Ebola and Divine Punishment

Ebola has been much in the news, lately, so much so that even someone as relatively uncurrent as I choose to be cannot help but hear about it. Currently two nurses in Dallas, Texas who were treating a Liberian Ebola victim are diagnosed with the disease, and some nervousness ensued in Ohio after it was found that one of the nurses flew to Ohio while on quarantine and with a mild fever. She was diagnosed after returning to Dallas.

Of course she immediately became everyone's new favorite person to hate, but as it later turns out, she checked with the CDC's epidemiology office that was handling her case before flying out to Ohio and was given the green light because her overall risk category was "uncertain."

A number of American Ebola patients have recovered using an experimental new drug which I have not taken the time to consult the literature about (because at the moment I am not worried about it). Seattle's Harborview hospital, practically in my back yard, has agreed to take on ebola patients, should it become necessary. The hospital my wife works at has also begun conducting ebola training, since there is a remote possibility they could be tapped to take on overflow patients.

All in all, if you are looking for something to worry about, ebola is as good as anything.  It is scary, foreign and outside your control so if you are looking for a reason to panic, you could do worse. In fact, the fact that it is completely outside your control is a major selling point. You don't actually have to do anything about it, other than what you already wanted to do anyway.

media covers it extensively (I am not going to bother posting links because if you are reading this I am going to assume you have google capability) and both political spectrums have picked their approaches to it with incredible alacrity. In fact, his rather long, but entertaining blog examines it as a case study in politicization. 

Homelessness, or poverty, or labor trafficking, or what-they-teach-in-school-these-days, are not nearly so convenient as they seem to require some measure of engagement with the real world, and might lead to, (Oh Horrors!) responsibilities!

That being said, there is one aspect of the ebola panic that strikes me as useful and enlightening. On a hunch I googled "Ebola" and "divine punishment" and sure enough I found a few articles from Africa, a Slate Article decrying the "God's punishment" narrative, and even a couple of extreme righter's claiming that it is either God's handiwork, or an opportunity to purify America, as long as Obama doesn't use it to declare martial law.

Okay, so there are crazies in the world.

The question I want to raise is, does God, in fact, use diseases to punish people and nations for their sins?

I immediately associate the question with my Grandpa. About three years ago, as he was dying of lung, breast and metastatic skin cancer, in fact one of the very last times I saw him, I asked him how he was holding up. He gave me an answer I will never forget. He said, "Ryan, I'll tell you, most of the time I hold up just fine, but sometimes I just get angry. I told my doctor yesterday that I was angry and I just keep asking, 'Why is this happening to me?'

"But I know why this is happening to me. It's because I smoked for 30 years, and because I went out in the Pacific sun for years without a hat on, and because I worked on RADAR towers with no shielding for so many years. That's why all this is happening to me."

November 2011, Shortly after my graduation from the Q course, I got the opportunity to have one last visit with a truly great man.

There was some anger there as he said it, but on a deeper level there was courage. He was being a man, and I think, showing me how to be a man, by taking responsibility for his actions. He was dying of cancer as a result of his own choices, no more and no less.

Were they morally terrible choices? Absolutely not. When he started smoking in the 50's no one knew that it caused lung cancer. When he worked on RADAR towers in the Air Force no one knew about the harmful effects of the electromagnetic radiation. No one knew about the effects of UV rays on the germ cells in the skin. He was not bad because he made these choices. He was sick, and eventually he died.

The point that was suggested to my by the association of that memory, specifically with the news about the nurse flying to Ohio while infected with the disease, was that human actions have consequences. Ebola, AIDS, wars, pollution, poverty, etc. all of these things are, without exception, either caused, or propagated, or both, by the choices of humans. Sometimes those choices affect primarily the chooser. More often, they effect everyone else as well.

This is what we must learn from ebola (and from every other social ill). We live in a web of

causation, where our actions and inactions have real consequences that will really effect real people. Ignorance excuses the guilt, i.e. the nurse who flew to Ohio contacted the CDC and they gave her the go ahead and told her she was still clear to fly. Turns out they were wrong. She was not a malicious person, neither was the poor (probably by now unemployed) clerk who took her call and answered her question based on the risk assessment matrix on the computer screen in front of him. That matrix itself, drawn together from the best guesses of a whole bunch of really smart people, was also wrong. Turns out a whole bunch of people were wrong, no one was a "horseman of the apocalypse" trying to spread the plague. Now they know more than they did.

Ignorance excuses guilt. It does not negate the consequences. Just because I don't know I have the flu (I think it is just a cold) doesn't mean that when I give it to someone else it might turn out to be a very serious deal for them.

A hunter falls asleep in a tree stand and wakes up when he accidentally pulls the trigger. The fact that he did not deliberately aim at his partner's foot or have any intention of doing any harm will not alter the course of the bullet or its effect on the bones and tissue of the foot that it strikes.

We don't know what the consequences of that flight from Dallas to Ohio and back will be. My honest (and not particularly educated) guess is that likely nothing will come of it. If that is the case, I will praise the Mercy of God for once again minimizing the potential harm that we human beings like to do to ourselves. I would say that that is the norm of Divine Action, that He intervenes more often to prevent or mitigate the negative effects of our stupidity and malice than to enhance them.

It is in this sense that I say, yes, if ebola does spread it spreads, not as punishment for, but as a result of sins; sins and ignorance, ignorance as a result of sin. Where is ebola spreading? In Africa, among the poor, the downtrodden, the weak, and the ignorant. Why are they poor, downtrodden, weak and ignorant? Because other people (black and white, this has nothing to do with race) keep them so, in order to remain rich and powerful, and to increase their wealth and power. Why do AIDS, syphillis, gonorrhea, HPV, and all the other STD's keep spreading? Is it a punishment for sin? Or is it a result of human behavior that is naturally conducive to their spread? Why does 10% of the U.S. Population have diabetes? Is it because God is smiting us with "the sugars" for our sins of unbelief and immorality? No, it is because we eat like pigs and we don't exercise.

My response to ebola, as to nearly every other crisis we choose to get excited over, and a good number than most people never hear about, is to pray. To pray and always to try to reform my life, to continue the work of conversion. If victims of this or any other disease come our way, I believe our hospitals should open their doors (maintaining all reasonable precautions) and welcome them. If in the future I am called upon to treat them (as I have treated patients with AIDS, HEP-C, TB and other terrible and contagious disease), I hope I will do so conscientiously and with mercy.

