An Old-fashioned Way to Broaden Our Perspective on Love

Popular culture has a lot to say about how people ought to live, and a lot of people listen to it. One of the top tenets of pop culture centers around a particular narrative. It's a narrative that makes us feel good. It's a narrative the sells well. It's also a narrative that interferes with our ability to love.

What is this narrative? It is that of responding to pain by "taking control" of our life and making changes. We adore the moral superiority of change.

It almost doesn't matter what the change is. Lose 100 pounds. Win the contest. Get a makeover with a new wardrobe and makeup. Go skydiving. Quit corporate life and become an entrepreneur. Get divorced and find new love. Just, for heaven's sake, do something.

Often, of course, human beings need to be prodded out of ruts for our own good. Yet the modern narrative about change obscures the idea that real change requires long-term dedication instead of just a big burst of dramatic action. It suggests that rather than changing ourselves from the inside, we need to change ourselves through our circumstances. We need a divorce and skydiving lessons.

All of this clouds our ability to see that when it comes to love, sometimes patience and endurance are actually the more moral choices.

Recently I stumbled across a secular review of the Christian movie Fireproof. (For anyone unfamiliar: it's an Evangelical Christian production about a firefighter who "accepts Christ" while attempting to rescue his dying marriage. Yes, it's a cheesy script with B acting). However, what struck me was how the secular reviewer interpreted the message on marriage. The reviewer said, "Marriage is portrayed as tough and often devoid of love, affection, or respect, but something that Christians are expected to endure anyway." It's a surprisingly grim-sounding summary of a story with a happy ending.

Even though the protagonist of Fireproof is able to save his marriage after completely humbling himself and showing sacrificial love to his wife for a period of time, the reviewer isn't happy. He complains that "The burden is on [the protagonist] to turn the other cheek as [his wife] spurns him again and again, with nobody calling her on her own questionable behavior."

If people are always taught to fix their problems by changing their circumstances, we lose the ability to see that sometimes, our job is to do the right thing in tough circumstances even when it doesn't seem to be working. Even when it's not fair. Even when the other people around us aren't supporting our choices and desires.

Popular culture demands that life be good and happy right now. It can't see the moral virtue in failing to dump a spouse who isn't being nice, regardless of the reasons.

The old-fashioned view of love and marriage is different. It brings a much broader perspective. It sees life not as a single moment in time that ought to be happy--and, if not, ought to be fixed--but part of a bigger picture. It suggests to us that before we demand a divorce and skydiving lessons, we might look at ourselves and repent of our own failings regardless of our current circumstances.

An old-fashioned appreciation of endurance allows us to say sorry even if the other guy won't. It allows us to wash the dishes even if our spouse doesn't take out the trash. Ultimately, unlike an addiction to change as the solution to unhappiness, it can actually free us from our circumstances. That's a pretty liberating thing.

My Recent Work Elsewhere

Should you be interested:

How Our New Definition of Freedom Causes Cruelty
In the past, freedom meant to ability to obey one’s beliefs. Now, freedom is the ability to require others to obey one’s own beliefs about oneself. 

 

It's OK for Babies to Swallow 'Me-time"
(The funny thing is that despite the title, this article was written to discuss a mother's need for rest and refreshment. It's just that mental rest isn't quite the same thing as 'me-time.')

 I've also posted about the modern husband. 

Cautionary Tales

I was talking with a friend about fairy tales lately. Among many other purposes, fairy tales once provided children with memorable warnings. The stories cautioned young listeners about certain aspects of humanity and about the necessity for humility and courtesy to strangers. When I wondered aloud whether a modern equivalent exists (do we tell cautionary tales to our children today, or just inspirational tales?) my friend pointed out that the modern world is full of cautionary tales. However, they are all for the parents.

Nowadays, it is generally the parents who are supposed to worry about strangers, dangers, and rustling noises in the woods. Not children. Children mustn't be exposed to darkness in their stories, lest they be alarmed. Not, at least, until they are old enough for the YA section.

I wonder why we do this. Being me, of course I think that all the adult cautionary tales and safety obsession is connected to other ideas, which are connected to other ideas, which show us what some of the problems in the modern world are. I'm working on an article about that.

