Think Twice Before Speaking for God, Please!

Every time a tragedy like that being experienced in Oklahoma occurs, people in my line of work start speaking for God. Many express love, concern, and solidarity. Others, however, say things that make me want to cringe.

Speaking for God is an audacious act. One should never do so glibly. In instances in which people are hurting, grieving, and doubting the beneficence of God (such as they are now in Oklahoma), one should think twice about doing so at all. If you can't help yourself, however, and you feel you must insert a word from God into such an emotionally volatile situation, then please try to avoid a few common mistakes that others have made while doing so:

1. Avoid the temptation to apply your theology of divine sovereignty to the tragedy. Many believe all events (the good, the bad, and the ugly) are all part of God's master plan. "All things happen for a reason," someone might say. Others believe that such tragedies are emblematic of the fallen state of creation and are indeed the opposite of God's will for our world. These are discussions that need to be had. They push us all to more robust understandings of the nature of God and the problem of evil (even the evil created by chaos). But the aftermath of these events are lousy contexts for such discussions. Regardless of whether or how God is involved in these tragedies, believers of every stripe do best when they respond to the tragedy in Christlike, selfless, and servant-hearted ways together; they do worst when they immediately enter the theological fray in an attempt to score points or to defend their beliefs.
2. Avoid saying or doing anything that might cause greater pain, suffering, or grief to those who are hurting most. The aftermath of a tragedy is not the time to speak a word of judgment on the victims of a tragedy. The pre-exilic prophets of the Bible warned of great disasters that would befall the people if they did not adhere to God's warnings against idolatry and the economic oppression of the poor and disenfranchised. Yet, when disaster did befall Israel and Judah as a result of God's judgment, the prophets wept with their people. They didn't gloat. They didn't wag their fingers and say, "I told you so." They went with them into exile. They helped give voice to the pain, the shock, and the doubt that their people were experiencing. And, most importantly, when they spoke for God, they spoke words of comfort and hope.
   

   Comfort, comfort my people,
       says your God.
   Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
       and proclaim to her
   that her hard service has been completed,
       that her sin has been paid for,
   that she has received from the Lord’s hand
       double for all her sins (Isaiah 40:1-2).

3. Avoid using the need of others as an opportunity for good public relations. This is a sticky one. To some extent, all help in a situation like this is good help. Those accepting help are not concerned with the motivation of the helper. They just need help. But if we desire for the help and hope that we offer in the name of God to be legitimately Christ-like, then we should have no need to publicize the help we are offering. Again, let me tread lightly. I am not suggesting that we should stop broadcasting that our churches and non-profits are poised and available to help in the aftermath of community tragedies like the tornadoes in Oklahoma or the explosion in West, but I would (humbly) suggest that there is no need for pastors to be doing interviews on national news stations. Those who are in need of help may need to know you are available to help. The rest of the world does not. A pertinent word on this topic from Jesus himself:
   

   “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you" (Matthew 6:2-4).

Sweeter than Honey

A local friend of mine found a beehive last weekend while moving an old propane tank. With a hive that big, there was bound to be some serious honey available. He was asked on Facebook if he got him some honey when he found it. He said, “No, I was too busy running. I even left my truck and my 4-wheeler behind.”

I know the feeling. We celebrated Elizabeth’s third birthday party at my grandparents’ ranch. After the party, my dad wanted to show us a waterfall on a tributary to the main creek that runs across the place. On the way there, we stirred up a hive of Africanized bees. I wasn’t too interested in honey at the time either.

My dad had been walking first. I was right behind them. They went after me. I took off my shirt and started swatting them away as I ran. I ran a quarter of a mile back to the truck and I was still being chased—still being stung. Somewhere along the way I lost my glasses. We looked, but we never found them.

I was stung about a dozen times in all. Between the stings and the Benadryl I took, I spent most of the day kind of groggy. Honey is sweet, but unless you are properly prepared, it isn’t worth the trouble. Bees will protect their hives with their lives and they are good at what they do.

As I write, I am preparing to preach on Psalm 119 this Sunday. It is one of the Psalms in which the law of the Lord is compared to honey.

“How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psalm 119:103).

A similar sentiment about the law is expressed in Psalm 19:10:

“They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the honeycomb.”

