Dorothy Day, the Child

Unsurprisingly, Dorothy Day began life as a child. Equally unsurprisingly, when she looked back on her childhood she found both profound truths and glimpses of her future self. This is perhaps a great act of anachronism--one which would be by no means unique to her--in which we project back onto a past of infinite possibilities the notion of fate which comes from hindsight and the wisdom which comes from distance. Even if that is true, even if to the smallest degree, it does not thereby negate the value of this self-reflection, this turning to the past to explain the present and to extract from its eventualities eternal truths. After all, Christ pointed often to children for just such a reason, either to validate this human instinct or because he knew that through it we might more easily grasp that which he taught us. It was to those like "little children" that truth had been revealed, not the wise, whom Jesus must rebuke and remind that out of the mouths of babes came true praise. To the those who would become children, the kingdom of heaven belongs. So when Day looks back on her childhood in search of kernels of truth, she may indulge a human impulse but she also practices a Christian virtue.

What she finds is both the seeds of simple faith and the onset of our most basic sins:

We did not search for God when we were children. We took Him for granted. We were at some time taught to say our evening prayers, “Now I lay me,” and “Bless my father and mother.” This done, we prayed no more unless a thunderstorm made us hide our heads under the covers and propitiate the Deity by promising to be good.

Very early we had a sense of right and wrong, good and evil. My conscience was very active. There were ethical concepts and religious concepts. To steal cucumbers from Miss Lynch’s garden on Cropsey Avenue was wrong. It was also wrong to take money from my mother, without her knowledge, for a soda. What a sense of property rights we had as children! Mine and yours! It begins in us as infants. “This is mine.” When we are very young just taking makes it mine. Possession is nine points of the law. As infants squabbling in the nursery we were strong in that possessive sense. In the nursery might made right. We had not reached the age of reason. But at the age of four I knew it was wrong to steal.

She also remember with what innocence and clarity she first learned about poverty and became disillusioned with the way it is approached in supposedly Christian society. Her words are both a testament to the obviousness of our shortcomings and to the wisdom and impressionability of our youth:

Children look at things very directly and simply. I did not see anyone taking off his coat and giving it to the poor. I didn’t see anyone having a banquet and calling in the lame, the halt and the blind. And those who were doing it, like the Salvation Army, did not appeal to me. I wanted, though I did not know it then, a synthesis. I wanted life and I wanted the abundant life. I wanted it for others too. I did not want just the few, the missionary-minded people like the Salvation Army, to be kind to the poor, as the poor. I wanted everyone to be kind. I wanted every home to be open to the lame, the halt and the blind, the way it had been after the San Francisco earthquake. Only then did people really live, really love their brothers. In such love was the abundant life and I did not have the slightest idea how to find it.

What Good Are Laws?

Throughout this political season--in addition to not so subtly pushing my Christian anarchist agenda--I have been trying to refer people as often as possible to different periods in the history of American politics in an effort to broaden the scope with which we look at the political process in the US. Today, I'd like to offer this quote, gleaned in passing from an oral history, that gives the political opinions of an early twentieth century resident of Italian Harlem:

What good are the laws of this country if a child is given liberty to talk back to his parents?

What good indeed? It's a remarkably different perspective than, say, what good are the laws of this country if they don't ensure a child's future right to choose his or her own religion without any bias from childhood religiosity.

Circumcision: Benefits Outweight Risks

As a general rule, when debates about circumcision arise, I tend to fall with those who believe that a parent should have the right to make that decision for the child in its infancy. The notion of a child's right to choose is absurd to me, a point I tried to hammer when the courts in Germany made this an international issue. Additionally the frequent argument that having a foreskin results in a better sex life is precisely the kind of qualitative judgment that science is unable to make. The statement that a penis with a foreskin is more sensate is a scientific claim. That a more sensate penis is better or results in more fulfilling sex is not.

What remains, in terms of arguments against circumcision, is the notion that it is an entirely cosmetic procedure or that, if it has some medical value, that such a value is minimal and outweighed by the risks. The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a policy statement which the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists endorsed saying that just the opposite is true:

The nation's most influential pediatricians group says the health benefits of circumcision in newborn boys outweigh any risks and insurance companies should pay for it...

"It's not a verdict from on high," said policy co-author Dr. Andrew Freedman. "There's not a one-size-fits-all-answer." But from a medical standpoint, circumcision's benefits in reducing risk of disease outweigh its small risks, said Freedman, a pediatric urologist in Los Angeles.

Recent research bolstering evidence that circumcision reduces chances of infection with HIV and other sexually spread diseases, urinary tract infections and penis cancer influenced the academy to update their 13-year-old policy.

Their old stance said potential medical benefits were not sufficient to warrant recommending routinely circumcising newborn boys. The new one says, "The benefits of newborn male circumcision justify access to this procedure for those families who choose it." The academy also says pain relief stronger than a sugar-coated pacifier is essential, usually an injection to numb the area.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Convention has estimated circumcision costs range from about $200 to $600 nationwide...Meantime, a recent study projected that declining U.S. circumcision rates could add more than $4 billion in health care costs in coming years because of increased illness and infections.

As the quote states, this is nowhere near an endorsement of universal male circumcision. It does, however, better articulate a well-reasoned position on the subject. Informed parents can make informed decisions without being labeled, socially or legally, as child mutilators. Maybe that means that the US medical community is "out of step" with other developed nations, as Ronald Goldman suggests, but if Germany is an example of such a nation, I'm glad we're not in step with them.

Mennonite on Trial for Kidnapping and Conscience

In case this story has been flying under your radar, here is what's happening:

Eleven women and three men were impaneled [Tuesday] to hear the case against Mennonite Pastor Kenneth Miller, accused of helping a woman flee the United States with her daughter rather than share custody of the child with her former lesbian partner.

Miller, 46, of Stuarts Draft, Va., is charged with aiding in international kidnapping. A conviction carries a maximum prison term of three years...


The judge said jurors will have to set aside their opinions and deal with the facts and the law in the case.


‘‘What is at issue here is whether Mr. Miller committed a crime,’’ U.S. District Court Judge William Sessions said.


The trial is expected to last six days.


Lisa Miller, no relation to the defendant, and Janet Jenkins of Fair Haven entered a civil union in Vermont in 2000. Lisa Miller gave birth to her daughter, Isabella, in 2002. The couple later broke up, and Lisa Miller returned to her native Virginia.


Kenneth Miller is accused of helping Lisa Miller and her daughter travel from Virginia to Canada, then to Nicaragua in September 2009 where they lived among Mennonites. The current whereabouts of the mother and her now-10-year-old child are unknown.

Now, I am typically a person of decided opinions, but I confess that I don't know what to do with this case. As a matter of navigating everyday life, I reject the judge's mindset that one must prioritize what is legal to what is moral. As the state has no legitimate authority, it has no power to coerce Christians to do violate their consciences regardless of the law. The instructions to the jury are appropriate, however, for the context in which they were given. They are in a courtroom and not an ethics seminar.

The beauty of the American legal system rests on the rule of law, single code for everyone, evenly applied. At the same time, the counterbalance to this potentially inhuman system is the court's dependence on the weighty roll given to a jury of peers to decide whether or not actions warrant penalty.

I do not think that the courts should be deciding issues of custody based on the sexuality of the parents. I also sympathize, to put it mildly, with the Christian convert who, following Biblical commandments, insists on raising up the child in the way it should go.

As I struggle with these tensions, I try to put myself into the pastor's shoes. We share, at least in theory, a common outlook on civil disobedience. Were I in his place, I might have done exactly what he did. I might even try to avoid legal penalty as he seems to be doing, although here I think this may not be the most Christian course. The biblical examples of civil disobedience, as well as those incidences of resistance which are lauded in modern times, have not tried to circumvent the law with impunity. When the time comes for a confrontation with the state, no excuses are made and no legal wrangling is attempted. Miller's attorney is claiming innocence via technicality, but when Peter confronts the state, his attitude is closer to, "I am innocent before God, even as I am guilty before you. What does that say about you?" Early Christians were imprisoned, flogged, and executed without resistance, a fact which has richly colored Mennonite history as well. Perhaps the truer course would have been to spirit the woman away and, when she was safely among the church, to accept whatever civil penalty the state imposes for right behavior.

But what do I know? Miller has already shown more courage than most of us will ever be called to show, made a more difficult decision than any of us will have to face. My purpose is not to judge him, but to take his extreme situation and use it to animate our common, extreme ethos. Whatever happens or should happen, my hope is that he will allow God to enrich him through the consequences of his actions.