We Shop Because We Yearn (at The Federalist)

My opinion on why we buy pink (or blue) baby tubs and crazily-expensive wedding dresses. Plus a Dorothy Sayers quotation, which always makes an article better.

We Shop Because We Yearn 

Bridal gowns, baby gear, and other stuff we shop for are part of the human quest for identity and quietly acknowledge the realities political correctness seeks to deny. 

In “Murder Must Advertise,” a Dorothy Sayers mystery novel from 1933, the aristocratic sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey goes undercover in an advertising firm. The narrator tells us, “He had never realized the enormous commercial importance of the comparatively poor. Not on the wealthy, who buy only what they want when they want it, was the vast superstructure of industry founded and built up, but on those who, aching for a luxury beyond their reach and for a leisure for ever denied them, could be bullied or wheedled into spending their few hardly won shillings on whatever might give them, if only for a moment, a leisured and luxurious illusion.” 

The advertising of our decade is very similar: products are advertised not as shirts, cereal, or face lotion, but as “something to make you look thin,” “something to help your kids get good grades in school,” and “something to make you look like Jennifer Lawrence.” The items with which we fill our shopping carts are as much ideas, fantasies, and forlorn hopes as they are food and raiment. Advertising is manipulative, but in its own limited way, it also reveals the yearnings of the American heart.

Read the rest HERE.

An Alien Sainthood

We remember Elizabeth of Hungary today. I must admit that I am not aware of the history of why Lutherans have selected this particular medieval woman for such official recognition. All I know is that she is admired for her self-sacrificing charity and generosity to others, and is one of the relatively few individuals commemorated in our Lutheran hymnal. You can find a brief text about her life here.

However, I was struck by one brief sentence (see the above link). After she was made a widow at the age of twenty, she "made provisions for her children and entered into an austere life as a nun in the Order of Saint Francis." Wow. Because she was married at the age of fourteen, the eldest of her three children could not have been any older than five or six. Yet she gave them into the care of someone else so that she could pursue austerity in a convent. Sorry, kids, Daddy is dead and Mommy is leaving. To top all that off, "Her self-denial led to failing health and an early death in 1231 at the age of 24."

To modern ears, Elizabeth's choices sound quite dreadful. They fly in the face of the priorities that we consider moral. As a mother myself, I find it hard to understand why she didn't wait until her little ones were grown.

The fact that Elizabeth's actions are considered proof of inspiring, saintly virtue shows that a cultural divide lies between her day and ours. The sanctity of the nuclear family was not a medieval value. Furthermore, the (Victorian?) idea that any decent woman would put her children first was not "obvious" to Elizabeth and her contemporaries. Nor did they recoil at a self-denial that we moderns would probably diagnose as dysfunctional or even a sign of mental illness (since it led to death).

There are, of course, many reasons for these differences, including the simple one that the nuclear family was not a sustainable unit in an era when death frequently winnowed out both parents and children. Besides, long-term life goals (such as a plan of entering a convent once one's youngest kid graduated from high school) would have been far more tenuous.

Despite all of my intellectual willingness to understand the values of Elizabeth's day, my emotions still balk at her choices (I can't help being from Twenty-First Century America). However, the beautiful thing is that Christians need not all belong to the same culture, live in the same way, or agree with each other's actions. It is good to be reminded sometimes that the many things I mentally categorize as being part of the "Christian life" are not perhaps ultimately important. What matters is not us and our culture and our Christian lifestyles, but Christ and the cross.

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I am going to listen to this Issues, Etc. episode about her. Perhaps it will help me understand.

St. Elizabeth of Hungary bringing food for
the inmates of Wellcome.

There May Not be a Santa Clause, Virginia; But Advent is Real

Recently I was able to hear a presentation by Dr. Cameron Mackenzie, a scholar and professor at Concordia Theological Seminary in Ft. Wayne. He made the point that the way that we think about history is very different from the way that Martin Luther did so. When we study the past, we are looking for patterns of natural causes and effects. When Luther looked at history, he spoke frequently of the direct action of both God and Satan.

