Category Archives: Passing the Torch

Misunderstanding Mrs. Proverbs 31

Leave a reply

The woman described in Proverbs 31 is meant to be an ideal. But in practice, she’s almost an object of ridicule among dedicated Christian women.  Who could do all that?!
At the same time, we don’t dismiss her. We ask her to wear a lot of our hats. She is called upon to endorse our preferences.

I have heard too many times from well-known pulpits and theologians and from other women, that the woman in Proverbs 31 is an ideal picture of a woman who has it all. She had a fulfilling home life and a career outside the home. I cannot find the evidence.

I certainly do not object to wives having careers. But let us refrain from misusing Biblical text.  Let’s let Scripture say what Scripture says, and not press it into our service. There may be Scripture to support our career choices, but I do not find that support in Proverbs 31.

Does the woman in Proverbs 31 have a career? Can we take a look together?

A wife of noble character who can find?
    She is worth far more than rubies.
Her husband has full confidence in her
    and lacks nothing of value.
She brings him good, not harm,
    all the days of her life.
She selects wool and flax
    and works with eager hands.
She is like the merchant ships,
    bringing her food from afar.
She gets up while it is still night;
    she provides food for her family
    and portions for her female servants.
She considers a field and buys it;
    out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.
She sets about her work vigorously;
    her arms are strong for her tasks.
She sees that her trading is profitable,
    and her lamp does not go out at night.
In her hand she holds the distaff
    and grasps the spindle with her fingers.
She opens her arms to the poor
    and extends her hands to the needy.
When it snows, she has no fear for her household;
    for all of them are clothed in scarlet.
She makes coverings for her bed;
    she is clothed in fine linen and purple.
Her husband is respected at the city gate,
    where he takes his seat among the elders of the land.
She makes linen garments and sells them,
    and supplies the merchants with sashes.
She is clothed with strength and dignity;
    she can laugh at the days to come.
She speaks with wisdom,
    and faithful instruction is on her tongue.
She watches over the affairs of her household
    and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children arise and call her blessed;
    her husband also, and he praises her:
“Many women do noble things,
    but you surpass them all.”
Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;
    but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
Honor her for all that her hands have done,
    and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.

Certainly no one can deny that this woman works. She is incredibly busy at home. She is such a diligent, efficient, committed worker that she seems to do the work of several people. Mentally walk through her day. When exactly do you find time in there for her to go to a job between “…she gets up while it is still night”…and “her lamp does not go out at night”?

Where is the career in this proverb? Is it this?

She considers a field and buys it;
    out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.

She is the wife-manger of her husband’s estate.  An estate would include a home and the land where all that the man owns is located: the fields where food is grown, animals are pastured, and other agrarian products produced, all for the provision and wealth of the owner’s family.

She is the manager of all she surveys.  She possesses the trust of her husband and her household, and the prerogative to increase the wealth of her estate. She buys more property to add to her family farm.  This makes her an independent real estate agent?

Or is it that we’re so addicted to the trope that says that ancient women were subservient and socially powerless that we are blind to the plain meaning here: she is a respected woman of social standing with perfect freedom to manage the household estate and broker a land purchase in the marketplace?

Is it this the career?

She makes linen garments and sells them,
    and supplies the merchants with sashes.

I use some skills I picked up in art college to create handmade books, which I sell. I do it all at home. I do not receive a paycheck. I do not spend my days assigned to a different location than my home. I do not observe company hours. And most importantly, I do not work for a boss.

Mrs. Proverbs 31 does not answer to any “boss” but her husband.  

The woman in Proverbs 31 excels at sewing.  She creates garments for everyone in her household so that they are properly, modestly dressed and warm in winter. In addition, she is such a diligent worker that she designs and sews sashes which she then sends to the marketplace to be sold.  She ingratiates herself with the merchants who will offer her products for sale by gifting them with these beautiful sashes. This has been a common practice of homesteaders and farmer’s wives throughout human history. This makes her a businesswoman with a career?

She sees that her trading is profitable,
    and her lamp does not go out at night. 

Picture her sitting in front of the household accounts at night after everyone else is in bed. 

This woman is a wife and mother who works tirelessly for the benefit of her family’s estate. She feathers her nest, she builds up her home. I  do not see any evidence in the passage which places this woman under the authority of a boss not her husband, or transplants her effort to another sphere outside her home, non-inclusive of her home

I just can’t find that outside-the-home job in Proverbs 31. If you find it, please let me know.

She opens her arms to the poor, and extends her hands to the needy.

This woman, and by extension her family, profits from the overflow of her domestic activity.  She is doing all these things for her household, and she is so diligent that she produces a generous surplus and God rewards her industry. This is the home overflowing out into the world, not the world — a job—inserting itself into the home. Nor is it her leaving her home to be profitable for another’s interest.

