Book Review: A Community of Character

A bit about the author: Stanley Hauerwas plainly says that he identifies strongly with the (Southern) Methodist tradition, but is open to ideas from other streams of Christianity (Page 6). He’s the son of a workingman from Indiana, who pursued higher education instead of staying close to home. He taught at Notre Dame and currently teaches at Duke Divinity School. He’s a prolific author and thinker, whose books are required reading in many theology programs.

Thesis: Hauerwas claims that the Church is to be a group of people who view life through the lens of Biblical Narrative and live in such a way that is true to those stories (Page 1).  That is the main way that Christians will “reassert” their relevance to culture (Page 1).

Structure: This book is a collection of essays grouped into three sections. Part 1 explores and explains what Hauerwas means by a narrative and it’s implications for community. Part 2 builds upon the definition of narrative and broadly traces it’s development and usage historically and ends with implications for spiritual formation. Section 3 takes advantage of the stage set by previous definitions and explorations and delves into critical areas in Christian Social Ethics. These issues are a definition of family, politics, how to talk about sex, and a response to the issue of abortion.

Personal Application: I am grateful for the way the thesis challenges the Church to be different from the world without withdrawing from it. Growing up in the height of the Religious Right’s popularity, left me questioning if the church’s main responsibility was in the arena of social policy, especially politics.  He supports his arguments and even includes many ideas contrary to his own position. This made his ideas more credible, even if it was hard to stick with the overarching thoughts in each essay. It was a stretch for me to read. I found myself agreeing with his positions, but perplexed as to how to apply it to my discussions with teenagers and parents.

The biggest challenge for me is how to apply these thoughts to my own family. I found myself without a quick answer to why I want children (Page 157). I’ve wanted to be a Father as long as I can remember, but I found myself without a vocabulary to explain why. After this read, and a little bit of thinking, I can say that I want my family to be ambassadors of another kingdom. I want us intimately involved in our neighborhood and church community. Now comes the hard part, doing this on purpose. Marie and I used to dream of taking our daughters to outreaches, doing things for our neighbors, and modeling a different way of life for them. However, much of this fervor gave way to the daily pressures of life. Hauerwas gives hope to this as well, as we can even see the mundane as “heroic”  (Page 174).

The Pause Button: A Decade of Marriage

In October Marie and I celebrate 10 years of marriage. Our wedding was on October 14, 2000 in Concord, New Hampshire. It was a nearly perfect day. Actually, it was perfect aside from waking up, taking a shower and asking, "Mike is this really what your honeymoon body was supposed to look like?" Thankfully, many things change in 10 years. Marie and I graduated from college, worked at  six jobs, moved into eight homes/apartments, lived in three states, attended three grad schools (still no masters!), and lived in two countries. Oh yeah, we made one person (Ella). Looking back at all that activity I wonder if I've learned anything. Here's a brief list of the few nuggets of wisdom I've learned in my first decade of matrimony.

THE PAUSE BUTTON:

Marie and I survived five years before we had a DVR in our home. I'm not so sure if they were around in 2000, but we certainly didn't hear about this device until we returned from Japan. The thought of recording our TV programs on a hard drive automatically sounded Heavenly. We perceived that we were starved for American culture from August 2004-August 2005. The obvious answer was to load up on as much TV as possible!

This device surprisingly helped our marriage. We noticed one Sunday that Marie and I were getting along exceptionally well for an NFL day. Then we noticed every time Marie walked into the room I was able to pause live TV and give her my full attention. I owe much of my emotional health to the pause button. If you are married and you have a TV, you MUST get one of these.


DUCK AND DODGE:
This is a term that I learned from a book called Mars and Venus In the Bedroom. Another newlywed couple gave us this book early in our marriage and it helped a lot. I don't remember the sex tips, but I do remember this advice about gender differences in resolving conflict. The author compared conflict resolution with your wife to a boxing match. (of course this metaphor means WORDS ONLY!!!)

The idea is that women don't mean every word they say in a literal sense. They throw out a few emotional "punches" until the figure out what is really bothering them. Men, having fragile little egos, need to master the urge to take every one of these little jabs personally. The idea is to duck and doge some statements that feel like a personal attack. If those words don't stick, then the husband will be able to listen better and thus resolve conflict without escalating into higher levels of conflict. This concept helped me so much!

IT'S NOT ABOUT BEING RIGHT:
In our second year of marriage Marie and I both took some grad school classes at Oral Roberts University. She got the class for free because she was on staff and I had an elective to burn for my degree so we both took Marriage Counseling. We used John Gottman's The Marriage Clinic as our main textbook. There were so many helpful concepts easily applicable to our marriage: warning signs of unhealthy couples, different conflict resolution styles, and great statistics. Interesting side note, this class taught me an awareness of how culturally charged marriage is. We had several classmates from Africa in class and any time the professor mentioned men and women's equality, the guys lost it. One almost fell out of his chair laughing. I wonder what it would be like to be a marriage counselor in Africa or Asia.

I digress, Gottman's very thorough work on tracking relational patterns revealed that an overwhelming amount of conflict in marriage cannot be resolved. This means that MOST of the conflicts a couple have cannot be solved with a mindset that says "I'm right and your wrong" or vice versa. I learned very early not to seek a "win" in an argument, but rather an understanding of how we would deal with differences of opinion, household efficiency, or family gatherings etc. Now if I could just stick to what I know...

I have to remind myself of these concepts a lot. This list is by no means exhaustive. It's also worth noting that after ten years of marriage, I've got a list of three learned things. Five years ago my list was longer...