Insulated by years of scientific advances, we tend to think of life as primarily something that we can improve and control. For instance, we expect as a matter of course to be able to find cures for illnesses and to eradicate diseases. In contrast, Luther and his contemporaries did not see the world as under the control of humanity. Life was something that happened to one, and disease and death was something that could come at any time (as could a miraculous deliverance from death).

I wonder if we are not in danger of losing sight of a reality that Luther knew very well. It can be too easy for us to feel that we are in control of our lives. With the adjustment of a thermostat and the willingness to pay a utility bill, we can summon cold in summer and heat in winter. With a bit of voice activated android technology, we can chat with people who would otherwise be unreachable. We are even encouraged by our culture to pursue our personal happiness at any cost, and told that we can achieve any dream if we will only believe in ourselves. It is tempting to utter the idolatrous words of Henley’s poem “Invictus” and to say, “I am the master of my fate.”

And yet, we are not. No matter how many Paleo steaks and organic vegetables we eat, we cannot stop ourselves from dying, perhaps today or perhaps in thirty years. No matter how many self-actualization classes we take, we cannot make our significant other love us (or even stick with us) in the way that we want. No matter how resolutely we try, we cannot even prevent ourselves from the very sins that hurt ourselves and those we most love. That is why we need Advent.

To submit to the rhythms of a church calendar helps us to remember that, just as we cannot make today Christmas (no matter how many Bing Crosby tunes we play), we cannot rule our own fate. To live according to an external order is to be free of the terrifying, lonely, ultimately empty illusion that the world belongs to us.

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Joining Sister, Daughter, Mother, Wife for an Advent Link-Up Party!

Here Lie No Dragons: Unspoken Rules of Socially Acceptable Storytelling

(Or, What I Learned from Ursula K. Le Guin and Jules Verne)

UPDATE: I expanded this blog post into an article for The Federalist, (read it here).

As I peruse Jules Verne’s dramatic 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, I am repeatedly struck not just with a case of I-am-not-buying-into-this-improbable-event-in-your-plot, but with actual discomfort. There are certain passages that conform to Nineteenth Century mores but clash with ours. Nowadays, when we talk about the astonishing creatures of the ocean, we are supposed to sound…. well, positive. Admiring. We aren’t supposed to judge them according to human standards of behavior or physical appearance, and to declare some of them (such as gigantic octopi) “monstrosities of nature,” or to decide that others (like sperm whales) are “mischievous creatures” who should be slaughtered in a “wholesome massacre” because of their supposed viciousness toward other, nicer whales. Our modern stories are supposed to focus on the danger that unrestrained humanity poses to the animals, not the danger that wild animals pose to humanity. To read about a scientist who says, “What a magnificent specimen of a rare creature! Quick, kill it!” feels downright awkward. I myself am no foe of hunting, but I am enough of a child of my era to experience unease when the fictional sea runs red with the blood of whales.

I am also reading the first story in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Tales from Earthsea (a collection of novellas that intersect with her Earthsea fantasy novels). What fascinates me is the contrast between this story and the author’s first Earthsea novel from 1968 (in the forward to Tales from Earthsea, Mrs. Le Guin herself acknowledges that the vast social changes in moral outlook have changed her own view and thus her stories).

The first Earthsea novel is called A Wizard of Earthsea. In it, a young man named Ged travels the difficult path to wizardry and self-knowledge. The story is unconventional in many ways that were, in their day, quite bold. For instance, although not all the book jacket illustrations reveal this, the hero and most of the characters are not white people. For another, instead of engaging in epic warfare (or any warfare at all) the hero endures a long quest that ultimately revolves around facing and accepting his mortality. It is a hero saga and a quest story with a counter-cultural, reflective atmosphere (and without any fair-haired maidens who require rescue).

Not Just the Pretty Babies

I'm in The Federalist today.

The Pro-life Movement is About Sacrifice, Not Sentimentality

Gentle lighting casts a glow across the perfect, healthy, Caucasian newborn who sleeps in a cocoon of white blanket. The photographer has captured the baby-ethos that tugs on the heartstrings of any member of the human race with half a heart, and it is hard to look at the picture without an inward, “Aww.” The text that is superimposed over the photo says, “Not a mistake. Not a problem. Not a burden. Not an inconvenience. Not a nuisance. Not an accident. Not a punishment.” Then, in larger font, “A miracle.” It is all very lovely. And yet when I see the meme in my facebook feed, it makes me, a pro-life advocate and an ardent fan of babies, a little uncomfortable. 

