is that most students have not been educated about a distinctly Christian worldview, and that’s a huge problem.

As someone who works on a secular campus, how do you suggest that other believers at other universities—both faculty and students—push back against secular exclusivity in a winsome way that invites conversation and not confrontation?

The university used to be better at debate; it was the place for open debate. When we have colleagues who are intellectually alive and like to do that, we can go for it. But first, we have to know what our field would be like “if Jesus were in it,” as Dallas Willard would say. We have to take the debate out of the political atmosphere, keep it in an intellectual atmosphere, and not make it so personal or political. We also have to look at the data. That’s the beauty of having data—it’s hard to object to.

In your view, secular exclusivity “contradicts the university’s own self-professed commitment to pluralism,” which brings us to the topic of free speech. This last school year, we saw multiple cases on campuses around the country. What are you anticipating this school year?

More of the same. The most disturbing thing to me, as I read the Chronicle of Higher Education on a regular basis, is that it doesn’t appear that the university has yet come to grips with the fact that it’s lost public confidence.

I was with a man recently—a young entrepreneur in his 40s, a middle-of-the-road Christian with big degrees from big places—and about halfway through the conversation he leans across the desk, points his finger at me, and says, “Why in the hell would I pay 60 grand a year to have my child’s life ruined?” I hear versions of that question everywhere. When we come to grips with the fact that the public no longer trusts us, then we might begin to do more self-reflection.

Emily Faulkner, one of students involved with the CSU Students for Life case, told you in an interview that “I prayed and prayed that God would give me courage, and he did.” In the context of discipleship, how can we equip Christian students like Emily to speak and hold their views in secular settings?

The church does need to do some work on worldviews— preparing students in terms of the intellectual content they’ll face and also in terms of the moral fortitude they’ll need. For students to stand up, they have to be well educated. My worry is, sometimes there are students who are brave, but they can’t carry the conversation of “why Christianity?” very far. They’ve been taught a lot about faith and how they should be good people, but they haven’t been trained on how to argue and discuss ideas. Read Pope Benedict’s talks, watch Ravi Zacharias or Robert Barron. Churches can do that sort of thing.

You’re essentially pointing toward apologetics.

Yes, apologetics and worldview training. If you don’t understand other worldviews, then your apologetics is going to be weak.

Besides apologetics, what else can churches do to equip and support students, especially given that parachurch organizations like InterVarsity are increasingly getting pushed off campus?

Here’s what I’d say to the Christian community: It’s our responsibility to build things up on the edge of college campuses—Christian Study Centers like the one at the University of Virginia. We need to understand that this is the way we’re probably going have to live for a while. There are a lot of universities that have them or are considering them, and we need to bolster them. I don’t think we can be naïve and expect to be invited in to secular universities; more and more groups are going to lose their university affiliations. But we have Catholic groups, like Focus, which are strong; we’ve got Protestant groups like Intervarsity, Cru, Navigators, and Veritas—which just piloted a new initiative, The Veritas Academy—and they can all use the same buildings. We need a place where students are getting fed. We need to really build up and support these structures.

You’ve addressed students, student groups, and schools as a whole. What about scholars and professors? How should they respond to what Mark Bauerlein calls “the secular premise”?

The first thing is awareness—we have to be aware of how secularism excludes. The second thing is that, as Christian educators and scholars, we have to wake up and get busy redefining our fields. Where do secular theories and Judeo-Christian thought overlap, and where do they part ways? And what does the Judeo-Christian tradition add to the conversation?

If you look back, George Marsden and Charles Malik and Pope Benedict … they’ve all been saying the same thing. Dallas Willard went around and said to us as scholars, “You need to figure out what Jesus thinks about your discipline.” For Marsden, he called it the “outrageous idea of Christian scholarship.” For Benedict, it was integrated from the top, from philosophy, really. In the book, Charles Glenn does a great chapter on this history.

This relates to a project you’re working on called the Upper Room. Tell us about it.

So the idea with the Upper Room project is, we get Christian scholars together—the sociologists and the psychologists and the political scientists, etcetera—for an extended period of time, a week every summer, and we say—what are the issues? Where do we need to work? What research do we need to do? There has to be a place where we gather into an “upper room” of sorts and begin to collectively rethink through our disciplines. The good news is, there are excellent forerunners from whom we can learn.

And we can’t get there alone. We have to be together—Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox. We have to be international, too, because this is not a national problem, anymore—yes, it was created by the West, but it’s spread everywhere now. We also need to have not just scholars—we need to have high-level players in each of these professions, and we’ve got to have younger people—graduate students and apprentices. We need journalists, too.

It’s going to be expensive, and we will need a lot of intercession. But I don’t see any other way to save the university.

I have been waiting most of my adult life for Paul Schrader to direct a great film.

In 1972, at the age of 26, Schrader penned a small, academic tome about the films of Robert Bresson, Carl Theodor Dreyer, and Yasujirō Ozu called Transcendental Style in Film. Two years later, he shared a screenplay credit with Robert Towne on Sydney Pollack’s The Yakuza. His next writing credit was for the film that laid one of the cornerstones of Martin Scorsese’s considerable legacy: Taxi Driver. It seemed then only a matter of time before Schrader emerged from the shadows of his peers in the “Movie Brat” generation, destined to be as successful filming his own scripts as he was in writing them for others.

Perhaps more than a few Christians were heartened as much by Schrader’s path to success as by the early films to which he contributed. Part of Schrader’s legend was his strict Calvinist upbringing—it is said that his parents did not allow him to watch movies until he was 18. A graduate of Calvin College, his success provided hope that artists and scholars could escape the Christian bubble and be taken seriously in their own right rather than only as part of the chorus in the newly developing “Christian” art subculture.

Schrader’s early films—Hardcore, American Gigolo, and Cat People—were not bad, but they had a seedy, overwrought style and tone that unquestionably translated better to the screen for Scorsese than they did for his scribe. By the time the pair teamed up on a disastrous adaptation of the controversial Last Temptation of Christ, Scorsese’s reputation was strong enough to withstand that film’s commercial failure. But while Schrader continued to write and direct, his films (excepting perhaps Affliction) were increasingly met with shrugs rather than cheers. He was fired from Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist and replaced with the director of Die Hard 2 and Cutthroat Island. The Canyons, a bad noir film, is pretty much what you would expect from a Bret Easton Ellis script starring Lindsay Lohan, getting most of its play sandwiched in between Real Sex 17 and Red Shoe Diaries on whatever cable channel needs late-night filler programming.

After that, I pretty much gave up on Schrader.

So when I say First Reformed is the Schrader film I had stopped waiting for, stopped even hoping for, it’s not just pull-quote baiting. For anyone who longs for stylistically informed, spiritually serious films for and about religious people, First Reformed is a forgotten wish finally come true.

