Snapshots from Parenting: The Boy and the Bible

First, one really cute thing Owen does before I get into the meat of what I want to say. Owen is simultaneously a human boy of nearly the age of three, a big giraffe, a small robin, and a small bear. Giraffes are his favorite animal, robins his favorite bird, and I have called him Bear since the day he was born so that one is more default. There was a new animal added to the menagerie this week: a baby fox. Clara was changing him for bed and he made a slight whimpering sound and then tucked his head down into her and rubbed it back and forth. When she asked him what in the world he was doing he told her he was a baby fox. His name is Harold when he is a baby fox. He keeps a baby fox den beside our bed with two of our throw pillows and an assortment of his blankets. (This is quite similar, structurally, to his robin’s nest that he builds on the floor at various times. I am overlooking his lack of architectural imagination.) Now, onto the other story. . .  

Owen, like most young sons, emulates nearly everything that I do. For better or worse, of course. He parrots my mannerisms, expressions, language. He is learning to process the world and his emotions through the way I engage the world and my own emotions. It is very convicting stuff. And the snapshot I share in this post is not meant at all to puff up my own estimation of my success at showing him Christlikeness. I fail constantly. This post is to glorify God for the way he makes up for what we lack.

The other night we were at our weekly Bible study and I was leading a conversation on family. We were discussing how it is the task of parents to shape the affections of our children, not just their minds. Clara and I are the only parents in the group, and we were expressing some mild exasperation in the day-to-day specifics of putting Christ at the center of our home. With a three year-old (almost) and a one year-old (almost) we can wonder if anything we are doing with our kids—reading the Book of Common Prayer at mealtimes, singing hymns, praying as a family—are really making any difference at all, if there is any way they are getting through to our kids and shaping their affections and desires.

Just as we are having this conversation, Owen, who had been playing in the living room came up and asked Clara for a Bible. She didn’t have one in the diaper bag and he got really sad. She told him to pretend that “Is Your Mama a Llama?” was a Bible (heresy!). He assented, grabbed the book, and came and sat next to me at the kitchen table. He interrupted our conversation to tell the whole group his routine:

“First, I read the Bible. Then I sing a song, like ‘Oh, How He Loves Us.’ Then I pray.”

It was a simple moment, but it was so touching for us. He wanted to insert himself into our conversation. He sat beside me for the rest of the time, mimicking my hand motions and agreeing with another group member whenever I did.

But it showed me that God’s power manifests not when we are perfect and have everything neatly ironed out, but when in our weakness we try to be more like him. 

Some Brief Thoughts on Alcohol

Christianity Today's recent cover story on N.T. Wright at long last persuaded me to subscribe to a magazine I have long freeloaded from. Which is serendipitous, given that this month's cover story touches on a topic I have been thinking a lot about lately. Alcohol. I thought it would be nice to write about something fun and not at all controversial.

But seriously, what follows is in no way intended to be divisive. I can and do appreciate a variety of perspectives on this issue. However, D.L. Mayfield's cover article on the subject of alcohol consumption ought to be compulsory reading for evangelicals my age. Culture shifts within the church seem to primarily consist of pendulum swings--liberalism to legalism, gospel to law, etc.--and my generation has swung the earlier fundamentalist fear of alcohol completely the other direction. We are almost gleeful in our alcoholic consumption. Mayfield cites the example of evangelical moms talking about needing a glass of wine after a long day with the kids, a comment that regularly shows up in my Facebook newsfeed. Young evangelical men are seemingly expected to enjoy craft beer and bourbon in order to show their all-things-to-all-people bona fides.

As Mayfield points out, though, alcohol is not always morally neutral. Hardly ever, matter of fact. Many people have a disease related to alcohol, called alcoholism. You may have heard of it. One branch of my family has struggled with the disease for generations. Mayfield's contention, then, is that for those evangelicals who pontificate the glories of single malt or who talk about "mommy need[ing] her wine" the most readily available explanation is that they know no one, or think they know no one (or more likely never consider the issue), who struggles with alcoholism. This parochial view allows us to gloss over the dangers of alcohol in favor of a mild form of libertarianism. 

Mayfield herself gave up alcohol when she and her family moved into an impoverished apartment complex to reach out to the residents. Alcohol was no longer a fun diversion, but a life-wrecker. It became difficult for her to walk into the neighborhood liquor store and witness the degradation of life surrounding it. And so she gave up drinking. She realized she was free in Christ, which included the freedom to abstain.

