Ask the Monk

Monk Guy, What is the academic consensus on the gay issue, from your experience? Is this all just about a few mistranslated passages? And if homosexuality is an abomination, what do you make of all the other wacked out rules, such as in Leviticus? If I’m on my period, I’m not supposed to touch anyone or anything, right? And the cloth made of two fibers thing, what about that?

Meanwhile, I’d also like to know why this nice God guy hates women so much. Do you have trouble selling the whole “Word of God” line when you know touching stories like Judges 19 are included in that?

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Originally posted by TBK at  The Beautiful Kind

Dear Monk,

I like having you as my patron monk. So tell me, what does God REALLY think about sex? Is there anything on my blog that is clearly a religious no-no? Also, do you have to be abstinent? Can you ever marry? If so, what if your wife got off on being called a dirty little slut in the bedroom – could you pull that off? What kind of monk are you, anyway? Are you a virgin?

Love, The Slut aka TBK

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We all know those kids, many of us are/were those kids. It’s 8am on a Monday, everyone’s just turned in their eight-page paper to the Ethics 314 teacher and now he’s asking for flash opinions on the war in Iraq. “Miss Frye” he reads off the attendance sheet, then turns to the whiteboard, ready to record Karen’s answer. Karen stutters through every two-letter word legal in Scrabble before saying “I guess I don’t like it.” Without acknowledging the weakness of the answer, Dr. Anderson asks “What don’t you like about it?” “Well… you know… I mean, it’s a war. People die and stuff.” Dr. Anderson bullet-points ‘People die’ and reads more names off the sheet. The answers don’t get much more profound. “We’re trying to give them freedom.” Says a farm boy. “We shouldn’t kill people for oil.” Says the guy in dreadlocks. “It’s all futile because the Middle East will always be at war until Christ returns.” Says the Seventh-Day Adventist everyone avoids talking to.

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Despite the fact that this is a theological meditation, I’m not being over-dramatic with the title. Indeed, our experience of this very real time piece is quite often as harrowing as the title suggests.

My whole college experience was an on-going trial in learning to live by God’s timing. We humans are very good at gold-leafing the promises of God’s perfection and provision onto all manner of stomach-churningly Americana wall hangings. However, when the moment of faith comes, the moment when we must sit in the chair, we question. We don’t question God’s power or his promises to provide, we want to know where the provision is coming from.

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I’ve been studying archetypal images for an upcoming novel and that got mixed up with thinking about stained glass windows (how they were used to teach Bible stories to the illiterate), which all wound up pitching a tent in my belief that the natural world was designed to be a mirror for the essential qualities of God.

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