The Great Foreskin Debate Continues

I honestly felt remiss in delaying so long sharing this, because I noticed it right when it happened. The German government, clearly responding directly to pressure from me personally, responded to the court ruling made several weeks ago now which declared religious circumcision illegal:

Germany's foreign minister on Sunday offered assurances that Germany protects religious traditions after a court ruled that circumcising young boys on religious grounds amounts to bodily harm even if parents consent...

Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said that a legal debate "must not lead to doubts arising internationally about religious tolerance in Germany."

"The free exercise of religion is protected in Germany. That includes religious traditions," Westerwelle said in a statement. "All our partners in the world should know that."

That's good to hear, Guido, but even weeks later, it would appear that many are unsatisfied with these kinds of toothless assurances. So frightening is the stance of the German government--apparently, just one of many European abridgments of religious freedoms--that the Germans have driven together Jews and Muslims for a common purpose:

In a joint statement from Brussels earlier this week, a group of rabbis, imams and others said that they consider the ruling against circumcision ‘‘an affront on our basic religious and human rights.’’

...The German ambassador to Israel told lawmakers in Jerusalem on Monday that the government was looking into whether laws needed to be changed.

‘‘For us the deadline is not tomorrow, but yesterday,’’ Goldschmidt said of possible changes to the law. In the meantime, however, ‘‘we say to the Jewish community ... keep performing the brit milah, and have no fear.’’

Unfortunately, it may be difficult for the Jewish community to heed this call, since "the president of the German Medical Association this week recommended that doctors cease performing circumcisions for religious reasons until the law can be clarified."

Holy Uncircumcised Penises, Batman!

Germany has become the first country (to my knowledge) to outlaw religious circumcision. While many countries have made cosmetic circumcision of children illegal, a court in Germany now says that religion is no longer a valid excuse:

Circumcising young boys on religious grounds amounts to grievous bodily harm, a German court ruled Tuesday in a landmark decision that the Jewish community said trampled on parents' religious rights.

The regional court in Cologne, western Germany, ruled that the "fundamental right of the child to bodily integrity outweighed the fundamental rights of the parents", a judgement that is expected to set a legal precedent.

"The religious freedom of the parents and their right to educate their child would not be unacceptably compromised, if they were obliged to wait until the child could himself decide to be circumcised," the court added.

The fact that roughly one in every three males born into the world is circumcised in a practice which has been carried out continuously since the dawn of recorded history didn't seem to bother the German judiciary. After all, we are entering a brave new world, one that can put behind it the ways of life in the backwoods parts of the world where circumcision is still prevalent: Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Israel, Canada, the United States, and Australia. Thankfully, we have Germany to lead the way, standing on the cutting edge of oppressing Jews for nearly a century now. (I'm sorry. It was just too easy.)

This, it would appear, is what societies get when law and ethics become reducible to questions of conflicting theoretical rights. Being neither a Muslim nor a Jew and living in a country which permits circumcision with broad latitude, I don't really have a dog in this fight, except for my ideological consternation when I see courts ruling in favor of self-determination for infants. Because a baby has a right to a foreskin, a right which supersedes a mandate from G-d or Allah. That works if you're a secular court in Germany because you can touch a foreskin and you can't touch God, but that logic won't fly with the billions of unenlightened people in the world who think that the commands of their respective deities hold real weight.

The idea of self-determination for infants is, pragmatically, nonsensical. We recognize that infants require guidance and support in every area of life but at the same time pretend that parents ought to be raising them in a political, ideological, and religious void. Says the court: "The body of the child is irreparably and permanently changed by a circumcision. This change contravenes the interests of the child to decide later on his religious beliefs." Ignore for a moment the fact that the absence of a foreskin does not actually prevent little Fritz von Spielberg from growing up to be good secular humanist like every other European millennial and imagine what this self-deluded ideology of neutral child-rearing and apotheosis of choice looks like in practice. In the words of Stephen Prothero, "This is foolhardy, not unlike saying that you will not read anything to your daughter because you don’t want to enslave her to any one language."

It is the right, or more precisely the duty, of every parent to raise each child in the way the parent believes is best for its health and safety temporal and eternal. Democrats can raise little Democrats. Republicans can raise little Republicans. Sooner fans can raise little Sooner fans, and the children of Longhorn fans will continue to thumb their noses at them every fall at the state fair. More importantly, Christians can raise little Christians and would be rather perturbed to find a court somewhere ruling that baptism prior to eighteen "contravenes the interests of the child to decide later on his religious beliefs."

And Jews and Muslims ought to be able to raise their children up in the way they should go. That includes performing the defining and foundational right, at least in Judaism, on their children. Unfortunately, the Germans don't seem to agree, and who better than the German courts to decide for Jews and Muslims what unacceptably compromises their religious beliefs.

What's Wrong With Spanking in Public Schools?

Due to a recent interest in public views about child rearing, and particularly with innovative new disciplinary methods, I recently came across a USA Today editorial opposing corporal punishment in public schools. It ought to go without saying that I have a profound dislike for corporal punishment of any kind applied to anyone. Not being a parent myself, by the grace of God, I stop short of presenting this dislike as a conviction, but--as an ardent opponent of violence properly understood and in all its forms--the prospect of hitting a child in a way which is typically logically unconnected to the offense being corrected is repugnant to me. In addition to being nonsensical and to the multiplicity of more taxing but more benign forms of discipline that could function as alternatives, corporal punishment teaches that violence is an appropriate corrective, an ethical and pragmatic fallacy that has far-reaching personal, political, and global consequences when children inevitably undergo the metamorphosis into citizens.

Yet, with all that being said, something about this article immediately rubbed me the wrong way. It wasn't even the pathetic and predictable public declamation of everyone's favorite ideologically backward whipping boy, the South, in the second sentence. It also wasn't the specious attempt by the writer to make an entire system culpable in the excessive of a few extreme incidents. It wasn't even the shameless way the bugaboo of racism was conjured. Okay, so maybe it was all those things--as good points poorly argued are a pet peeve of mine--but not first and not most. This is what really troubled me:

When children are struck by school personnel, they learn a couple of lessons, neither of them good: One is that it's OK for non-parental authority figures to hit them. Another is that violence is an acceptable response to bad behavior.

Why should that bother me? After all, that sounds very much like my primary objection to the corporal punishment of children. Here's the problem: both of those "bad" lessons are true lessons which will serve children in our society. After all, I wonder if the writer is aware that the police, the most prominent domestic "non-parental authority figures," still employ force as a means of social control, even in the thirty one states and over one hundred foreign countries that have disallowed corporal punishment in schools. We may think ourselves civilized in America because we don't cane vandals or maim thieves, but our civil servants still strike, mace, wrestle, and electrocute suspected criminals for refusing to comply with official directives. As for violence acting as "an acceptable response to bad behavior," the continuing presence of capital punishment domestically and military action internationally prove that violence is still very prominent in our culture as a means for suppressing unacceptable behavior.

Perhaps the editorial writer and the enlightened residents of the Northeast would like it if all of that weren't true, if there were no violent action by the police, no armed conflict internationally, and no capital punishment. As a matter of fact, I'd like those things. But saying that for children to learn that the world is controlled by means of violence is a bad lesson is disingenuous. It is perhaps the most basically true lesson they can learn in school. If they'd like, opponents of corporal punishment can change the way the world works so that the life lessons they admit corporal punishment teaches are no longer true. If, however, the idea is to alter education in an attempt to rework the world order into their ideological image...well, wouldn't that be shocking.

Unorthodox Teen Discipline Prompts Criticism

In a story surprising equally for the unapologetic ingenuity of its protagonist and the gross oversensitivity it uncovers in the general public, ABC reports that one woman has taken her fight against inappropriate social media behavior deep into enemy territory:

At first, it might seem like your typical case of modern parental discipline: A Texas mom has prohibited her 12-year-old daughter from using the photo-sharing site Instagram after she caught the girl posting a photo of herself holding an unopened bottle of vodka with a caption that read “I sure wish I could drink this.”

But it’s what ReShonda Tate Billingsley did next that has people buzzing: Billinglsey, a prominent Houston-area author, had her daughter post a new picture of herself to Instagram earlier this month holding a sign reading, “Since I want to post photos of me holding liquor, I am obviously not ready for social media and will be taking a hiatus until I learn what I should (and) should not post. Bye-bye.”

Billingsley then posted the same photo – in which only the lower half of her daughter’s face was visible – to her own personal Facebook page and it has since gone viral. It has seen 11,000 shares from Facebook alone, not to mention attention from various media outlets.