Charity begins at home; her generosity sends her wealth out into her community. Missions begin at home; her abundance sends the next generation out into the world and into the future.

Generosity, charity, philanthropy, obedience to the Lord’s commands to love your neighbor. Call these a career if you like but I don’t see it.

Don’t we have to devalue her hard work at home in order to insist that she have a career in addition to her homemaking?  If so, is that because the work done by a woman in her home, for her home, isn’t perceived as being “real” work? Or significant work?

Let’s find other sources of blessing on our lifestyle choices. Proverbs 31 Woman is busy enough without putting on all the hats we need her to wear.

What I Found in the Nursing Home

6 Replies

I wrote this a few years ago, when my Mom was still alive.

I suspect we most clearly demonstrate who we are when we respond to the weakest, the most vulnerable, the least pretty, the unwanted. I think I am beginning to learn who we are via the modern geriatric facility.

There are certainly all kinds of people to be found at work there. There are people who do their jobs and go along to get along with the culture they’re plunked in; and there are people who go about their jobs with objective integrity, beholden to no one but the source of the highest truth they recognize.

Thank God for those people. I think the culture in which they work is making them swim upstream.

My mother is in her upper 90’s. Until three years ago, she lived alone. She needed no medication until she was over 90. She has lived a life of determined independence and no nonsense.

At the same time it was a life of willing service and self-sacrifice. Her one marriage was no picnic and she usually worked alone. She raised six children and helped cared part-time for several of her grandchildren. Her direct descendants number over forty. It has been a self-determined life of solid accomplishment.

The mind of this housewife was more sharp and active, her judgements on current events more insightful than many much younger, who would think themselves much more in-the-know.

Then, mini-strokes, a stroke. Dementia. There is no short-term memory. She is helpless against emotional vicissitudes.

We cared for her 24/7 in her home for three years. My siblings and I and three aides divided the time. She used a walker and got around in her home. She ate well, was healthy, and watched a lot of TV. When this lady who never went to bed caught a bug and ended up there nevertheless, she recovered but still couldn’t sit up in bed. We couldn’t do for her what she needed, she wasn’t going to get up, and she was developing a pressure wound.

At the same time, she was finally running low on the money my Dad left her thirty years ago. In a little while she would not be able to pay her bills or hire the aides. So it was time. Time to go to a home. They would take all she had, and care for her for the rest of her life. She would have rehab, treatment for the wound, and a home til the end. That, to my understanding, was the deal.

Unfortunately my siblings and I were under a misapprehension that a place which operates for the stated purpose of caring for elderly people is prepared to care for elderly people. That such a place should not be surprised when elderly people are people: that they are imperfect, retain their personalities and independent thoughts; nor when they are elderly: that they are cranky, ill, difficult or have dementia. When they are not entirely in control of their feelings or their actions, when they are not entirely compliant.

My mother couldn’t remember where she was or why she was there. When we weren’t there to answer her questions she filled in the blanks with invented content. The content was invariably paranoid. She reacted to her invented narratives–she was angry and difficult. She became belligerent. She tried to escape; she was going home.

She was not being a jerk. Her brain was wearing out. She couldn’t remember.

First they tried two medications. They didn’t work. The last few days, she was so heavily drugged she could hardly stay awake. But she never moved off topic: going home.

So they kicked this 96-year-old wheelchair-bound woman with dementia out of their place. Take her somewhere else. How quickly can you place her?

In other words, they took her in because she had dementia, and they kicked her out because she had dementia.

This private facility has a long waiting list. They could easily fill her half-room. And that’s what matters: all beds filled with people who aren’t much trouble.

We move on to Home #2. It is a state facility and for her it’s the last option. She does not know this, of course. What she knows is that she’s in another unfamiliar place, she can’t remember why she’s there, and I keep telling her she can’t go home just now. It’s bare and impersonal, and there are men with dementia who are permitted to roam into her room, mess with her stuff, and roam back out. When we arrive she usually has been looking for me all day. She’s fretting that someone told her I was on another floor and I had to go out. Or I’m finally there to pick her up from the store; she forgot to bring money. Or they arrested her and she wants to know how much she needs to get out.

The other home was homey. We personalized her space and everything stayed put. In Home #2 we cannot personalize the room. Her belongings have a way of wandering off.

One evening in week two, I am in the open bathroom washing my hands. I hear an aide telling my mother, disrespectfully and forcefully, that she must go to the bathroom and get on her nightgown now, as though she is an defiant child and the aide is an exasperated parent. I come around the doorway to find the aide standing over my mother behind her chair, with her hands on my mother’s arms, struggling with her. I still don’t understand what the aide was trying to accomplish.