“Baby J” is one of the reasons. His picture has also been posted to my feed. In his photograph, he lays in a hospital bed, his little face partially obscured with tubes and tape. This six-week-old has already undergone heart surgery. He depends on a ventilator to keep his lungs open, is expected to spend life breathing through a tracheotomy tube, and has been rejected by his biological family. He currently has no relatives to visit him in the hospital. The adoption agency that has posted information about “Baby J” states he will do best with a family that can provide one-on-one, lifelong care. Unlike the baby in the pro-life meme, this little guy does not glow beneath the lens of a camera.

Read the article here.

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I've also written semi-recently about modesty. "If the Skirt Fits, Wear It?"

“Your dresses should be tight enough to show you're a woman and loose enough to show you're a lady.” Edith Head (legendary costume designer of old Hollywood)

Read the article here.

Five Links: Literary Culture and Supporting Good Art

A vibrant, Christian culture is important. Stories and ideas are important. Art is important. Yet how do we craft good stories and real art from a Christian perspective, so as to build and define a vibrant culture? I think that these links are all helpful.

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Katie Schuermann talks about the sorry state of Christian fiction, and delivers a call to do better.

“Weekend Fisher” blogs about how one of the things that art and literature can do is to capture, and communicate, what it is to have a religious experience.

Suzannah of Vintage Novels makes some fascinating points about the difference between being an imaginative and an introspective reader.  

I’ve already posted this, but in case you missed it, here is an explanation of why modern critics don’t like old books (and, by extension, why even good Christian fiction might not be considered “artistic” by the critics).

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Also, on an almost entirely unrelated note, I got to experience my first (brief) for-the-radio interview today. It was about an article I wrote for Sister, Daughter, Mother, Wife. You can find the interview here.

Infiltrating the Arts, Part I

Stories are powerful. Can the arts (broadly defined to include popular forms of storytelling) be used to shape people's beliefs? Can they be used a subtler form of apologetics?

Conflicts about ideas and beliefs tend to be messy. This is in part because, even if ideas themselves are logical, human allegiance to them is based on a chaos of feelings, assumptions, and preferences. Often we are not even aware of the presuppositions with which we approach an argument. Merely being right does not necessarily make a position convincing. When Christians try to engage in the interplay of ideas, we often find that our audience does not just disagree with us—instead, it actually cannot give us a fair hearing, and cannot truly understand what we say. This is observable in many different settings. Missionaries to unreached peoples cannot start with the story of Good Friday and Easter, but must first teach Genesis and the concepts of sin, God, and the soul. Missionary-citizens in the United States are also faced with a culture that is often a barrier to communication. Addressing these barriers is part of what we call apologetics.

Read the rest of the article HERE.

Does Modern Respect for Artists Undermine Art?

People used to respond to art with strongly-worded judgment. They might declare a particular piece to be good, bad, dangerous, correct, incorrect, beautiful, or overwhelming. They put their fists were their words were, too. For instance, a calculated and bloody riot occurred over one of Victor Hugo’s new plays, and it included beating up critics who opposed his Romanticism. People would also incur financial losses for the sake of their artistic judgment. For example, Theodore Roosevelt refused to sell a large screen of Tiffany glass back to its creator and instead ordered that the “decadent” piece be smashed.* I am struck by how seriously people once took art. How many of us today would riot about an offensive painting or drama? How many of us would take a fist to the mouth for literature, or strain our throats heckling a playwright? Imagine the scandal if we did! Nowadays, simply criticizing the ideas behind a work of art can be enough to earn one the reputation of an uncouth, would-be censor.

