Yesterday we took our youngest son to college at the University of Texas at Austin. It is quite an operation to receive all the new freshmen and to deposit them and all their stuff in their dorm rooms. I was quite impressed with how well the dorm staff had organized the activity. After checking in you were given a number and waited pleasantly in the cafeteria before it was your time to drive up to the curb to unload all your stuff. Students and staff members helped unload everything, put it on carts and haul it to the student’s assigned room. While everyone waited their turn the cafeteria staff even served complimentary drinks and snacks. I had plenty of time to look around at the other families who were bringing their children to college. One surprising observation struck me. I saw students of every hue and description, but each one was accompanied by an intact family: father and mother, and in many cases siblings as well.
If you are familiar with colleges in Texas, you will no doubt realize that the University of Texas at Austin is the highest ranked and most selective public university in the state. It is no mean feat to be admitted to UT Austin. Around us yesterday were some of the best students in Texas. Knowing the statistics for single-parent households, it was no surprise to see each student accompanied by his or her mother. But I was amazed and gratified to see, in every case, the father there as well.
This can be no accident, I’m sure. All the statistics also point out that an involved father is one of the most important contributors to successful and well adjusted children. Now I’m sure that some of the families I saw yesterday were blended families. But in every one there was still a man who was willing to step up and be a father to the children in his home – whether they were his flesh and blood or not.
We often hear the phrase “faithful husband” but it is just as important to be a faithful father as well. When will the men in our society wake up? When will they accept their God-given responsibility? How long must the social devastation of their selfishness continue? I am proud to be a faithful father to my two sons. If God gives them families of their own I hope they continue that legacy. I pray that they will.
Showing posts with label society. Show all posts
Showing posts with label society. Show all posts
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Too Far From the Farm
Several lines of thought lately have led me to contemplate the impact on our society of the decline in rural life. I’m talking about the fact that fewer and fewer people live on a farm anymore, and fewer and fewer city dwellers know anyone who does. This has changed our culture in many ways. But the particular effect that has intrigued me lately is a modern city dweller’s relationship to nature.
Urbanites typically have one of several attitudes toward nature. Some simply want nothing to do with it. The local park is about all of it they’re interested in experiencing, or perhaps the zoo. Otherwise they are happy to live in high rise apartments and work in office buildings and spend their leisure hours in clubs or museums or theatres.
Then there are the outdoor sports enthusiasts. For them, nature is something to conquer, as in climbing a mountain or snowmobiling through Yellowstone National Park. These people sometimes cross paths with another group, the wilderness lovers, but they’re very different in their outlook toward nature. The wilderness lovers worship those remnants of nature untouched by humans. They long for nothing more than to experience such places, but they feel their own presence there is an intrusion – and they resent the presence of the sports enthusiasts, who don’t share their reverence.
None of these has the same perspective on nature as the farmer. He enjoys the outdoors like the sports enthusiast, and he loves nature like the wilderness lover. But his love for it is more intimate and more connected than the others because he is part of it, not an invader or outside observer. The farmer gives his time and labor to the land and receives back from it his livelihood. He participates fully in the natural cycle.
The city dweller is part of this cycle, too, but feels disconnected from it. He drinks water from a river or well he might never have seen. He eats produce that he wouldn’t recognize if he saw it growing in a field. He likes meat but doesn’t like to think about how it got to his table. To the disinterested city dweller nature is a distant memory. To the sports enthusiast it is a playground, and to the wilderness lover it is an icon of lost innocence. But for the farmer nature is a resource. It is also his home.
I was fortunate enough to have grandparents who lived in the country and my favorite thing to do as a child was to visit them. My grandparents grew up in rural East Texas, but when they got married in 1925 they moved to Houston. He became a shop foreman for Hughes Tool making drill bits for the Texas oil fields. She raised their three daughters. When he retired they moved back to the farm she grew up on, and began to practice all the skills they had learned growing up but had long left behind. They planted a garden. It was almost an acre and my grandfather plowed it with a tractor. They raised cattle and pigs and chickens. My grandmother canned the fruits and vegetables they raised. She even tried her hand a few times at churning butter and making lye soap, but it was so much easier to drive into town and go to the grocery store for some things. During the summer weeks I spent with them I got to experience all aspects of rural life.
I think the general lack of such experiences today has some disturbing consequences. For one, we have become squeamish. People don’t like to get their hands dirty. Kids won’t pick up a caterpillar. Parents are embarrassed if their children see one dog mounting another. Many adults decide to become vegetarians.
This last observation is emblematic of the transformation I’m talking about. It is perfectly natural for humans to kill and eat animals. It’s been going on for all of human history. And for almost all that time, if you ate it you probably killed it and cleaned it. Our grandfathers moved to the city and started buying their meat at the butcher’s shop, but they remembered where steaks and fried chicken came from. Their children knew this too, but not having grown up with it weren’t comfortable thinking about it. Their grandchildren are so removed from it some think it is evil and have decided not to eat meat at all.
I remember when I was about ten there was a calf on my grandparent’s farm whose mother for some reason couldn’t suckle it. They bottle-fed it until it could be weaned. My grandmother even named it: Carnation. My sister and I enjoyed feeding and petting Carnation. Then one weekend we went to visit them and Carnation was gone. I remember how my sister reacted when she learned where the steaks we were eating had come from. My grandparents tried to console her, but to no avail.