Does this sound strange to you? Are we not more familiar with the kind of thinking about the law that moved Paul to say things like:

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:1-2)

And:

“The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law” (1 Corinthians 15:56).

 Yet, Paul was primarily concerned with debunking a false conception about the law (namely, that strict adherence to the law could produce the kind of holy person that could only be produced by the internal working of the Holy Spirit). He was not suggesting that the wisdom behind the law was faulty. The law itself is beautiful. A person’s life is only made better by adhering to the law. A person’s joy is greatly increased when that person adds thoughtful meditation upon the law and how it makes life better to their adherence to that law. As the psalmists wrote, a person that does so will find that the law of the Lord is sweeter than honey.

But like honey, that sweetness is hard to get to if you are unprepared.

Beekeepers are able to harvest honey because they are prepared. They have special suits, special hats equipped with stylish nets to cover their faces, and smoke dispensers that causes the bees to become docile.

Those who find great rewards in meditating on the law of the Lord must come prepared too if they expect to enjoy the sweetness of the law. First, they must be committed to following it. As Christians, the Sermon on the Mount is a great place to start when looking for how a person is to live in accordance with God’s law. After all, the sermon is essentially a sermon on how the law is to be applied in one’s life and in one’s heart. Second, they must pay attention to what difference following the law (or Jesus’ moral instructions, if you prefer) makes in their lives. Such a person is certain to discover that the law of the Lord is sweeter than honey.

Humility and How I Attained It

My dad used to joke that he was going to write a memoir and title it Humility and How I Attained It—the unoriginal joke being that no humble person would write a book like that. Humble people are supposed to be the kind of people who do not know they are humble. If you brag on their humility, they are supposed to be the ones who respond by saying something self-deprecating.

But this assumes that someone either is or is not humble. At the very least, it assumes that we are on a continuum with Gandhi on one end and Donald Trump on the other. And yet...

Humility isn’t a trait we are born with; we are all born believing that we are the center of the universe. We are little black holes for love, attention, and nourishment. We suck it all in and give none of it back. Not at first anyway. The process by which we learn to be givers is the process by which we start to develop humility. When a person fails to develop the most basic levels of humility…well, we have clinical language for that.

The development of humility is a process and we all are all developing humility at different rates. Some of us our learning some lessons first while others are starting elsewhere. And most of us share at least one major growth area when it comes to humility: we tend to believe that the ways we have learned to be humble should be obvious to everyone. And we can be sharply critical of those who have yet to learn the lessons we have.

But the development of humility is a process and every process tells its own story. And our stories are not formulas. We all experience hardship and personal disappointment. In most cases, these experiences teach us lessons in humility. Yet, we do not all suffer the same hardships and disappointments that teach us humility. And even when we do share similar experiences, we are not all starting in the same place when those circumstances occur. We are all living our own unique stories.

Instead of judging others more harshly than ourselves, we need to be intentional learners of humility from one another. In order to do so, three important steps are required—two of which require humility and one that requires a violation of our usual expectations regarding humility.

First, we must begin to extend grace to those who have failed to learn the same lessons we have. Others are not living your story. You learned what you have learned because of your story. We must be humble enough to recognize that if it wasn’t for our stories, we might be behaving in the same selfish/prideful way.

Second, we must be willing to learn from the stories of others so that we are not waiting for the right cocktail of circumstances to teach us the same lesson. It requires humility to admit that we have lessons that we can learn from the stories of others. That much is obvious. What may be less obvious is that if we are humble enough to learn from the stories of others, we are likely to learn even greater humility in the process.

Finally (and this is the step that could seem out of place in a discussion about cultivating humility), we must speak more openly about our own humility and how we attained it. Unless it is considered vain and proud to share how our own stories have forced us to learn basic lessons of humility, then doing so cannot be considered a real violation of humility. If anything, the kind of honesty, transparency, and vulnerability required for such sharing itself requires great humility. It requires us to admit that even the ways in which we are most impressive and/or most humble, we are exhibiting learned behaviors. Again, none of us were born that way.