I find it curious, as well, that so much great art was created by people who were viewed as craftsmen and, in a sense, merely well-trained laborers. Leonardo da Vinci worked during an era in which artists did not even sign their work, and when many pieces were the work of a studio instead of an individual. Johann Sebastian Bach was a mere church organist whose workaday compositions happened to be rather brilliant, but which were not seen as particularly artistic (he did not fit the mold of an Enlightenment musician). Nowadays we have elevated the status of artists. We tend to speak of art and artistic creativity as something romantic, high-brow, and rebellious. Artists must be uncensored and unfettered. They cannot be “wrong.” They should challenge prevailing notions. They must not follow any specifications but their own inner vision. They should wear their hair differently from everyone else. Their work is seen as different from workaday, useful, mechanical skills and endeavors. It is at once freed from the practical sphere and the moral sphere (this is a change from the day in which Roosevelt would smash a stained-glass screen because of its supposedly immoral effect).  

Participation Trophies and the Value of Human Life

Yesterday I read an opinion piece in the New York Times that was modified from the book, The Myth of the Spoiled Child: Challenging Conventional Wisdom about Children and Parenting. In the adapted excerpt, the author, Alfie Kohn, argues that popular disdain for children’s “participation trophies” (and the like) comes from an unhelpful desire to emphasize competition and to ensure that kids experience repeated failure. He discusses this focus on winning and losing, and claims that it teaches a child to believe that his parent’s love as well as his own value as a human being are conditional. They must be earned through success. In fact, Kohn says:

“A commitment to conditionality lives at the intersection of economics and theology. It’s where lectures about the law of the marketplace meet sermons about what we must do to earn our way into heaven. Here, almost every human interaction, even among family members, is regarded as a kind of transaction.”

He contrasts this conditionality with the strong need of children to receive unconditional love and to develop unconditional self-esteem. Leaving aside his unfortunate understanding of Christian theology (which actually teaches the impossibility of earning one’s way to heaven), it is fascinating that the heart of his argument is about raising children who feel that they are inherently valuable. The same theme is echoed constantly in discussions of body-image. It is one of our cultural values that girls and women ought to be told that they are all beautiful, not because anyone truly thinks that all females are equally gorgeous, but because “You are beautiful” is another way of saying, “You have value.”

What on Earth is a Human Being?

 Since the dawn of modern science, we have been made uneasy by the prospect of using technology to change or enhance the human mind and body. Such an endeavor forces us to wonder what really defines us. Suppose we took a child and gave her a robotic leg. She would still be human. But what if we enlarged the scope of her robotics? What if she had a human head and a robot body? What if she had a human body with a robot head, or robotic enhancements to her brain? Sci-fi tale after tale has attempted to explore some permutation of this question (indeed, perhaps even Frankenstein fits among those volumes).

We have asked ourselves, “What separates us from machines?” Our answer has focused on the mind. The body does not much matter, we say. Instead, what makes us human are the thoughts, feelings, and desires that flow from the human brain (such a division may prove to be scientifically premature, considering recent discoveries that indicate how integrated our feelings and bodies are—for example, the tie between the bacteria in our guts and the feelings in our heads). Yet our delegation of the body to a lower shelf has contributed to a tremendous change in our culture’s understanding of fundamental aspects of being human: sex, gender, and the purpose of human life. We have come to the point where our physical body need no longer inform our identity, and where humans are considered perfectly sane although they attempt to exchange one healthy physical body for a preferred type of physical body, such a male body for a female one (we still consider Body Integrity Identity Disorder, in which sufferers feel that some part or whole of one of their limbs does not belong to themselves, and desire to have it amputated, to be an illness)

Millennial Life: When The World is a Jungle and Peers Are Your Tribe

The myths, folk tales, and fiction of every culture are part of a feedback loop that both reflects and also shapes cultural values. Such tales provide their listeners with heroes to be imitated and enemies to be despised, with dreams to be chased and errors to be avoided, and, above all, with a sense of what is normal in the world. Through stories comes a sense of shared culture and a shared way of interpreting life. Youths of ancient Greece and Rome were immersed in the hierarchic, heroic culture of The Iliad. Uncle Tom’s Cabin magnified nineteenth-century disapproval of slavery. The Andy Griffith Show upheld trust in the wisdom and authority of sensible, masculine American virtue. These stories all helped to shape the social outlook of young people and to prepare them for entrance into the adult world. In the last forty years, the stories that our culture provides for our youth have acquired a strangely regressive message. It is a change that both reveals and contributes to the tribalism and generational isolation of our era. 