Attitudes towards guns have undergone a similar transformation. As they became less familiar to people they seemed at first scary, and then later evil. I contrast this again with my own experience. When we used to visit my grandparent’s farm there was always a loaded .22 rifle leaning in the corner of their bedroom. There were other guns, too. They were used for hunting birds or deer, so there was no reason to keep them loaded. The .22 was sometimes used for squirrel hunting, but it was kept loaded and handy to dispatch certain nuisance animals that occasionally made their appearance. Armadillos would dig up the yard and the garden. Raccoons would rip open every ear of corn in an entire row and only eat a few bites. Rattlesnakes were dangerous to people and livestock.
No one gave a thought to the danger of having a loaded rifle there with kids in the house, because we had all been taught to handle guns and shoot from an early age. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know how to shoot a gun. My grandfather taught each of his grandkids how to shoot that .22 as soon as we were old enough to hold it. I must have been only three or four years old. We would sit on the back porch and shoot at a tin can resting against an old tree stump in the yard. It was absolutely my favorite thing to do. When I was little he would always be sitting right at my elbow. But by the time I was eleven or twelve he would let me shoot it by myself.
Part of the problem with guns in the city today is that kids know only a Hollywood fantasy of them, not the reality of them. Guns are the forbidden fruit that adults tell them never to touch. But that rifle leaning in the corner of the bedroom wasn’t dangerous to anyone because, first of all, we all knew proper gun safety. We had an excellent appreciation for what a gun can do to a person or an animal. Secondly, I knew that if I ever wanted to shoot it all I had to do was ask. It was as familiar to me as my baseball glove. I taught my kids to shoot a pellet gun when they were little because I wanted them to have the same familiarity and healthy respect that I had. I wonder if accidental shootings wouldn’t be rarer if more parents did that.
If you grew up on a farm or knew someone who did, you realize that nature doesn’t have to be kept completely pristine, either. It is a resource without which humanity couldn’t survive. We must care for it and be good stewards of it, but the idea of leaving all of it completely untouched is, literally, suicidal for the human race. Between the extremes of destroying it and not touching it there is plenty of room for developing it and benefiting from it responsibly.
In East Texas we have oil wells. My grandparents weren’t fortunate enough to have one on their property, but many of their neighbors and kin did. Back in the sixties, the oilmen sometimes made a mess when they drilled a well, and they didn’t always clean up after themselves perfectly, either. They’re much better now, of course. But even then the land recovered and nothing was permanently destroyed. All of us as a society have benefited from the oil pumped out of those wells, and the landowners benefited financially as well. It would have been silly to leave it all in the ground.
Growing up in Houston, we have often gone to the beach in Galveston and seen the oil rigs offshore. It never bothered me to see them. It didn’t spoil the experience for me. It was kind of cool, actually. Sometimes tar balls washed up on the beach and that wasn’t pleasant. But again, they’re much more careful about it now, and in any case the benefits to everyone far outweighed the inconvenience to a few. I don’t think most people minded that much. Nobody has to freeze in the dark on our account.
As I reflect on all these things I realize that it is the typical urban attitudes toward nature that are unrealistic and unsustainable, not the attitudes of those who would cultivate it as a resource. Whatever ideals we might hold about nature, the very cities we live in would be impossible without the large scale transformation of the land that farming, ranching, mining and other productive activities entail. And you know what? It’s not all that bad. There is a beauty to a well-tended world as well as to the pristine wilderness. We can have both. It is God’s gift to us. We are not alien to nature; we are part of it. We cannot deny our dependence on it and our inevitable effect on it. Let us both embrace it and harvest from it, without apologies.
Urbanites typically have one of several attitudes toward nature. Some simply want nothing to do with it. The local park is about all of it they’re interested in experiencing, or perhaps the zoo. Otherwise they are happy to live in high rise apartments and work in office buildings and spend their leisure hours in clubs or museums or theatres.
Then there are the outdoor sports enthusiasts. For them, nature is something to conquer, as in climbing a mountain or snowmobiling through Yellowstone National Park. These people sometimes cross paths with another group, the wilderness lovers, but they’re very different in their outlook toward nature. The wilderness lovers worship those remnants of nature untouched by humans. They long for nothing more than to experience such places, but they feel their own presence there is an intrusion – and they resent the presence of the sports enthusiasts, who don’t share their reverence.
None of these has the same perspective on nature as the farmer. He enjoys the outdoors like the sports enthusiast, and he loves nature like the wilderness lover. But his love for it is more intimate and more connected than the others because he is part of it, not an invader or outside observer. The farmer gives his time and labor to the land and receives back from it his livelihood. He participates fully in the natural cycle.
The city dweller is part of this cycle, too, but feels disconnected from it. He drinks water from a river or well he might never have seen. He eats produce that he wouldn’t recognize if he saw it growing in a field. He likes meat but doesn’t like to think about how it got to his table. To the disinterested city dweller nature is a distant memory. To the sports enthusiast it is a playground, and to the wilderness lover it is an icon of lost innocence. But for the farmer nature is a resource. It is also his home.
I was fortunate enough to have grandparents who lived in the country and my favorite thing to do as a child was to visit them. My grandparents grew up in rural East Texas, but when they got married in 1925 they moved to Houston. He became a shop foreman for Hughes Tool making drill bits for the Texas oil fields. She raised their three daughters. When he retired they moved back to the farm she grew up on, and began to practice all the skills they had learned growing up but had long left behind. They planted a garden. It was almost an acre and my grandfather plowed it with a tractor. They raised cattle and pigs and chickens. My grandmother canned the fruits and vegetables they raised. She even tried her hand a few times at churning butter and making lye soap, but it was so much easier to drive into town and go to the grocery store for some things. During the summer weeks I spent with them I got to experience all aspects of rural life.