It was a clever move on the part of Billingsley and effective, apparently so much so that the daughter begged for a spanking as an alternative. What I love about this, particularly when compared to corporal punishment, is there is a logical relationship between the "crime" and the "punishment." Most obviously, if children abuse social media, they should have their access to social media restricted. Moreover, with the theoretically limitless reach of online behavior, the act of forcing her daughter to own up to her mistakes is equally essential. When I committed some indiscretion against someone, some public act of bad behavior, as a child, I was required to apologize to all those who were effected by said behavior. As Instagram was the arena of her malfeasance, then it is appropriate that she should own up to her mistakes through in the same place.

For some reason, however, the "public shaming" has apparently made Billingsley the target of serious criticism. Aside from the presumptuousness of child-rearing professionals and the public at large meddling in other people's parenting in ways they would never permit in their own families, the real problem with this is the labeling of the second picture as the embarrassment rather than the first. It is precisely this misconception that Billingsley's choice of discipline can serve to correct. The shameful act is not and should not be taking public responsibility for one's actions and accepting the consequences of them, as Billingsley made her daughter do. It is the careless and deeply inappropriate act of a twelve year old announcing to the world how much she would love to be able to drink hard liquor. When the child's aberrant behavior ceases to shock and the act of publicly taking responsibility offends, it becomes clear that the world is hopelessly confused about what is truly shameful.

And just so that we can all gain a little perspective, let's all take a look at this mother in Mexico City who also employed an unorthodox punishment:

A mother in Mexico has been arrested on suspicion of gouging out the eyes of her 5-year-old son during a ceremony...The mother is believed to have removed the eyes with her bare hands because the boy refused to close them during the ceremony, police told a news conference.

Let's Talk about Sex

I recently watched the 2009 documentary Let's Talk About Sex. The stated purpose of the film is to examine adolescent sexuality and to try to understand alarming trends in American culture, such as rates of teen pregnancy and teen STD contraction significantly above that of any other "developed" Western nation. In truth, the documentary is a forthright apology for comprehensive sex education in schools and a frank criticism of abstinence-only education as an alternative. Everything else which is discussed is done so more-or-less as a footnote. This is not intended as a criticism; the filmmakers do very little to hide this motivating intention. Why should they? The nature of sex education is a matter of intense debate because it has real and dramatic consequences. When we realize that 7% of all women in America will become pregnant before they turn twenty and that, of those pregnancy that might otherwise be carried to term, 30% will end in elective abortion, it is hard to imagine anyone not concerned. The documentary rightly concludes that everyone wants the same thing: fewer teen STDs, fewer teen pregnancies, and fewer teen abortions.

To that end, the documentary offers at least three suggestions which, though by no means novel, warrant constant reiteration until they come to fruition:

• Comprehensive sex education in schools:  The film cites studies which have shown there to be no correlation between abstinence only education and decreased rates of pregnancy or STDs.  While this alone is not enough to commend comprehensive sex education, it is hard not to look over to Western Europe with the remarkably low rates of teen pregnancy and STDs and wonder what our public education system is doing wrong.  The government has a legitimate public interest in preventing teen pregnancies and STDs, and the filmmakers rightly point out that the health hazard created by (or at least correlated with) teen ignorance costs the government multiple billions of dollars annually.
  
• Greater involvement and candor from the religious community: Sex education is not simply a public health concern.  It is a moral and existential concern as well, and because of that it is imperative that the faith community take an active role in educating America's youth about sex.  At its most compelling, the film displays ministers earnestly seeking to balance moral truth with the pressing needs of adolescents in their congregations.  One commenter rightly points out that there was a time when the church was engaged meaningfully on social issues in a way not so readily reduced into the kind of moralizing which is only profitable for an audience to whom it is not applicable.  Preachers preach hellfire and abstinence, parents nudge their young children into purity pledges, and adolescents are swept along in ignorance.  The church needs to stop teaching teen classes on Song of Solomon and then washing their hands of their youth.
  
• Parent centered solutions:  The church is not and should not be the most directly formative influence on an adolescent's life, and the state infinitely less so.  A great deal of the blame for the culture surrounding sex and particularly adolescent sex in America falls on parents.  Particularly guilty are those multitudes of parents who deflect responsibility onto the schools and churches, refusing to bring the issue of sex into the home except for a single, awkward, trite "birds and the bees" talk at the onset of puberty.  Surely parents haven't forgotten adolescence; surely they remember that sex is not something their teenagers think about once at thirteen, make a decision about, and then are never troubled again.  Sex pervades society, and even if it didn't, sex would still dominate the hormone addled mind of teenagers.  If parents really cared about their teen, cared more than they care about their comfort, they would be engaged regularly and openly.

While I wholeheartedly embrace the above as legitimate steps to be taken to mitigate the fall out from inevitable teen sex, there are problems with the way they are often presented and with the way the documentary presents them.  One of the reasons the issue has become so charged and why people who agree on the ends cannot unite on any common means is because people from both sides have too thoroughly draped their solutions with their peculiar ideologies.  It is no wonder that comprehensive sex education smacks of libertinism much in the same way that abstinence only sex education smacks of fideism.  Correctives are needed:

• The public interest is a health interest: The state does have a legitimate interest in educating teenagers about sex, but the legitimacy of that interest does not legitimize the state offering up a normative ideology through the education system.  The very fact that comprehensive sex education is being used for this ought to raise deafening alarms in the Orwellian corners of our brain.  Comprehensive sex education needs to be comprehensive only in terms of its factual, scientific information and only as far as is prudent for preventing unwanted pregnancies and STDs.  Teach teens about diseases: how they are contracted, how they are treated, and how they are prevented.  Teach teens about pregnancy: how it happens and how it is prevented.  Demonstrate contraceptive use, offer resources for obtaining those contraceptives, discuss issues of consent (e.g. what constitutes "date rape"), and the importance of being assertive in demanding that you and your partner practice safe sex.  The legitimate concerns of the state end there, but for some reason that hasn't stopped some programs from tacitly or even explicitly passing qualitative judgements on sexual behavior.  They want to teach an ideology that homosexuality is good, that sexual experimentation is good, that anything is good provided it is done safely and consensually.  The documentary shows over and over sex education material that uses terms like "good," "healthy," "beautiful," and "fun."  The state should not be making those qualitative determinations.  Their job is to define what is legal; it falls to others to debate what is good.
  
• The church does not need to abandon ideology:  The church, unlike the state, has a duty to make qualitative and moral judgments, and it is not the place of the government to restrict or direct those judgments.  Unfortunately, however, most of the churches that were shown actively participating in rigorous sex education were churches of a unabashedly liberal bent.  This leaning showed through clearly in the way they approached sex education, and the viewer might get the impression that the only way a church could be involved in sex education in a way that would please the filmmakers would be if they were conferring divine approbation on the secular sex agenda.  This need not be the case, however.  Churches, even conservative churches, can legitimately engage in rigorous and thorough sex education while continuing to make the argument that premarital sex is a moral evil and promoting heteronormative sexual ethics.  It is the ridiculously shallow "sex is bad if you do it before your married" line, coupled with vacuous purity ceremonies, that has made the church culpable in the crisis of teen sexuality, particularly the startling number of devout teens engaging in para-intercourse sex acts with impunity because "technically" they are still virgins.  A comprehensive, faith based sex education plan can make great strides in alleviating not only social, but moral and existential ills.  Begin with the truth that human sexuality, like everything else, is God-created, wonderful in its appropriate context, and devastating when improperly employed.  Acknowledge the intensity of temptation and the universality of human frailty.  Create an environment of accountability that minimizes shame and maximizes the edifying value of confession.  Most importantly, make the commitment ongoing.  Youth ministers and their congregations need to be thinking about sex as often as their teens are and devoting a proportionate amount of time and energy to their sex-related efforts.  Just because a church is seriously committed to sex education does not mean that they need to adopt the value judgements of liberal sexual ethics.
  
• It isn't enough just to shift the blame to parents:  Everyone knows that parents need to be more involved.  The government has said it.  The churches have said it.  Even many parents, often hypocritically, have said it.  But just as parents are too often guilty of shifting the responsibility onto schools and churches, society seems largely uninterested in actually equipping and encouraging parents to talk to their children about sex education.  It is time that schools and churches made a greater effort to ensure that parents had both the tools and the motivation to be active in the sex education of their teens.  The documentary made a positive exhibition of a number of very progressive parents (e.g. parents who gave their teens condoms for their birthdays, who let their teens' significant others spend the night, who joked around the dinner table about their teens' sex life) but what was most striking is that many of the parents on display were just as ignorant as their teens.  They didn't know the statistics about sex or the myths that were floating around among teenagers.  There are some parents, paradoxically (and we shift out of the documentary and into personal experience here), who aren't even entirely sure of the mechanics of sex, pregnancy, and STDs.  Parents would benefit from programs offered by schools and churches specifically designed to educate parents about adolescent sex issues and about how to talk to teens about sex.  Small, interactive gatherings with teachers, counselors, and members of the clergy have significant advantages over whatever thirty year old "How to talk to your kids about sex" book that a parent might buy off Amazon.