My emphasis on personal morality will not protect me or my family from the results of other people's choices. It may actually place me at a higher statistical risk of dying in horribly unpleasant ways, but when has that ever been different? Has life ever been safe? Has anyone ever gotten out of this world alive? We have a greater chance of getting wiped out in a car accident because someone chose to drink too much and then drive than we ever will of getting ebola. No amount of worry is going to keep me from becoming the victim of other people's choices. Rant and rave about how unfair that is, but that does not change the truth. "Being good" has never been a guarantee of safety. Indeed, it often seems to function rather more like a red cape in front of a bull. The most innocent human being ever to live died of asphyxiation and blood loss, hanging from his arms by nails, and cursed or abandoned by almost everyone.

I do not choose to be on the side of Mercy to protect myself, but because that is what Jesus did, and I want to be like Him when I grow up.

Passus Est

I remember when I was a teenager, singing in the choir at Our Lady of Good Counsel Parish in Verona, NY. We were one of the few choirs in the area that sang in Latin, thanks to Fr. Morelle's reverence for the beauty of the Latin liturgy and the old sacred music.

(Incidentally, Fr. Morelle perfectly modeled for me the proper attitude towards the Latin Mass. While he personally loved the extraordinary form, he never entertained any nonsense about the novus ordo being "invalid" or incapable of reverent, beautiful celebration. When asked about it he simply said that he obeyed his bishop, and celebrated as reverently as he could the form he was given. Perhaps this is why I have never understood the tension between the advocates of the two forms in some Catholic circles. But I digress.)

At any rate, I had enough Latin in school to have a solid grasp of the roots of the words, enough, at any rate, to be able to translate the parts of the Mass into English as we sang them. After years of singing them, eventually I no longer needed to translate them. Instead I sang them, thought, heard them, and prayed them in the Church Latin. Perhaps my love affair with words and language of all kind aided in this.

All this by way of trying to explain the impact of the phrase "passus est" from the Credo. The extended phrase was "Crucifixus etiam pro nobis, sub Pontio Pilato, passus et sepultus est." This is translated, "Crucified also for us, under Pontius Pilate, (he) suffered and buried was."

To me the impact of the word "passus" was mind blowing. Taken in the same vein as my last post, it is even heart-shattering. Passus!

We translate the word as "to suffer," but the translation loses something. Suffering tends to be an active verb, in English. "I suffer from delusions of erudition." "You suffer from boredom." "He she or it suffers me gladly to be a fool." "Passus" however, has a passive connotation. The word "passive" comes from the same root. When I hear, "passus est" I do not hear something that Christ did, but something that was done to Him.

This is phenomenal! Christ is God! I take it from basic theology 101 that God is the primum mobile, the uncaused cause, the mover of all things. He is all action, actor, doing, being. It is His nature to be. He initiates, we respond. He acts, we are acted upon. He gives, we receive. I have had this truth fixed into my brain from my youth. I almost take it for granted.

And yet, "passus est!" We do not have a direct translation, since I cannot think of an English verb which could be the passive of "to suffer". He was made to suffer. He was wounded. He was beaten. He was despised. He was rejected. All of these happened to Him. He was not acting. He was allowing His creatures to act upon Him. He let us do whatever we wanted to Him. He was passive. He allowed all these things to happen to Him.

The CREATOR BECAME A CREATURE, PEOPLE!!! How is it possible for anything to be the same ever again?

I may be going over old ground here. Very often I come upon (to me) startling new insights only to find that everyone else has been taking them for granted for a very long time. Of course, God came down to earth and suffered. It is just that the concept, the reality, of the incarnation is so truly mindblowing that whenever I am refocused on it it reshapes something in me.

Shusaku Endo got this, I think. His novel "Silence" asks hard questions about the nature of a God who is silence in the face of so much suffering. Only the cross makes sense of it. The power and silence of a God "somewhere out there" is of no help or comfort to the Catholic's being tortured in 16th century Japan. The only possible answer lies in the vulnerability of the God who became a creature, and became helpless.

Jesus on the cross. He appears so vulnerable (even the word "vulnerable" comes from the Latin "vulnerus" meaning to be wounded.) He hangs there passively allowing, suffering, His creatures to do unto Him whatever they want, whether we want to kill Him, or spit on Him, or worship Him, or love Him. Amazing! God be praised. But in the End He not only suffers the death to happen to Him, but actively embraces it and gives up His spirit.

Blessed be He!

Be Not Afraid

Today, while saying midday prayer in the Divine Office, this verse caught my attention:

Jesus was seized with fear and distress (Mark 14:33)

It was not one of the antiphons, it wasn't part of the psalms, or even part of the reading. It was one of the little "aside" verses that they put at the beginning of some of the psalms, as kind of a guide to meditation, or a suggestion. I confess I usually don't pay too much attention to them. This one, however, seemed to smack me upside the head with the image of Jesus being seized with fear and distress. 

I did not look up the context, as I already knew where it came from. This was the garden of Gethsemane. I am used to the translation, "He began to be saddened and exceedingly troubled." The unfamiliar translation is a good thing. It causes words familiar to me from literally hundreds of hearings and readings to reach me in new ways, and to say new things. 

What hit me now was an image. I cannot describe it visually. It was more of a startled realization, "Jesus? Afraid?!" It was a feeling of utter shock and dismay. I know what fear is. I have faced fear in many different shapes and forms, and in some ways I have been afraid all my life. It comes of having an overactive imagination, and a conscience. Fear is inescapable. I have learned that fear is less important than what I do with it, but I assume that I feel fear because I am imperfect. When I am perfect I will no longer feel fear. After all, "Perfect love casts out all fear." 

But here is Jesus, my hero, (I almost said, "my idol" except that that is the one thing He could not be) afraid. HE! The God/Man. The conqueror of death and sin! He cannot be afraid. I have thought of Him being saddened, in pain, in agony, but never afraid. Pain is one thing. Even the most intense pain ever is not half as bad as the fear of that pain. I don't know why I never thought of Jesus being afraid. I guess I assumed that because He knew how it was going to turn out, He already knew what He had to do, and knew that He would endure, knew that He would rise, fear would be out of the question. It is uncertainty, the weakness of the flesh that lacks trust and confidence that shrinks back in fear. That is why fear is so toxic, and so much worse than pain. Any amount of pain can be endured so long as you have hope. Fear, however, crushes the spirit because it attacks hope. I just could not conceive of Jesus being afraid. 

And my first thought was, "What would Socrates say?"

Socrates, like Jesus, was persecuted and ultimately killed for preaching a truth that those in authority did not want to hear. Like Jesus, Socrates could have escaped and chose not to. Unlike Jesus, Socrates showed no fear in the face of death. Of course his death was a lot less painful and horrific. He drank some hemlock and fell asleep, instead of being tortured to death. 