Involuntarily I make WHOA-what-the-heck-are-you-doing sounds. The aide gradually backs off her manhandling but seems irked that we aren’t backing her up. She thought we would be cooperative in getting my Mom changed for the night. (By the way it is 7 pm.) She leaves the room.

I report this to the charge nurse and I am approached by an ascending order of supervisors to recount the incident. Every one is focused on the necessity for my mom to be toileted according to schedule. (I should have pointed out that my Mom is mostly continent; she will tell them if she needs to go.) Two days later, we meet with a higher supervisor and recount again. She agrees that the aide’s attitude and actions were all wrong. But my mother needs to be toileted at a minimum of every eight hours or all sorts of bad things will occur.

I point out that a young, fit person wrestling with a 96 year old woman in a wheelchair might cause bad things to occur as well. I am quietly puzzled that she seems to be more concerned with charges of neglect than charges of abuse. I press the point politely: what happens in the case of a non-compliant patient refusing to be toileted after eight hours? The answer: we must, and do, force them.

My mother was not compliant and would stay that way. It was the core of her being. She was old and weak but she thought she could take anyone. Doesn’t anyone else see the potential for harm?

Let’s be honest: the staff, the family, the culture– we see the nursing home as a waiting room for eternity. It is unspoken, but we actually perceive some human beings as unwanted.

Should it be that a good person who’s lived almost 100 years faithfully devoted to others, at the time when she is most vulnerable, weakest, most helpless, should suddenly have to adjust herself to other people’s priorities? Shouldn’t someone with 40 descendants be able to count on as much reciprocity as she needs? Is it countercultural to expect that someone in the most dependent part of her life should find that her world responds with that which she requires?

I contrast what I see every day with another scenario. My Mom surrounded by family, people she remembers and trusts. Feeling secure in the center of someone’s home. Her needs tended patiently for as long as she needs.

We did just this as long as we could. My mom had physically deteriorated so much that we could not adequately care for her. Even accompanying her in the shower resulted in mini-strokes. Soon after entering the home, it became clear that she needed medical expertise close at hand. The goal became: someone visting every day to orient and reassure her.

But institutions promote accomodation. Our default is the warehouse for people who are not easy, not pretty, not fun, not independent.

My Mom is so dependent, and yet she is very independent. Her current context responds unfavorably to her independent attitude, even while they resentfully suffer her dependence. One spends a lot of time staring at the ceiling in the dark, trying out plans for a better situation. But I’m afraid such plans are made difficult by the status quo and the desire we have to get on with our own lives, uninterrupted by someone else’s needs.

The real question: what does each of us do when the context tells us a given level of care is good enough, when the environment requires and expects a given level of care? How many of us decide our actions are adequate–or even good–because we have met the standard expected by the culture in which we work? And how many of us have a higher independent standard which requires a higher standard of care?

Won’t most people accommodate the context in which they work? And what if that context does not address the patients’ needs but some institutional self-interest?

I don’t want to suggest it’s all bad. By far most of the workers I have observed are doing their jobs with integrity and care. They try to relate to my mother kindly and she receives good care. Recently, they found a med which keeps her calm and un-agitated without making her druggy. They’re only people after all–trying to accommodate someone who is belligerent is just about impossible, and dealing with a pleasant patient is much better. So my mother gets along with her caregivers now, much of the time.

But I have seen what we human beings tend to do when we perceive the context we’re in as a settled given: we accommodate. And if the given expectations we’ve accepted are being challenged, the challenger too must be caused to accommodate. Only the few will put the needs of the challengers, like my Mom, before the institution’s expectations, because they act according to an overriding law.

Regarding “Women’s Day” and Similar Stunts

Leave a reply

“A Day Without a Woman.” Are we still doing this or did it flop?

So my new feminist overlords want me to be a woman who refrains from:

Paid job (Ah–but not the unpaid job!)

Emotional Labor (What does this mean)

Childcare (Please arrange for a competent substitute before you do this. And do explain to the children that, on every other day, you are being forced to care for them by your patriarchal oppressors.)

Diapers (Please don’t make the babies suffer. Secure a competent substitute.)

Housework (No complaint here. But can’t you refrain from this without an international event?)

Cooking (No eating.)

Sweeping (Why precisely sweeping…?)

Laundry ( Because men never do laundry.)

Dishes ( Because men never do dishes.)

Errands ( Because men never run errands.)

Groceries ( Sure– buy your groceries another day.)

Fake smiles (Only women have fake smiles; and all women’s smiles are fake. So no smiles — take that.)

Flirting (Awww. Because we’re so dumb we want permission to feel alright about not being forced to flirt.)

Makeup (Because every other day I mindlessly obey male-dominated societal expectations by applying the slave-paint as expected. We all know the fashion industry, the make-up industry and popular women’s magazines are totally male owned and operated.)