First Reformed is not, however, an easy film to digest, especially if viewers are unfamiliar with the works of the directors who influenced Schrader’s adoption of what he calls the transcendental style. Ethan Hawke plays Reverend Ernst Toller, a burnt-out, ailing (possibly dying) head of a small New York church that is more tourist attraction than active house of worship. Toller’s wife left him after their son was killed during his military service, and he has been living with despair for so long it’s no longer clear, even to him, whether he’s in a dark night of the soul or has passed through to the sickness unto death.

By day Toller maintains an all-will-be-well serenity, while at night he pours out his anguished thoughts in a journal he promises himself he will burn before its contents are ever revealed. A pregnant parishioner (Amanda Seyfried) asks him to counsel her husband, an environmental activist who sees no point in bringing an innocent life into a world already doomed to a fiery climate-change-induced death. In counseling, Toller can force the orthodox messages of faith and hope past his clenched teeth—but he’s nowhere near as convincing as when he shares his own inner demons with the man to assure him that he can relate to his struggles.

In the meantime, the megachurch down the road is footing the bill for First Reformed’s rededication ceremony. The celebration is corporately sponsored by one of the megachurch’s biggest donors, who is also one of the state’s biggest industrial polluters. Beneath a veneer of servile appreciation, Toller seethes with resentment toward the men to whom he is beholden—and toward himself for allowing himself to be beholden to them.

As it moves towards its climax, First Reformed captures so many of the qualities that make the films of Schrader’s artistic idols beloved by people of faith. It illustrates how theological debates matter substantively to how we live on a daily level. It acknowledges pain, doubt, and the ever-present shadow of despair. The film may level critiques at institutional religion, but personal faith is presented as something more than just a cultural or political tribal allegiance. In Toller’s passionate self-flagellation, we perhaps even catch a glimpse of a seed of truth in The Last Temptation that could never fully sprout: Our greatest human temptation is not carnal pleasures, but the promise of an end to spiritual suffering.

One nagging question remains, however: Can any work this derivative be considered a major artistic achievement? We live in an age where innovation and originality win the lion’s share of critical praise, even though a list of our most popular and financially successful films is increasingly populated with remakes and sequels. Sure, cataloging the film’s copious references and antecedents will make critics feel smart—but does that just make First Reformed fan service for those who share Schrader’s obvious affinity for Bresson, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Ingmar Bergman?

The line between skillful homage and hackish knock-off is an admittedly fuzzy one, but Schrader’s film is on the right side of it. First Reformed is not a remake of Diary of a Country Priest, even if it shares with Bresson’s film the central conceit of a physically sick and spiritually tormented minister of the gospel wrestling with his own conscience. Reverend Toller is not Roman Catholic, and his conflicts with the pastor of the megachurch give the film a contemporary, American flavor. A montage of environmental devastation evokes The Devil, Probably, but Schrader’s protagonist is middle-aged, not a college student, and his despair comes across as more informed by his personal suffering than by impotent rationalism. A scene with two characters lying together is lifted straight out of Tarkovsky’s Sacrifice, but the relationship between the two characters is very different here. Consequently, while the effect of their entanglement is visually similar, the potential meanings inferred from that effect are markedly different.

Those examples are meant to illustrate that Schrader is not simply imitating or even channeling the other directors. He is, however, adopting their film vocabulary in order to tell his own story. Paul Thomas Anderson borrows from Max Ophüls. Tom Tykwer acknowledges the influence of Krzysztof Kieślowski and Ernst Lubitsch. J. J. Abrams cites Akira Kurosawa, John Ford, and Terrence Malick as his muses. Steven Spielberg’s work bears the imprint of Stanley Kubrick. Great directors are inspired by, learn from, and copy other great directors. It’s what they do. Paul Schrader has always been a great writer. By imitating other great films, he has ironically, perhaps even paradoxically, finally made a film of his own that is worthy of being celebrated as their equal.

Kenneth R. Morefield (@kenmorefield) is a professor of English at Campbell University. He is the editor of Faith and Spirituality in Masters of World Cinema, Volumes I, II, & III, and the founder of 1More Film Blog.

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Our pastor recently preached a sermon on strategic bridge-burning. He didn’t really call it that, but that’s what it was about. The biblical passage was 1 Kings 19, where the prophet Elijah calls his successor Elisha. The story begins with Elisha behind a team of oxen, plowing his field. Elijah approaches and puts his cloak around him, a gesture signifying prophetic calling in ancient Israel. Elisha responds by hosting a giant oxen-barbeque for the whole village, fueled by his plowing equipment. With no plow and no more oxen, there is no turning back for Elisha. Israel’s new prophet is born.

Elisha understood commitment and its costs. But as a university professor, one of the great dilemmas I have found within the millennial generation is that millennials possess two contradictory desires:

1. A yearning for existential meaning by uniting their lives to a greater and higher purpose
2. A desire to be free from the kind of serious commitment necessary for (1).

Again and again, my students tell me that they made a certain decision to “keep their options open.” That millennials like to keep options open is borne out by the data: only one in four (26%) millennials are married, nearly one-third (29%) are not affiliated with a particular religion, and half (50%) consider themselves political independents.

So what gives? From an economist’s perspective, millennials seem to measure decisions by what we call “option value.” In economics, if a decision like the purchase of an asset has a high option value, it means that there is a significant probability of a very good outcome. However, in the case that things don’t go as well as hoped for, it is easy to break ties and cut losses. Of course, this is only possible in a world of limited commitment. If one needs to be committed to something even when things don’t turn out as well as hoped, then the option value is lower.

I find that many of my university students fall into the same pattern of thinking in decisions related to graduate school, careers, marriage, and even spiritual commitments. Decisions are made based on their option value. It’s all about keeping the options open.

But it doesn’t work.

There is no student I know who has been successful in college by keeping all of their academic options in play. There is no older adult I’m acquainted with that has had a successful career while perpetually keeping their career options open. I am unaware of any married couple with a happy marriage without narrowing their relationship options. Frankly, I can’t think of anybody who has succeeded in anything by keeping all the options open.

Whether explicitly or implicitly, successful people understand the concept of strategic bridge-burning. I try to illustrate this in the game theory class I teach at the University of San Francisco in a game called “Marriage Game III”. (Yes, there are two other marriage games, I and II.)

The game goes like this: Alvin and Betty have been dating long distance for some time and want to get married. But Alvin has a problem. When Betty visits him in his hometown, she notices that he likes to go out in the evenings with his old high school buddies. If she moves to Alvin’s town, she knows things will go badly. He cannot pre-commit to a healthy relationship with Betty because the temptation to go out with his buddies remains too strong. But if he moves to her town, she has every reason to believe things will be better because this option will be unavailable.

The point of the game is clear. The only way Alvin gets his best payoff is to credibly eliminate the option of going out with his buddies. He needs to engage in strategic bridge-burning by moving to Betty’s town. Only then will she marry him and will they live happily ever after.