But there was more here than that. Socrates insisted that death could not be an evil to a just man, and died in a manner that proved the conviction of his words. Jesus was a perfect man, and yet He sweat blood in fear and distress, and prayed that the cup be taken away from Him.

This is important to me. Perhaps this is part of why Socrates has only ever been an inspiration to the elite few, the intellectuals with a strong sense of discipline and trust in their own natural righteousness. He appeals to the strong, old pagan sense of courage which insists that, whether or not man can achieve justice by his own efforts, he is honor bound to make the effort. 

Jesus appeals to the weak, the pathetic, the crushed, the downtrodden. He is the friend that I have turned to in all of my fears, uncertainties, and doubts, because I thought that He would be able to help me through them. After all, there is no fear in Him, right?

But if He truly was afraid, as I realize now He must have been, then I was wrong. (I wonder if maybe He truly can be an idol after all? Not Him, but my idea of Him?) It is not His fearlessness that aids me in my moments of fear, but His fearfulness. Which reveals how He chooses to help, not by removing the fear, but by joining me in the fear. He embraces it so intimately that our pain wounds Him more deeply than it wounds ourselves. No matter how deep into hopelessness we go, He has gone deeper, and He is waiting there to embrace us. He brings love into the depths of blackness, loneliness and despair, and as deep as the pit goes, His love will go deeper still.

Perfect love does cast out fear, because only perfect love is strong enough to embrace it and become one with it, and so rob it of its power.

A Face That People Can Trust

Once, back in the Q course, I was standing in line at the drop zone. I had harnessed into my chute and was waiting for a jumpmaster to perform his prejump inspection. This is basically a head-to-toe examination of the harness and chute prior to getting on the aircraft, to ensure there are no deficiencies and everything is attached and kosher looking. When the jumpmaster noticed I was ready he came over and began his inspection.

If you take out the middle letters it doesn't count as a bad word.

Now, the JMPI (Jumpmaster Prejump Inspection) is a very quick and fluid process. The Jumpmaster's hands fly swiftly by rote over the same path every single time, and the only time they seem to be paying attention is when they find a deficiency. Especially on this particular jump, the jumpmaster was so unconcerned he was holding a conversation with me.

"Are you jumpmaster qualified?"

"No, Sergeant."

"Well you should be. You have one of those faces, you know? You just look like you know what you're doing. Turn around. That's the important thing. Bend, squat and hold. You don't actually have to know what you're doing, you just have to look like it. Have a good jump."

And he wandered off to the next jumper.

It is true though. By some trick of bone structure and muscle tension, my face when relaxed has always looked like I know what I am doing, which is totally ironic since in reality, at any given moment I am probably winging it. The odds of my actually knowing what I am doing are quite small.

Ryan Kraeger pre-mission photo, circa 2007

A case in point of that occurred in Afghanistan, toward the end of my rotation. I had been working at route clearance for the last six months of a fifteen month trip. (Route Clearance means we went searching for IED's and disarmed them when we found them. I was the guy with the mine detector.)

After six months I had found every one and not been blown up once, which is a good record to have, but I was getting burnt out. I was losing confidence in myself. You know the way you feel when you win five poker hands in a row, and you just don't want to bet anymore because you know the next one is going to be a flop? That's how I felt. Only by "poker hand" I meant "IED" and by "flop" I meant "red mist on the breeze."

I was also developing a deeper, stronger confidence in God. I was coming face to face with my own mortality and fallibility, and yet was still required to do my job, and so I was left with no recourse but to trust God. I did not particularly trust Him not to get me killed. His people have a way of meeting singularly inconvenient ends which sometimes involve explosions, and sometimes do not. How many practicing Catholics have been shot, bayoneted, burned, nuked or gassed in the last hundred years or so? Do you think their mothers weren't praying for them? Seriously, the founder of our Church was nailed to a stake and left to die. How should I expect special favors?

So I had no illusions that trusting God was some magic, IED-proof force field. Which didn't matter to me, because I was not afraid of dying. I knew that if I died, it would be because God thought I was done with whatever it was I was sent to do, and who am I to argue?

God must feel like this psychologist sometimes.

No, I did not fear death, I feared failure. I was afraid of making a bad call and letting the vehicles roll over a bomb and killing someone else. It was a call I made every day, and I was well aware how fallible I was. You never really know. It is one thing to trust God with your own life. It is another thing to trust him with someone else' life. It is another thing to trust Him with the things that really matter to us personally: projects we have invested in, plans we have made for the people we love, surefire ideas to save the world, etc. In a word, control.

It was this that I was called to surrender, the reputation for being right, the illusion of authority. I was learning to give up the illusion of control. There was a measure of irony in the fact that, while I barely trusted myself at all, but trusted God with everything, the other guys in the platoon barely trusted God at all, but trusted me with everything. I am sure God thought that was quite funny.

But in reality, isn't that part of the call of being Christian, to trust God on behalf of other people? It has become an increasingly important component of my prayer at any rate. I know that God is to be trusted. Other people do not, but for whatever reason they trust me. As long as there is a me in the equation this is an alarming concept, but if I can let go of the me and let God take over, then they are really trusting God. Praying for people has become something like an exercise in letting go of them. Simply trusting that God knows best, that He is in control, that even if He lets them die (which He certainly will eventually) He will not let them out of His sight. This is also how I pray for my atheist and agnostic friends. Even if they do not know or trust Him, I feel like it is helpful, perhaps even critical, for me to trust Him with them. Somehow I feel like it does them some good.

I don't know how, but if I am right thus far I don't really need to know how. It is enough to be going on with.

Come Examine

Daytime prayer from the Divine Office for today had a phrase in one of the psalm prayers that caught my attention: "Come, examine your Church and wash her clean of sin." When I read that phrase it hit me like a ton of bricks, effecting an instant paradigm change.

You see, when I read the first part my first reaction was one of fear. I recoiled. I don't want to be examined. For some reason I have always had a fear of anyone looking at me too closely, especially people I care about; most especially God. I am afraid of what they will see. There is a lot about me that I don't like. I expect others to dislike it as much as I do. I expect rejection, or condemnation. Especially from God, I feel like if someone else sees how unworthy I am, I will stand condemned.

The more I read and talk to other people, the more convinced I am that this is not an unusual feeling. In fact, I have come to believe that everyone in the world feels this deep seated sense of unworthiness. As in my case, growing up as I did with incredibly supportive parents who take immeasurable pride in every good thing I have ever done and never hesitate to tell me so, you would think if anyone would be free of it, I ought to be but that is not the case, because that is not the source. It is not a product of upbringing or childhood neglect or an insufficient education. All of these can compound or mitigate it, but the thing itself is much deeper. It is, quite simply, Original Sin.