Mayfield's temperance emanates from a place of compassion. She is surrounded by the detritus of alcohol and cannot disentangle the substance from its effects in her neighborhood and upon the people she loves. Which is exactly where the impetus for the temperance movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries began. Though the movement reached its culmination in the disastrous Volstead Act and the Eighteenth Amendment, the fact that it brought freedom to many from the bondage of alcohol should not be overlooked. The temperance crusaders by and large were not fun-hating puritanical prudes, but people whose husbands, brother, and fathers had been devastated by the drug of alcohol. It was rare in that day to have a drink after work to blow off some steam, more likely to blow an entire paycheck in a drunken frenzy. Notably, it was not only "fundamentalist" Christians who led the movement, but progressive believers as well. Alcohol was seen as a life-destroyer and a guarantor of systemic poverty, a role it still quite clearly plays in many communities.

I am not going to quit drinking after reading Mayfield's article. I find her perspective persuasive and I think alcohol is an important thing to think about. We must be careful to be intentional with a substance as powerful as alcohol. Too many of us seem to have thought very little on the topic, except to ignorantly denigrate the very real concerns of earlier generations. 

In reading through the gospels in the One Year Bible, I have read repeatedly the passage in the Synoptics when Jesus shares the Passover supper with his disciples on the night of his betrayal. During that final meal he tells his friends: "I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom." We are going to party with Jesus someday. And among everything else on that glorious day there will be wine. Wine that we can drink without shame or reproach or fear of captivity. And for those teetotaling believers who want to wait for that day, I say, God bless you. For those convicted differently, I say the same. To each other I say practice charity. To not let either the liberties we exercise or our the convictions we hold become stumbling blocks to one another. Remember, there are ditches on both sides of the road.

Teaching Philosophy

A few of you have asked in conversation about my new teaching position what I wrote about in my Statement of Teaching Philosophy. I mentioned in an earlier post about how the words just flowed out quickly and while I still don't think it is perfect, and it is certainly not polished, here is what I wrote. I was mercifully brief for once in my life:

Teaching Philosophy

I believe that all knowledge, wisdom, and truth emanates from the triune God. As such, all education, whether in mathematics or languages or literature is a striving to know our omniscient God in a deeper way. John Milton put it nicely in his educational tract, written in 1644 (I will colloquialize the language and spelling): “The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may be nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection.” Milton of course goes on to say how difficult of a process learning is, but that the end is to become like God and so to glorify Him.

I remember reading that passage for the first time in graduate school and thinking of how far my experience of education had been from what the old Puritan divine had in mind for the education of young minds. In my childhood education the subjects were so atomized. What hath Christ to do with Belial? What hath reading to do with science? But when all education and all knowledge and wisdom is under the umbrella of repairing the fall and learning to know God and the things he has revealed to us then it takes on new life again. Science is a way to praise God for his power in creation. Math is a way to marvel at his precision. Literature puts us in touch with the eternal.

For me this realization liberates education. Time spent learning is never time wasted. Given that we spend so much of our lives, especially our early lives, in educational situations this is extremely fantastic news. It is this that I want to impart to the students that I teach: that all knowledge testifies to Jesus. If, as Milton suggests, in our quest for knowledge we unite our studies to love of God and imitation of Christ we will have the type of knowledge that can build up and not the empty sort of knowledge that only puffs up our own egos. 

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Like I said, short and sweet, at least by my usual long-winded standards. And I mean everything that I wrote and if I had not been intentionally short-winded I would have elaborated on each point. And, of course I quoted Milton. Like I do. However, there is the bare-bones outline for my philosophy both of teaching and learning. The epiphanies I had about education in my mid-20s changed my life and I hope to encourage my students to avoid some of the angst Christians can feel about education as well as to avoid a sacred/secular divide in their views of the subjects. I don't want to create thinkers only, but worshipers who worship our Father in spirit and in truth. 

Getting to Know GW (13): Slavery, Again

I posted earlier about Washington's discomfort with the institution of slavery. For a number of reasons he was uncomfortable with the practice and worked to mitigate some of its harshness on his own estates, but he refused to ever speak out candidly against slavery. This position put the leader of a nation striving towards individual freedom and liberty in not a little hypocritical position. George Orwell said famously in Animal Farm, "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others," and something like this sentiment abound in early America as it surely does in every other political system in one way or another (Orwell was, of course, satirizing communism). 