Whatever its obvious biases and deficiencies--particularly in terms of proposing concrete, unifying solutions--Let's Talk About Sex is a documentary worth watching.  It is probably one even worth watching with teens, be they your children, your class, your youth groups, or your friends.  The film is informative yet entertaining, remarkably clean given the subject matter, and has tremendous heuristic value.  If nothing else, it can function as a great launching point for the conversations we all ought to have been having all along.  The issue is obviously too pressing for Americans to stick their heads into the sand and hope it goes away.

In Other News

Last fall, I relayed an argument that I had been having about whether or not raising one's children to be religious constituted "indoctrination," and, if it did, whether or not it was possible to raise them in a state of neutral irreligion in an effort to promote choice. I concluded, and was delighted to later find my argument mimicked by Stephen Prothero, that there is no neutral state of irreligion, that the very act of raising children is a process of "indoctrination," and that proponents of "choice" for children were constructing their argument on an anthropological fallacy. Unfortunately, people still seem to be deluded by the fantasy that children can be raised as blank slates with regard to religion:

Ontological anxiety is the anxiety created after realizing the overwhelming number of choices one can make as a free individual. Most people choose the path of least resistance and allow the choice to be made for them by their parents or other social pressures. Thus, shrinking of consciousness occurs, as a simple way to relieve the ontological anxiety is to eliminate the vast number of choices. I believe the majority of people who label themselves as Christians do so during their childhood because it is comfortable and easy for them to conform to their family's atmosphere, not because they have any sort of intrinsically strong faith or spirituality. In contrast, children with parents who do not offer a clear path of least resistance must deal with ontological anxiety as an individual. They are forced to pick through many choices and understand their choices more as a result. Thus, shrinking of consciousness does not occur to such a high degree and their more conscious choice is usually atheism (those who never overcome the issue of ontological anxiety are agnostic, as they do not make a choice).

NYU student Joseph Rauch certainly dresses the argument up in fancier language (something he probably zealously picked up in a recent seminar), but the window dressing can be ignored. (We should also probably ignore his amusing misappropriation of agnosticism which is in fact more likely to be a positive theological position--the belief that knowledge is impossible or inaccessible--than atheism, which at its most basic merely describes the absence of a particular belief.) The argument is ultimately the same and the conclusions just as flawed. Children who are raised as "blank slates" have no greater or fewer choices available to them than the children of religious adherents, and parents who "do not offer a clear path" are in fact offering no less clear a path than a Christian parent who takes their child to church. Irreligion, whether in the form of religious pluralism, religious apathy, or positive irreligion (what Rauch likely means in his grossly overnarrow use of "atheism"), is not a neutral position in childrearing. The act of raising a child, which is by definition active, has no passive positions. I don't know what they are teaching you at NYU, Mr. Rauch, but around here we call that low-effort thinking.

In Arkansas, however, low-effort thinking is being linked with conservative politics. (Speaking of issues we've tackled here before.) Researchers at the University of Arkansas got some Razorbacks drunk and were delighted to find that the probability of holding conservative positions increased with each shot of corn mash:

Bar patrons were asked about social issues before blowing into a Breathalyzer. As it turned out, the political viewpoints of patrons with high blood alcohol levels were more likely to be conservative than were those of patrons whose blood alcohol levels were low.

But that's not all:

But it wasn't just the alcohol talking, according to the statement. When the researchers conducted similar interviews in the lab, they found that people who were asked to evaluate political ideas quickly or while distracted were more likely to express conservative viewpoints.

"Keeping people from thinking too much...or just asking them to deliberate or consider information in a cursory manner can impact people's political attitudes, and in a way that consistently promotes political conservatism," Dr. Eidelman said in the email.

Maintaining all the high standards of journalistic excellence discussed in the previously linked article, this report closes with the clearly innocent string of interrogatives: "What do you think? Are conservatives less intelligent than liberals--or more intelligent? And is conservatism a matter of lazy thinking?" It never occurs to anyone to ask whether or not sobriety or concentration might actually be correlated to political correctness rather than drunkenness and distraction to social conservatism. More insidiously, it automatically labels the motivating factor in conservatism with a derogatory epithet: "lazy thinking." Would it not be just as accurate to interpret the results thus: tests show that social conservatism is the default response of uninhibited individuals. If anything, the heuristic value of the study as reported in the article is to question whether or not social progressivism is actually furthered primarily by cultural pressures and fear of social marginalization more than anything. After all, the study doesn't indicate what way people lean who are more intelligent or more thoughtful, only which way they lean when they are less inhibited and less guarded in their responses. Rejoice conservatives; your views are instinctive (at least in Arkansas).

And while we argue about how to not raise children to not be religious and what it means when drunks in the Ozarks sound off about gay marriage, twelve Christians in Iran were anxiously awaiting a verdict in their apostasy trial. It's almost as if the Middle East has an actual war on religion.

#300

In keeping with time honored tradition, this three hundredth post commemorates the great quotes that have appeared here over the last hundred entries. Below are my personal top ten notable quotables, though you are welcome and encouraged to disagree.

10) The last hundred posts began with one of my first comparative series, this one examining points of contact between Christianity and absurdism. As a near rabid fan of Albert Camus, it was difficult to select only one quote. Nevertheless, here is a thought of his from The Absurd and Science:

And here are the trees and I know their gnarled surface, water and I feel its taste. These scents of grass and stars at night, certain evenings when the heart relaxes -how shall I negate this world whose power and strength I feel? Yet all the knowledge on earth will give me nothing to assure me that this world is mine. You describe it to me and you teach me to classify it. You enumerate its laws and in my thirst for knowledge I admit that they are true. You take apart its mechanisms and my hope increases. At the final stage you teach me that this wondrous and multicolored universe can be reduced to the atom and that the atom itself can be reduced to the electron. All this is good and I wait for you to continue. But you tell me of an invisible planetary system in which electrons gravitate around a nucleus. You explain this world to me with an image. I realize then that you have been reduced to poetry: I shall never know. Have I the time to become indignant? You have already changed theories. So that science that was to teach me everything ends up in a hypothesis, that lucidity founders in metaphor, that uncertainty is resolved in a work of art. What need had I of so many efforts? The soft lines of these hills and the hand of evening on this troubled heart teach me much more. I have returned to my beginning. I realize that if through science I can seize phenomena and enumerate them, I cannot, for all that, apprehend the world.

9) More recently, we find ourselves int he midst of a comparative examination of Christianity and Jain. While there are still many great quotes yet to come in this series, the following excellent excerpt could have easily been from any number of Byzantine Christian mystics but is in fact a saying of Mahavira, posted in Christ, Jain, and the Material World:

...there is no analogy whereby to know the transcendent; its essence is without form; there is no condition of the unconditioned. There is no sound, no color, no smell, no taste, not touch--nothing of that kind. Thus I say.

8) The past hundred posts has seen an unusual output of advice to parents, including from such notable figures as Stephen Prothero and the inimitable David Bentley Hart. Still, none left quite the impression as J. C. Ryle, who proved that some child-rearing wisdom is timeless. While there is much to commend the meat of his teaching, the most memorable quote came from The Wisdom of J. C. Ryle: An Appendix:

Never listen to those who tell you your children are good, and well brought up, and can be trusted.

7) I find the news deeply frustrating, as so many of us do. No story has so grated against my sensibilities for the last hundred posts than has the unceremonious dismissal of Joe Paterno. Still, the best quote here has come from the relatively minor Rep. Brad Drake, with this profoundly nonsensical, self-defeating comment posted in the Oct. 19th edition of In Other News:

I have no desire to humanely respect those that are inhumane.

6) I never seem to be lacking in pithy, inspirational thoughts from great pacifists. Last time around it was J. W. McGarvey. This time, let me offer one from J. D. Tant in The Wisdom of J. D. Tant:

I would as soon risk my chance of heaven to die drunk in a bawdy house as to die on the battlefield, with murder in my heart, trying to kill my fellow man.

5) Without a doubt, the past six months in the United States has been completely dominated by the American electoral process. More important than anything the candidates might be saying is this sentiment from Stephen Prothero offered in Knowledge and Franchise:

Few Americans are able to challenge claims made by politicians or pundits about Islam’s place in the war on terrorism or what the Bible says about homosexuality. This ignorance imperils our public life, putting citizens in the thrall of talking heads and effectively transferring power from the third estate (the people) to the fourth (the press).

