I bring this story up today less because the potential plight of hungry New Yorkers warrants our consideration than because the way that Chick-fil-A has handled this and other controversies offers us a helpful reminder of what it looks like to stand for Christ in a way that honors our Lord without compromising our Christian principles. One of the most important, yet difficult, aspects of being a Christian is the idea that Jesus has called us to be in the world but not of the world (John 17:14–16). Yet, this approach to our interactions with the culture around us was not unique to Jesus. Rather, it was largely a continuation of the call God had given the Jews as far back as the exile.

Chick-fil-A is one of the most profitable companies in their industry, with the average non-mall-based franchise generating $8.7 million in sales each year. By comparison, the typical McDonald’s generates $3.7 million per year. Overall, it is the third-largest restaurant chain in the country, and all of this despite their famous stance of only being open six days a week.
Now a new bill in the New York State Assembly is trying to change that by forcing Chick-fil-A—or at least the locations along their highways—to stay open every day.
As the bill’s authors argue, “While there is nothing objectionable about a fast food restaurant closing on a particular day of the week, service areas dedicated to travelers is an inappropriate location for such a restaurant. Publicly owned service areas should use their space to maximally benefit the public. Allowing for retail space to go unused one seventh of the week or more is a disservice and unnecessary inconvenience to travelers who rely on these service areas.”
Assemblyman Tony Simone, who is one of the bill’s sponsors, put it a bit more bluntly: “You know, we get hungry when we’re traveling. We may not like our brother-in-law or sister-in-law’s cooking and wanna get a snack on Christmas Eve. . . . To find one of the restaurants closed on the thru-way is just not in the public good.”
Simone went on to add, “The Thruways are meant to serve New York travelers first. And I think it’s ridiculous that you’re able to close on Sunday—one of the busiest travel days of the week.”
While many would have responded to such charges in anger, to this point Chick-fil-A has seemed content to let the process play out and wait for the bill to force a conflict rather than to seek one out.
Fortunately, it looks as though it won’t come to that.
Chick-fil-A has already signed a thirty-three-year contract as part of a $450 million project to build twenty-seven service areas along the highway. Moreover, the project was funded without any toll or tax dollars, making it unclear how much say the state could actually have on which restaurants are placed in the stations and how those restaurants are run. And even if the bill becomes law, it stipulates that it would apply to future contracts rather than existing ones.
Couple those details with the fact that each of these locations includes other restaurants that are open seven days a week and it looks like Chick-fil-A is likely to remain closed on Sundays for the foreseeable future.
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Postmodernism is devouring the liberal arts. Such a deeply entrenched cultural problem cannot be solved by top-down intervention. Rather, reform must come from the individual efforts of dissenting students and professors who presently remain silent for fear of being challenged by the orthodoxy of postmodern culture.