In short, we could all benefit from sharing a few stories about humility and how we attained it. For a truly humble person is unafraid of both learning humility from others and sharing how difficult it was for them to learn humility themselves. The sooner we all start pretending like we were born with whatever humility we have attained, the sooner we will stop attaining greater and greater humility.

Tolerating Ambiguity

My church is not devoid of young adults, but my Wednesday night men's class is (unless you count people my age, but, sadly, you probably don't).

I like this class and the men in it. Most of them are my parents' age or older. They are good thinkers and are generally open-minded. It is the kind of class where everyone participates and we are as likely to spend time thinking through and discussing someone else's question or observation about the biblical text as we are one of mine. That is right up my alley. I get pepped up when I get an opportunity to engage good questions with others.

I have noticed, however, that this class does get frustrated with me on occasion. It is not that they get frustrated about my opinion on this or that (although that may happen too from time to time). It is that they get frustrated with how comfortable I am with ambiguity.

One of the questions I get from this group is, "Why can't it just mean what it says?"

That may sound like a reasonable question, but it assumes too much.

First, it assumes that our first reading is always the best reading. That is not the worst rule of thumb, but it can be problematic when my first reading of a text differs from yours.

Take Matthew 5:25 for an example: "Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court."

Let's say your first impression is that Jesus is instructing us not to take a fellow Christian to court. You base this on the fact that in the previous verses, Jesus is discussing relationships with brothers and sisters in the faith. Therefore, you conclude that you are not to take a disagreement with a Christian to court and that you should do everything within your power to settle a disagreement before a fellow Christian takes you to court.

Let's say my first impression takes this a step further. I suggest that Jesus is instructing Christians to avoid court whenever possible--regardless of the faith commitments of the adversary. And what if I assume that this still applies when it involves turning the other cheek to someone who has wronged you?

Is one of us right? Is the other wrong? What is at stake if we can't agree? Nothing is at stake...until we are in a situation in which we might end up in court. In that case, what Jesus has to say about it is quite prescient.

Second, a question like, "Why can't it just mean what it says?" assumes that there is only one meaning. In this way of thinking, one reading is accurate and all other readings are inaccurate. Let's play it safe and look at Matthew 5:13 for an example (read: I don't want to start an argument about an issue I am not attempting to address with this article): "You are the salt of the earth."

One reader understands the value of salt in its preservative qualities. According to this reader, the world is rapidly decaying. Christians (as salt) slow the decay of the world around them. They function as salt by subscribing to the inverted values of the kingdom that Jesus is laying out in the rest of the Sermon on the Mount.

Another reader understands the value of salt in its ability to enhance taste. The beauty of salt, culinarily speaking, is that it makes food taste more like itself. The right amount of salt makes a steak taste more like a steak and broccoli taste more like broccoli. In moderation, salt takes the inherent flavors of food and enhances them. According to this reader, Christians help make earth the way it is supposed to be. The earth was created to be a home to people who subscribed to Jesus' inverted kingdom-values. When Christians live the way Jesus teaches, it brings out the beauty that God instilled in everything and everyone he created.

Are not both of these readings helpful? Even if we could prove that Jesus only had one idea about what salt was when he said this, would that make the other reading less helpful?

"Why can't it just mean what it says?" is usually given as a response to me after I have pointed out an ambiguity in the text. It isn't really a question. It is a protest that expresses frustration with what they perceive to be over-analysis.

When I hear this, I suspect they are really saying this: "Please, don't confuse me by pointing out the ambiguity of the text. I prefer thinking that the Bible is simple." Or maybe this: "I don't mind you disagreeing with me. I'll give what you have to say a listen and think about it. But don't confuse me and then leave me hanging by saying the text is ambiguous."

Here is a (relative) truth: my generation and the generation that follows my generation are far more comfortable with ambiguities than our parent's generation and those that came before them. That is just the way it seems to be.

So far, I have addressed this dynamic from the perspective of the men in my Wednesday night class, but there is another side here.

On Thursdays, I have been meeting with one guy in the morning and a couple more at lunch every week. Two of these guys are about my age. My relationship with both of them started when they came to me with a series of hard questions. They asked questions about the relevance of faith and the nature of truth. I never tried to put their questions to rest. I did my best to help them follow their questions toward even better questions.