4) Pope Benedict XVI has done more shocking things this year than kissing an imam. In addition to renewing the Catholic Church's stand against capital punishment, he had this to say about the Christian use of war in history, in Pope Shocks World by Doing the Right Thing:

"As a Christian I want to say at this point: yes, it is true, in the course of history, force has also been used in the name of the Christian faith," he said in his address to the delegations in an Assisi basilica.

"We acknowledge it with great shame. But it is utterly clear that this was an abuse of the Christian faith, one that evidently contradicts its true nature."

3) In a post which happened to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks which launched the world headlong into two prolonged multinational wars, I shared a Tentative Description of a Dinner Given to Promote the Impeachment of President Eisenhower, a poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti:

And after it became obvious that the strange rain would never stop and that Old Soldiers never drown and that roses in the rain had forgotten the word for bloom and that perverted pollen blown on sunless seas was eaten by irradiated fish who spawned up cloudleaf streams and fell on our dinnerplates

And after it became obvious that the President was doing everything in his power to make the world safe for nationalism his brilliant military mind never realized that nationalism itself was the idiotic superstition which would blow up the world

...The President himself came in

Took one look around and said

We Resign

2) On an anniversary which personally touched me a little more dearly, On the Anniversary of David Lipscomb's Death, I shared these thoughts of Price Billingsley on the great man who was so influential in his own day and continues to touch the hearts and minds of Christians who read his works:

I then got my first sight of the dear old Brother Lipscomb dead. I was amazed to see how fine looking and tall he was when straightened out in the casket. I saw him when he was dying, and a more abject object of decaying senility I never before beheld - body and soul distraught in the parting! But did I pity him? I pitied myself for not being as ready to die as he!

1) The recent past has had more than its fair share of high profile deaths, from entertainment stars like Elizabeth Taylor and Harry Morgan, to intellectual celebrities like Christopher Hitchens. The more important loss for many, however, was a completely overlooked Bible professor at a small Arkansas university. Before offering my own eulogy concurrent with his memorial service, I shared this quote from Amelia Burr on the day of his passing:

Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die.

Here's looking forward to another eventful hundred posts with even more memorable thoughts to share in the months to come.

Is Shame a Cure for Obesity?

Georgia's Strong4Life has been creating controversy recently with a series of pointed ads intended to raise awareness about the childhood obesity epidemic. And there is no doubt; childhood obesity has reached epidemic proportions. In the nation as a whole, the Center for Disease Control states that one in five children is obese with nearly that many adolescents obese as well. For children, that number has more than doubled in the last thirty years; for adolescents it has more than tripled. Georgia, and the Deep South as a whole, are at the center of the problem, with the Peach State ranking second in the nation in childhood obesity rates with approximately 37% of children being overweight or obese. This ranks behind only Mississippi with a obesity rate of more than 44%. Given that childhood obesity continues to be on the rise in Georgia (up 5.6% from 2005 to 2007), it is understandable why the people of Georgia would feel the need to take an extreme approach to combating the problem. Here is the course they've chosen.

Shocking, yes. But the people of Children's Healthcare of Atlanta say that shocking is precisely what is needed to jar Georgians out of their torpor and inspire positive action. Unsurprisingly there are countless detractors, including some notable academics. NPR spoke to one such detractor:

According to Rodney Lyn of Georgia State University's Institute of Public Health, "This campaign is more negative than positive."

Based on his research, Lyn says, the ads can hurt the very market they're targeting. "We know that stigmatization leads to lower self-esteem, potential depression. We know that kids will engage in physical activity less because they feel like they're going to be embarrassed. So there are all these other negative effects," he says.

ABC spoke to another:

"Blaming the victim rarely helps," said Dr. Miriam Labbok, director of the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "These children know they are fat and that they are ostracized already."

There are countless others, but I think the outrage is largely inappropriate. Labbok, for example, claims that the ads are blaming the victims. Hardly. The ads are blaming the perpetrators, and quit powerfully at that. In one of the video spots (embedded below), an overweight boy and his overweight mother are placed opposite one another. The boy, clearly overwrought, asks his mother, "Why am I fat?" The mother has no answer. It is obvious who the victim is here and who is the "criminal." The ads--all of the ads--are targeted at the parents who, through various forms of negligence and ignorance, are responsible for their children's poor health. Some of the ads are followed by a startling statistics: 75% of parents with overweight children were unaware there was a problem. That sort of willful blindness borders on unconscionable. It takes the faces and voices of overweight children confessing to their parents and to their communities "It's hard to be a little girl when you're not" and "Being fat takes the fun out of being a kid" and "I don't like going to school, cause all the other kids pick on me." It should hurt to watch that. It should eat us up inside because, overwhelmingly, it is within the power of parents and teachers and community leaders to improve if not solve the obesity crisis among children.

The campaign doesn't shame the victims. It shames parents, and they should be ashamed. It is shameful that children are plied constantly with junk food simply because their parents are unwilling to fight the domestic battles necessary to make them eat their vegetables. It is shameful that children's desires for fast food are regularly gratified as we continue to bow to the altar of convenience. It is shameful that we are too lazy to hide the PlayStation or computer power cord and force our children (or ourselves) outdoors for exercise. It is shameful that, as in the case in Georgia, community priorities are so skewed that cutbacks in education target areas like school nutrition, physical education, and recess. There are other culprits. Advertising groups that market unhealthy, inexpensive foods to children stand out. The problem begins and ends at home and in the schools. It is a problem of our making and one of which we ought to be greatly ashamed.

So if you're going to be outraged, why not be outraged that it has come to this? We are at a point as a culture where this kind of melodramatic public spectacle is necessary to shock parents and communities out of ignorance and apathy. If it works and Georgians begin to take control of the obesity epidemic in their state, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta is to be congratulated. If it doesn't, well that is just one more thing of which we should all collectively be ashamed.

The Angel at the Ford of Jabbok (Pt. 4)

After spending days parsing my thoughts on Jenson, Hart, and Hart on Jenson, all that remains is to share with you the memorable wisdom David Bentley Hart imparted:

Well, theology is a particularly savage business (at least when it is done right), and one that it is never too early to discourage one's children from entering.

The Wisdom of J. C. Ryle: An Appendix

While J. C. Ryle's The Duty of Parents interested me primarily as a corrective for modern trends in child-rearing, I was surprised to find myself engaged and inspired by other quotes in his work which often had nothing to do with raising children. So, in addition to some extra quotes on children that did not make it into the previous post, I would like to share a few other quotes from Ryle's work that I found interesting.

More advice on raising children:

A true Christian must be no slave to fashion, if he would train his child for heaven. He must not be content to do things merely because they are the custom of the world; to teach them and instruct them in certain ways, merely because it is usual; to allow them to read books of a questionable sort, merely because everybody else reads them; to let them form habits of a doubtful tendency, merely because they are the habits of the day. He must train with an eye to his children’s souls. He must not be ashamed to hear his training called singular and strange. What if it is? The time is short, — the fashion of this world passeth away. He that has trained his children for heaven, rather than for earth, — for God, rather than for man, — he is the parent that will be called wise at last.

Never listen to those who tell you your children are good, and well brought up, and can be trusted.

Fathers and mothers, you may take your children to be baptized, and have them enrolled in the ranks of Christ’s Church; — you may get godly sponsors to answer for them, and help you by their prayers; — you may send them to the best of schools, and give them Bibles and Prayer Books, and fill them with head knowledge but if all this time there is no regular training at home, I tell you plainly, I fear it will go hard in the end with your children’s souls. Home is the place where habits are formed; — home is the place where the foundations of character are laid; — home gives the bias to our tastes, and likings, and opinions. See then, I pray you, that there be careful training at home.

On human nature:

Believe me, we are not made for entire independence, — we are not fit for it.

No created being was ever meant to be idle. Service and work is the appointed portion of every creature of God.

...there is an alphabet to be mastered in every kind of knowledge...

The active moving mind is a hard mark for the devil to shoot at.

On Christian practice:

Prayer is the simplest means that man can use in coming to God. It is within reach of all, — the sick, the aged, the infirm, the paralytic, the blind, the poor, the unlearned, — all can pray. It avails you nothing to plead want of memory, and want of learning, and want of books, and want of scholarship in this matter. So long as you have a tongue to tell your soul’s state, you may and ought to pray.

Strive rather to be a living epistle of Christ, such as your families can read, and that plainly too.

And still more:

The Bible tells us that God has an elect people, — a family in this world. All poor sinners who have been convinced of sin, and fled to Jesus for peace, make up that family.

Children have ever been the bow from which the sharpest arrows have pierced man’s heart. Children have mixed the bitterest cups that man has ever had to drink. Children have caused the saddest tears that man has ever had to shed.