It takes so many shapes, this existential shame. Every human being experiences it, because every human being, deep down at his core, is in fact unworthy. No one can be worthy of what we were created for. It is sheer gift, unearned and unasked for. In the beginning, in Eden, this unworthiness was not a source of shame, but of joy. Adam and Eve delighted to receive the gifts they had not earned, and joyfully accepted being eternally in His debt. That is our nature. We were created to be cheerful beggars.

Perhaps it was rejection of that joy, and seeking to be self sufficient, equal with God, that was the core of their sin. Certainly the first thing that they did after sinning was to hide. First they hid from each other by making clothes, and then they hid from God. Why? Their hiding was the root of our fear of being examined. We desperately want to be seen intimately and loved totally, and we desperately fear being seen intimately and found unworthy, rejected, or treated as an object. And because each human being is born with that deep seated awareness of unworthiness, we assume on some level that anyone who does really see us will see our unworthiness.

It takes many forms. The husband who can't understand why, no matter how many times he tells his wife that she is beautiful, that she is precious to him, she brushes him off or doesn't seem to believe him, but she gets upset with him if he never says it. This is because she deeply needs to be told that she is worthy but only one voice is strong enough to tell her permanently, and that is God's voice. That is why she needs to hear it from her husband, but his voice alone will never fully convince her. However, if his love is true love, meaning that God is teaching him how to love, then his voice will become more and more convincing, because more and more it will be God's voice speaking through his. The same is true for the husband who never believes he is good enough, or makes enough money, or whatever. He needs to trust that when his wife speaks to him out of true love, it is a way in which God speaks to him.

But when I read the second half of that phrase, "And wash her clean of sin," something shifted in my head and my eyes opened. I was willing to allow God to examine me, endure it as a necessity, but the prayer of the Church invites me to look forward to His examination and welcome it with joy and even eagerness. Why? Because the purpose of that examination is precisely to heal me of my sin. God wants to heal that deep, fundamental skew that makes me so afraid. The purpose of the examination makes all the difference, and His purpose is not to condemn. It has never been to condemn. It is to heal.

It is as if we said to the doctor, "No! Don't look at me! I am sick!" "Well of course you are sick, you dunce! And if I do not look at you, you will stay that way." In her daily prayer the Church is inviting me to trust in God's desire and ability to make me clean, and to be so eager for that cleansing that I accept, and invite, and welcome with open arms that vulnerabilityof being seen in all my naked unworthiness.

I wonder if that isn't what life is all about. Certain parts of it do seem to be in preparation for that vulnerability. Opening up and allowing friends to see into your heart a little bit; the nakedness of husband and wife, (physical and emotional); most especially the sacrament of Confession; heck, even the decrepitude of old age, and allowing someone else to wipe your but for you, if accepted graciously and joyfully, even that is a preparation for meeting God.

There is much to be learned from just that one phrase, but mostly I guess it can be summed up by saying, "Be not afraid."

He loves us.

"Protecting" the Kids From Dating

Part Two in a series on emotional modesty. Part one is here.

The very first line of the CD's very first post struck a chord.

The really old Italian priest at the Latin Mass chapel I attend when on the West Coast gave a sermon once about how parents shouldn't discourage their teenagers from having boyfriends and girlfriends. I thought it was pretty funny, and it didn't occur to me until about five minutes ago that maybe he was talking about that whole emotional chastity movement.

 When I read that paragraph I immediately thought of two concrete examples of this sort of idea taken to extremes. A family that I know quite well did not let their children date at all in their teen years. They were tacitly encouraged to be attracted to movie stars, fictional characters, etc. but crushes on other teenagers were implicitly forbidden. The girls, even into their twenties, were convinced that it was a mortal sin to like a guy, unless he liked them first.

In another family I know, the 21 year old son is still not allowed to drive female friends home by himself. There must be someone else in the car with them as chaperone.

The rationale, such as it is, behind both of these attitudes seems to me to be well-intentioned, at least on the most basic level. The parents grew up continually exposed to sex, drugs and rock-n-roll in their teen years, and so have a very acute awareness of the dangers of such temptations. They desire to protect their children from these temptations, so they make rules that perhaps they wish they had kept when they were young. They draw lines, thinking that as long as their children do not cross those lines they cannot be drawn into sin.

Unfortunately this approach is not true to human nature. There are a couple of major flaws in it:

1)    First, it gives the wrong impression. It assumes that boys and girls cannot behave when they are alone together, and therefore must constantly be under supervision. Often there is an unstated emphasis on the boy in the situation, as if the girl needs to be protected from his boyish nature, and he needs to be protected from himself. This is a terrible assumption. Not only is it unjust, and it has something of the nature of a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is just as wicked and dishonest as the worldly version of manhood that tells boys that they need to lay as many girls as possible to be a man, and it has the same root, and the same effect. The root is the assumption that “That’s just how men are,” and “Boys will be boys.” The effect is to give men the impression that we are helpless slaves of our biology, and consequently we should either despair of ever being pure, or just laugh off our sins as simply “boys being boys.”

2)    Second and more foundationally, we were not put on this earth to avoid sin. We were put on this earth to know, love and serve God and our neighbor. This means that we must live. Sinlessness is not a requirement for entrance into Heaven. Love is. Avoidance of sin is a crabbed, stilted, pitiful imitation of the boundless energy, the joyous vitality, the fierce, unconcerned freedom of the pursuit of holiness. Sometimes simply avoiding sin is the best we can do. I admit that. I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t. However, categorically basing the raising of teenagers on the principle of merely avoiding sin is dangerous. It gives sin more power than it ought to have.

3)    In most societies prior to ours, teenagers of 16 or 17 were regarded as adults, and expected to behave as such. It is our society that keeps pushing the limits of adolescence further and further and further, by not requiring maturity of teenagers, then of highschoolers, then of college students, and now we do not even require maturity of grown men of thirty years old. My entire adult life has been spent as a leader in the military. Because I could keep my nose clean, I was put in charge of my peers right from the beginning, and told to keep their noses clean as well. I have over ten years of experience in leadership, and the one rule, the only thing I have learned with any certainty, is that people cannot be pushed into maturity. They can be pushed or coerced into meeting a standard, as long as that standard is mediocre enough, but no human being can be forced to mature. They can only be invited, and then allowed the chance to succeed or fail. In my experience, more often than not young people rise to the level of trust placed in them, but there are no guarantees. Sometimes people fail, and a leader must give them that opportunity. 