One of the great myths of Southern slavery is that the abuses and excesses are overblown by our retroactive moralistic judging of the institution and that most slaves were treated well. What's more, they were content in their position and it was only abolitionist agitators that stirred up in their docile minds notions of freedom. Washington held to this notion as well. He believed if he treated his human chattel well and extended a certain amount of liberty to them they would be content in their status as human chattel. 

Washington was disabused of this notion toward the end of his life when two of his most trusted slaved, not to mention the two that had the easiest go of it, ran away as soon as they had opportunity. One was the personal chef named Hercules that Washington had brought from Mount Vernon to the presidential mansion in Philadelphia. The other was Martha's attendant Ona. Both decided they would rather have a harder life and be free than an easy life with bondage.

One of the little known facts of Washington's life (at least I had never heard it before) is that he wrote a will in his final months that set all of his slaves free. I couldn't help but wonder if the disappearance of two beloved slaves whom he assumed with all of the blithe ignorance of the wealthy member of a privileged class were happy in their estate finally caused Washington to see through all of the b.s. his society had constructed to justify slavery. 

Certainly part of his motivation in this benevolent act was to rectify his image with posterity. He had to know that slavery as a system was unsustainable in the long term and that future generations would judge harshly its practitioners. Washington, as we have seen, was hypercritical of his public image. But part of me thinks that there was a more human concern playing out with the old man. He had always felt uncomfortable with slavery and the disappearance of the two best treated slaves put flight to the notion that well-treated slaves will be content in their confinement. The last moral card he held in his deck was shredded. And he did what was in his power hoping that it would make a positive example to other slaveholders in the region. It did not, and 65 years later America finally had its bloodletting that Washington had helped it avoid during his remarkable career. 

A Brief Thought on Carrying our Crosses

Whichever passage in the synoptics you read it in, Christ's call to people to take up their cross and follow him is a stark commandment. Here is the passage in Luke's gospel:

23 And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his crossdaily and follow me. 24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. 25 For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? 26 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamedwhen he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. 27 But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God." (Luke 9:23-27)

Christ is here murdering our self-justifications: what God wants from us is to try our best; it is our heart that counts; I keep the whole law!; and the ways in general that we compartmentalize our lives. Christ's call is total. There is no equivocation here. He does not stutter and he is not apologetic about what he asks. There is no hedging. Cross. Everyday. Unashamed. 

Part of me reads this and gets excited; part of me reads this and is filled with dread. I want so badly to lay down my life for Christ, to put sin to death in my life, to live for his glory, and the prospects of a life lived in service to those ends is exciting. I dread this passage because I am so terrible at doing all of those things. Most days I think nothing of the cross, nothing of the strangeness of Christianity and the humiliation of following Christ.

In this passage in Matthew's gospel Peter takes Jesus aside after he has foretold his crucifixion and rebukes him telling him that there is no way this can happen. God wouldn't let something bad happen to someone good, right? In response, Jesus calls Peter Satan. The cross is how we come close to Christ. This perverse symbol of human depravity is what cancels our depravity. We cannot remove the cross and its shame. We cannot remove the real blood and the real death that stands at the center of our confession. 

I think that along with excitement and dread this passage ought also to induce in us a great sense of gratitude. The way of Christ is the cross; the way of the Christ-follower is the cross. True. But by God's mercy the work of the cross is counted toward us, the righteousness of Christ is imputed as our own. 

Human Toby reads this passage and thinks, "No freaking way. I cannot do this. I cannot lay down my life like this, I can't shoulder a cross everyday. I can't give up my life everyday." And God in his mercy says, "You're right. That's the point." Jesus does what we could never do. Our Older Brother laid down his life everyday before he laid down his life on the Day. Our older brother shouldered a cross everyday before he shouldered the Cross. And we, in the great transfer, have been crucified with him and we no longer live. And our life in this flesh is lived by faith, including the faith to believe that we are both to take up a cross everyday and that our Lord has given us an easy yoke and a light burden.

I am so grateful for the cross.  

Getting to Know GW (12): Parties, and Not the Fun Kind

Most everyone knows that Washington was elected unanimously to the office of the president for the first, last, and certainly only time in our nation's history. He did not campaign, deliver rousing speeches, kiss babies, or try to reach out to Joe Sixpack. He was just like, "Look, who else would it be?" and people were like, "Yeah, you right." There were no challengers and there were no parties.