I think the general lack of such experiences today has some disturbing consequences. For one, we have become squeamish. People don’t like to get their hands dirty. Kids won’t pick up a caterpillar. Parents are embarrassed if their children see one dog mounting another. Many adults decide to become vegetarians.
This last observation is emblematic of the transformation I’m talking about. It is perfectly natural for humans to kill and eat animals. It’s been going on for all of human history. And for almost all that time, if you ate it you probably killed it and cleaned it. Our grandfathers moved to the city and started buying their meat at the butcher’s shop, but they remembered where steaks and fried chicken came from. Their children knew this too, but not having grown up with it weren’t comfortable thinking about it. Their grandchildren are so removed from it some think it is evil and have decided not to eat meat at all.
I remember when I was about ten there was a calf on my grandparent’s farm whose mother for some reason couldn’t suckle it. They bottle-fed it until it could be weaned. My grandmother even named it: Carnation. My sister and I enjoyed feeding and petting Carnation. Then one weekend we went to visit them and Carnation was gone. I remember how my sister reacted when she learned where the steaks we were eating had come from. My grandparents tried to console her, but to no avail.
Attitudes towards guns have undergone a similar transformation. As they became less familiar to people they seemed at first scary, and then later evil. I contrast this again with my own experience. When we used to visit my grandparent’s farm there was always a loaded .22 rifle leaning in the corner of their bedroom. There were other guns, too. They were used for hunting birds or deer, so there was no reason to keep them loaded. The .22 was sometimes used for squirrel hunting, but it was kept loaded and handy to dispatch certain nuisance animals that occasionally made their appearance. Armadillos would dig up the yard and the garden. Raccoons would rip open every ear of corn in an entire row and only eat a few bites. Rattlesnakes were dangerous to people and livestock.
No one gave a thought to the danger of having a loaded rifle there with kids in the house, because we had all been taught to handle guns and shoot from an early age. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know how to shoot a gun. My grandfather taught each of his grandkids how to shoot that .22 as soon as we were old enough to hold it. I must have been only three or four years old. We would sit on the back porch and shoot at a tin can resting against an old tree stump in the yard. It was absolutely my favorite thing to do. When I was little he would always be sitting right at my elbow. But by the time I was eleven or twelve he would let me shoot it by myself.
Part of the problem with guns in the city today is that kids know only a Hollywood fantasy of them, not the reality of them. Guns are the forbidden fruit that adults tell them never to touch. But that rifle leaning in the corner of the bedroom wasn’t dangerous to anyone because, first of all, we all knew proper gun safety. We had an excellent appreciation for what a gun can do to a person or an animal. Secondly, I knew that if I ever wanted to shoot it all I had to do was ask. It was as familiar to me as my baseball glove. I taught my kids to shoot a pellet gun when they were little because I wanted them to have the same familiarity and healthy respect that I had. I wonder if accidental shootings wouldn’t be rarer if more parents did that.
If you grew up on a farm or knew someone who did, you realize that nature doesn’t have to be kept completely pristine, either. It is a resource without which humanity couldn’t survive. We must care for it and be good stewards of it, but the idea of leaving all of it completely untouched is, literally, suicidal for the human race. Between the extremes of destroying it and not touching it there is plenty of room for developing it and benefiting from it responsibly.
In East Texas we have oil wells. My grandparents weren’t fortunate enough to have one on their property, but many of their neighbors and kin did. Back in the sixties, the oilmen sometimes made a mess when they drilled a well, and they didn’t always clean up after themselves perfectly, either. They’re much better now, of course. But even then the land recovered and nothing was permanently destroyed. All of us as a society have benefited from the oil pumped out of those wells, and the landowners benefited financially as well. It would have been silly to leave it all in the ground.
Growing up in Houston, we have often gone to the beach in Galveston and seen the oil rigs offshore. It never bothered me to see them. It didn’t spoil the experience for me. It was kind of cool, actually. Sometimes tar balls washed up on the beach and that wasn’t pleasant. But again, they’re much more careful about it now, and in any case the benefits to everyone far outweighed the inconvenience to a few. I don’t think most people minded that much. Nobody has to freeze in the dark on our account.
As I reflect on all these things I realize that it is the typical urban attitudes toward nature that are unrealistic and unsustainable, not the attitudes of those who would cultivate it as a resource. Whatever ideals we might hold about nature, the very cities we live in would be impossible without the large scale transformation of the land that farming, ranching, mining and other productive activities entail. And you know what? It’s not all that bad. There is a beauty to a well-tended world as well as to the pristine wilderness. We can have both. It is God’s gift to us. We are not alien to nature; we are part of it. We cannot deny our dependence on it and our inevitable effect on it. Let us both embrace it and harvest from it, without apologies.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
The Real Problem in Education
The real problem with public schools is not poor funding. It’s not obstructive teachers unions. It’s not an overemphasis on standardized testing. It’s not a lack of innovative programs. Helpful changes could be made in all these areas, but we would just be dancing around the edges. The real problem in education is the social chaos created by two generations of disintegrating families, entitlement attitudes, failed discipline and misguided attempts to use public schools for social engineering. The failings of our schools reflect deep dysfunction in our society.
My wife began teaching in public schools over 25 years ago. She has taught at both the middle school and high school levels. The district she taught in for most of that time transitioned from a middle class suburban community to a poor, high-crime, heavily minority community. Gangs, drugs and teen pregnancy are significant problems, even among seventh and eighth graders.