The Wisdom of J. C. Ryle

An incident recently brought to my attention has reignited my interest in a 19th century child-rearing manual that I had set aside for more challenging reading. When I heard about the family who had taken a contemporary manual and applied its teachings to the terminal detriment of their adopted daughter, I began to see in a new light the restrained, even-handed suggestions of Anglican bishop J. C. Ryle. In The Duties of Parents, Ryle offers seventeen suggestions for raising a Christian child that have a timeless quality to them. While his theology, apparent in some of his advice, takes a decidedly Calvinistic bent which may not sit well with everyone (myself included), the pedagogy Ryle outlines has the benefit of transcending the modern tendencies to polarize to the extremes of permissiveness or, in the case of the family in the news, cruelty. So, I offer these seventeen training tips now (with the full knowledge that I am someone without children of my own) both in the form of quotations from Ryle and my own translation of his advice into a modern idiom.


1. Left to his own devices, your child will screw up with tremendous acuity. You must actively train a child in what is right or he will incline toward what is wrong.

Remember children are born with a decided bias towards evil, and therefore if you let them choose for themselves, they are certain to choose wrong. The mother cannot tell what her tender infant may grow up to be, — tall or short, weak or strong, wise or foolish he may be any of these things or not, — it is all uncertain. But one thing the mother can say with certainty: he will have a corrupt and sinful heart… for pity’s sake, give him not up to his own wayward tastes and inclinations. It must not be his likings and wishes that are consulted. He knows not yet what is good for his mind and soul, any more than what is good for his body. You do not let him decide what he shall eat, and what he shall drink, and how he shall be clothed. Be consistent, and deal with his mind in like manner.

2. Raise your child with a love and affection that is both genuine and apparent.

Love is one grand secret of successful training. Anger and harshness may frighten, but they will not persuade the child that you are right; and if he sees you often out of temper, you will soon cease to have his respect… Try hard to keep up a hold on your child’s affections. It is a dangerous thing to make your children afraid of you. Anything is almost better than reserve and constraint between your child and yourself; and this will come in with fear. Fear puts an end to openness of manner; — fear leads to concealment; — fear sows the seed of much hypocrisy, and leads to many a lie.

3. Remember that you are the greatest pedagogical force in your child’s life. Embrace that reality.

We depend, in a vast measure, on those who bring us up. We get from them a colour, a taste, a bias which cling to us more or less all our lives. We catch the language of our nurses and mothers, and learn to speak it almost insensibly, and unquestionably we catch something of their manners, ways, and mind at the same time.

4. Don't let momentary concerns cause you to lose sight of eternal ones. A child's soul is in your charge no less than his body.

Precious, no doubt, are these little ones in your eyes; but if you love them, think often of their souls. No interest should weigh with you so much as their eternal interests. No part of them should be so dear to you as that part which will never die. The world, with all its glory, shall pass away; the hills shall melt; the heavens shall be wrapped together as a scroll; the sun shall cease to shine. But the spirit which dwells in those little creatures, whom you love so well, shall outlive them all, and whether in happiness or misery (to speak as a man) will depend on you.

5. Begin to teach a child the Scriptures even while he is young. Let them be the bedrock of his developing character.

See that they read [the Bible] regularly. Train them to regard it as their soul’s daily food, — as a thing essential to their soul’s daily health. I know well you can not make this anything more than a form; but there is no telling the amount of sin which a mere form may indirectly restrain. See that they read it all. You need not shrink from bringing any doctrine before them. You need not fancy that the leading doctrines of Christianity are things which children cannot understand. Children understand far more of the Bible than we are apt to suppose.

6. Teach a child to pray, and thereby to confer actively and personally with God.

Prayer is one great secret of spiritual prosperity. When there is much private communion with God, your soul will grow like the grass after rain; when there is little, all will be at a standstill, you will barely keep your soul alive. Show me a growing Christian, a going forward Christian, a strong Christian, a flourishing Christian, and sure am I, he is one that speaks often with his Lord.

7. Instill in a child the value of being a regular participant in the life of the Christian community. He should know that to be a part of God's family and to participate in its formal life is a blessing not a chore.

Tell them of the duty and privilege of going to the house of God, and joining in the prayers of the congregation. Tell them that wherever the Lord’s people are gathered together, there the Lord Jesus is present in an especial manner, and that those who absent themselves must expect, like the Apostle Thomas, to miss a blessing.

8. Teach your child to have faith in your instruction, and give him no reason to doubt that trust.

...you should train them up to believe what you say. You should try to make them feel confidence in your judgment, and respect your opinions, as better than their own. You should accustom them to think that, when you say a thing is bad for them, it must be bad, and when you say it is good for them, it must be good; that your knowledge, in short, is better than their own, and that they may rely implicitly on your word. Teach them to feel that what they know not now, they will probably know hereafter, and to be satisfied there is a reason and a needs-be for everything you require them to do...No doubt it is absurd to make a mystery of everything you do, and there are many things which it is well to explain to children, in order that they may see that they are reasonable and wise. But to bring them up with the idea that they must take nothing on trust, that they, with their weak and imperfect understandings, must have the "why" and the "wherefore" made clear to them at every step they take, — this is indeed a fearful mistake, and likely to have the worst effect on their minds.

9. Ensure that your child knows the virtue of obedience, because a habit of disobedience spills over into unexpected and dangerous quarters.

Teach them to obey while young, or else they will be fretting against God all their lives long, and wear themselves out with the vain idea of being independent of His control. Reader, this hint is only too much needed. You will see many in this day who allow their children to choose and think for themselves long before they are able, and even make excuses for their disobedience, as if it were a thing not to be blamed. To my eyes, a parent always yielding, and a child always having its own way, are a most painful sight.

10. Make sure your child always speaks the truth not merely that he doesn't lie.

Try to keep this continually before your children’s minds. Press upon them at all times, that less than the truth is a lie; that evasion, excuse-making, and exaggeration are all halfway houses towards what is false, and ought to be avoided. Encourage them in any circumstances to be straightforward, and, whatever it may cost them, to speak the truth.

11. Do not give much time to idleness, even though your child's idleness may be convenient for you.

Reader, I ask you to set these things before the minds of your children. Teach them the value of time, and try to make them learn the habit of using it well. It pains me to see children idling over what they have in hand, whatever it may be. I love to see them active and industrious, and giving their whole heart to all they do; giving their whole heart to lessons, when they have to learn; — giving their whole heart even to their amusements, when they go to play. But if you love them well, let idleness be counted a sin in your family.

12. Avoid over-indulgence. It is an easier and deadlier trap to fall into than small excesses in austerity.

It is natural to be tender and affectionate towards your own flesh and blood, and it is the excess of this very tenderness and affection which you have to fear. Take heed that it does not make you blind to your children’s faults, and deaf to all advice about them. Take heed lest it make you overlook bad conduct, rather than have the pain of inflicting punishment and correction...Do not, I pray you, make your children idols...

13. God has a family over which He is the Father. He is the ultimate model for righteous parenting.

Now, reader, notwithstanding all these things, did you ever hear of a single child of God who thought his Father did not treat him wisely? No, I am sure you never did. God’s children would always tell you, in the long run, it was a blessed thing they did not have their own way, and that God had done far better for them than they could have done for themselves. Yes! And they could tell you, too, that God’s dealings had provided more happiness for them than they ever would have obtained themselves, and that His way, however dark at times, was the way of pleasantness and the path of peace. I ask you to lay to heart the lesson which God’s dealings with His people is meant to teach you. Fear not to withhold from your child anything you think will do him harm, whatever his own wishes may be. This is God’s plan. Hesitate not to lay on him commands, of which he may not at present see the wisdom, and to guide him in ways which may not now seem reasonable to his mind. This is God’s plan. Shrink not from chastising and correcting him whenever you see his soul’s health requires it, however painful it may be to your feelings; and remember medicines for the mind must not be rejected because they are bitter. This is God’s plan. And be not afraid, above all, that such a plan of training will make your child unhappy. I warn you against this delusion. Depend on it, there is no surer road to unhappiness than always having our own way...Reader, be not wiser than God; — train your children as He trains His.

14. Your child is watching you, and no matter what you say, he will learn first and best from what you do.

Instruction, and advice, and commands will profit little, unless they are backed up by the pattern of your own life. Your children will never believe you are in earnest, and really wish them to obey you, so long as your actions contradict your counsel. Archbishop Tillotson made a wise remark when he said, "To give children good instruction, and a bad example, is but beckoning to them with the head to show them the way to heaven, while we take them by the hand and lead them in the way to hell." ...Fathers and mothers, do not forget that children learn more by the eye than they do by the ear. No school will make such deep marks on character as home. The best of schoolmasters will not imprint on their minds as much as they will pick up at your fireside. Imitation is a far stronger principle with children than memory. What they see has a much stronger effect on their minds than what they are told.