Washington saw himself as above the idea of a party politician and actively hoped that the partisan spirit would not take root in the United States. Ha! Politicians love arguing and politicians also love being able to blame some other people if stuff goes bad. Parties were bound to happen. None of us can conceive of politics without parties for a reason. The alternative is hard to imagine. Also, you need people to disagree about stuff. You need people to say, "Government is bad! Businesses never do anything shadily or excessively." And you need other people to say, "Government is good. Government can solve all of our problems. You like roads, dontcha?" Both people are idiots but they provide a nice balance to each other.

Anyway, Washington's high-mindedness aside, parties were always going to happen, but Washington was probably pretty p-o'd that the first real division was within his own cabinet. On the federalist team we have Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, who was like, "Remember how we needed a national army to win the war? Maybe we need a strong federal government." On the republican side we have Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State, who was like, "We must be debt free as a nation, but taxes levied to pay those debts are evil. Oh, and the states pretty much have things covered, you snooty northerners." These guys hated each other. They each funded newspapers to sling mud at the other side. The dude Jefferson hired even castigated Washington for owning slaves. Thomas Jefferson, plantation owner of Monticello, baby daddy to Sally Hemings, berating another man for owning slaves. Pot, kettle, etc. It was weird stuff.

Washington's own affections were more of a Federalist nature. The war had impressed upon him the need for a strong federal government, without which the unity and cohesion needed to win another war would be severely lacking. Washington was not a big government Democrat, by today's standards, just convinced that the nation needed an identity as a nation and not merely a conglomerate of states geographically related.

Given this bent, much of Washington's implicit and explicit support was directed toward Hamilton. This, of course, earned him the ire of Jefferson and Madison and some of the other republicans. Which Washington hated. People could badmouth him in that purple prose eighteenth century style and he just had to take it. It frustrated him to no end, but he held the dignity of his office as of more value than scoring political points. Though he vented his exasperation in private, he never let it spill over to the public. He was a good man.

Getting to Know GW (11): What in the World Does the President Do?

By now in our country's history we are all familiar with the role of the president: you promise a bunch of stuff on the campaign trail (maybe you mean it, maybe you don't, frankly it is hard to tell), get elected and realize how hard it is to get stuff done and change things, become a punching bag for whichever side is now out of power, get really gray hair, get one or two things accomplished that because of the weight of partisan opposition suck anyway, have people in your own party disown you for this or that (usually because you don't realize how totally great they are and how much you should be listening to them), convince yourself to run for a second term, usually win it, and then do mostly nothing while contenders in your own party and across the aisle ready themselves for the next election. Then you write a book, smile for some photographs, and pretend like you still give a tinker's damn about this country (sometimes you might even paint pictures of yourself in the bathtub).

But when Washington took office no one had really figured any of this out yet. He was a trailblazer in the role, there was hardly even a historic precedent to look to within the previous 1500 years. Cromwell's Commonwealth? Not a great example.

From my readings of these chapters, and from the perspective of a biographer who is very compassionate towards the challenges Washington faced, it seems like he was competent. When he was a general he didn't win many battles but he won the war by holding things together. The same thing sort of played out in his presidency. He had a number of strategic victories and perhaps amplified the constitutional intent for the role of President, but for the most part he left personally frustrated and with a deeply divided nation.

As to the adjective competent, though, I don't want this to seem as if I am damning with faint praise. Competent is fantastic for a president. It has been awhile since we have gone there as a nation. Maybe it is from going to business school when the book Good to Great was all the rage, but the transformative, charismatic leader usually sets up his successor to fail. Washington refused to become a demigod. Though his ultimate goal was to rise above the fray he was forced to get his hands dirty.

Perhaps his ultimate accomplishment was serving as an emotional ballast in a heady time for revolutions. The French revolution bathed Paris in blood, but there was no similar bloodletting for the United States in the wake of victory. Washington's calm demeanor, however carefully crafted, saved what could have been the almost universal tendency to replace one sort of tyranny with another. Washington restrained the worst impulse of revolutionaries, both in his role as general and as president, and I don't think we can underestimate what an amazing accomplishment that is in light of what could have been.

Some additional thoughts on his presidency to come. Until then, have a wonderful holiday weekend.