Teaching in this environment is not for the faint of heart. Mustering the optimism, the energy and the courage to face the daily challenge for the 4000th time requires more dedication and fortitude than the average person possesses. It is, as Samuel Johnson once said about remarriage, “the triumph of hope over experience.” It’s true that many burned out teachers stay a few more years just to finish out the years of service needed for retirement. But most are still committed to doing what they can to make a difference. They press on, hoping to make an emotional connection with another hurting student, buoyed by the spark of learning in the eyes of the ones who rise above their environment.
The deck is stacked against success. Easily a third of classroom time, sometimes more than half, is devoted to dealing with discipline problems. It’s no wonder the school districts keep trying to add extra class time for remedial work on the basics like reading. But they’re trying to fill a leaky bucket because every year sees fewer classroom minutes spent on instruction.
What kind of discipline problems? Students put their heads down on their desks and sleep. Students get up out of their seats and wander around the room to talk to their friends. Students cheat on tests, vandalize books and equipment, steal supplies, get in fist fights, shout at the teacher and make threats. Most of the troublemakers have no interest in learning and they make sure no one else can, either. They are failing all their classes but they simply don’t care so they don’t try. They are angry, disillusioned and hurting. Sometimes an empathetic teacher can make a connection, but most of the time they can’t.
How did we get into this mess? First and foremost is the disintegration of the family. Most of these students either have no father in the home, or they have a stepfather with whom they have a strained relationship. This affects boys and girls in different ways. The moms lament that they can’t control their sons. Many of the boys join gangs. The girls are often sexually promiscuous. They want to have a baby as soon as possible because they feel that’s what makes you a real woman. In this they have their own mothers as role models.
Today’s students are now the grandchildren of the boomers. They are the third generation of those who made rebellion against authority their defining issue. Parents no longer support the schools on discipline issues. It never occurs to them that their child might be lying or might actually be in the wrong. They leap to their child’s defense and the children learn to have an adversarial attitude toward teachers and administrators. The schools, for their part, are afraid of being sued. They abandoned corporal punishment long ago and will even back down on something as simple as issuing detention if the parent complains.
Overwhelmed administrators dictate elaborate discipline processes teachers must follow before they can send a disruptive student to the principal’s office. Instead of getting the source of disruption out of the classroom as soon as possible so instruction can resume, teachers are giving repeated warnings, documenting misbehavior in writing, taking students aside for verbal correction and phoning their parents, all while the rest of the class waits.
In the name of inclusiveness schools try to “mainstream” special education students as much as possible rather than segregating them in special classes. While this is a laudable goal, when those students are disruptive it is not fair to the other students. Many students are designated special ed not because of learning disabilities but because of behavior problems. Every year my wife sees more special ed students in her classroom. She has had classes in which as many as a third of the students were in this category. When the number of special ed students is high enough a teacher’s aide is supposed to be assigned to the classroom, but due to resource limitations this does not always happen.
The cult of self esteem is so strong in our society that we have raised our children to expect they will always be successful, whether they try their best or not. Students are unwilling to work hard, and they feel victimized if the result is a low grade. They feel victimized if their misbehavior results in negative consequences, like being disqualified to play sports. Instead of understanding that they are being held accountable for their behavior, they imagine that their teachers are “out to get them.”
I don’t know how to solve all these problems. They reflect deeper societal problems that go beyond anything under the control of the schools. What the schools should do, I submit, is focus on educating the educatable. We need to recover the idea that a free public education is a privilege and not a right. We need to clearly articulate to students and their parents what the rules and expectations are for those who want to take advantage of this privilege. Students who cannot sit in a classroom without being disruptive need therapy more than they need instruction. School isn’t going to do them any good until they are sufficiently in control of themselves to listen and learn.
As individuals, we must teach our children the importance of marriage, the need to respect authority and the value of hard work. There is nothing new in that. But too many of us have lost sight of these core values. We thought there might be a shortcut, but it turns out we were wrong.
It’s not enough just to get our own houses in order, either. As Christians we need to be reaching out to the hurting people in our communities. We need to be coming alongside single parents whose kids need positive role models. We need to help families who struggle to feed and clothe their children. We shouldn’t expect the government to step in with billions of dollars and solve all of society’s problems. The biggest problems aren’t solved with money. They are matters of the heart.
My wife began teaching in public schools over 25 years ago. She has taught at both the middle school and high school levels. The district she taught in for most of that time transitioned from a middle class suburban community to a poor, high-crime, heavily minority community. Gangs, drugs and teen pregnancy are significant problems, even among seventh and eighth graders.
Teaching in this environment is not for the faint of heart. Mustering the optimism, the energy and the courage to face the daily challenge for the 4000th time requires more dedication and fortitude than the average person possesses. It is, as Samuel Johnson once said about remarriage, “the triumph of hope over experience.” It’s true that many burned out teachers stay a few more years just to finish out the years of service needed for retirement. But most are still committed to doing what they can to make a difference. They press on, hoping to make an emotional connection with another hurting student, buoyed by the spark of learning in the eyes of the ones who rise above their environment.
The deck is stacked against success. Easily a third of classroom time, sometimes more than half, is devoted to dealing with discipline problems. It’s no wonder the school districts keep trying to add extra class time for remedial work on the basics like reading. But they’re trying to fill a leaky bucket because every year sees fewer classroom minutes spent on instruction.
What kind of discipline problems? Students put their heads down on their desks and sleep. Students get up out of their seats and wander around the room to talk to their friends. Students cheat on tests, vandalize books and equipment, steal supplies, get in fist fights, shout at the teacher and make threats. Most of the troublemakers have no interest in learning and they make sure no one else can, either. They are failing all their classes but they simply don’t care so they don’t try. They are angry, disillusioned and hurting. Sometimes an empathetic teacher can make a connection, but most of the time they can’t.