15. In raising your child, never underestimate the pervasive power of sin.

You must not expect to find your children’s minds a sheet of pure white paper, and to have no trouble if you only use right means. I warn you plainly you will find no such thing. It is painful to see how much corruption and evil there is in a young child’s heart, and how soon it begins to bear fruit. Violent tempers, self- will, pride, envy, sullenness, passion, idleness, selfishness, deceit, cunning, falsehood, hypocrisy, a terrible aptness to learn what is bad, a painful slowness to learn what is good, a readiness to pretend anything in order to gain their own ends, — all these things, or some of them, you must be prepared to see, even in your own flesh and blood. In little ways they will creep out at a very early age; it is almost startling to observe how naturally they seem to spring up. Children require no schooling to learn to sin.

16. Do not be discouraged when your efforts at first appear fruitless. There is no way to know how a proper raising will carry on even after you are gone.

You may not see with your own eyes the result of careful training, but you know not what blessed fruits may not spring from it, long after you are dead and gone. It is not God’s way to give everything at once...Many children, I doubt not, shall rise up in the day of judgment, and bless their parents for good training, who never gave any signs of having profited by it during their parents’ lives.

17. Entreat God constantly on behalf of your children. Do not delude yourself into thinking that you are up to the challenge of raising them on your own.

The Lord is far more willing to hear than we to pray.

Causality vs. Moral Culpability

The issue of causality vs. moral culpability has been weighing on my mind for months now. The more I mull it over, the more I am startled by our culture's unwillingness to make any effort to change its behaviors and perceptions for fear that it will somehow be an admission of guilt. It is as if, in ignorance, we have collectively walked into a bear cave and been mauled, but rather than agreeing that we should avoid bear caves in the future we keep walking foolishly into them because to stop would be a tacit admission that we were somehow guilty of our own mauling. It’s nonsense, plain and simple.

In conjunction with my reflections on The Obedient Wives Club, I promised to give a fuller discussion of this problem. This is it. My thoughts on this coalesced in response to a story that broke back in March, and I wrote the below then. If facts have changed in the particular case in question, there may be some factual inaccuracies or at least some strokes imprecisely brushed. The point, however, remains the same.

-----------------------------------------------

There is a difference between causality and moral culpability that is critical for the construction and preservation of a healthy society. Unfortunately, this distinction is not only not acknowledge but is feared, with the ultimate consequence being that in an effort to empower victims, we actually ensure a sort of universal victimization. Let me explain.

For every moral event, there is both a morally neutral set of causes which brings about the event and a moral actor who is the cause of the event itself. Moral culpability necessarily resides in the latter, but, with the exception of omniscient and omnipotent beings, the moral actor cannot have exhaustive power over the former category. While the emphasis of my point will be on negative moral actions, let me illustrate this principle first with a positive example. Let us imagine that your spouse needs you to go to the grocery store on a stormy day. When you arrive, you are forced to park at the back of the parking lot. There you see a woman without an umbrella carrying a baby. You go to her and offer to share your umbrella.

From a deterministic perspective, we can posit an infinite causal catena or, if you prefer, an immense chain of cause and effect which stretches back to the beginning of the universe (be it in God or in natural causation) leading to any particular interchange, including the one described above. For practical purposes, however, let us admit a number of more direct and evident causes. First, had it not been raining, there would have been no need either for you to have your umbrella or for you to offer it to the woman. Furthermore, had the woman not forgotten her umbrella, you never would have acted virtuously in offering yours to her. Finally, had your spouse not needed you to go to the store, you would never have encountered the woman.

All of the above, I hope, is entirely self-evident. I hope it is equally obvious that any moral culpability (and here, I intend both positive and negative moral value) belong to you alone as the moral actor. The fact that an obvious causal connection can be seen between your spouse needing groceries and your moral action does not lead you automatically to impute moral virtue to your spouse. Even more nonsensical would be to suggest that the woman with the baby is morally virtuous because had she not been there without an umbrella you never would have behaved virtuously. The recognition of causality has essentially no bearing on moral culpability.

With the principles thus laid out--hopefully in a way that is totally uncontroversial--I will shift to address negative moral action, first in a hypothetical case and then in the actual case that has spawned this musing. Let us take the same inoffensive logic that recognized causality but imputed moral virtue only to the moral agent at the grocery store and apply it to a touchier subject. Imagine now that you asked your spouse to go to the grocery store on a stormy night, New Years Eve to be precise. While driving to the store, your spouse’s is engaged in a fatal collision with a drunk driver. Looking once again at the obvious and direct causes, we can say that had you not needed groceries, it is likely that your spouse would be alive. Had it not been stormy, it is likely that your spouse would be alive. While there may be some impulse in us to blame God for making it rain or yourself for needing the errand run, ultimately we know that moral culpability for the death is on the moral actor alone: the drunk driver.

Let me go a step further, however, and point out that neutral moral causality is not entirely out of our hands. While it may be psychologically dangerous to dwell on this in the actual instance of tragedy, for the purposes of our hypothetical let us admit that we can make a reasonable assumption about the danger of driving on New Year’s Eve (when drunk drivers abound) in stormy weather. Had we been thinking with a level head about the dangers of driving when compared with the pressing need for groceries, we may very well have concluded that it would be better to wait rather than risk grievous injury. We make these kind of decisions all the time, trying to control or predict insofar as is possible for us the various morally neutral causes which may come to bear on our lives. If you don’t want to get mugged, don’t walk down a dark alley at night. It is common sense.

I imagine at this point, if you have bothered to read that interminable build up, that you may be wondering if anything of any real substance will be said, anything which runs against the grain. In truth, I agree that all of the above seems totally innocuous. There has been, however, outrage over a recent story about a young girl who was gang raped by nearly twenty men. More to the point, there has been outrage over some of the coverage of the story which quotes members of the girl’s community describing her dress and behavior as promiscuous. The culprit in question is the New York Times which reported:

Residents in the neighborhood where the abandoned trailer stands — known as the Quarters — said the victim had been visiting various friends there for months. They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground, some said.

“Where was her mother? What was her mother thinking?” said Ms. Harrison, one of a handful of neighbors who would speak on the record. “How can you have an 11-year-old child missing down in the Quarters?”

I am sure that we would all agree that the act perpetrated by these men is truly despicable and that they alone are responsible for it. It would, in fact, be wrong to try to defer any blame for what happened onto this girl or her parents. None of that is in question, and frankly none of that is truly addressed by the quotes which the New York Times reported. It would appear, at first blush, that the members of the community of Cleveland cannot totally ignore causality. It is something which we ought to be able to recognize, perhaps even intuitively and particularly those causes which are within the realm of our control. Certainly, anyone can be raped, and there is nothing to say that an Amish woman locked in an isolated country home with a state of the art security system (if you can even imagine such a thing) still couldn’t be raped. In theory. From the perspective of our experience though, we know that if you go jogging alone at night, you are at risk. We know that if you let a stranger mix your drinks, you’re at risk. And if you let your eleven year old daughter present herself to the public as an object of sexual desire, dressed immodestly and surrounding herself with older males, then you can imagine that she is at risk. Not at fault, mind you, but at risk.

And why shouldn’t we notice that with relation to this story? We tell women never to go jogging alone at night. We tell women not to let strangers mix their drinks. It is that same logic which ought to permit us to say, “Look! Our culture creates permissive parents and children who think that promiscuity will lead to happiness. Maybe that has something to do with a world where twenty men can gang rape a child.” There is nothing in that which says, “She got what she deserved,” nothing which tries to mitigate the legal or moral responsibility of the rapists. It only recognizes causality and suggests a preventative.

In a perfect world, we could behave in ways which are morally neutral without any thought of evil. I could send my wife to the store and would only need to worry about events which were truly accidents. People would stop at stop signs, never drink and drive, and never take advantage of opportunities for sin. Shocking as this may be for the more delicate among you, however, we do not live in such a world. In the treacherous endeavor of navigating through life, it is pragmatic (if not always encouraging) to remember that humanity is a base, degenerate group of semi-rational beasts. For every saint who offers an umbrella to a drenched mother there is a vicious, nasty, brutish scoundrel who cares only for himself. If you don’t want your wives and daughters raped, then don’t send them out on the street in clothing which invites sexual objectification. It is no guarantee, but it is a cause which is within our limited sphere of control. You are all welcome to defend parents rights to be as negligent as they please and a person’s right to be as reckless as he or she pleases, but I dare say that it would be more constructive for us as a society to take instances like these as nauseating object lessons in the necessity of living shrewdly but innocently in a world which demands both.