Laundry ( I get to not do laundry twice today.)

Shaving (It’s March. Not a problem.)

The women most likely do be excited about not doing these things probably aren’t doing them already.

So my niece is supposed to abandon her 14 month old son for the day? Her cousin, who cares for him on weekdays should refrain from caring for him also?

Are these the things which make me a woman?  Are these things exclusively feminine? Are these the things that oppress me?

If all the women who keep our society rolling every day really did strike, the results would be bad indeed. I don’t mean the few who will actually take a paid day off from their jobs, or the few who will pass off their childcare to another woman. Or that dishes will not be done. I mean the things women do that really make this world go around.

 Do we achieve peace and harmony through anger? Do we change minds by taking our ball and going home? Also,  if you think you need someone’s permission to strike, then aren’t you admitting that you’re a puppet every other day?

As a mere homemaker, I do what I do intentionally. No one forces me and I don’t need anyone’s permission to stop.

The most embarrassing aspect of an event like this is that it can only appeal to 1%-ers; meaning all of us in the first world. People with leisure, time and money to play at it. It accomplishes nothing for the woman who is actually poor, hungry or powerless. You couldn’t promote a movement like this in places where there was actually a problem. If you have the opportunity to choose to take the day off and shop at only small, female-owned businesses, you are one of the privileged, not one of the oppressed.

That being said, I’ve read some commentary from people who ought to know better along these lines: Even if women really struck, the world wouldn’t fall apart. Now if MEN went on strike, everything would grind to a halt.  An unfortunate sentiment which would encourage some to say we need a women’s strike.

Please, think about the women in your life refraining from the things they do every day which keep your world running smoothly. Think about what you wouldn’t know without what the women in your life have taught you. 

Let’s not confirm the division. Anything which is about dividing the sexes, about pitting them against one another, including the championing of one sex at the expense of the other…all of it tends toward destruction, conflict, tragedy. Nothing good can come of it.

Why? Because we were meant to be compatible, complementary, supportive of each other, invested in each other’s well-being, health, wealth, progress, and good outcomes. We were meant to do things together which neither of us could possibly do alone. Rather than seeking the destruction of one another, we were meant to build together.

And it unwittingly confirms the predictions God made about us at the beginning of human history. Men and women would struggle with each other for supremacy. We would perceive inequality where there was none and fight for our turf.

I think of myself as a human being. We human beings need to love each other, support each other, strive for better things together. If I divide myself from half of the planet, and half of the people in my life, I suffer for it, and so do they.

Gimmicks accomplish little, and division is nothing if not destructive.

 

 

Grief is Real but Memories Are Too

8 Replies

Sometimes time crawls. I am frozen.

The empty space is just a matter of fact. Everything else goes on. The landscape changes. Her house, my house, which I see out my front window, becomes less recognizable by the day. I can never go back in.

Distracting images float into my thoughts regardless of what I am doing or thinking. The last time I saw her, realizing just how very much I will miss her crooked fingers.

How can someone with such a huge presence be gone?

In my mind, I often find myself in that room where we found her nearly every day. We are watching M*A*S*H or looking vainly for a good movie. I am watering her plants and my husband is shooing away one of the wandering residents. Or we are wheeling her out of the dayroom to the gazebo, an escape she loved for as long as possible, to watch the sky over the trees past the other resident buildings.

Or she is still at home. We are sitting with our feet up on either end of her couch recliner, watching episode after episode of Law and Order, or old movies on TCM. Later I’m in her kitchen baking this week’s cookies.

Or I am sitting by her bed on that long Friday. On Saturday my siblings are arriving gradually, one by one, faces distorted briefly as they come in. I’m staring at the picture over her bed in which she stands between my two brothers looking fully twenty years younger than she was.

Mostly I find myself just hovering there in the room with the afternoon light slanting in then dimming toward evening. My husband and I are just with her.

How can such a huge presence be gone?

Here is a conversation from one of those afternoons under the gazebo. My mother, with dementia but articulate as could be, had been indulging in a confrontation with some of the staff. Now, calm:

Mom: What are those buildings? It looks like a school.

My husband: No, it’s just some of the other buildings here.

Mom: …Maybe they’re teaching manners to the elderly.

My husband: They assume they already have them.

Mom: … …Obviously we don’t.

She never lost her true self. I have stories.

Now, no matter what happens, or what I do, I just cannot feel right. I imagined that grief was a little ball of black twine inside of me. I’m getting along OK, I don’t feel any way in particular, I’m just getting through each day. I will feel normal in awhile. Just wait.  I am frozen.

Then it occurred to me that my image was wrong. The ball of grief is not a little thing inside me. I am in it. My world is inside of grief.