This is one of the reasons I’m not a fan of cohabitation. It’s an alluring but feeble institution. By keeping everyone’s options open, the commitment necessary to work through difficulty and create the foundation for a lasting relationship too often fails to materialize. The data bear this out; couples who cohabit before marriage are more likely to be divorced later. A recent meta-study of 16 individual studies estimates that the odds of cohabiting couples staying together after marriage are only 81% of that of couples who do not cohabit before marriage. Despite these numbers, cohabitation has only grown in popularity. It’s an arrangement that keeps options open.

One can tell the same story about choosing a college major. Some students choose majors because they are easy, fun, and allow for maximum flexibility. They leave difficult vocational choices for the future, kicking the career can down the road. Some majors are hard and involve a laborious investment of time and energy that requires some strategic bridge-burning of other career options. And there is a greater possibility of failure. But the future rewards to a challenging major are great, at many levels. The rewards to a non-challenging major are working at your high school job.

Economists value decisions at their opportunity cost or the value of the best forgone opportunity. By this criterion, if our decisions do not involve a significant opportunity cost, they are probably not very meaningful decisions.

Spiritual commitments are the same. Ultimately, one must choose one god or another one. Choose comfort. Choose popularity. Choose mammon. Choose God. But we cannot be fully devoted to more than one.

How do we choose between one commitment and another? How do we know when it’s time to end our involvement with one thing and begin something else? These are often weighty and highly contextual questions, and my meager attempt to address them is only to offer a few basic principles for making commitments.

First, a larger sense of calling on our lives creates the foundation for commitments. What allowed Elisha to burn bridges to his past was commitment rooted in a deep sense of calling. We discern God’s calling on our lives through a consistent life of prayer, devotion to discipleship, and pursuit of wise counsel.

The second is to keep our focus on calling, even as it may evolve over time. God’s goodness toward us means that there will be nothing that will give us more joy in the long run than our faithful response to his calling on our lives despite that our commitments consistent to this calling will involve significant opportunity costs.

Third, the smaller choices we make should revolve around our larger calling. They should be congruent with it, supportive of it, and involve hundreds of little sub-commitments that are made in light of this bigger picture of what we sense God is calling us individually to do—and more importantly—be.

When I was a visiting graduate student at Eastern University a generation ago, sociology professor Tony Campolo made the point that people are defined by their commitments. Continually searching inwardly for meaning is like peeling away the skins of an onion. We keep peeling and peeling, ultimately finding that there is not a whole lot there except that little pale bulb inside the onion—not the most impressive part of this vegetable. I don’t think he studied game theory, but Campolo would have agreed with strategic bridge-burning. We are defined by our commitments, but like Elisha, our commitments are defined by what we leave behind.

Bruce Wydick is professor of economics at the University of San Francisco and distinguished research affiliate at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

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“Monday is Patriot’s Day. Nothing will be going on.”

I paused from gathering my things from the table. “I forgot about that,” I said. “But my maternity leave ends Monday. Shouldn’t I be here?”

“I’m surprised you even came in for this meeting,” my hospital colleague said. “You’re not on call Monday, and it’s going to be so quiet around here. Stay home.” As he turned to leave, he smiled, and added, “Enjoy one more day with your little one.”

Seventy-two hours later, two pressure cooker bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon finish line on Boylston Street. The entire city mobilized to help the victims. Paramedics raced toward the explosion. Physicians met ambulances in the street to triage patients. At the hospital where I worked, my partners catalogued injuries with black marker scrawled upon patients’ extremities. They clamped bleeding arteries, shouted orders, and rushed patients to the operating room.

Meanwhile, oblivious to the catastrophe, I sat cross legged on a chair in my kitchen and gazed at the fussy two-month old boy who had finally fallen asleep in my lap.

When I learned about the bombings hours later, long after my partners had saved lives and salvaged limbs, the news halted me mid-stride. After my initial shock and worry, guilt washed over me. I should have been there, I thought in self-rebuke. As a trauma surgeon in Boston, I had trained for a decade to care for the injured. Yet when terrorists attacked my own city, I had failed to show. In my earnest desire for one more day at home with my baby, I’d inadvertently abandoned my colleagues. The realization sickened me. Meanwhile my son, doughy and vulnerable, wailed at my shoulder.

A common anguish

In the days that followed, I threw myself into care for the bombing victims, and my inner conflict deepened. I tended to wounds, adjusted ventilator settings, performed bronchoscopies, and counseled family members into the evening hours. My little boy, who from his first moments on earth knew only the sound of my voice and his need for me, bawled all night at home in my absence. I introduced the governor to victims in the intensive care unit. My husband called me in a panic because my son had a fever. I dressed wounds and removed shrapnel under local anesthesia. My milk supply dried up. Guilt took deep root within me during those days and weeks. It persisted into the months and years beyond.

Although my own introduction to working motherhood was dramatic, the disquiet I experienced was by no means unique. We all know that women routinely juggle careers and motherhood, sometimes out of choice, other times out of necessity to support a household. In 1962, 54.4 percent of mothers worked outside the home; in 2012, that statistic rose to 70.5 percent. Today, the majority of first-time mothers work full-time until the last month of pregnancy, and the number of women who return to work after just three months of maternity leave has increased four-fold since the 1960s.

Meanwhile, a quick Google search of “mom guilt” returns over 14 million hits. In an era when working motherhood has become the norm, women share a common anguish over their competing responsibilities. Literature discussing the tension litters bookshelves and clutters inboxes. Conversations with women at the cubicle, in the laboratory, and on the subway platform confirm the shared struggle.

Fixing the problem?

Despite the preponderance of commentary, popular media does little to assuage the self-reproach many of us experience. Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer of Facebook and author of Lean In, urged women to “have the ambition to run the world, because this world needs you to run it.” Yet while such words may empower the starry-eyed college undergraduate, they can demoralize the mother who cuts back on hours to spend more time at home, or who struggles with angst as she rushes to the office despite her child’s tears.

In contrast, Anne-Marie Slaughter, in her 2012 essay featured in The Atlantic, asserts that women cannot “have it all” until our economic and societal framework prioritizes families. Research from Harvard Business School, with a counterpunch, reassures us that children of working mothers grow up to earn higher incomes. Parenting offers us 31 tongue-in-cheek reasons to shun mom guilt by savoring “life’s little luxuries,” a list that includes scolding an innocent child. In Christian circles, discussions of working motherhood can quickly veer toward emulation of the woman in Proverbs 31 or devolve into disputes about complementarianism and egalitarianism.

These arguments about motherhood and career choices frequently contradict one another, and few adequately address the anguish many women suffer. Most claims—from either side in these debates—place responsibility for “fixing” mom guilt squarely upon women’s shoulders.