Read THE REST OF MY ARTICLE at The Federalist. 

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Also 1: for those who missed it, are you acquainted with HOMESCHOOL BARBIE? (Thanks to Rebekah of A Mad Tea Party for the link). No doubt I should have somehow incorporated this doll into my series of articles about homeschooling. Oh well. Note: I took this "barbie" as tongue-in-cheek humor, not mockery. Speaking of beauty and image, I found THIS rather amusing as well.

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Also 2: A certain degree of Individualism is necessary for democracy, but did American Rationalism lead to an unhealthy individualism?

When the Devil Really is in the Details (or, How the Internet Fulfills a Chesterton Quote)

People on the internet often seem unable to focus on the big picture. Someone writes an article arguing that ADHD should be treated more holistically, and happens to mention that the young Michael Phelps used exercise to cope with his ADHD. Someone else immediately rants, “I exercise and I still have ADHD! You are a horrible person for suggesting that I shouldn’t take meds!” as if this invalidates the article.

In fact, we seem as a culture to be obsessed with trivia. We know the names of celebrities’ dogs and the color of their shoes (both the celebrities’ shoes and the dogs’ shoes) but not, say, the history of drama. We make lists of things that students ought to memorize and provide bullet points of qualities that they should acquire, but we provide no overarching intellectual or moral framework (even proponents of classical education can fall into the error of thinking that students are classical just because they can provide a lot of details about Latin grammar or ancient Greek armor).

G.K. Chesterton saw this phenomenon in his own day.

“We are more and more to discuss details in art, politics, literature. A man’s opinion on tramcars matters; his opinion on Botticelli matters; his opinion on all things does not matter. He may turn over and explore a million objects, but he must not find that strange object, the universe; for if he does he will have a religion, and be lost. Everything matters—except everything.”  From Heretics.

Perhaps this focus on details is not surprising. After all, details about the ball game or the weather (or even Botticelli) are the kinds of things that people typically discuss with strangers and acquaintances. Arguments over details are safe enough for public consumption because they touch on nothing fundamental. They will not anger, inspire, move, or challenge anyone. We focus on details in the modern world because even on the internet, we are a nation of strangers.

Linking-up to Wednesdays with Words
and
Weekends with Chesterton

The Body of a Woman: Seven Recommended Readings

Frederick, the former pirate, sees young ladies for the first time, and realizes 
that his elderly nurse, Ruth, is not nearly as lovely as he once assumed.
Image from here.

Fredrick: Oh false one! You have deceived me!

Ruth: I have deceived you?

Fredrick: Yes! Deceived me.....You told me you were fair as gold!

Ruth: And master am I not so?

Fredrick: And now I see you're plain and old!

Ruth: I'm sure I'm not a jot so!

Fredrick: Upon my innocence you play...

Ruth: I'm not the one to plot so!

Fredrick: Your face is lined your hair is grey!

Ruth: It gradually got so!

(From The Pirates of Penzance)

The issues of modesty, the objectification of women, and women’s body-image are hot topics right now. Here are some articles on the subject that I think are helpful.

On the Objectification of Women:

1. A Tangled Web: Don Jon Highlights Real-Life Effects of Internet Porn by Mary Rose Somarriba

Part movie-review, and part examination of the effects of porn on both men and women.

“Don Jon is a bold contribution to a recent trend in entertainment, giving audiences a real—and grim—snapshot of 21st-century relationships.... It’s as if sex is no longer sexy in pop culture. What was once a warm and alluring mystery is now a cold, anatomical display. If intimacy is dead, porn may have killed it.” READ THE ARTICLE.

2. People See Sexy Pictures of Women as Objects, Not People (Psychological Science, 2012)

This brief press release contains very interesting observations on how people respond to images of “sexy women.”

“One way that psychologists have found to test whether something is seen as an object is by turning it upside down. Pictures of people present a recognition problem when they’re turned upside down, but pictures of objects don’t have that problem. So Bernard and his colleagues used a test where they presented pictures of men and women in sexualized poses, wearing underwear....