I can only wait until it wants to go. The grieving person does not control the grief process. No matter how prepared you were for your loss, grief takes its own course. You are at its mercy.

It’s helpful for others to know this. Rather than trying (however sympathetically) to tell someone how to get through (or get over) their grief, we should walk with them through it. No matter how long it takes, or how unexpected the path. Just be kind and present. There’s really nothing else you can do. Or maybe the best thing you can do is to leave them alone with it and let them work through it.

I wish I had written down more of her memories. Let me tell you a little about my mom from my memory.

She was creative. Before she became too impaired to sew anymore, she had been sewing for about seventy five years. She could make almost anything. She never followed a pattern without creating her own alterations. My friend and I were looking at tote bags today at Hallmark and I remembered the huge, wildly printed, sometimes waterproof-lined totes my mom made. With handles that would never fall off. She loved color and loud prints. She was always stylish in her one of a kind handmade dresses. She made her hats, she made our Easter dresses and spring coats every year, she made my sister’s formal prom dresses (several), she made the wedding dresses for all three of us Mercer girls. She loved to make my children clothes: flannel lined denim baggy jeans with huge pockets and elastic waists, delightfully patterned little girl dresses, baby clothes, doll clothes, roomy fleece sweaters with reindeer and snowflakes.

How many of her carefully sewn gifts do I still have? Not that many. How did I let them go? This feels like infinite regret now.

She also loved cooking and was creative there too. There was a health-conscious era where all baked goods had what we called bark and gravel. There was always cake and the smell of cinnamon buns or cookies in the oven signaled the holidays. I have carried on her baking traditions, so at least that isn’t lost.

At the center of my mother’s personality was a diamond hard gem called Self-Determination. Maybe it was really called Opposition or You Can’t Make Me. She died with advanced dementia but that nucleus at the center of her being was untouched.

To the end she knew two things. She knew her children and their children, and she knew nobody was ever going to make her do anything she didn’t want to.

She gave up going to bed when her dementia was advancing. No amount of persuasion would  get her out of the recliner and into bed. So there she sat 24/7, dozing sometimes, awake sometimes, regardless of night or day. I once marched over to her house at 2am to convince her to get into bed. By 3:30 I retreated home, angry, exasperated and unsuccessful. The more I persuaded, no matter how I persuaded, the more her heels dug deeper.

She never gave up the idea of going home once she was in the nursing facility. This got her kicked out of the first place because she, with her wheelchair and strength of a kitten, was actively trying to escape. The second place had the locked-down unit where they’re supposed to be prepared for wanderers and escapists. They had to invent new safeguards and change procedures after she arrived. She pulled the fire alarms. They had to hide the elevator button.  She was going to bed when she wanted.

In her last conversation, aware that she had had a stroke, confined to bed, she was still asking if I thought she’d be going home soon. She. Was going. Home.

This is one of my favorite Mom stories from my childhood. She would not mind my telling it. My mother was well educated, articulate and intelligent. But few things in the neighborhood made my mom madder than people letting their dogs “go” on our property. If she caught some dog walker allowing their dog to do its business in our yard, or even our sidewalk, they would get an earful.  One day she saw a neighbor lady from around the corner doing this and my mom had had it. When the lady tried to justify herself my mother asked her: “How would you like it if I sent my kids over to go in your yard?”

Neighbor lady went off shocked. Little did the woman know that my brother loved this and would have been glad to do it.

I could fill a book with things to tell you about my Mom and maybe someday I will. She deserves it.

10 Ways Large Families Save the (Earth) World

9 Replies

1. I just finished wiping the icing off the bottoms of a bunch of birthday candles. I’m going to need those again in ten days, and again less than a month later. Why would I buy new ones when these still have a good inch and a half? Crumbs of old homemade icing never hurt anyone yet. I bet moms of two kids buy a new set of candles every birthday and throw them away.

Also, homemade-from-scratch cake costs about 1/20th of a bakery cake and tastes 20x better. Hydrogenated shortening kills; real butter doesn’t.

2. My son needed to do zero adjusting when he went to college and shared a room with two other guys. He shared a room with two guys at home too. Maybe my boys were unusual, but they never fought over territory. So at college my son was perfectly content with his bed and his desk; he let the other guys vie for lebensraum.

3. It is essential to learn patience when eight people share one bathroom. It is equally essential to learn sympathy and consideration for others (‘ bladders).

4. Bags and bags of clothing used to show up on our porch. We had never asked for hand-me-downs; people just assumed we could use them. They were right and we were thankful. It would have been difficult indeed to buy new clothes every season for every child. Most of the clothing we received was in like-new condition, and a lot of the items had price-tags.