When callings seem to collide

Such a multitude of discussions populate the internet because they ultimately fail to solve the predicament. The tension we feel as working mothers is not merely practical—it is also devotional. In their focus on policy, social norms, and leather-bound organizers, popular commentaries on this topic frequently undermine the deeper conflict at play. Mom guilt extends well beyond the trappings of planners, paychecks, and baby bottles. It courses through us in tides that rise and ebb in every moment, fluctuating throughout the day in nuances of bitterness, hopelessness, anxiety, and despair. It is raw, real, and deeply spiritual.

Mom guilt so deeply troubles us because it strands us between Romans 12:6–8 and Deuteronomy 6:7. God graces us with unique gifts, attributes, and talents so that we may enact good works he has “prepared in advance for us to do.” (Eph. 2:10) When we embrace our vocations in service to God, we honor him. Diligence in our careers, when love of Christ motivates us, glorifies the Lord.

Yet, as mothers, the Lord also blesses us with children whom he calls us to shepherd in his ways. Motherhood, like one’s career vocation, is a calling with clear biblical foundations. In the tangle of promotions, deadlines, Twitter feeds, attachment parenting, and organic baby food, these dual ministries of career and motherhood can seem diametrically opposed, if not irreconcilable. We struggle, and our hearts ache, because fulfillment of our God-given duties appears unachievable.

Perhaps no solution satisfies because none exists. Perhaps the ongoing tension draws us toward a different answer entirely.

Inadequacy as invitation

When arguments surrounding the mom-guilt predicament focus only on practicalities, they imply that the capacity to “have it all” remains within our power. They falsely insinuate that if we think smarter or work harder or plan better, we can somehow make everything work. They delude us into relying upon our own efforts and devalue a conflict that penetrates to our bones.

Scripture teaches us to lean into God rather than into our own capabilities (see Prov. 3:5–8). The Bible reveals that God places people into insurmountable circumstances to test their faith, to demonstrate his sovereignty and goodness, and to draw people to himself. David does not defeat Goliath because he’s a great shot. Daniel does not scheme and strive to escape the jaws of lions. Moses does not extract water from a stone through his own talents—in fact his personal flourish in the moment denies him access to the Promised Land! These stories and others highlight not our human strengths and independence, but rather our frailty, our limitedness, and the singular hope we have in the God who rescues us. In the most breathtaking example, God sent his Son to die for our sins because we lack the power, the wisdom, and the courage to redeem ourselves.

The tactics of leaning in, opting out, and reconfiguring priorities seldom untether our hearts from the weight of mom guilt. When the pangs twist from within, we must take heed rather than try to hush them up. Perhaps they signal a call not to strive harder, but rather to set our eyes heavenward. In the moments when we lock up the office after dark or gaze upon our toddler already asleep, when the thoughts begin to race and the desperation gnaws, perhaps the Holy Spirit beckons us to relax our grip upon the minutes or the missed kisses and to surrender to his will.

In such moments, when we acknowledge our own brokenness and lean into his faithfulness, even anxieties that steal our breath can bless us. The guilt we feel as we try to navigate career choices and parenting responsibilities may serve as a longstanding invitation to raise our eyes to him and pray, Lord, I give this to you. I cannot do this alone. Help me. Perhaps in our turning, he may guide us down another path. Perhaps he will equip us to carry on. Or perhaps the simple act of surrender will strengthen us in ways unseen, as disciples of our great God who saves those crushed in spirit.

Kathryn Butler, MD, is a trauma surgeon turned writer and homeschooling mom. Her book on end-of-life care through a Christian lens is anticipated in 2019 (Crossway). She writes at Oceans Rise.

As far as I’m concerned, the phenomenon of “hate-watching” was invented for women viewing romantic comedies. I dislike the trappings of romance and the pitiful reduction of characters to clichés that define most rom-coms—yet I still watch at least a few every year. I do so in part because a good one can feel like comfort food: It’s warm and soothes my secretly mushy heart.

Nancy Meyers’s rom-coms, including It’s Complicated and Something’s Gotta Give, are good examples of the genre’s potential. Now, though, her daughter has also gotten into the rom-com business: Home Again, which came out September 8, is written and directed by Hallie Meyers-Shyer. It is her first feature film; Nancy Meyers also co-produced it.

Home Again is about how sometimes we have to re-find home. I love that idea. In my 30s, I’ve already spent some quality time searching for, clinging to, creating, and recreating “home.” Unfortunately, though, the movie implies that home is about the people with whom we make it—a concept often taken for fact in this genre about “soulmates” and finding “The One.”

Alice (Reese Witherspoon), the film’s protagonist, is a 40-year-old woman starting her life over after a divorce. She has two daughters, a floundering career, and a big house. She has recently relocated her family back to Los Angeles, so it’s natural that Alice would lack a community or a sense of home that is more than a place. Yet she happens to own a place that feels like a resort.

Because she’s floundering—but still has the room to “be a patron of the arts”—she allows three young men who are attempting to make it in Hollywood (Pico Alexander, Jon Rudnitsky, and Nat Wolff) to move into her guest house rent-free. This setup for a pretty standard situation comedy ought to lead to heartwarming hilarity.

It doesn’t.

Alice’s struggle to ground herself seems vaguely superficial and not very much like a crisis. She says she is “alone and terrified,” but the movie doesn’t back up the claim. Alice, after all, has a vast safety net in the form of her mother (Candice Bergen), a house, and an unusually thoughtful estranged husband (played by Michael Sheen). She even has the freedom to unload on her only client (Lake Bell) without consequences while drunk. (Alice, who is frequently told she is handling things well and emotes a sense of “I got this,” actually seems to make a lot of her decisions drunk.)

There are seasons in a life where we all question where or what our home base is. Moving out of our parents’ house for the first time. Leaving college. Roommates. Divorce. Finding ourselves living a different life than we planned. All can be triggers for a sense of homelessness. Home Again attempts to find sympathy and comedy from the similarity between Alice’s season in life and that of the three 20-somethings attempting to establish their first careers. But it doesn’t dig much deeper than making the point that Alice, despite her determination to act her age (and look her age—the movie dresses her in “mom jeans”), can relate to 27-year-olds. Despite its big theme of “home,” it never really makes a point about what “home” means beyond a fizzy montage of good company around a table. Instead of tackling the deep well of pain and redemption found beneath identity questions, the film turns such questions into clichés.

Admittedly, this movie has plenty of superficial style. The aesthetics are all in its favor. Alice works as an interior designer and seems obsessed with image, so her home is immaculate. But if “home” is more than a place, the focus on physical surroundings and the very solid, unchanging nature of the house where Alice lives seems to undercut the theme.

The movie struggles with wit, as well. Witherspoon and Bergen are both funny at times, and so is the interaction between the three men and Sheen, but the script heavily relies on “inappropriateness” and spelling things out—describing the boarders as, respectively, “live-in childcare, full-time tech support, and sex” for example—rather than surprising moments or even the actors’ ability to sell a scene.