At times, I have sensed their frustration with me too. Sometimes people just want a straight answer. But as our relationships grew, both of these men (men of my generation) have shared with me that they would have dismissed me a long time ago if I had tried to offer simplistic answers to their questions. As it turns out, not only are the people of my generation more tolerant of ambiguities in general, when it comes to the really important stuff, they are intolerant of those whom they perceive to be overly certain of their opinions.

This may make them appear wishy-washy. Some of them may be. (Maybe I am. Maybe not. I can't decide.) It can be mind-numbing to wait on people from my generation (and younger) to commit...to anything. And while I am not saying it's better to sit on the fence and mull things over and over and over again than it is simply make up one's mind and commit, there are some positives to all of this mulling and questioning.

The best part of all the mulling and questioning of people like the guys I meet with on Thursdays is that we have some of the deepest and most personal conversations about life and faith that I have ever had with anyone. And these conversations could have only taken place between people who have learned to tolerate ambiguity. It is hard to explore topics of contemplation in an in depth manner when either or both parties feels pressured to decide the matter once and for all. It takes a certain tolerance for ambiguity to allow for your questions to spurn new questions. Without that tolerance for ambiguity, you are simply on a quest for the right answers (which, whether those answers are right or not, if you believe they are right, the quest for truth ends there).

There is much I could continue to say on this subject. (Maybe I will in subsequent blogs. Maybe I won't. I am at peace with that ambiguity). But my intention in broaching this subject is to point out an obstacle most of our churches are facing. There is a generational disconnect between those who can only tolerate certainty (answers to questions) and those who are more at home with ambiguity (questions that only spurn new questions). The difficulty of the dilemma is that there are no obvious ways to heal this disconnect...save one.

Love.

This is one area (notice I did not say the only area!) in which the men in my Wednesday night class get it right. They get it right with me. They get it right with people they know.

Endless conversations about matters that they think are simple might annoy them, but these are men who have been formed by their lifelong commitment to put others above themselves. By doing so, they prove the genuineness of their faith far more than they could if they could convince those they perceive to be over-analyzers of the "simple truth."

And it is the patience for those with endless questions that they exhibit out of love that makes a case for why those with questions need to learn patience for those who find such conversations pointless.

In the end, there is no way to judge which generation's approach to ambiguity is "better" (I admit that I put "better" in quotes to annoy anyone who can't tolerate ambiguity; please, accept my "apology"). Yet, it is clear which path is best for both: love, respect, and patience.

Stress and Tension, Part 2

Do you make the most of stress and tension in your life? Do we make the most of stress and tension in our church?

Stress and tension are not bad. They are not unhealthy. No one gets medicated because their life has stress or tension in it. We seek out medication when we are unable to healthfully manage that stress and tension and it becomes chronic anxiety.

Most of us are good at managing a certain amount of stress and tension on instinct alone. We roll with the punches when our children get sick and we miss work. We find ways to manage financially for a few unexpected expenses on repairs or medical bills. Times like these are stressful, but we know to expect that this will happen from time to time. The problem arises when life introduces stressors for which we were not prepared. Our normal coping mechanisms break down. Stress becomes anxiety. Once that happens, we urgently need to deal with that anxiety because if we don’t our anxiety will become chronic. And chronic anxiety comes with consequences.

It is the same with churches. It may not seem like it, but churches are always under stress. A certain level of tension in the air is the norm. Sometimes these stresses are superficial. Do we focus our budget on this ministry or that? Do we like this preacher or not? Why isn’t he wearing a tie?

Some stresses are deeper. Stresses over the interpretation of Scripture. Stresses over the preservation (or abandonment) of traditions we hold dear. Stresses over who can and who cannot publicly participate in worship. Stresses over who is and who is not a Christian. Stresses over how we should respond to certain trends in American culture as Christians. We may not talk about or even engage all of these stresses often in our congregation, but they are still here.

As I said last week, we all face stresses aplenty at home and in our places of work. Whereas we accept these stresses as givens, most of us prefer that our churches be places of peace. Therefore, we tend to react to avoid these stresses, that is, we try not to think about them and we don’t generally like it when someone else brings them up. Most people do not have the reservoir of emotional energy to engage a stressor at church. They are tapped out at home and at work.