How did we get into this mess? First and foremost is the disintegration of the family. Most of these students either have no father in the home, or they have a stepfather with whom they have a strained relationship. This affects boys and girls in different ways. The moms lament that they can’t control their sons. Many of the boys join gangs. The girls are often sexually promiscuous. They want to have a baby as soon as possible because they feel that’s what makes you a real woman. In this they have their own mothers as role models.
Today’s students are now the grandchildren of the boomers. They are the third generation of those who made rebellion against authority their defining issue. Parents no longer support the schools on discipline issues. It never occurs to them that their child might be lying or might actually be in the wrong. They leap to their child’s defense and the children learn to have an adversarial attitude toward teachers and administrators. The schools, for their part, are afraid of being sued. They abandoned corporal punishment long ago and will even back down on something as simple as issuing detention if the parent complains.
Overwhelmed administrators dictate elaborate discipline processes teachers must follow before they can send a disruptive student to the principal’s office. Instead of getting the source of disruption out of the classroom as soon as possible so instruction can resume, teachers are giving repeated warnings, documenting misbehavior in writing, taking students aside for verbal correction and phoning their parents, all while the rest of the class waits.
In the name of inclusiveness schools try to “mainstream” special education students as much as possible rather than segregating them in special classes. While this is a laudable goal, when those students are disruptive it is not fair to the other students. Many students are designated special ed not because of learning disabilities but because of behavior problems. Every year my wife sees more special ed students in her classroom. She has had classes in which as many as a third of the students were in this category. When the number of special ed students is high enough a teacher’s aide is supposed to be assigned to the classroom, but due to resource limitations this does not always happen.
The cult of self esteem is so strong in our society that we have raised our children to expect they will always be successful, whether they try their best or not. Students are unwilling to work hard, and they feel victimized if the result is a low grade. They feel victimized if their misbehavior results in negative consequences, like being disqualified to play sports. Instead of understanding that they are being held accountable for their behavior, they imagine that their teachers are “out to get them.”
I don’t know how to solve all these problems. They reflect deeper societal problems that go beyond anything under the control of the schools. What the schools should do, I submit, is focus on educating the educatable. We need to recover the idea that a free public education is a privilege and not a right. We need to clearly articulate to students and their parents what the rules and expectations are for those who want to take advantage of this privilege. Students who cannot sit in a classroom without being disruptive need therapy more than they need instruction. School isn’t going to do them any good until they are sufficiently in control of themselves to listen and learn.
As individuals, we must teach our children the importance of marriage, the need to respect authority and the value of hard work. There is nothing new in that. But too many of us have lost sight of these core values. We thought there might be a shortcut, but it turns out we were wrong.
It’s not enough just to get our own houses in order, either. As Christians we need to be reaching out to the hurting people in our communities. We need to be coming alongside single parents whose kids need positive role models. We need to help families who struggle to feed and clothe their children. We shouldn’t expect the government to step in with billions of dollars and solve all of society’s problems. The biggest problems aren’t solved with money. They are matters of the heart.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
The Scandal of Grace
If you could sum up the very core of Christianity in one word, it would be grace. Grace is what sets Christianity apart from any other belief system. It has been the central theme of the Christian message for the past 2000 years. Grace is good news. It is the Good News. It defines who we are as Christians.
Surprised?
It’s a sad fact that we Christians haven’t done a very good job lately of communicating grace to the world around us. That’s actually a huge understatement. Let’s be blunt: collectively Christians in this country have done a terrible job of communicating grace to our fellow citizens.
What is grace? Grace is showering blessings on those who don’t deserve them. Grace is a kind word to those who speak harshly. Grace is giving to those who don’t give back. Grace is forgiving without waiting for an apology. Grace is caring more for another person’s needs than for your own.
Why is grace the one word that defines Christianity, that sets it apart from every other religion? Because Christianity began with the greatest act of grace that can ever be conceived: For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Christianity has always been a good news/bad news story. The bad news is that nothing you can ever do will make up for the sins you have committed. There is no way you can make yourself good enough to be acceptable to God. The good news is that no matter what you have done or how bad you have been, God has provided a way for you to be forgiven. Jesus took the punishment you deserve so that you can have peace with God. And that’s Grace – with a capital G.
Somehow we haven’t gotten the message across. I have rarely met a non-Christian who understands this aspect of Christianity. Somehow what people hear is, “You are a bad person because you do lots of bad things. You better straighten up or God will send you to hell. We Christians are better than you so God is going to let us go to heaven.”
What a horrible distortion of the Gospel! How can we have been so misunderstood? I know this is not the message that is preached from the pulpits of America every Sunday. A Christian is not someone who is better than everyone else. Christians are simply people who have realized what terrible sinners they are and have accepted God’s forgiveness through Jesus Christ.
Alas, I think I know one reason our message has been so misunderstood. Over the past few decades we have become defined in the national consciousness primarily by what we disapprove of. As the nation has moved away from a Christian moral consensus, Christian groups have risen in protest. We protest abortion. We protest gay rights. We protest handing out birth control pills to middle schoolers. We protest Harry Potter. Before you know it everyone thinks of Christians as people who spend their lives following a long list of rules. But we aren’t content with that. We want everybody else to follow those rules, too. We have become the national nags.
My Christian friends will ask, “Is that wrong? Isn’t it important that we take a stand for what’s right?” I’m not sure I know the answer. As citizens of a democracy we have a right for our voices to be heard. And we have an obligation to protect the young and innocent in our society, born and unborn. But by focusing on the behavior of others instead of the condition of their hearts we have sent the wrong message. We seem to be saying that the most important thing is following the rules. But we know that’s not true, because just trying to follow the rules didn’t save us and it will never save anyone else, either.