4)    As with anything having to do with people, you cannot fight nature and expect there to be no consequences. Teenagers are designed to be interested in the opposite sex. God made them that way. It is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. It draws people into relationship with each other. Does it also provide opportunity for temptation? Yes. But to quote Catholic blogger Seraphic Singles "Eros… is above everything else an impulse to escape the prison of one's own ego to connect with someone or something else." To hear a lot of Catholic speakers, writers and leaders on the subject, (and my younger self was guilty of this at, say, 15 years old) one would think that the burgeoning of human sexuality in the teen years was a bit of a mistake. A miscalculation on God’s part, if you will, which puts all of us in a devilish awkward position, what with having desires that can only be satisfied by marriage, and yet being too young to marry. Best thing to do is teach the kids to ignore those desires for relationship, lock them in a closet until your 21^st birthday, and then let them out when they are mentally, emotionally, and financially ready for marriage.

There are consequences for stifling these budding romantic attractions. Most of the time it is done by making the kids feel that there is some sort of stigma attached to those feelings, or even that they are somehow dirty or bad. Whether the parents intend this or not, that can be the result.

I think what is needed is to recognize things for what they are. Here are three facts that I can think of off the top of my head which ought to be recognized:

1)    The truth is that teenagers are going to have crushes on other teenagers. If they are not that is probably not healthy. Something is very wrong when young men and women are not attracted to one another, or have no desire for relationship with each other.

2)    Teenage crushes are not permanent, nor are they necessarily very profound. This does not mean that they are not real. It is one thing to remind a teenage girl that her crush on a boy is not on the same level as the love Grandma and Grandpa have for each other. All kids need to be reminded of this, and the perspective is priceless. It is quite something else, however, to laugh at her feelings, or to make fun of them. Her feelings are real. She is really feeling them. They are probably immature, and perhaps a bit silly. Perhaps they are a lot silly, but they are the best she can feel for now. No one makes fun of a toddler for falling over while learning to walk. Why should we make fun of teenagers for bumbling clumsily about while learning to love?

3)    No one (except the teenagers themselves) expects teenage romances to be permanent. The kids are going to get their hearts broken. There is no point in deliberately courting heartbreak, but neither should parents be overly concerned with protecting their kids from it. We learn from heartbreak. It presents us with a choice, whether to grow or to shrink back into ourselves, and this choice is the meaning of our very lives.

I think all parents fear for their children. They think about their children falling in love with other children, and they see all the worst case scenarios: STD’s, out-of-wedlock pregnancy, sin, and disgrace. They try to shield their children from these consequences by shielding them from the relationships that could be a temptation to them, without realizing that these relationships are also opportunity. We fear the possibility of failure, so we have a tendency to pass up opportunity for victory.

On a larger scale, that is why our culture is the way it is. We Christians are not going out and living and loving fearlessly. We are isolating ourselves in communes so that we will not be corrupted, rather than going out and carrying the gospel into the very teeth of the world.

Re-Examining Emotional Modesty

Charming Disarray has started a series of posts on “Emotional Chastity” which I have been following since the first one appeared, and periodically going back to re-read. It is of great interest to me because I have written an entire book about modesty for women (a fact which I am sure does not recommend me to CD at all) and in it I actually spoke about emotional modesty; and also because I have written a book about manhood for young men, in which I posited a sort of emotional modesty for men.

Emotional modesty for women could very simply be defined as not sharing on an intimate emotional level, or allowing a man to share on such a level, unless he had openly declared his commitment to that relationship.

Emotional modesty for men could be defined as saying only what you mean, and no more. This means don’t act like you are pursuing a woman unless you do intend to commit to that relationship. I also discouraged the idea of dating without a clear intention of discerning marriage, and hence discouraged dating for young men who were not ready to get married, personally or financially.

Like all of my theories, they were formulated in response to a perceived problem. As I saw it, the women that I knew tended to be too ready to commit their hearts to relationships that very clearly weren’t going anywhere, because the guy was not committed at all. He, for his part, more often than not, was well content to let things go on, enjoying the attention and emotional (and/or physical) attachment, but apparently unable or unwilling to get tied down. That was the most common scenario that I saw, and so it was the scenario I wrote about. I was aware at the time that both theories could be taken too far and hence tried to balance them in my writings, but there is only so much you can do.

Three or four years later I am revisiting those theories, interested in finding the flaws. Surprisingly, I don’t find too many obvious flaws in formulation in the books. As I said, I was quite careful to balance out my theories with common sense. What I find, however, is that those theories play right into the hands of a certain attitude, which I have come to call “Fear Based Ethics.”

What is a “Fear Based Ethic?” It is an ethical proscription put forth out of fear of the possible consequences. I oppose it to “Love Based Ethics” which are embraced for love of the good that comes from them. A fear based ethic is, “You had better go to Mass on Sunday or you will go to hell.” A love based ethic would be, “I go to Mass on Sunday because I want to grow closer to God.” Currently (I am only 27 and my ideas are constantly under renovation) I am a bit suspicious of fear based ethics. They are suitable for two year olds, “Don’t run into the road or Daddy will spank you,” but hardly for adults. I recognize that sometimes a little fear of damnation is all that stands between myself and… well… damnation; However, I believe the ultimate goal is to move away from fear based ethics, and move towards love based ethics.

I recognize that fear of evil consequences is an inevitable component of any system of morals. The question is how much, and for how long, and how do we move to love?

It is not enough simply to avoid evil. We must learn to pursue the good with all our hearts. Even that is not quite love based. If I could write well enough, I could portray the good as it really is, and I the writer and you the reader would fall in love with that good, and be consumed with desire to pursue it. “Should” and “Want to” would be synonymous.

With that in mind, I want to take a cue from CD in examining the concept of “emotional chastity.”

Threshhold Life

Do not call me a dead man;
Say, rather, unborn.
Call me not an evil man;
Say only, “Unformed.”
Unformed, embryonic, a teeming mass
Of cells, undifferentiated,
Potential unmapped
Unabated because untapped.
No not evil.
I have committed no crimes.
I am not a devil.
But I am a product of my times.
I have spent my score of years and seven
Waffling about between heaven
And the space inside a zero.
I have built a fortress out of sheer possibility
And I guard its ramparts like the true hero
Of false humility;
Firmly entrenched in the zero space
The liminal space
The nowhere space
Between a thousand “Yeses.”
Not lost;
I know precisely where I stand
Trammeled about by guesses
More educated than most.
 