But there is a problem with letting stressors run around unattended. They do the same thing to a church system as they do to us as individuals. The stress turns into anxiety. And if that anxiety is not addressed, it can become chronic anxiety.

How do you tell when a church system is suffering from chronic anxiety?

Perhaps you witness someone blow up in anger over an issue or a slight that did not seem to warrant that kind of anger. Or maybe you see a few families start to pull away (either by choosing to worship elsewhere or by emotionally disengaging from the rest of the group) without a convincing explanation as to why. Or you might begin to hear language of “us” versus “them” and you sense that there are factions emerging within the congregation. All of these are signs of chronic anxiety in churches.

Like chronic anxiety within the life of an individual, chronic anxiety within churches is avoidable. Yet, paradoxically, the way to avoid chronic anxiety (in either case) is to stop avoiding that which causes stress and tension. Such avoidance is harmful and it always catches up with us.

Congregations are at their healthiest when all topics of conversation are fair game. They are at their healthiest when the peer pressure is exerted on members to love and respect one another despite their differences rather than on all members to agree (or, worse yet, avoid potential topics of disagreement).

The early church was a place of high tension between Jewish Christians who believed that Gentile Christians should be circumcised and those who believed (like Paul) that they should not be asked to do so. Because of that tension, some of the greatest teaching in the Bible is available to us as Paul argued his case to Christians everywhere. Imagine what would have happened had Paul avoided the tension to “keep the peace.” Would peace really have ensued? Or would that peace have been at the cost of spreading the gospel to “the ends of the earth” as Jesus had commissioned the church to do?

Stress and Tension, Part 1

You know stress. You know tension. You know that mental burdens can affect you physiologically. You know that learning to cope with stress and tension in your life is one of the most important lessons that any person can learn. You know this from experience.

I also suspect that somewhere in the back of your mind is this fact: there is a positive side to stress and tension. This fact is widely known; it is rarely considered.

Biologically speaking, stress is tied to our fight-or-flight instinct. Short-term stress has benefits that range from a boost in acute focus to the enhancement of the immune system. In these instances, stress is simply what we call it when our bodies shift gears to help us survive in the face of a perceived threat.

Stress and tension become negatives when they become chronic or too frequent to allow the body the needed time to recuperate (a factor in causing Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome). Typically, we only pay attention to these forms of stress and tension because the beneficial kinds of stress feel so natural and are quickly forgotten.

One consequence of forgetting the beneficial effects of stress and tension is that we work too hard to avoid tension in personal relationships. Most of us are masters at dodging relational tension wherever we can. A great deal of this dodging is the result of maturity. Some causes of tension do not warrant conflict. Yet, we dread conflict so much that we are susceptible to burying tension where conflict is necessary.

Again, I think this is something most of us know even if we do not think about it much. As such, we learn useful ways to address conflict as we mature. The principle theaters for such practice are the home and the workplace. Through trial and error, we have learned to navigate these dimensions of life. Some of us learn quicker than others, to be sure, but we are all doing the best we can. At least I would like to think so. We desire peace, but we understand that peace is more than just a surface-level absence of conflict. Sometimes, the only route to peace is through conflict.

And conflict always arises as a result of stress and tension. To the extent that conflict is resolved, it can be said that the stress and tension were beneficial. To the extent that the conflict went unresolved, the stress and tension were deleterious.

One of the places that relational stress and tension can wreak havoc is in the church. Like the human body, the church is a complex system. Stressors for a church include growth, decline, innovations in worship, and strained relationships. In a system as complex as a church, it is often impossible to respond to these stressors in a manner that pleases everyone. That is where the tension arises. We might be better equipped to deal with this tension if we were not all so worn down by the stress and tension created by our life at home and in our workplaces. We have enough stress and tension in our lives. When we come to church, we want peace. When the stress triggers our fight-or-flight instinct at church, many people make the easiest choice: flight.

The obvious way people take flight is to do so physically. They withdraw from the congregation and worship elsewhere or nowhere. Yet, this is not the only way people choose flight. The most harmful way people choose flight (both for them and their congregations) is to take flight emotionally while remaining physically. I have seen this happen more than once in the small town churches where I have preached. Many folks feel as if they have no other place to go, so they stay. But emotionally speaking, they are gone. They are no longer invested as functional members of the body.