Theologians talk about the “scandal of grace.” From the earliest days of Christianity people were afraid that God’s grace might be misunderstood. When people find out that salvation is by faith in Christ alone, and not by living a holy life, they may be tempted to give lip service to God and keep right on sinning. That’s certainly possible. The Gospel might indeed be misunderstood as giving license to sinful living. But the greater danger today is that people will never hear about God’s grace at all. This is the true scandal of grace in our generation.
If you are not a Christian, please hear this from me today: God loves you, right now, regardless of what you’ve done or what you’re doing. Maybe there are some things you think are good and he thinks are bad, but there’s time later to work that out. You know deep in your heart you’re not the person you ought to be. God knows that, too, but he still loves you. He wants to cleanse your heart and make peace with you. There’s no price for you to pay because Jesus has already paid it by dying for you on the cross. Now God is waiting for you with open arms.
Surprised?
It’s a sad fact that we Christians haven’t done a very good job lately of communicating grace to the world around us. That’s actually a huge understatement. Let’s be blunt: collectively Christians in this country have done a terrible job of communicating grace to our fellow citizens.
What is grace? Grace is showering blessings on those who don’t deserve them. Grace is a kind word to those who speak harshly. Grace is giving to those who don’t give back. Grace is forgiving without waiting for an apology. Grace is caring more for another person’s needs than for your own.
Why is grace the one word that defines Christianity, that sets it apart from every other religion? Because Christianity began with the greatest act of grace that can ever be conceived: For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Christianity has always been a good news/bad news story. The bad news is that nothing you can ever do will make up for the sins you have committed. There is no way you can make yourself good enough to be acceptable to God. The good news is that no matter what you have done or how bad you have been, God has provided a way for you to be forgiven. Jesus took the punishment you deserve so that you can have peace with God. And that’s Grace – with a capital G.
Somehow we haven’t gotten the message across. I have rarely met a non-Christian who understands this aspect of Christianity. Somehow what people hear is, “You are a bad person because you do lots of bad things. You better straighten up or God will send you to hell. We Christians are better than you so God is going to let us go to heaven.”
What a horrible distortion of the Gospel! How can we have been so misunderstood? I know this is not the message that is preached from the pulpits of America every Sunday. A Christian is not someone who is better than everyone else. Christians are simply people who have realized what terrible sinners they are and have accepted God’s forgiveness through Jesus Christ.
Alas, I think I know one reason our message has been so misunderstood. Over the past few decades we have become defined in the national consciousness primarily by what we disapprove of. As the nation has moved away from a Christian moral consensus, Christian groups have risen in protest. We protest abortion. We protest gay rights. We protest handing out birth control pills to middle schoolers. We protest Harry Potter. Before you know it everyone thinks of Christians as people who spend their lives following a long list of rules. But we aren’t content with that. We want everybody else to follow those rules, too. We have become the national nags.
My Christian friends will ask, “Is that wrong? Isn’t it important that we take a stand for what’s right?” I’m not sure I know the answer. As citizens of a democracy we have a right for our voices to be heard. And we have an obligation to protect the young and innocent in our society, born and unborn. But by focusing on the behavior of others instead of the condition of their hearts we have sent the wrong message. We seem to be saying that the most important thing is following the rules. But we know that’s not true, because just trying to follow the rules didn’t save us and it will never save anyone else, either.
Theologians talk about the “scandal of grace.” From the earliest days of Christianity people were afraid that God’s grace might be misunderstood. When people find out that salvation is by faith in Christ alone, and not by living a holy life, they may be tempted to give lip service to God and keep right on sinning. That’s certainly possible. The Gospel might indeed be misunderstood as giving license to sinful living. But the greater danger today is that people will never hear about God’s grace at all. This is the true scandal of grace in our generation.
If you are not a Christian, please hear this from me today: God loves you, right now, regardless of what you’ve done or what you’re doing. Maybe there are some things you think are good and he thinks are bad, but there’s time later to work that out. You know deep in your heart you’re not the person you ought to be. God knows that, too, but he still loves you. He wants to cleanse your heart and make peace with you. There’s no price for you to pay because Jesus has already paid it by dying for you on the cross. Now God is waiting for you with open arms.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Crime and Punishment
Anna Quindlen wrote an editorial in the August 8 issue of Newsweek about this video making the rounds on YouTube. Apparently some people have gleefully discovered that pro-lifers don’t spent much time thinking about how to punish women who get an abortion. The pro-abortion folks take this as evidence that we aren’t very smart. But there’s a simpler explanation. Pro-life activists are motivated first and foremost by the goal to prevent abortions. They want to save the lives of babies. They’re not out to get pregnant women. They want to help them avoid what may be the biggest mistake of their lives.
If you wanted to prevent abortions, how would you do it? First, you might try to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Encouraging people to have sex only inside of a stable, monogamous, heterosexual marriage might be a good start. So what do we find? The same Christians who want to save the lives of unborn babies also generally support abstinence education and oppose anything that would weaken the cultural institution of marriage.
There will always be unplanned pregnancies, of course. Christians have therefore established thousands of privately funded crisis pregnancy centers in this country. The goal of these centers is to give women the emotional support and the practical help they need to carry their pregnancies to term, whether they choose to keep their babies or give them up for adoption.