An acorn is free to roll,
But not free to grow.
No.
For that there is a toll,
And the toll is rootedness
Fixedness
Differentiation in anticipation.
And before that there must be a split
A tearing
A rupture of the skin as from within
Tender green and white things like earthy wings
Must thrust through the crust into the dust
And dirt, in search of fertile ground. It hurts.
And before even that there must be the time
Of lying
And crying,
And dying silently on the forest floor
Half buried under dead leaves.
Pelted by rain and hearing
The snortings of pigs and scurryings of squirrels and fearing
And feeling lost and cold, as the frost takes hold.
All too often only thus is softened
An acorn’s shell.
And it cannot tell
That only thus is it free
To be
Rooted.

Death in Children's Stories

*Note, this post was first written, but not published, well over a week before the events in Newton, CT. Bear that in mind when reading it, but I am already beginning to think about how it applies to that event and especially to the children affected by knowledge of that event.

 

 

At Bible Study on Monday night, or rather in the pre-Bible study man talk (the ladies having either not arrived or gone off to procure refreshments) one of the guys mentioned a comic book inspired cartoon he had seen as a kid, and mentioned an episode in which Superman had had his dreams invaded by his arch-nemesis, and in the ensuing nightmare had accidentally killed his friend. The guy reminiscing about this episode pointed out, "You know, some of those cartoons were pretty dark. I mean those were kid shows, but they were really dark for kids."

I mused that I didn't particularly see a problem with death and violence in kid's stories or movies, necessarily, as long as it was done right. Some of the guys agreed, some disagreed, but we didn't really get into a conversation about it.

A couple of things went through my mind when I heard that comment. The first was all the parents I know who try so hard to keep their children from seeing certain movies because they are afraid they will scare them or give them nightmares (and by parents I mean mothers. I don't think I have ever seen a father censor a movie on that argument.) Parents who won't let their children watch "Lord of the Rings" because they think the orcs are too scary, or who won't let their children read the Chronicles of Narnia because of all the fighting. (This is a much smaller subset.)

There were a couple of movies that my parents wouldn't let us see when we were kids because they were afraid we would have nightmares. I don't remember any of them, but I think my parents, on the whole, were pretty sensible about it. They did their best but predicting what would or would not frighten each of us was an impossible task. I remember being frightened out of my wits by the flying monkeys in Wizard of Oz; crying at the dressed up White Rabbit in a live action version of Alice in Wonderland; having nightmares about the ghosts in Tevye's dream in Fiddler on the Roof; and lying awake for what felt like years, mulling over the haunted wood scene in Anne of Green Gables. The things my Mom expected to scare me, (Star Wars, for instance) were not scary at all. In fact, Star Wars was hands down my favorite movie for most of my childhood.

What this indicates to me is that it is impossible to predict with certainty what will or will not frighten any given child. The child himself decides, subconsciously and without understanding the reasons, what he will be afraid of and how he will be afraid of it.

On a deeper level, the whole idea that children must be protected at all costs from frightening ideas and images is counter-intuitive to me. (You will note that 1: I am a man and 2: I have no children of my own.) I do not think that movies that are frightening simply for the sake of being frightening, (i.e. horror movies) are good for children. On the other hand, I think that violence, fear and death are absolutely necessary in children’s literature and movies.

Grownups who do not want these elements in children’s stories do not understand the purpose of stories in a child’s life. Grownups think of stories as merely entertainment, but this is a stunted two-dimensional way of looking at it. Children know better. To a child a story is another life, no different in perceived reality or importance from the child’s own real life. Stories are a way of learning, perhaps the most powerful way in which children learn. Grownups worry sometimes about children entering so completely into their imaginary worlds. I know a lot of grownups were disturbed by how seriously I took my imaginary world as a kid but that is precisely how we learn. By investing the imaginary world with such depth, the lessons we learn there stick deep. To this day I still learn things in the same way. I imagine things and live them in my mind before they happen and learn prudence. I listen to other peoples’ experiences and try to enter into them, and I learn empathy. I live various possible solutions to problems and anticipate complications. None of this would be possible without that early childhood training in allowing my imagination full rein.

More importantly, stories change who we are. They allow us to grow up.

One of my young second cousins is 4 ½ years old. His parents have been showing him the animated Redwall series (based on the truly outstanding books by British author Brian Jacques.) Now, in the Redwall series there are many bad guys. In the first season there is the vicious rat Cluny the Scourge, and his vast horde of bloodthirsty vermin, weasels, stoats, ferrets and such. However, more sinister still is the serpent, Asmodeus. The brave warrior mouse Matthias has to fight with this serpent who is a hundred times his size and overcome it in order to achieve the sword of Martin the Warrior and fulfill his destiny. (Ha Ha! Just remembering the story is getting me pumped. I loved that series and read dozens of those books out loud to younger kids when I was a teenager. Good times!)

My cousin’s mom told me that the little boy was so scared of the snake that he was standing up on the couch as he watched it, ready to run away at a moment’s notice. But then his dad showed him how Matthias killed the snake, and now it is the little boy’s favorite part of the movie. He role-plays “Matthias and the Snake” over and over again with his dad, or whoever else will play it with him. Sometimes he is Matthias and sometimes he is the snake, and both are deeply significant from a psychological point of view, but the main point is that that he has looked the snake in the eye, and slain it.

G. K. Chesterton said, “Fairy stories are important, not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated.” There should be a sign over the entrance to this world to warn us, “Here there be dragons!” Like it or not, dragons roam the byways of this earth and sooner or later every child will meet his dragon. When he does he should do so already knowing that dragons can be slain.

I am not talking about head knowledge either. I memorized my Baltimore Catechism with the best of them when I was a fuzzy headed altar-boy. I could quote from memory about the theological virtue of hope, God’s promise to grant me the “salvation of my soul and the means necessary to obtain it,” but I was fully twenty-five years old before that formula meant anything to me more than the words that made it up. I had long since encountered dragons aplenty and had long since had need of the hope in my heart that would give me the courage to fight them without rest or quarter, certain that in the end victory would be mine. The rational understanding of that hope came from my formal education, the training in writing, logic, philosophy, catechism and other such arts of the mind, but the habit of hope had been formed at a much earlier age by much humbler influences. Long before I knew how to read about serpents I already knew that they ought to be defeated, and that they could be defeated, and that I was born to fight them.

The grownups who refuse to allow anything frightening in the stories their children hear, watch and read, may be providing them with better entertainment, (or maybe not. After all, what is a story without a conflict?) However, they deprive them of so much more. They assume that all fear comes from outside of the child, but this is not the case. This is a fallen world. The shadow of Original Sin is cast from within and the fears are already there. Frightening things frighten because they echo in the dark places of our own souls. In depriving the child of an imaginary bad guy to be afraid of, you deprive him of any way of focusing on the internal fears. In depriving him of imaginary heroes you deprive him of any way to face his fears and defeat them.