I will say more tomorrow, but for now, let me close by pointing out that churches are far more likely to deal positively with tension that sparks a fight than they are to deal positively with tension that sparks flight. Of course, it is important that “fights” not be carried out in a juvenile manner, but as stated above: peace is more than just a surface-level absence of conflict.

In many cases, this is unnecessary. Conflict may be more complicated at church (as church systems are more complicated that workplace systems and family systems since they are generally a hybrid of the two), but it is no less constructive when managed healthily.

The Father's Role in Gender Equality in the Workplace

One night when Kara and I were at an academic event, we had a pleasant conversation with a professor of something or another (something different than Kara anyway).

A little background: Kara teaches composition, rhetoric, and professional writing at Baylor University. She was recently granted tenure and I am more than a little proud of her. The other fields of study are a bit of a blur for me at these events. I do well just to remember names and the departments in which they teach.

I used to be intimidated by these gatherings of intellectuals. It can be hard to follow the conversations some of them carry on with my wife. Even when I can follow, it is awkward. They are talking to her. She is the intended audience. But I know I am supposed to maintain eye contact and nod occasionally and they do the same. Maybe it's good for me. She does this for me at church events all the time.

Some academics forget how to speak to lay people. Many are introverts who feel awkward in social gatherings.  If you can keep these academics talking about what they do and what they are researching, conversations go well enough. Stray from their field of expertise and it's a roll of the dice.

Every now and then, I find one or two guys that I really enjoy talking to and the night that I mentioned above was one of those nights.

I liked this guy. He was from out of state. Waco was his first experience living in the Bible Belt. That itself was a fun conversation. If you have never lived outside the Bible Belt, you have no idea how weird we are here.

At one point, Kara told him what I did for a living. Some conversations with academics hit a wall when they learn that I am a preacher, but we were at a Baylor event. This guy turned out to be a preacher's kid. Go figure.

He also had kids. Four, if I remember correctly. His wife stays at home. He joked about how little professors in the humanities get paid compared to professors in the hard sciences.

Eventually, the conversation turned back toward Kara and tenure. He congratulated Kara on being granted tenure. Then he said, "And you have kids, right?"

"Three," she answered.

"Wow," he said. "Did you have them all while working at Baylor?"

"No. I had my daughter while I was writing my dissertation."

"Me too. I even stayed at home with my first kid while I was writing mine."

I thought this was cool. I did some staying at home with Peyton during his first year of life too. My opinion of this guy was going up.

"I had the boys while I was working here," Kara continued.

"Did that delay your tenure clock?" (That's insider speak for a loose form of maternity leave. Women who have babies are allowed to delay going up for tenure for a year as a consideration for the research time they will lose due to childbirth.)

"I didn't delay the clock for the first one, but I did for the second one."

"And you still got tenure!" he said, trying to be encouraging. "That's really amazing!"

"Thanks," Kara said.

All would have been well enough, but the conversation continued. "I could have never gotten tenure if my wife hadn't stayed at home," he said.

He was trying to say something nice--that Kara had accomplished something even more impressive than he had because she was the mother of three children. Kara offered him an out: "None of us with children could do what we do without a lot of support from our spouses."

"No doubt," he said, but he didn't take the hint. He was intent on driving home the compliment he wished to pay Kara. "But that doesn't take away from your accomplishment. I mean, having kids had absolutely no bearing on me professionally. But you--" he lifted his hands up toward Kara in a gesture of admiration.

"Thanks," Kara said. He just didn't get it.

What he didn't get is that he had just perfectly articulated one of the primary obstacles for women in the workplace (and he did so obliviously). Men have children left and right. No one says anything. They are congratulated. All is as it should be in the world. It is different for professional women. Kara dreaded informing her colleagues each time she was pregnant--especially the third time.

When professional women get pregnant, male and female colleagues alike wonder if they know what they are doing. Are they flushing their careers down the toilet? Are they naive about how much work it is to raise a kid? Are they really committed to their careers?