The final component of the strategy to save the lives of babies is the drive to make it illegal to provide abortion services. We need to put these organizations out of business, or at least out of the abortion business. Should it also be illegal to get an abortion? Perhaps, but the pro-life movement has never been about retribution for abortions already committed. I believe jail time is not the most effective deterrent. Knowledge is. When a pregnant woman truly understands that she carries another human life within her, and when she understands how brutally abortion terminates that life, few would be so selfish as to choose their own comfort, convenience or even safety over the life of her child.
If you wanted to prevent abortions, how would you do it? First, you might try to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Encouraging people to have sex only inside of a stable, monogamous, heterosexual marriage might be a good start. So what do we find? The same Christians who want to save the lives of unborn babies also generally support abstinence education and oppose anything that would weaken the cultural institution of marriage.
There will always be unplanned pregnancies, of course. Christians have therefore established thousands of privately funded crisis pregnancy centers in this country. The goal of these centers is to give women the emotional support and the practical help they need to carry their pregnancies to term, whether they choose to keep their babies or give them up for adoption.
The final component of the strategy to save the lives of babies is the drive to make it illegal to provide abortion services. We need to put these organizations out of business, or at least out of the abortion business. Should it also be illegal to get an abortion? Perhaps, but the pro-life movement has never been about retribution for abortions already committed. I believe jail time is not the most effective deterrent. Knowledge is. When a pregnant woman truly understands that she carries another human life within her, and when she understands how brutally abortion terminates that life, few would be so selfish as to choose their own comfort, convenience or even safety over the life of her child.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Theocracy: Just Say No!
There is a prevailing opinion in secularist circles that American Christians want to create a theocracy in this country. In fact, this has become quite a popular theme for fundraisers on the left. I would like to reassure our atheistic friends that for the vast majority of Christians, nothing could be further from the truth. You see, Christianity had its fling with theocracy centuries ago. It didn’t work out too well. From the time of Emperor Constantine to the rise of the modern nation state, the church wielded vast temporal power. This power only corrupted the church and diverted it from its true mission in the world: bringing the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every corner of the earth.
But what about all the right-wing talk of America being a Christian nation? Yes, there is definitely a sense in which America is a Christian nation. It is a nation founded on Christian principles and friendly to Christian practice. Most of the founding fathers were Christians. Their words and their actions were motivated by their faith. But they were wise enough not to establish a state religion. Nowhere is Jesus Christ explicitly mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution or the Bill Rights as he is in many of the colonial charters and constitutions. I am convinced this was no accidental oversight by the founders. Instead what we find are general Christian principles such as justice, freedom of conscience, and the equality of all men before God.
The founders never intended that the government, or anyone else, have the right to coerce an individual to believe and practice any particular religion. I don’t know of a single Christian today who would subscribe to such a notion. At the very core of evangelical Christianity is the idea that each individual must freely choose whether to follow Christ. A forced conversion is a false conversion and does no one any good whatsoever. In fact, forced conversion is a great evil and I repudiate all such efforts in prior centuries which were falsely done in the name of Jesus Christ.
I don’t support theocracy. I don’t know anyone who does. But I am alarmed at the efforts of some to expunge all Christian faith and expression from the public sphere. These efforts are unwise, unjustified, and unsupported by the history of this nation. In forbidding the establishment of a state religion, the founders did not intend to forbid Christian speech by those who hold office. In fact, we have two hundred years of precedent to the contrary. Of course in a Christian-majority nation there will be many officeholders who are Christians. Of course they will be motivated in their speech and their actions by their faith. But that’s a long way from creating a theocracy. This is still a nation of laws and it will remain so. The Christians in this country are as happy about that as anyone else. Christians came to this continent from Europe specifically to create such a society, where all citizens are subject to the rule of law, where they can participate in the democratic process, and where they are free to practice the religion of their choosing.
But what about all the right-wing talk of America being a Christian nation? Yes, there is definitely a sense in which America is a Christian nation. It is a nation founded on Christian principles and friendly to Christian practice. Most of the founding fathers were Christians. Their words and their actions were motivated by their faith. But they were wise enough not to establish a state religion. Nowhere is Jesus Christ explicitly mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution or the Bill Rights as he is in many of the colonial charters and constitutions. I am convinced this was no accidental oversight by the founders. Instead what we find are general Christian principles such as justice, freedom of conscience, and the equality of all men before God.
The founders never intended that the government, or anyone else, have the right to coerce an individual to believe and practice any particular religion. I don’t know of a single Christian today who would subscribe to such a notion. At the very core of evangelical Christianity is the idea that each individual must freely choose whether to follow Christ. A forced conversion is a false conversion and does no one any good whatsoever. In fact, forced conversion is a great evil and I repudiate all such efforts in prior centuries which were falsely done in the name of Jesus Christ.
I don’t support theocracy. I don’t know anyone who does. But I am alarmed at the efforts of some to expunge all Christian faith and expression from the public sphere. These efforts are unwise, unjustified, and unsupported by the history of this nation. In forbidding the establishment of a state religion, the founders did not intend to forbid Christian speech by those who hold office. In fact, we have two hundred years of precedent to the contrary. Of course in a Christian-majority nation there will be many officeholders who are Christians. Of course they will be motivated in their speech and their actions by their faith. But that’s a long way from creating a theocracy. This is still a nation of laws and it will remain so. The Christians in this country are as happy about that as anyone else. Christians came to this continent from Europe specifically to create such a society, where all citizens are subject to the rule of law, where they can participate in the democratic process, and where they are free to practice the religion of their choosing.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Agreeing to Disagree
For several years I have subscribed to World magazine, a weekly news magazine like Time or Newsweek, but written from a Christian perspective. Normally I enjoy, or at least appreciate, their take on things. However, the current issue has an article about urban living that really made my blood boil. The author, Mindy Belz, waxes rhapsodic about urban environments and disparages the suburbs. She speaks of being “moored in tracts of pavement on an empty retail prairie, forgettable constellations of congestion and sameness.” But, hey! I like the suburbs. I like the area where I live and I don’t like highly urban areas. This article really got under my skin, and I started to wonder why. Then I realized that she was making no room for differing tastes and life experiences. The message was simply: “City good, Suburb bad.”