Breaking News: Liberals Run the Media

In a new revelation that should shock absolutely no one, Ben Shapiro is claiming that liberals run the media. Sure, it's been a stock accusation by conservatives for years now, but Shapiro says he has proof: the liberals themselves admitting it with glee. In a newly released book, Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV, Shapiro breaks down the content of dozens of interviews with the minds behind Friends, House, Happy Days, Rosanne, M*A*S*H, and more. They gladly admit not only that they actively pushed a progressive social and political agenda in their TV shows but that they delight in the fact that conservatives are ostracized and discriminated against in Hollywood. Here are some snippets of what Shapiro claims to have gotten out of his interviews:

In one video, "Friends" co-creator Marta Kauffman says that when she cast Candace Gingrich-Jones, half-sister of Republican former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, as the minister of a lesbian wedding, "There was a bit of [a middle finger] in it to the right wing."

Kauffman also acknowledges she "put together a staff of mostly liberal people," which is another major point of Shapiro's book: that conservatives aren't welcome in Hollywood.

Maybe that's because they're "idiots" and have "medieval minds." At least that's what "Soap" and "Golden Girls" creator Susan Harris thinks of TV's conservative critics.

However, the ranks of dumb right-wingers has dwindled, according to Harris, whose video has her saying: "At least, you know, we put Obama in office, and so people, I think, are getting — have gotten — a little bit smarter."

...an additional video has Di Bona, who also created "America's Funniest Home Videos," becoming remarkably blunt about his approval of a lack of political diversity in Hollywood. When Shapiro asks what he thinks of conservative critics who say everyone in Hollywood is liberal, Di Bona responds: "I think it's probably accurate, and I'm happy about it."

Even more interesting than the obvious revelations that shows like Friends or M*A*S*H have an agenda are accusations that shows with a wide viewing audience among conservatives are also secretly trying to push a liberal agenda. The most obvious example of this:

Shapiro released two videos Tuesday, one featuring "COPS" creator John Langley saying he's partial to segments where white people are the criminals...

I know a lot of people who are very restrictive about what their children watch on TV. I have always understood it, but I admit that it always made me sort of uneasy. At the same time, I wonder to what degree the liberality of my own parents TV watching habits has affected my worldview. I suppose at the very least it merits consideration to what degree we want to allow ourselves and our children to be subtly indoctrinated by people who have an admitted agenda in their programming. After all, according to Shapiro, not even Sesame Street is above reproach. It's a good thing I was raised on Mr. Rogers.

Reading Titus with John Chrysostom (1:5-11)

John's second homily on Titus addresses 1:5-11, the qualifications for elders:

The reason I left you in Crete was that you might straighten out what was left unfinished and appoint elders in every town, as I directed you. An elder must be blameless, the husband of but one wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. Since an overseer is entrusted with God's work, he must be blameless—not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. Rather he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.

For there are many rebellious people, mere talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision group. They must be silenced, because they are ruining whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach—and that for the sake of dishonest gain. (NIV)

It should be noted that by John's time the episcopacy has been established for at least three centuries, so that these verses are understood exclusively in episcopal terms. I have used various titles to refer to church leaders below, but it should always be understood that John sees these passages as addressing bishops.

The text of the homily can be found here.

From God Be the Glory

“Retire from the earth, and look to that theater that is in Heaven.”

I found it somewhat ironic that in his exposition on a passage of scripture which gives a man (Titus) the means by which to judge the character of other men (potential elders) John should find the occasions to so vehemently reject the notion that Christians ought to care about the judgments of men. Upon further reflection, however, it seemed quite appropriate if the list of qualifications given is understood not as the human means of judging character but instead God’s. What is presented in Titus is God’s rubric for the character of a man, and that is the only judgment the Christian should consider.

For John there is nothing “so tyrannical, [and] so universally prevalent,” as the wanton pursuit of glory, i.e. human accolades. John sees in his congregation and in the hearts of all men the tendency to act primarily so that others will see and applaud our good works. The glory which is acquired is, nevertheless, utterly worthless. “…human glory is empty, and an imitation of glory; it is not true glory.” Only glory which is from God is true glory, and seeking that glory, according to John, is the only way to overcome the temptations of vainglory.

“When in doing any good thou considerst that it ought to be displayed to men, and thou seekest for some spectators of the action, and art in travail to be seen, reflect that God beholds thee, and all that desire will be extinguished. Retire from the earth, and look to that theater that is in Heaven. If men should praise thee, yet hereafter they will blame thee, will envy thee, will assail thy character; or if they do not yet their praise will not benefit thee. It is not so with God.”

When this true glory from God is understood as the real aim of our virtuous deeds and is sought accordingly, the praise which is received from men becomes meaningless in comparison. Thus, John exhorts us to become “as those who desire gold, but receive clay.” Whatever praise is given by men is to glory from God what dirt is to the most precious material man can imagine.

Having God as the sole judge, living according to His standards, comes at a price. God, who is always watching when a good deed is performed, sees every evil, even the “hidden” evil deep within the heart. For the pious, this is good news, for “thou obtainest glory for thy piety. If thou art truly pious, and conscious of no guilt, thou shouldest rejoice, not because thou are reputed pious, but because thou art so.” On the other hand, “if while conscious of guilt, thou art supposed by all to be pure, instead of rejoicing, thou shouldest grieve and mourn bitterly, keeping constantly in view that Day, in which all things will be revealed, in which the hidden things of darkness will be brought to light.” If God alone is judge, then the need to be pious becomes more important than the need to be seen being pious. If God alone is judge, it is more critical that one avoids being impious than that one avoids being seen to be impious. For this reason, John exhorts “Let us cast away the sheep’s clothing, and rather become sheep.”

In reading a text on the virtue of the leaders of the church, John sees the perfect opportunity (and perhaps justly so) to remind his congregants that the glory which is afforded to the great men of the church is from God alone. Whatever judgments are made in the selection of leaders and whatever honor is accorded to them because of their apparent virtues, the true judgment rests in the hands of God. The best that can be done here and now is to judge ourselves in view of what God requires of us, to find joy in the knowledge that He rejoices in our virtues and to be shamed by the fact that He will make known our vices.

Prescription for Christians from Descriptions of Elders

The elders being selected in Titus 1 are undoubtedly intended to be the pillars of the church, the cream of the crop, so to speak. What Paul offers is a list of qualifications that seem largely descriptive (though they are undoubtedly commands to Titus to select such men). John, however, sees in these ideal descriptions the grounds for which to make a number of practical assertions about everyday life for Christians.

The command that the elder should have only one wife is for John a tacit affirmation of the sanctity of marriage. In a modern context that does not seem all that crucial, but in early Christian times as far back as the New Testament, the question of the validity of marriage in God’s plan was widely questioned. Here, John goes further than many other authors who merely accept marriage either as permissible or inevitable. He declares that “it is not an unholy thing in itself, but so far honorable, that a married man might ascend the holy throne.” Leaders, and therefore all men, should have a high regard for marriage. Entering into a single marriage and never a second shows the high regard for one’s wife that Christ has had for his bride, the church.

John also has a word for absentee fathers based on the section relative to the orderly behavior of an elder’s children. Apparently, as is still the case, there were fathers in ancient times who were “occupied in the pursuit of wealth” such that they had “made [their] children a secondary concern, and not bestowed much care upon them…” This neglect is unacceptable to John, as it should be, and he places the sins of the children on the heads of the fathers (a nice reversal of biblical imagery). “Sins are not so prevalent by nature, as to overcome so much previous care,” John speculates. If fathers would dedicate sufficient time and offer adequate instruction, their children would not be delinquents. A father has not only a great length of time, but the force of laws and nature to inculcate virtue into his children. He must take responsibility for that.

Finally, John has advice for rulers of any sort, advice which seems obvious now but may appear strange given the authoritarian way the government and the church in antiquity are viewed. Beginning with the affirmation that an elder ought not to be “a striker” (NIV, violent), John concludes that “…a ruler without, as he rules by law and compulsion, perhaps does not consult the wishes of those under his rule…if he so conduct himself as to do everything of his own will, and share counsels with no one, makes his presidency tyrannical rather than popular.” Instead, leaders “ought to rule men with their own consent” so that their subjects “will be thankful for his rule.” Authoritarian leaders are not good leaders, a maxim as true in the fourth century as it is now.

It seems perfectly reasonable to me to take these qualifications for leaders and extrapolate them to other areas of life. Certainly the behaviors which are good elders who are fathers are good for all fathers. Surely virtues which are necessary of leaders in the church are necessary for Christian leaders in business, in the community, or even in the home. All men, in fact, ought to aspire to live a life worth of position of elder without the ambition, perhaps, to actually attain that office.