Perhaps the most valuable component of these acts of generosity was that my kids learned that a second-hand item in good condition does not differ one iota from a brand-new one. There is shame neither in sharing nor receiving, and there is nothing which so inspires giving than receiving.

5. My kids are now adults who don’t expect the world to hand them all the amenities– partly because we didn’t teach them to expect gifts except on Christmas and their birthdays. They didn’t expect candy except on Christmas, Easter, and Halloween.

My oldest daughter was honestly judgmental about her friends expecting big gifts for Easter and lesser holidays. My kids know how to delay gratification, and although they do not always practice it, they know how to be frugal.

6. Reduce, reuse, recycle. It was our lifestyle before the motto was coined. I was raised by children of the Depression and learned to make my spending count. When I was growing up, we didn’t spend money on non-essentials but we had all we needed. We weren’t used to vacations and we were usually the last of our friends to get the latest tech like color TV.

We raised our kids with the same mindset: one not deprivation but careful frugality. Spend when you need to without regret, but save whenever you can for future needs. We didn’t spend much on vacations. We drove our cars until they were junk. Eating out or ordering in was a rare special occasion.

7. Contrary to popular assumption, big families have small footprints. We eight use approximately the same resources that the four of you, or the two of you, do.

At the same time they condemn parents of several kids for selfish and wasteful American materialism, my childfree acquaintances espouse the superior lifestyle of spontaneously flying the globe, to stay at the priciest family-free resorts, indulging themselves in only the finest and most select perks that the self-absorbed can devise. Driving further to shop for only the trendiest fair trade items.

I’ll compare my eight-person staycation expenses to your two-person dream trip any day you like. Guess who comes out using up more of earth’s precious resources? Virtue-signaling and Childfree -signaling don’t mix.

8. Happy families. Positive family experiences. Fostering a concept of unconditional belonging. We believe that being plunked in the middle of a bunch of other difficult human beings is actually according to a wise plan; we are each more or less compelled to learn how to live in peace with these other people, which teaches us valuable lessons about how to get along in a world full of other people.

9. Raising people who want to have children and build families, and who see the importance and enduring value of pouring their lives into others and investing themselves in creating a unique family culture which will continue to influence after they are gone.

In other words, small footprints may lead to small footprints.

10. Today, a large family orientation usually develops within a faith orientation. Our society has moved toward smaller families with the advent of birth control and the cult of personal fulfillment. I might also say with the de-emphasis of faith culture and the growth of materialist culture. It is counter cultural to have large families and, counterintuitively, large families very often happen due to deliberate choice. That choice usually derives from faith in the intrinsic value of each person, given by a gracious God.

Because of this faith orientation, the lessons of other-centeredness, the value of family, the hope of enduring heritage, good stewardship of material wealth, sustainability, recycling and reusing–all part of a whole.

Bonus reason: I love my big family.

 

 

 

 

 

Hero Fathers

Leave a reply

I attended my aunt’s funeral recently. She was the last of her generation in my mother’s or my father’s family.

Two of her children and one grandchild eulogized her and spoke of her affection and her infectious love of fun. It was acknowledged that she had had an unusually tragic childhood.

My uncle, her husband, passed away about fifteen years ago. Only honor was spoken for both parents. Yet I know there was such turmoil in that home. How does it all add up?

An extremely conflicted marriage which bore legendary stories produced five upstanding, moral, faithful, loving people. And each one produced functional homes and happy families of their own. Such is not always the case.

Somehow a couple who clashed tragically, worked together. They persevered to guide five children to responsible adulthood. The kids had two models who together covered most of the bases and who somehow taught them well to discard the bad examples and to emulate the good.

He was everything good in this world and protection from everything bad.

My cousin had this to say of her Dad. She borrowed it from her brother who wrote it for his eulogy.

It was certainly true for them and their siblings. I knew that he stood in the way between his kids and a lot of negative outcomes. The fact that all five turned out well is the proof of his success.

I knew him as a guy who had a way with stories, who loved to visit his elderly mother (my grandmother, who lived with us) on Wednesday nights for a glass of wine and a lot of laughs. According to his kids he was also a rock-solid course-corrector. In the face of nonsense, he was no nonsense. He poured out his whole life, all of his energy and time, for his family and for his kids.

And here is the thing that I think makes him truly remarkable: he stuck with a marriage that most today would have abandoned. This marriage was not one in which he found comfort, peace, or support. Clearly there was nothing in it for him for many years.

He stayed with his children.

Would anyone say this about him:

He was everything good in this world and protection from everything bad

if he had not chosen to stay and face the conflict every day, and owned the responsibility to keep his family on a straight course?

Today we are encouraged to live our own lives, to pursue our own particular brand of happiness, and to let go of what–and who–makes our lives anything but happy. Just walk away if you perceive another person as “toxic.” In other words we are encouraged to jettison difficulties, and to exclude what–and who–does not serve us.