The ‘liberal arts’ were so named for their orientation towards free thought, and the foundational claim that they existed to enrich the lives of free people. They are, in other words, dependent on the open-mindedness of individuals wishing to develop their knowledge and understanding by exploring thousands of years of history and literature produced by human civilisation. Despite this, universities in recent years have seen a rapid decline in the reputation and value of liberal arts degrees. Whereas once an education in literature and philosophy was highly revered in academia, setting the world at its students’ feet, today a liberal arts education is widely regarded as a useless endeavour for aimless students, which offers no clear path for the future. This development can, in large part, be laid at the feet of the ever-increasing influence of postmodernism, a superficially attractive philosophy often used to promulgate political and cultural ideas. Courses that have embraced a postmodern viewpoint tend to harshly ostracise any conflicting perspective, thereby eroding the intellectual freedom upon which the liberal arts had hitherto relied.
Part of postmodernism’s allure is that it evades clear definition. Does it exist only in the realm of art and literary theory or is it also a social phenomenon? Like any cultural movement seeking to expand its territory, it seems to have designs on both. Postmodernism, in both the artistic world and the real worlds, is concerned with interpretation and subjectivity, and the deconstruction of overarching ‘meta-narratives.’ Its opposition to these meta-narratives, according to philosopher Stephen Hicks, can lead to a wholesale rejection of the Enlightenment’s salient ideas of reason, logic, knowledge, and truth. One of postmodernism’s most famous thinkers, Stanley Fish, has said of deconstruction (a postmodern technique) that “it relieves me of the obligation to be right…and demands only that I be interesting.”1 This is the essence of postmodern theory—you don’t have to be right, because right and wrong don’t exist.
Since universities are the home of contemporary philosophy, it should not be surprising that they are currently the main hub of contemporary postmodern thought. This manifests predominantly in liberal arts subjects, where postmodern subjectivity is often taught under the guise of ‘tolerance’ and ‘inclusivity.’ This is particularly evident whenever students are asked to analyse a work of art. Rarely are they encouraged to research the context in which the art was produced or to draw upon previous knowledge to uncover resonance and meaning. Instead, they are encouraged to fabricate interpretations based on their personal experience and feelings. Needless to say, I am not suggesting that contemplating and critically analysing art is an entirely objective enterprise. Artworks can yield multiple interpretations, and sometimes more than one of these interpretations will be equally valid. However, postmodern analysis takes this a step further; its rejection of grand narratives means it has no grounds on which to say that any interpretation is superior to any other. To say that one interpretation is better than another is not only to imply an objective standard, but also to ‘exclude’ or express ‘intolerance’ towards any interpretations that have been deemed inferior or less plausible.
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Sin in any relationship is serious, but since marriage is a unique covenant that represents Christ and the church, betrayal from a spouse is particularly devastating. Sexual unfaithfulness can shatter a wife’s sense of identity and worth. Her husband has not only gone outside the marriage but has actually brought pollution and idolatry into their union. Wives feel this intensely, even when they’re not the ones who pursued sexual unfaithfulness.

If your husband has sinned sexually, you might be surprised at how deeply you feel ashamed. Shame can be a vague, haunting, smothering feeling in our hearts. It may hover the way a low-grade physical ache emerges with the flu. Or it can suddenly fall over us, collapsing our hearts inward as if a heavy, water-soaked blanket was dropped on us.
The Bible connects shame and guilt, yet also distinguishes between them. Guilt communicates, “I’ve done something wrong.” Shame communicates, “Something is wrong with me.” Ed Welch, a biblical counselor, makes the distinction in his book Shame Interrupted:
Shame lives in the community, though the community can feel like a courtroom. It says, “You don’t belong—you are unacceptable, unclean and disgraced” because “You are wrong, you have sinned” (guilt), or “Wrong has been done to you” or “You are associated with those who are disgraced or outcast.” The shamed person feels worthless, expects rejection, and needs cleansing, fellowship [community], love, and acceptance. (11)
Note what Welch says about shame coming not only from our own sin but also from association with those who are disgraced. Just as you’ve perhaps been troubled by your troubles or anxious about your anxiety, maybe you’ve been carrying the shame of your husband’s sin as your own.
But your husband is guilty of sexual sin, not you. Regardless of how either of you (as sinners and sufferers) may have contributed to brokenness in your marriage, your husband chose to act on desires and pursue his own sexually sinful behaviors. Yet the intimacy of the marriage covenant does closely associate you with his guilt and the shame that comes with rebellion against our holy God. Why is this, and how does it happen?
Marriage, Sexual Sin, and Shame
Marriage creates a powerful opportunity for a husband and wife, in covenant before God and witnesses, to enter into a oneness-of-life relationship. Traditional Christian wedding vows usually include the following components.
Will you have this woman/man to be your wife/husband, to live together in holy marriage?
Will you love, comfort, honor, and keep her/him in sickness and in health?
Will you forsake all others, being faithful (relationally, mentally, sexually, emotionally, physically) to her/him as long as you both shall live?
 In response to all of these questions, the man and woman both promise, “I will.”
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