It’s fair to say that I hold rom-coms to a higher standard than most—but this piece of the rom-com tradition, which managed to assemble both cast and crew from veterans, takes itself quite seriously, as well. Meyers-Shyer recently wrote for Refinery29 about the difficulty of making a modern rom-com and Hollywood’s resistance to female-centric movies. Home Again’s set design, she pointed out to NPR, frames Witherspoon as a woman casting male influence out of her life—and yet she’s sleeping with one of her male boarders, still flirting with getting back together with her ex, and inherited the luxurious house from her famous dad.

It’s no surprise, then, that a quick browse of the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes reveals critics saying the script is built on entitlement and white privilege. I wish Meyers-Shyer had taken her characters as seriously as her opportunity to make a movie. Pointing out Alice’s relative good fortune would have been a start: Benefits and advantages don’t make life questions less painful, but expensive surroundings also don’t make a home, any more than sex equals love or blood makes a family closer.

Christianity, by contrast, has always addressed life questions outside of circumstances, geographic location, or even the people with whom we live. “Home” to a Christian is meant to be an eternal anchor that stands firm despite the reality of such concerns. We can always return to such an anchor, time after time again.

I wouldn’t expect a Hollywood movie to advocate an eternal solution; the quest for one, however, is very human. Alice is looking for an anchor for her soul more than a person or people to make her feel at home. The best fictional stories acknowledge that kind of deeper context—and the inability for the world to completely fulfill such a longing.

Similarly, the best rom-coms aren’t just about the search for a person to share life; they’re also about the longing to be seen and known—a longing we all know in real life only exists in pieces, divided among relationships and fractured by short attention spans and human failure. The best rom-coms not only get the wish fulfillment right but also make the viewer feel better about the limits of real life.

That’s why I’ll keep hate-watching rom-coms: I’m always looking for a new one that feels as comfortable as my favorites. Unfortunately, Home Again just doesn’t make that cut.

Alicia M. Cohn is a freelance writer. She is a native of the Midwest, former homeschool student, graduate of Wheaton College (near Chicago), and a previous intern at Christianity Today magazine. She continues to take journalism internships, thanks to this interesting economy, though hopes not perpetually. Above all, she expects God to illuminate each step on the path ahead. Follow her on Twitter @aliciacohn.

Despite intense opposition, a referendum that could lead to the establishment of an independent Kurdish nation appears set for Monday, September 25.

Upwards of 35 million Kurds—a majority-Muslim community and the fourth-largest ethnic group in the Middle East, spread across Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria—are on the verge of setting their century-old dream of a homeland on the path to reality.

Victimized by the Ottomans during the Armenian (and Kurdish) genocide of the 1910s and regularly persecuted since, the Kurds have long been a marginalized population. Ironically, the recent upheaval in the Middle East has presented them with an opportunity. Many are moving to take advantage of regional mayhem and political malfeasance, filling a void of security and governance with self-determination.

The idea of a free Kurdistan isn’t popular among non-Kurds. Turkey has openly fought with its Kurdish population in a decades-long conflict that has killed between 30,000 and 40,000 since 1984; the Syrian regime readily repressed Kurdish rights; and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq murdered tens of thousands of Kurds in the country’s north.

But as war has ravaged Syria and Iraq, and as ISIS swept from Raqqa to Mosul and nearly to Baghdad, the Kurds are not throwing away their shot.

Kurds in Syria have declared autonomous enclaves collectively called Rojava. In neighboring Iraq, where Kurds have claimed a level of autonomy since 1970, the recent turmoil has given Iraqi Kurdistan new territory and greater autonomy. It has also given Iraqi Kurds momentum to finally push the long-desired referendum.

Christians in the Middle East share a bond with the Kurds, both being minorities. That doesn’t mean they’re always political bedfellows, but they often share common interests.

Whether an independent Kurdistan is among those interests is a point of dispute.

“Everyone has a different opinion,” says Grady Pickett, an American pastor in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, who has lived in the region for more than a decade. “Usually what we hear is, ‘Baghdad has done nothing to help us the past three years. The Kurds welcomed us and helped us. We would rather be under Kurdish rule.’”

Local politicians like Romio Hakkari, leader of an Assyrian Christian party in Iraq, echo that sentiment. “We support the referendum, and we also have a plan for post-independence in Kurdistan,” he told Kurdistan24 last year.

There are 200,000 to 250,000 Christians left in Iraq, many of whom fled from Mosul and the Nineveh Plains to Kurdish-controlled territory in the wake of ISIS’s rampage. Many Iraqi Christians don’t view themselves as loyalists to the Kurdish cause, but see Kurdish governance as an alternative to the corruption and dysfunction in Baghdad.

“The problem is not the Kurds or the Arabs,” says Haitham Jazrawi, an evangelical pastor in Kirkuk, a city officially controlled from Baghdad but effectively governed by Kurdish leaders and defended by Kurdish militias. “The problem is our central government in Baghdad. They are very weak. They cannot protect the ministers, so how can they protect me?”

Jazrawi emphasizes the great need Christians have for law and order. As a dwindling minority, they are dependent on the government and police forces for safety.

“Who will defend me?” Jazrawi asks. “At least the Kurds are stronger than the central government. They are governing the three major cities of their own—Erbil, Dohuk, and Sulaymaniyah—in a very good way. So we prefer, at least in this period of history, to be under the Kurds.”

But the pro-Kurdish perspective isn’t the only one among Iraqi Christians. Some have a vision for a single united Iraq—one in which Christians are free to travel wherever they please. Other Orthodox and Catholic Iraqis have a bolder dream: their own autonomous region.

Ashty Bahro, a pastor based in Kurdish-controlled Dohuk and past chairman of the Evangelical Alliance in Kurdistan, says the Christian political parties oppose Kurdish liberation because adding another country to the Middle East mix may dash Christian dreams.

“The [Christian] parties and their supporters do not want [Kurdish] independence because they believe it will end their hopes of a future state for Christians,” Bahro says.

A group of Christian fighters in Iraq called the Babylon Movement issued a statement in August calling for the Nineveh Plains, the traditional homeland for many Christians, to be left out of any referendum. “We respect the will of the Kurdish nation in their decision to exercise their self-determination right … but this should not be imposed on the Christians,” the group stated.

Many religious freedom advocates have argued for the creation of a “safe haven” for minorities in the Nineveh Plains. For example, Chris Seiple, president emeritus of the Institute for Global Engagement, has argued for a buffer zone to balance the ambitions of Arabs, Kurds, and other ethnic and religious minorities.

Specifically, Seiple encouraged the creation of a province in the Nineveh Plains for the protection and autonomy of minority communities like Iraq’s Christians. “Iraq’s recognition of this province would provide the distinct, indigenous nations/communities with some measure of self-governance and self-defense,” he wrote.

It’s a popular view among Iraqi Christians and some of their backers in the West. The plan doesn’t jive, however, with the grand vision of Kurdish independence.

In the last month, Kurdish authorities have removed a pair of Assyrian mayors from office, a move critics said was intended to repress pro-Christian politics. One of the mayors was replaced by a fellow Assyrian, but one loyal to the Kurdish cause.