How will we ever know what kind of people we are? If my uncle had not lived in the crucible, would he have known the steadfastness of which he was capable? Would his children know he was a hero?

It was a different time. He lived by an old code. Men were men. He stood up and did his duty. You can say all these trite things.

But it seems to me old codes and doing one’s duty, being a man and living according to a different time…knowing how men are expected to behave and committing to being a man…are all things that work. Thank God there are people who fulfill their promises, no matter how much it takes from them, who commit without turning back, who endure no matter what comes.

Fathers can be heroes, and my uncle was one.

 

 

“…but some everyones are more equal than others”

3 Replies

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948 (General Assembly resolution 217 A) as a common standard of achievements for all peoples and all nations. It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be universally protected and it has been translated into over 500 languages

Article 6 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights establishes that:

“Everyone shall have the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.”

It is this kind of intentionally vague statement that totalitarians throughout our history have used to establish control and shape societies according to their will.

I see the problem right away, don’t you? Who exactly is everyone? It should be obvious that any despotic body can exclude any group it would prefer from the “everyone” umbrella with ease. Human society has a long history of selective inclusion to the most favored status. Slaves, European Jews, Armenians, Hutus.

Although over 100 organizations and states argued for the right of the unborn to be recognized among that “everyone,” a UN body has excluded the unborn from any rights or protections which international law can recognize.

From https://c-fam.org/right-life-international/

The latest effort comes from the Human Rights Committee, one of the oldest and better known of the UN treaty bodies. The committee is drafting a legal commentary on Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on the Right to Life, one of the foundational human rights instruments, that categorically excludes children in the womb and denies their membership in the human family.

The Human Rights Committee has created a contradictory premise within a universal statement. According to the HRC, the right to obtain an abortion is far more significant than “the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.”

The progressive penchant (born of Marxist theory) is to present two rights as though they are in conflict, make the best use of that conflict, and then to pick a winner.

As though two universal human rights can be mutually exclusive.

In reality, the right of every human being to be regarded as a person should not stand in conflict with the right to reproductive healthcare. It seems logical that if a universal right and a non-universal right are in conflict, the non-universal right is void, or at least questionable. A particular right can be forfeit by its owner; a criminal forfeits rights as the penalty for his crime. But the unborn do not forfeit their rights–the HRC and many others declare that they never posses such rights at all.

Both rights–the rights to life and to reproductive healthcare–are life affirming, health affirming, good things.  But that argument as presented by our progressive death culture reveals much: the right to life does stand in conflict with the right to obtain an abortion.

The pro-abortion mind has been tenacious in its preference to present this moral dilemma as a struggle between two interests: the interest of the woman vs. the interest of the unborn fetus inside the woman. Note the entrenched exploitation in the attempt to divide the most intimate co-existence known to humankind.

After which, that mind declares that it does not acknowledge one party–the unborn fetus–as an interest which it must respect. Erase that person from the equation (which you have created)–et viola!–the only interested party is the woman.

And anyone who would deny her rights is perpetrating injustice.

The UN HRC body is a nonsensical entity until it is able to recognize, at the very least, that the plight of the pregnant woman is a plight which involves two persons. From that position, we could then move forward in an effort to ensure the rights of both persons in a realistic manner. As long as we must play pretend while making international declarations, we are making ourselves selfish children engaging in nonsense.

Our cause is to keep the reality of the personhood of the unborn child always before the world. We must not allow the world to erase, forget and ignore the rights of the unborn human child.

animal-farm-some-animals-are-more-equal

 

 

Growing Up in the Church

3 Replies

Young adults grow up, graduate from youth group, and leave the church. This is a truth; I don’t want to know the stats.

Why? Maybe many, if honest, would sum it up this way: Once I didn’t have to go to church anymore, I found it irrelevant.

The first blush of real freedom, of having the say-so over where you go and what you do sure is freeing. Sure, you have to get some sort of job, or live on school funding which others provide, and more or less pay for things–but after all you’re over seventeen, and no one can tell you what to do. That’s worth everything. Why spend time anywhere that you don’t find engaging?

But wait. Did you make that decision to leave church as an adult?

Or do you still approach church as a consumer, an audience member, a client–or like a child? Positioning yourself as a receiver, one whose needs you expect others to meet, is what a child does. And church no longer satisfied.

But that is hardly surprising. In order to “get” something out of church, you must take a step out of childhood. You must take responsibility for your own walk.

And in order to be able to do that, you must choose to invest. You make an investment–a commitment–in your fellow church family members.