As I thought about it a bit more it occurred to me that this is a common mistake we make. We take preferences and turn them into moral judgments. For instance, when I was a kid a lot of adults complained about rock music. But instead of saying they didn’t care for it, they said it’s just noise, not music, and only a bunch of degenerates would listen to garbage like that. Nice conversation starter, huh?
I hate bananas. Don’t ask me why; I just do. The smell of them makes me nauseous. This has been the occasion for a lot of jokes in my family, but they realize they don’t have to “convert me” to a banana lover. And I’m not trying to talk them out of eating bananas. We can agree to disagree about the fruits we like. Why can’t we do that with the kind of neighborhoods we like or the music we listen to? Why do we have to condemn those with different tastes? There are more than enough important issues we disagree about without making up extra ones that really don’t matter.
Humans are naturally prideful and self-centered. We want to make ourselves the gold standard for everyone else. So without even realizing it we often take our personal preferences and turn them into moral standards by which we judge others. When we think about it, of course we realize this is wrong. But the opposite mistake is just as bad. We must not treat important moral issues as mere personal preferences. This is the source of much conflict in our society today. At the heart of such classic cultural battles as abortion and homosexuality is a disagreement over whether these are moral issues or mere personal preference. Take abortion, for instance. Central to the question of whether it should be illegal or not is the question of whether it is wrong. It’s amazing to me how often this fundamental question is glossed over. Too often the issue is framed merely in terms of the politics of power. I won’t go into my own position on that today. I just want to suggest that whenever we disagree on some issue, it is important to ask ourselves whether we are dealing with a moral issue or merely personal preference.
As I thought about it a bit more it occurred to me that this is a common mistake we make. We take preferences and turn them into moral judgments. For instance, when I was a kid a lot of adults complained about rock music. But instead of saying they didn’t care for it, they said it’s just noise, not music, and only a bunch of degenerates would listen to garbage like that. Nice conversation starter, huh?
I hate bananas. Don’t ask me why; I just do. The smell of them makes me nauseous. This has been the occasion for a lot of jokes in my family, but they realize they don’t have to “convert me” to a banana lover. And I’m not trying to talk them out of eating bananas. We can agree to disagree about the fruits we like. Why can’t we do that with the kind of neighborhoods we like or the music we listen to? Why do we have to condemn those with different tastes? There are more than enough important issues we disagree about without making up extra ones that really don’t matter.
Humans are naturally prideful and self-centered. We want to make ourselves the gold standard for everyone else. So without even realizing it we often take our personal preferences and turn them into moral standards by which we judge others. When we think about it, of course we realize this is wrong. But the opposite mistake is just as bad. We must not treat important moral issues as mere personal preferences. This is the source of much conflict in our society today. At the heart of such classic cultural battles as abortion and homosexuality is a disagreement over whether these are moral issues or mere personal preference. Take abortion, for instance. Central to the question of whether it should be illegal or not is the question of whether it is wrong. It’s amazing to me how often this fundamental question is glossed over. Too often the issue is framed merely in terms of the politics of power. I won’t go into my own position on that today. I just want to suggest that whenever we disagree on some issue, it is important to ask ourselves whether we are dealing with a moral issue or merely personal preference.
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Have a Nice Day!
The other day a friend of mine posed an interesting question. Why are Americans, by and large, so much more respectful toward each other and toward public property than citizens of other countries? My friend is from South America. Her father is here visiting, and he was marveling that no one seems to litter and everyone is so nice to each other. He wanted to know, how did this come about and why isn’t it that way in his country?
I confessed I didn’t know, but I’ve been thinking about it for a few days and I’m ready to hazard a guess.
Some people might challenge these assertions. It is certainly true that these feelings are not universal. Many do feel disenfranchised, especially among those who live in poverty and have suffered racial discrimination, but most do not. What worries me more is that our society seems to be polarizing and fragmenting over the last few decades. I hope that we don’t forget what made this a great country. Sometimes we just need a reminder. And nothing helps me put our problems in perspective like talking to a first generation American who loves this country and doesn’t take it for granted.
I confessed I didn’t know, but I’ve been thinking about it for a few days and I’m ready to hazard a guess.
- Americans are, by and large, tremendously proud of their country. It is so large and beautiful. We are proud of its history, proud of its freedoms, proud of its strength and proud of its wealth.
- We truly have a sense of ownership in this country. We really believe all that stuff in the Constitution about “We the people…” If we harm this nation we are hurting ourselves and our neighbors, not just getting back at “the man”.
- The idea of government based on the rule of law rather than the rule of men is deeply ingrained in us from childhood – we feel viscerally that “no one is above the law.”
Some people might challenge these assertions. It is certainly true that these feelings are not universal. Many do feel disenfranchised, especially among those who live in poverty and have suffered racial discrimination, but most do not. What worries me more is that our society seems to be polarizing and fragmenting over the last few decades. I hope that we don’t forget what made this a great country. Sometimes we just need a reminder. And nothing helps me put our problems in perspective like talking to a first generation American who loves this country and doesn’t take it for granted.
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