Perhaps the only clear thing is this: The Kurdish referendum, wrapped up as it is with ambitions of autonomy among Christians and other minorities, is a complicated affair. Approaches stretch far beyond a simple pro-Erbil or pro-Baghdad dichotomy. Racism between Arabs and Kurds—and a history of violence between Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and their Kurdish populations—muddy the waters of any shifts in governance.

Pickett, the Erbil pastor, has heard some Shia militiamen say after they defeat ISIS, they will move on to fight the Kurds. Other Iraqis, especially those in the south, far from the sandy borders of Kurdistan, say the Kurds have a right to self-governance.

As with so much of Middle Eastern politics, a host of factors—history, ethnicity, geography, and religion—all tend to convolute the issue.

“The independence vote could spawn 10 different wars,” says Pickett.

In general, the relationship between Kurds and Christians in Iraq is cordial. Minorities make good allies.

Bahro points out Christians in Iraqi Kurdistan are mostly respected by their Kurdish neighbors, though he acknowledges instances of hostility. Living all his life in the Kurdish regions, he says he has never encountered opposition from Kurdish authorities.

“On the contrary,” he says, “everything we have asked for as a church or institution has been accepted by the Kurdish government.”

Jazrawi also speaks amicably of the Kurds, who pay visits to the churches on Easter and Christmas, he says. “They will give us their greeting.” (Exchanging holiday greetings as social custom is refused by some conservative Muslim sects as validating false belief.)

But Kurdish cordiality won’t spare the referendum from causing disruption and resistance.

The vote, while not an official declaration of independence, could start a multi-year process toward an independent country. If that happens, the highway to sovereignty will face roadblocks. Will the Kurds pave their own way? Will Baghdad or Ankara pick a fight? Will Kurdish allies—including the United States—stick around?

Already this month, the Iraqi parliament and supreme court have rejected the referendum. Turkey has promised to oppose Kurdish statehood, vowing retribution if the vote passes. And the US may cut ties with the Kurdish government, including the peshmerga—Iraqi Kurdistan’s military wing and America’s close partner in combatting ISIS—if the vote happens. So far, only Israel has publicly supported the Kurdish independence effort.

After 15 years of violence, Iraqi Christians expect more of the same: more war.

Their hope is in God, says Pickett; but also in the US, which has built up significant military bases in northern Iraq. “Their hope is the American presence will be a guarantee of peace in Kurdistan.”

The other day I chatted with a friend who has lived in the US for a year or two—a refugee from Afghanistan who recently got an entry-level job in her field of engineering. She was ecstatic, eager to work her way back up the ladder. While drinking green tea, I casually asked her about her new job and what it was like to be an engineer in Afghanistan. Her two-year-old daughter was with us, eating red cherries as the juice spilled down the front of her second-hand party dress. “Oh,” my friend said, “there are no engineers there anymore.” I looked at her blankly. “What do you mean?” “All of the engineers were killed,” she told me. “The Taliban, they wanted the country to go backward. So they killed them all. Now there are villages waiting for buildings to be made, but there are no engineers to help anymore.”

She said it all so matter-of-factly while wiping her kid’s messy hands that I could barely understand her meaning. After the conversation, however, I thought a lot about how her story and others like it seem so unusual to me until they start to pile up and accumulate. As I hear more and more from my refugee and immigrant friends, as I read the news and try to pay attention to current events, suddenly I start to find that my safe and secure existence is the anomaly. My lack of proximity to suffering is what marks me as different—the outlier in a world full of horror.

I thought about this conversation as I watched the new Netflix film First They Killed My Father (a Cambodian Daughter Remembers). I’m not sure anyone is strong enough to watch a genocide unfold through the eyes of a five-year-old. And yet, this is precisely who experiences these horrors—little children, the elderly, the vulnerable. In an American culture like ours—several generations removed from a world war and comfortably certain genocide could never happen on our watch—it seems deliberate that director Angelina Jolie chose a child protagonist to walk us through the Cambodian genocide of the late 1970s.

Loung, played by Sareum Srey Moch, is the eyes and ears of First They Killed My Father, which was co-adapted from the book of the same title by Loung Ung. (It’s worth noting that Ung is one of Jolie’s closest friends.) The film keeps a close focus on Loung, played luminously by Moch, who over the course of the story becomes increasingly traumatized by all that she witnesses. For those of us who might typically be turned off by a more traditional war movie, the arc of this film provides a different experience and allows us to see the intimate destruction that regimes, soldiers, and fellow citizens often enact on one another.

While watching the film, I couldn’t help but recall some of Jesus’ most well-known words: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Who is purer than our children? Their eyes are powerful precisely because they see everything without fully understanding. Watching Loung slowly shed her joy and turn quiet, inward, ever watchful—sometimes slipping into a vivid dream of longing, sometimes fixating on tiny details—feels akin to watching someone experience death. Through her eyes, the audience gets a glimpse of the worst of what our broken world has to offer and how in turn it longs to make us see God, as well.

By using a five-year-old as a protagonist, Jolie is choosing an innocent character for the audience to identify with. Perhaps it’s because I have a young daughter or because I live and work in communities of refugees and immigrants, whatever the case, Loung is easily identifiable to me as a neighbor. She is someone who in God’s kingdom belongs to me and I to her. While watching her story, I was overcome with a feeling of personal responsibility laced with helplessness. After all, the genocide in Cambodia took place 40 years ago, so there’s not much I can do about it. But even so, the storyline is more relevant than ever.

Because I teach English to speakers of other languages, I meet people whose home countries are making headlines. People from Cambodia, yes, but more recent conflict zones like Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, and Myanmar. Women will tell me a few sentences here or there—journeys they have undertaken, possessions they have left behind, loved ones who have died or been killed. All of them, however, tell stories where the world as they knew it ended.

Some are more pointed than others. A friend of mine from church who often serves on the worship team recently shared at an event commemorating the 23rd anniversary of the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsi by the Hutu. I knew Emmanuel as a fellow worshiper, but I didn’t know his personal history. When he shared his story—how his father was gruesomely murdered, how he barely escaped—I was shaken to my core.

Other survivors shared stories, as well. A second-generation Rwandan stood up—a young man in his senior year of high school in Oregon. Along with everyone else, he was dressed in a dark suit as if he were attending a funeral. In the halls of the high school and in the wider news, he told us he was starting to hear language that was meant to dehumanize entire people groups. Undocumented immigrants, refugees, and people who identify as transgender were all groups he had personally seen and heard being attacked by others. He asked us to pay attention and to fight against the language that normalizes violence and strips people of their imago Dei.

After multiple survivors shared the same sentiment—they feel as if the US is in a pre-genocidal moment—I was compelled to go home and pay more attention to the words being used in our public discourse by our highest elected officials. Many of them fit the technical definition of pre-genocidal actions as outlined by Genocide Watch. Dehumanizing language that refers to people as “animals, vermin, insects or diseases” has been mainstreamed. For example, President Trump recited a poem comparing Syrian refugees to a venomous snake countless times during his campaign and after he was elected, including at a rally celebrating his 100 days in office.