“People recognized right-side-up men better than upside-down men, suggesting that they were seeing the sexualized men as people. But the women in underwear weren’t any harder to recognize when they were upside down—which is consistent with the idea that people see sexy women as objects. There was no difference between male and female participants.” READ THE PRESS RELEASE.

How to Homeschool without Warping Your Kids: Adult Grads Report Back (III of III)

This article is part of a three-part series. Please read:

Part I: “Are Homeschoolers Raising Judgmental Twerps?”

Part II: “It’s a Scary World Out There.”

Part III: “If You Give a Homeschooler a Fish:” Turning Sheltered Children into Discerning Adults

“As no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler.” Izaak Walton in The Compleat Angler, or the Contemplative Man's Recreation (1653)

Education, in the fullest sense of the word, is all-encompassing. It includes learning how to interpret life. As homeschool parents educate their families, they have tremendous influence over the way that their children will relate to the rest of humanity. Often homeschool parents have chosen to bypass the public school system because they wish to transmit a very specific understanding of God, the world, and the human role on earth. In this series we have discussed the challenge of teaching our children to apply truth without becoming self-righteous twerps who think that they are better than everyone else simply because they happen to be right. Basically, we want our children to practice discernment without being snooty about it. Yet because we are all sinners, we cross the line between discernment and judgmentalism more easily than we wish. We all sometimes fail to love our neighbor and to recognize the sin in our own heart as well as the sin in his. As we live in daily repentance and forgiveness, we can only trust in God’s grace to carry us through this parenting challenge and to work through us despite our errors.

We know that we must somehow transition from sheltering our little ones to releasing our prepared, discerning grown-ones. Newborn babies can see the contrast between black and white, but their eyesight is too undeveloped to distinguish between shades of blue and green. The moral sense of children is rather like the visual sense of an infant: to children, the world is black and white. Things and people are either good or bad. The concept of being simultaneously a saint (saved by God’s grace), and yet a sinner, is difficult for them to grasp. So is the idea of showing compassionate love to someone “bad.” That is why we must model and teach this attitude. We are preparing our kids to live in the world as adults with adult vision—which means that we begin the process of releasing control while they are still tiny. It’s like the old adage about teaching a man to fish. If you shelter your children now, you protect them for a day. If you teach them to discern for themselves, you protect them for much longer.

How to Homeschool without Warping Your Kids: Adult Grads Report Back (II of III)

This article is part of a three-part series. Please read a Summary of the Project. 

Part I, “Are Homeschoolers Raising Judgmental Twerps?” looks at the issue of judgmentalism and argues that it is a real problem of which Christians parents should be aware and wary.

Part II, below, looks at specific pitfalls of parenting that seem to lead to fearful judmentalism and moralism. I realize that some parents err on the opposite side by failing to take the temptations of the world seriously or to focus on guiding their children in truth. This blog post is not addressed to them. Again, as I said in the summary of the project, I am writing from the assumption that homeschooling is a fantastic parenting option even though it is imperfect (nothing on earth is perfect). 

Part III, which will appear next Tuesday, looks at the positive side of how parents have raised kind, secure, pleasant children who love truth.  

Part II: “It’s a Scary World out There:” Three Parenting Pitfalls

Old-fashioned fairytales remind us that if we leave the path in the woods, we will probably meet someone who wants to eat us. The forest is teeming with well-spoken wolves and witches whose houses are made from baked goods. Yet fairytales are also populated by intrepid youngest sons, dispossessed princes, and faithful maidens who must venture out to seek their fortune in the wilderness, and who ultimately triumph over the wolves and witches in their path. This age-old ambiguity about the dangers of the wider world is also expressed in plenty of contemporary family stories: The Croods must venture out of their cave to survive, Merlin must stop over-protecting his son Nemo, and Rapunzel must exit her tower (frying pan in hand) despite the witch’s warnings that, “it’s a scary world out there” full of “men with pointy teeth.”