Children’s stories, therefore, should be realistic. This is not to suggest that dragons, hobbits, elves and dwarves are to be eschewed. The fairy stories are more realistic than the tamer stories could ever be, because the fairy stories get to the real root of the world, to goodness, truth and beauty; to evil, lies and ugliness; to the courage to stand up for the right and resist the wrong. In the end, fairy tales tell us the only things that really matter.

They tell us there is hope.

 

Inferno

Once upon a time we knew

What we knew,

And what we didn’t.

But that is long since hidden,
Bidden fly away and hide
Inside our vain certitude
That our age is one of beatitude.
The attitude is one of extreme
Academic schizophrenia, we seem
So certain we know, and dream
All that is worth
Knowing on earth
Or dreaming.
Meanwhile scheming
To convince ourselves from our youth
That the truth
Is unknowable.
Un-showable.
And consequently, why bother
The reverend Father
With disturbances of his reverie
His litany,
If it makes him happy
Then leave him to his delusions
So long as his certainty does not threaten our confusion.

We are not especially interested in why.

Sure, have a try,
At thinking about meaning,
And dreaming
Of reasons
And seasons,
And some fictitious “Plan,”
But Man, I’ll let you have “Why”
And I will learn of “How.”
That’s the real thing, now
These days, knowing
Not where we’re going
But how to get there faster.
You see, the clock is my master,
Or not really the clock, but my own fear of hereafter.
To rest would be a disaster.

Did I mention
My latest invention!
I put a jet engine
In a car with no map. My intention
Is simple, to race around
And around,
And around,
And around this giant, blue/green hamster wheel.
The real cannot be reached
The barrier cannot be breached.
So I will race without a destination
Not a vacation.
Not a variation.
A vacancy.
Vacuous virtuosity
Curiosity is dead
Instead my mind unravels
To travel from the here of my birth
To nowhere. What mirth?
What youth?
What truth?
What good are questions to one who doesn’t believe in answers?
What good is a ballroom, if you are afraid of other dancers?
 
You see, we used to tread our bawdy measures
In search of pleasures,
Trading treasures, gold for silver
Silver for copper,
Copper for clay,
Clay for dung,
And even dung is too rich
Too alive,
Too fecund.
Sterility, that’s the thing.
A rock feels no sting,
Our fling with vices
Showed us nothing suffices
Except Everything!
We struggled to achieve
Happiness, but conceived only pain
And again, ceased to believe
In things.
When you have finally clawed your way to the bottom
It is easy to mock the heaving orgy of Sodom
From the finality,
The banalit,
The silent streets of Gomorrah,
Having sold all tomorrows
And bartered all sorrows
And pains,
And gains above
And loves,
And joys,
And toys,
And trash,
And even ash
For nothing,
And no one.


I wrote this poem a few days ago, and when I finished it, it scared the heck out of me.

Ask Thugfang... Or maybe not?

Well! This is a bit of development.It appears that the Obfuscator replied to Thugfang's advice column on confession. After doing a little digging, it appears that Thugfang actually replied to the Obfuscator's comment. Of course he would. Someone that arrogant couldn't resist. Naturally he wouldn't reply in his regular column, but I managed to get my hands on the correspondence and am sharing it with you, because I think the question was quite good and really did see something the old devil missed. Might have been wiser not to point it out, though. So here it is, the correspondence of the unfortunate Obfuscator.


Dear Master Thugfang, Your well thought out tricks and traps will definitely be reread over the next while. There is much there to be applied with my Catholic patient, and I am beginning immediately. I am also looking forward to your additional column on post-confesson attacks.

However, through analyzing my patient before and after he goes to confession I have begun to realize why I have been having difficulty. It is due to the one question that you touched on briefly at the beginning of you letter, "How does confession work?" As you said, it is total nonsense to us, completely irrational. Yet, this man believes that it is powerful! So, would it not be better to show him how ineffective confession actually is? Why could we not attack the sacrament itself? I realize that the confessional is a no fly zone we cannot access. However, we could attack his faith in confession indirectly, by playing on his fears that he is revealing himself in a way that makes him vulnerable! Pride is the downfall of many men, as you yourself mentioned, so why don't we help him to realize that he is telling his sins to a mere man... one who might use that information for his own benefit. His pride would then guide him away from saying anything that would make him appear lesser or weak, for no man wishes to be judged by another. I will be considering all these issues critically as I continue to seriously practice your advice.

Sincerely, the Obfuscator



My Dearest, Darling Obfuscator,

So wise we are, suddenly! So perspicacious! You grasp things so quickly and even come to conclusions the master had not reached! Well, a gold star for the star pupil.

Certainly, if you can attack the patient's awareness of the priest's humanity, by all means do so. I have known it to work, but not, usually, in a patient with a well established habit of confessing. That sort of thing is better suited to the lapsed Catholic who is half-considering going back to the Church. That's when you want to trot out a parade of priest scandal stories and bad jokes about altar boys and confessions. Better still if he knew a priest who was an alcoholic, or a glutton, or even simply a bore. Anything to render ludicrous (in his mind as it is in ours) the idea that the Enemy could possibly use such a weak, pathetic sinner to affect His work. Even a cursory reading of the gospels would convince the dullest human that not only is that not unusual, it is precisely the Enemy's usual mode of operation, but most humans don't read the gospels. That is where you make mileage on the priest's sins.

In the case of a patient who has been confessing regularly for years, particularly if he confesses to several priests, his faith is in the sacrament, not the priest. As you pointed out, he believes the sacrament is powerful, and that is why he goes. He probably doesn't seriously attach that power to the priest himself.

On the other claw, if you do know anything about the priest, it wouldn't hurt to ensure the patient becomes aware of it. The juicier the better. What if the priest doesn't have any serious faults? Well, you're a demon, aren't you? Gossip, suspicion and lies are as good as a conviction in your patient's culture. Maybe he will stop going to confession altogether, or maybe he will simply decide to quit going to that priest. Either way, the distrust is certainly worth it, if you can make it happen.

Another thought. I once got a patient to stop going to confession to her regular confessor, who was a very wise and holy man, because I convinced her that every time he preached a homily on gossip he was thinking about her latest confession. I had forgotten that little anecdote. One of my more humorous escapades, if I do say so. In fact, the truth of the matter was that that abominable little prig spent so many hours in the confessional per week he was guaranteed to hear every sin in the book by four-o-clock wednesday afternoon. Make fun of her? Ha! He couldn't for the life of him remember which parishoner had told him what sins, except for one or two of the more colorful local characters. I strongly suspect he had heard a murder confessed once or twice (a few of my colleagues were assigned to local gang members) but given the fate of the priest's handler, I doubt he ever broke the seal of the confessional.