(A more casual but nonetheless serious example, in my opinion, is the frequency with which entire groups of people are called “illegal.” As Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Holocaust, has said, “no human being is illegal.” Being cautious with the language we use toward groups of people we deem different by race, ethnicity, or legal status is not a matter of being seen as “correct,” either politically or morally. Rather, it has a direct correlation to how we treat them and also how we enact public policy on their behalf.)

At the moment, the small nation of Myanmar is experiencing a genocide. For decades, the Rohingya Muslims, an ethnic and religious minority, have experienced targeted persecution by the Buddhist majority, and the persecution has recently been ramped up under the watchful eye of their Nobel Peace Prize–winning president (an irony that is truly terrible to behold). The UN recently declared the situation in Myanmar as “textbook ethnic cleansing”—a phrase no one wishes to hear in their own lifetime.

In my own neighborhood, there are several Rohingya families who have been resettled in the past year or so. They cook food for me, squeeze my toddler’s cheeks, and drop by for a chat every now and again. I know the names of their children and the grades they are in at school, including the Rohingya boy in my daughter’s second-grade class. He is the one I picture as I read the news of more killings, of the government torching homes, beheading people, and planting landmines on the border to Bangladesh as the Rohingya try to flee. It doesn’t feel like a genocide happening far away—it feels close by. It feels like my neighbors are suffering—and just as the apostle Paul said, “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it” (1 Cor. 12:26).

In this context of global upheaval, First They Killed My Father is a tremendously important film. For those of us who are not blessed with neighbors from far away countries, it allows us to see all of God’s beloved children as our neighbors, no matter the distance, geography, culture, or religion. That’s why Jolie, Ung, and the cast and crew of the film are blessed in my eyes. Through this film, I now have a better view of Cambodians as my neighbors, and I can catch a glimpse of the image of God wandering the earth in the midst of horror. These glimpses have allowed me to see myself, and my world, as closer to that reality than I could ever wish.

It’s a hard blessing, to be sure, but one I will not let go of.

D. L. Mayfield is a frequent CT contributor and author of Assimilate or Go Home. Her most recent CT cover story was “Facing Our Legacy of Lynching.” She lives in Portland, Oregon.

At his memorial service Thursday, Nabeel Qureshi was remembered for his unusual passion for Christ and the significant evangelistic impact he made before he died last Saturday at 34.

Hundreds gathered at Houston’s First Baptist Church and thousands more online to honor Qureshi, whose life and ministry was cut short by aggressive stomach cancer.

The young speaker and author was eulogized by his mentor, Ravi Zacharias, who compared him to the apostle Paul as well as to other noteworthy Christians who died young. (Zacharias also wrote a tribute to his young protégé.)

“He was a man of incredible, undying energy, and it was a privilege to cover the globe with Nabeel Qureshi,” said Zacharias, who recalled stories from their final ministry trip together—to Malaysia—earlier this spring. He said he had recently heard from an employee at the hotel in Kuala Lumpur who remembered Qureshi and had begun to watch his messages after meeting him a single time.

When Qureshi would preach from a favorite text, 1 Corinthians 15 (where Jesus appears to Paul, one “abnormally born”), Zacharias said he’d think, “You’re just like that, Nabeel. You’re a very abnormal person.”

The global evangelist shared with the crowd the unusual distinctives of Qureshi’s deep understanding of sin; Qureshi’s devotion to his family, who were heartbroken when he left Islam to claim Christ; and his confidence in his evangelism.

Zacharias addressed Qureshi’s parents, who are Pakistani Americans and Ahmadi Muslims, greeting them in their native tongue. Their only son had converted to Christianity while in medical school.

“His biggest heartache was the pain the family was going to feel at his commitment to Christ,” Zacharias said. “His passion was tearing him apart over his love of his Heavenly Father and his commitment to his earthly father and mother and family.”

The evangelist described Qureshi as “fearless” and “a man on a mission” as others attempted to discredit his message or even threatened his life as he preached in areas where Christians suffer persecution.

“He did not care about those who fabricated stories about him; he did not care about those who tried to knock him off,” Zacharias said. “He was willing to be an ambassador for Christ right to the end.”

After years of understanding sin as a form of blindness, Qureshi can finally see reality as God intended him to, Zacharias told the crowd.

“This abnormally born, abnormally torn, abnormally scorned man is now abnormally gone. Gone at such an early age in life,” he said. “So what I say to you is this: He’s not the only one who’s died young.”

He went on to list fellow Christian men who died in their 20s and 30s, including singer Keith Green, Scottish minister Robert Murray M’Cheyne, and theologian Blaise Pascal.

Rice University scientist Jim Tour and Houston’s First pastor Gregg Matte also shared stories of their friendship with Qureshi.

A GoFundMe account, created before his death, to support his wife and young daughter has earned more than $775,000.

Lightstock

Editor’s Note: This article is part of “Change Makers,” our recent CT special issue focused on some of the ways women are influencing the church, their communities, and the world. It includes articles that explore trends in women’s discipleship, examine research on women and leadership, highlight women who are making a difference, and grapple with the unique challenges female leaders face. Click here to download your own free digital copy of “Change Makers.”

Since 2014, single adults have outnumbered married adults in the United States, but church ministries and programs often don’t reflect this reality. Pastors rarely talk about singleness or dating from the pulpit, and churches struggle with integrating singles into church life. If it’s difficult to be a single woman in the church, imagine the burden of being a single woman in church leadership.

Is Marriage the Goal?

First of all, the church’s focus on marriage can be difficult to navigate. A clear message—however unintentional—seems to be communicated: Singleness is a less-than status, a stage of life meant to be passed through as quickly as possible, a stepping stone on the path to wholeness. Certainly, most Christians would heartily disagree with this theology, and yet it’s what so many single people grasp from the way the church talks—or fails to talk—about singleness. Chi Chi Okwu, senior church advisor with World Vision and former associate pastor, says, “It’s hard not to let those messages get deep inside you. You start to think, ‘Maybe there is something wrong with me. Maybe I shouldn’t be leading in this capacity.’ ”

“I never really thought much about being single,” Okwu continues. “Working for a church, it becomes very pronounced because everything is about the family. It’s the goal. It’s like there’s a piece that’s missing until you get married.” This message is so prevalent, she jokes that there must be a verse that says, “Thou shalt get married.” “All I’ve found,” she insists, “is Paul saying it’s better to be single.”

Aleska Barkoviak of Eastview Christian Church in Normal, Illinois, explains that many well-meaning people have shared false promises with her like “your time will come,” or “someday you’ll be married.” She’s quick to correct them: “That’s not something that the Lord has promised. He has promised to never leave or forsake me, but he hasn’t promised that human companion.”