All parents face tension between the urge to keep their family safe, and the realization that ultimately they must give up control.  Christian homeschool parents are especially concerned because they fear spiritual wolves as well as physical and emotional ones. They look at the disintegration of modern society and start planning a tower for the whole family. Yet tower life is not a suitable long-term plan. God did not tell us to seek safety above all things. The parable of the talents in Matthew 25 describes a servant who is so afraid of losing his master’s money that he buries it in the ground in order to keep it safe, and yet is punished—he should instead have invested it. The Scriptures tell us to train our children, not to bury them. Of course, this training benefits from appropriate sheltering. Homeschoolers are only sensible to skip premature immersion in our society’s postmodern, R-rated culture until their children are grounded in the faith and have acquired a strong sense of what is healthy. Yet children grow up. One of the biggest challenges faced by the first-generation homeschool movement in which I grew up is that the parents (many of them adult converts to Christianity), had few models of how to transition from sheltering their children to letting them go; letting them take risks; letting them arm themselves with frying pans and set out to save the world or respond to the Great Commission. This led to several pitfalls that tend to produce fearful, overly-judgmental children. Three pitfalls in particular were discussed by the adult homeschool grads I spoke to. 

How to Homeschool without Warping Your Kids: Adult Grads Report Back (I of III)

In this series, I discuss a concern that I've lately heard expressed by veteran homeschoolers and homeschool graduates. Part I examines the issue of fearful and prideful judgmentalism, and argues that it is a problem of which Christians (especially Christian homeschoolers) should be both aware and wary. Part II looks at parenting choices that can exacerbate or cause this problem and discusses reasons why parents fall into those traps. Part III looks at what parents have done to raise pleasant, successful children who are able to speak the truth in love and to remain faithful to their values without fearing or mocking others. My research included contacting a range of homeschool graduates in their twenties and thirties. They gave me fantastic advice and insights that I am eager to share. Note: I am writing from the assumption that homeschoolers have already proven themselves both academically and socially, and that home education is a wonderful parenting option.

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Part I: Are Homeschoolers Raising Judgmental Twerps?

A lot of people think that Christians are stuck-up, arrogant, judgmental, sour, and hypocritical; quick to condemn others in order to feel better about ourselves. They think that we go around burning books and spitting in the face of the poor, or that we seek nothing more than to control the universe with our own tyrannous rules. Why do we have such a bad reputation? Recently I listened to a discussion that focused on three main reasons for this. One: sometimes the sinful world is simply reacting in defensive anger to a good and holy law that would restrict their preferred activities (rather like a child who screams, “I hate you!” when his mother forces him to go to bed on time). Two: sometimes the world does not understand the difference between judgment and judgmentalism. Christians may simply explain the contents of our beliefs, and our listeners may assume that we are doing so in order to condemn them. Three: sometimes Christians totally deserve that reputation. Unfortunately, we too are sinners, and our own pride and lack of love can make us obnoxious.

I remember talking with a young Jewish man who had a visceral, emotional reaction against the word “Christian” because the Christian clique in his high school had seized every opportunity to express contempt for non-Christians. Apparently one of them once walked up to him in the hallway and said, “You’re Jewish, aren’t you? You’re going to hell.” The Christian then strode away. It is a horrible thing when the sins of us Christians get in the way of the Gospel that we all (pagan, Jew, and Christian) need desperately. It is the sort of thing for which millstones are prescribed. Nowadays, the need to focus on speaking the truth in love, and to teach our children to do the same, is heightened because of the fractured culture in which we live.

Death Doesn't Care If You're Sexy

(Today's issue of The Federalist includes an article I wrote!)

A few years ago, in the middle of a swing dance lesson, I found myself dancing with a middle-aged man. Suddenly he remarked that he enjoyed our class, because, “with dancing, you get to touch people.” His words seemed pretty creepy. Yet I think that they were innocent—innocent, and rather sad. He enjoyed learning swing-outs and under-arm turns because they provided simple, physical human contact. He had no other way of getting that contact because he had no girlfriend.

We modern Westerners shelter ourselves within a personal-space bubble that allows us to touch others only with very specific body parts in very specific contexts. We are uncomfortable with greater intimacy not because we don’t like touch, but because most bodily contact has been so sexualized.

Click to READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE

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Happy Friday!