To be fair, it is true that many women cannot sustain the kind of intense career my wife has when they become a mother. Parenting is difficult. It takes a big share of a limited amount of energy and focus. I have no beef with employers or colleagues who begin to wonder how much will change once the baby is born. My beef is with the double standard.

The fact that a father of four can say, "Having kids had absolutely no bearing on me professionally," is the problem. Now, if his wife wants to stay at home with their kids and take care of all the domestic chores that come with having children, that is a fine thing. Many women and a growing number of men choose to do this and I think it is one of many great ways to organize the way a family functions. But I do have an objection when women are pressured into staying at home with their children by their husbands' refusal to allow parenting to interfere with their careers or (even worse) leisure time. I am not saying that is the case with this guy; it may not be. But it happens all of the time. And it is wrong.

If women are to have the same kind of opportunities as men, then fathers need to start assuming their share of the inescapable sacrifices that come with childbearing and child rearing. It takes two parents to make a child. It is only fair if both parents make sacrifices to raise the child. Having children has made it harder for Kara to accomplish her career goals. I have no doubt that she could research more, write more, and get published more often if we did not have children. But I could say the same. I could read more, see more people during the week, and preach less impromptu sermons if we did not have children either. Yet, as important as our careers are to us, they are not as important to us as raising our children. Whatever having children costs us professionally, we are willing to pay the price. Most mothers are. What dumbfounds me is that so few fathers are.

The best way I have found to insure that both parents are contributing equally is to take an honest look at the leisure gap. On average, husbands enjoy five more hours of leisure time than their wives every week (Forbes). Usually, this is because women still do significantly more housework and child care than men even if both spouses are employed full-time.

When I became aware of this leisure gap, I took inventory of our own family's situation. I started watching for times when Kara was cooking, cleaning, or engaged with the children while I was reading, watching TV, or taking a cat nap on the couch. I also watched for times when I was engaged and Kara was taking some leisure time. I noticed that we had a leisure gap. She almost never sat down to take a break when I was busy with housework or the kids. She usually used what "free time" she had to do work she had been unable to do at the office. I was getting significantly more leisure time than her.

To combat this, I took over the laundry. I decided that I would do more than my "fair share" of the dishes. I started telling her to sit and relax while I finished up picking up for the cleaning lady to come the next day. Anything I could think of.

The leisure gap is not just wrong. It can be the cause of great resentment in marriages. No thanks. I was and am still determined to close it--even if the only way I can close it is to convince Kara to relax more!

I do not think I am that special. I think most husbands are as clueless about the leisure gap as I was and I believe most would do what they could to close that gap if they knew about it. That is part of why I am writing this blog. But it's more important that just maintaining a happy home. It's a crucial evolution of the American family. As the gender ratio in the workforce continues to balance, it must have implications in the home. The leisure gap at home does not need to be the only thing that changes, but it may be the simplest way to make the biggest difference now.

I am sure the guy we talked to is a swell dad who loves his wife and his children. I am sure he would gladly make sacrifices of all types (including his career) for his children if the situation called for it. He is an unintentional part of the problem. But the fact remains that as long as working mothers (who are unlikely to take the traditional male approach to parenting even when their husbands stay at home) are compared in terms of productivity and commitment to fathers for whom having kids has had no bearing on them professionally, true gender equality in the workplace will be nothing more than a pipe dream.

Perhaps you wonder why any of this matters to me. It's simple. I love my wife and I watch how hard she works. Her ability to balance her career and her family life is a marvel to me, but none of this would be possible if I expected her to do that job, commute for an hour each way, and spend any quality time with our children while still performing all (or even half) the household chores that were traditionally assigned to mothers. That means that I too have to make sacrifices for her to have her job. I too have to sacrifice my leisure time (and occasionally my work time) to make our life together possible. Our sacrifices are collective sacrifices. And it should be noted that the rewards are collective rewards as well and I don't like gender stereotypes or outright sexism limiting the returns we get as a family on the sacrifices we make as a family.

The injustices I am writing about don't just affect women. They affect all of us.

If this conversation is new to you, I suggest getting caught up. This is important stuff. Let me recommend a TED talk and a book (Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead) by Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer for Facebook. She is a working mother with an inspiring story. And she has some good ideas and good advice to professional women...and the men who love them.