Stephanie O’Brien, church planter and pastor of Mill City Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, says, “When I go to church-planting conferences, I’ve never been in a setting where someone assumed I was a church planter. People ask, ‘Whose wife are you?’ ” This is also communicated in many ministry job searches. Some job descriptions mention a wife or children, making these values clear. Others communicate this in the interview process. O’Brien explains that the common assumption is that a person who is single can’t minister to those who are married or parents. Of course, one only needs to think of Paul to know this isn’t true.

Loneliness and Burnout Are Magnified Hazards

Because of this focus on marriage and family, single women leaders face a heightened risk of loneliness and burnout. “It feels like so many people do ministry together as a couple, and it can make me really aware that I’m doing this alone,” observes Laura Leonard, a youth leader and elder at Life Church in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. “I don’t have someone to share the burden of ministry, the joy of ministry, and the relationships.” Loneliness can be especially trying for younger single women. Barkoviak explains, “When you’re at college, you have all these friends. Then you get out into the world and you have a job and you realize that it can get lonely really fast if you’re not willing to invest time in people and build up friendships around you.”

Making time for those relationships, though, can feel impossible for single women in ministry. There is a misconception that people who are single have more time for ministry, so they are often expected to be available whenever they’re requested, which can make avoiding burnout difficult. In reality, people who are single often take care of all the housework, bills, yardwork, and other obligations without the help of a spouse—meaning they may actually have less time.

“When you have a family, it’s easier to create boundaries,” says Tiffany Thomas, director of missions, young adults, and singles ministry at Scioto Ridge United Methodist Church in Hilliard, Ohio. “If I had a daughter, and she had soccer practice on Saturday mornings, I could tell my congregation that Saturday mornings are off the table. If you don’t have a daughter, it’s much harder to make that space. The church isn’t going to intuitively think, ‘Oh you spend a lot of time here. You should go home and do something else for a while.’ ”

Mandy Fowler, former small-group director at Bel Air Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, agrees. She recalls a time she was asked to help with a Sunday night service. She’d already attended service and had a scheduled meeting with her small-group leaders that day, so she said no. It wasn’t received well. She shares, “If I had said, ‘My kid has a soccer game’ or even just ‘That’s family time,’ it would have been more respected.”

To make matters worse, many single women feel guilty taking time off. “People celebrate when a man is taking his kids to Disney World, but if I go on a vacation with my girlfriends, it’s different,” Okwu says. “It’s not that anyone looks down on it, but you feel guilty about stepping away.” Along the same lines, Leonard notes that she often has to choose between ministry events and time with friends, and while many times she’s happy to choose her ministry, there are times she’s felt guilty choosing an event with friends.

An Example to the Church

Despite the challenges single women in ministry face, the church desperately needs them. When single women facilitate small groups, lead prayer during weekend services, guide the congregation in worship, or teach a Sunday school class, they visually represent the growing number of singles in our congregations, and that’s incredibly important, Thomas asserts. This also lends to modeling Christian singleness and dating, says Okwu. “We don’t talk about relationships or sexuality. Dating is hard. What’s the model?” Okwu suggests that single women in ministry can provide this.

Single women benefit both single and married people in the church, though. They often have more freedom and flexibility in how they live out their callings, and they can inspire the rest of the church to imagine what God is calling each of us to do. Tammy Melchien, teaching team pastor at Community Christian Church, a multi-site church in and around Chicago, serves as an example. She’s led in numerous roles in the church over the years, from overseeing the children’s ministry at all the church’s locations to planting and pastoring a new campus in Chicago. She says, “When I was younger, I made the decision that I was going to fully live my life no matter what. I’m not going to miss out on things I want to do in my life.”

Single women can also be an example of choosing to live with contentment even if life doesn’t look like we’d hoped—whether we’d hoped for a spouse, child, different career, or something else. Dorothy Haire was commissioned at age 50 to plant a church with her husband. Then, just 30 days into the church plant, her husband had a heart attack and passed away. Committed to following God’s call on her life, she soldiered on, navigating ministry and her new singleness—a giant feat after being in a relationship with her husband since the age of 12. Haire’s story of living fully for God is powerful.

Fowler notes that this will require preaching a robust theology of singleness. “There’s biblical support for the value of being single, yet that value is never talked about. It’s always talked about as a defect or a temporary status that everyone is trying to get out of. It’s treated as less-than, like you’ve not reached your full potential, and that it’s not God’s ideal for life. It should be given some dignity.” Okwu echoes her statements: “I’m not less-than because I’m single. Just because we’re not as visible in church leadership doesn’t mean we can’t do that. We can bring so much to the table. Our voices are needed because there are so many people like us in the world and in our churches. To be the functioning body of Christ, we can’t ignore certain pieces. I wish the church knew how much the church needs us and how much we need the church as well.”

This will only happen when others—both single and married—begin seeing and advocating for single women in ministry. Christine Lee, the student worship pastor of Canyon Ridge Christian Church in Las Vegas, Nevada, says, “It’s a human need to be seen, to truly be known for who we are, and to have space to be that. It’s difficult, in general, for churches to make space for that. Not just for single people. Not just for women. I hope that the church would become—no matter what life stage you’re in, no matter your gender, no matter what you’re going through—a place for you to bring it all to the table.”

How You Can Help Single Women in Ministry Flourish

• Get to know singles as individuals. There’s a whole range of reasons why people are single and how they feel about their singleness. Ask questions rather than assume. “The assumption is that because everyone has been single at one point, they know what it’s like. But being single in college is completely different from what it’s like to be a single into your late 20s, 30s, 40s, and beyond,” Mandy Fowler explains.
• Invite them to your celebrations. Tammy Melchien shares, “The hardest part for me is holidays when I can’t be with my family.” So if you’re going to the Fourth of July fireworks, throwing a birthday party, or hosting Thanksgiving, invite a single person along.
• Refuse to offer platitudes. God doesn’t promise marriage to everyone, but he does promise his presence. Stop yourself from saying things like, “God’s got someone for you,” and “You just need to wait on God’s timing.”
• Encourage good boundaries. To whatever degree you can influence your church culture, encourage people in ministry to be allowed rest, vacation, and good boundaries. This is crucial if we want to see single women succeed in ministry and stick around for the long haul.
• Sponsor, invite, and validate their ministry. Because there often isn’t a clear path to ministry for single women, they need people to help clear the way for them. Invite a single woman to teach at your ministry event, validate a woman’s gifts publicly, or sponsor a woman when your church is looking to fill key ministry roles.

For more practical ideas on advocating for single leaders, read “10 Ways to Help Single Women in Ministry Flourish.” If you are a single woman leader, check out Navigate Singleness in Ministry for practical tips.

Amy Jackson is associate publisher of WomenLeaders.com, SmallGroups.com, and Christian Bible Studies. She is a former small-group minister. You can follow her on Twitter @AmyKJackson.