Which reminds me, I really ought to look you up some time. I have taken a special interest in your career, and we might be meeting far sooner than you ever expected.

Cheers!

Thugfang

Dilemma

Late at night the poet wields his pen

Revealing the strange things everybody knows

To eyes that see but do not look, and ears

That hear but do not listen. The sons of men

Cannot survive reality’s hammer blows

Without some armor, but armor only kills

And must be chinked and softened by many tears.

The question is answered, not by minds, but wills.

The Truth will kill you, if you let it reach

All in you that is not true. It does but slay

What is already dead. The image shields

From nail wounds, but one might as well say

That we are shielded from the dance by other dancers.

We will not learn so the poet cannot teach,

Cannot conquer because we will not yield.

So full of questions, but no longer believe in answers

 Perfect love casts out all fear, but there

Is precisely mankind’s dilemma. The apple grove

Is littered with rotten cores snatched down still green

From living trees. The unready, stolen gift

Turns our stomach sour and tears a rift

In the fabric of the cosmos. All this has been

Our curse, that now it is precisely perfect love

I vitally need and most supremely fear.

 

Oh Rivers clap your hands, ye mountains dance

And by your dance say things too full of truth

To be said with prose; by bright-eyed paradox

Shielding hearts from the Lover’s fiery shocks.

Burning into our hearts. The fire of youth

Hides in ancient patience. We look askance

At giddiness; not all is gold that gleams.

But wisdom hides in foolishness and so we dream.

Fear and Love in Homeschooling

In life there are only two paths: the Path of Love and the Path of Fear. They begin from the same place and travel very close to each other at first, but the farther a man travels along them, the more spearate they become. In the end they diverge so sharply and irrevocably that they lead to opposite sides of an unbridgeable chasm. On one side is life in all its fullness. On the other is death in all its emptiness.

I grew up in a homeschooling Catholic family and I know many homeschooling families, both Catholic and Non-Catholic. I know enough about it to know that no two families choose to homeschool for the same reasons, or in the same way. Some have religious reasons, some have primarily academic reasons. There was a time, when I was a teenager, and a little bit into my early twenties, when if you had asked me how I intended to educate any children I might ever happen to have, I would have said "Homeschool," hands down and given you a half dozen or so well-articulated reasons for that conviction. Since then, however, I have had the good fortune to meet and become very close friends with a number of families, young and old, who have homeschooled some of the time, or most of the time, or all the time. Some used curricula programs, some created their own curricula. Some went alone, some worked as co-ops with other families. Some homeschooled up until highschool, and then sent their kids to the public school or to private schools. I know of two groups of unusually ambitious families who pooled their resources and created their own Catholic schools, one in New York and one in Louisiana.

We can quote statistics about how well homeschoolers do on standardized testing, or invoke stereotypes about the sheltered, socially awkward homeschooler going hog wild on sex, drugs and rock'n'roll in college. No matter how many "outcomes" I have seen I can see very little in the way of a pattern. (Even the evaluation of outcomes must be undertaken very carefully, taking into account that every human being is different and makes his or her own choices.) I do, however, see a pattern in the foundations, so to speak. The motivation behind the choice to homeschool is really a choice between two opposite reasons. The choice is made either out of fear of evil, or out of love of the good.*

Too many homeschooling families that I have known chose homeschooling out of fear, fear of the experience they had in highschool being replayed in their children's lives (with good reason). The choice to homeschool was a reaction against that, a flight from the evils of the world. This attitude of fear is very powerful, but also very posionous. This attitude of fear becomes a prevalent undercurrent in the life of a family, and then in the life of a young person who grew up in that environment. The fear of making mistakes, of failing, of not being the "perfect Catholic" family, of somehow being corrupted by the evil world, all of these attitudes are based on fear. This is the fear that keeps Catholic young people from going to secular colleges for fear of being corrupted, from entering the military for fear of being dragged off to the strip club, from asking that girl to dance for fear of being led into sin or having everyone think you are going steady. It is the fear that keeps men from trying out the seminary, because they might fail. It is the fear that keeps men in the seminary after they have decided it isn't for them, because they don't want to be seen to fail. This fear prevents good Christian boys and girls from spending time together because they fear temptation more than they trust grace. This fear prevents good Christian young people from being friends with atheists, for fear that their faith will be stolen. Fear, fear, fear. We become so enamored of the homely ideals which really only exist in our minds that we run away from the real world, and consequently it goes to the devil. What do you expect when the salt of the earth is horded for our own private recipes, and the light of the world is put under a shade to make it a convenient night light for scared children?

The opposite motivation is love. Some people homeschool because they believe they have a gift to give their children which the world cannot give them. They want to share this gift of life with their children, in the hopes that their children will then go out and share that gift with the world. So they allow their children to ask questions, even challenging or disrespectful sounding questions. They allow their children opportunities to learn from anyone and everyone who has something good, true or beautiful to offer. Perhaps most importantly of all, they allow their children room to make mistakes. They do not try to shelter them from the responsibility to make their own choices, they do not prevent them from meeting people who think differently. They are available to answer questions and aware of the questions that their children are asking, but they are willing to be pushed aside, ignored or not listened to. They applaud the good, no matter how immature it might be, without ever condoning or encouraging that immaturity. These parents are humble enough to realize that they are not in control. They are simply tools in the hands of God, so they can make themselves available but not grasp at control when things don't go the way they planned.

This is the pattern throughout life. The slightest good attempted by the grace of God, even if it "fails" by our standards, is of more value than any amount of evil avoided. Remember the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-29), and tremble if you were given great gifts. Tremble, but rejoice, for you have been given the opportunity to do great good. Invest everything you have and everything you are in the mission that excites your heart and sets it on fire. Do not fear the naysayers, whether they wish you well or ill. Listen to their fears, and recognize them as fears. Take whatever truth they offer, and let their fears pass you by.

For we were not given a spirit of slavery to fear, but a Spirit of adoption by which we cry Abba! Father!

Fear not! He has conquered the world. He who is in us is stronger than he who is in the world.



* For the purpose of this blog I have artificially separated and contrasted the two motivations, but in real life they are never that simple. There are very, very few people in the world who are completely motivated by love and never by fear. There are some people who are motivated almost entirely by fear, but I hope not very many. There is a little bit of love in everyone, just a little spark of fearlessness. So don't expect to see real human beings entirely in one camp or another, and don't expect to see homeschooling families entirely in one camp or another either. The distinction is meant to enable us to see which direction we ought to be going. When we start using it as a set of boxes to stick our fellow Christians in, then I think it has become a trap and should be discarded.