When you do, you find that those other people are not grown-ups to be dismissed or mocked, but real human beings and creatures of the Creator, on level footing with you. You begin to listen not in order to criticize, but in order to hear wisdom, support, guidance.

Or did you think those people were too lame for God to use, too irrelevant to have anything to offer you?

As long as you wait, like a child, to receive what you want, you will not find what you want as a child, nor what you need as an adult.

 

 

Social Media Reveals

Leave a reply

When you can’t say hello to your high school friend after a couple decades without a disclaimer: “Even though we would not agree on politics or religion, I have decided to acknowledge your greeting”–you reveal a lot.

Word of advice, when you can’t even say hi to an old friend without establishing your tribal identity, you have joined a cult. You’ve given yourself over, body and soul, to a controlling party.

You’ve bought into identity politics and applied it to yourself. Peer acceptance is essential, and the virtue signal to the self is as necessary as air. In every social interaction, your identity must be validated.

I’ve been lectured to by a close relative, who actually knows me apart from any cultural caricature, who applied abusive accusations based on a cultural caricature which she supposed fit me. I wasn’t even the offender in this situation but I was close at hand.

I’ve been unfriended, post-hidden, and even once blocked (I was relieved about that one; the blocker was actually getting scary). All of this long after I announced that I would no longer make political comments. I no longer do; I decided that social media is for socializing with new and old friends. Sharing news and pleasantries, songs we like, amusing anecdotes from our lives, and re-connecting with long-lost friends.

But re-connecting can be deflating at times. Warm and funny friends in high school reveal themselves to be cold and distant. Greetings after 30 years need disclaimers. It’s not enough to be politics-free. I am not sufficiently deferential to the essential political consensus. I’m not in the tribe, and so social interaction will be impossible.

All this is very sad. We’ve turned over social reality to social media virtual-reality, and we mistake the one for the other.

 

 

 

 

Return to Respect for the Marriage Bed

Leave a reply

I am appalled when I hear of a young married man and woman being asked to spend nights apart because of ministry duties.

God created human society. At humanity’s core is the intimate relationship between man and wife.  It is the nucleus of the relationship between man and woman; it is the Big Bang which creates the family; it is the center of all human relationship. Church, village, nation, world–all human society springs concentrically from the source of this physical/spiritual union between man and wife.

God designed the marriage relationship as a human mirror of His most intimate, unconditional and expressive love. His love for His Bride.

The marriage bed is respected and set apart — or made sacred — by God the Creator. Have we bought into the world’s evaluation of married sexual relationships? The newly married couple–wink wink–now can have some legal fun. No big deal if they have to put other priorities before this bit of self-indulgence.

No, no, no. This is what God has to say in His Word about married sex:

Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. Hebrews 13:4

Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well. Proverbs 5:15

Has not the one God made you? You belong to him in body and spirit. And what does the one God seek? Godly offspring. So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful to the wife of your youth. Malachi 2:15

God designed the first years of marriage as a special time when a couple nurtures and builds their love. He knows that physical expression binds the two together in a connection so close that we can hardly comprehend. It is a mystical union meant to reflect the faith, constancy and intense affection that He has for us. It is how we seal the ownership of one another, heart, body and soul. It is a time to develop a new wordless language unique to each relationship. It takes time, intentional effort, and self-sacrifice.

But I’m in a struggling ministry and I’m needed, you say. If you are married, you will never have another ministry which supersedes your marriage. It is your Number One Ministry Priority. The cultivation of your marriage as an expression of God’s gift, and its maintenance as a representative of God’s unbounded love, far surpasses any other ministry goals over time.

We are here to represent God to a world which needs Him. We are here to love God through loving (verb) His other human creations. How better to do that than to live out a marriage as He designed, since your marriage is an example of how God loves each of us?

The marriage bed is not to de slighted. It is the far more important than the world knows. Let’s be the ones who respect the marriage bed. The freedom of the married man and woman, particularly the newly married couple, to cultivate this most vital foundation—unhurried, unhampered, undistracted—should not be infringed by anyone. No one should tempt a newly married man or woman away from the marriage bed, from the right to spend private time together overnight in their own home. The marriage bed takes precedence over other relationships. The marriage bed comes far before any other ministry responsibilities.

And no man, and no woman, having recently married, should submit to a request to spend an overnight apart from his or her spouse. To do so is to slight the other, and the marriage, and the Lord who sealed your union.

How do I know? This is what God has to say on the subject of young marriage:

“When a man takes a new wife, he shall not go out with the army nor be charged with any duty; he shall be free at home one year and shall give happiness to his wife whom he has taken.” Deuteronomy 24:5

God is not winking and nudging at honeymoons. He does not think the man and wife self-indulgent who enjoy their new intimacy. Even our Creator respects the marriage bed and tells us that it is of first priority over virtually all others.