Installment # 64

In my naivety I thought that virtually all of the couples I saw attending worship services, Sunday school classes, mid-week bible studies, home bible studies, etc, would just naturally have healthy marriages, good self-images, and just a lot of happiness and contentment in their lives.  When I started to build my multi-level marketing business I saw it as nothing more than a bunch of cooperative, positive-minded people working together for mutual benefit.  What shock and disillusionment I was in for!  Not only did I find all my “believer friends” to be small-minded and petty, given to jealousies and gossip, full of fears and doubts, but their marriages were mostly unhealthy (to be polite); their finances were in disarray, and their homes were an embarrassment to them.  Their lives were essentially out of control.  The wives “wore the pants” in the family, for the most part, and did not show the respect for or commitment to their husbands that I thought I would see.

That was sort of the beginning of the end of my faith.  There was no question that Biblical Christianity was not making a difference in their lives.  They were just as fearful and unhappy as any random cross section of the American population – perhaps more so, because Christianity attracts people who on average have greater needs for belonging and acceptance, direction and authority in their lives.  I was upset when I first heard someone say that Christians are “easily led,” but even while I still was one I had to admit that it was true.  I was told I was being too judgmental about the lack of difference I was seeing in “believers,” or that I was once again being too literal – expecting too much, etc.  The standard comeback is, “Christians are not perfect; they are just saved.”  But that is apples and oranges.  I can see that you are not perfect; I must take your word for it that you are “saved.”  That is a faith-based belief that no one can really argue with, nor would I want to.  Believe whatever you want.  “Live and let live, as I have said. 

It is said that the way a sheep wanders away from the flock is “one blade of grass at a time,” meaning indulging in progressively more questionable activities and “sins” until he is lost.  But really it is the process of increasingly opting out of the constant reinforcement of the message, in the presence of hundreds of other believers, that allows a person to break away. The standard rebuttal would be that wherever two or more believers are gathered in His name, He is there through the agency of the Holy Spirit, and that the bible exhorts us not to “forsake the assembling together” with other believers.  But of course if we each individually are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, as we are told, then there should be no important diminution when one believer is by himself.  Also, there is only one place or very, very few places in the bible where we are exhorted not to forsake the assembling together, but that was used repeatedly to get us to come to church whenever the doors were open.  Ironically, bible scholars admonish us to be very wary of something that seems to appear in the bible only once, or very few times. 

I’m pretty sure it is the power of association, the continual reinforcement of the message, and the human desires for belonging and for answers to the great questions of existence, that are operating to keep the flock together, all moving in the same direction.  I heard a less accurate, but more amusing summation of Sunday morning preaching described as, “A mild-mannered man exhorting a group of mild-mannered people to be more mild-mannered.”  That would be how it might have appeared to an uninformed observer. At the other extreme, Mom’s reaction was: “You ‘born agains’: they should lock you up for the first year!”

I’ve read accounts of people who managed to break away from various cults, and I can empathize with how hard it is.  I didn’t have to plan a dangerous physical escape, or risk the well-being of a loved one.  It happened naturally over time for me, but it took a number of years, and I am amazed about how I thought and felt back then, compared to how I think and feel now.  It was quite a journey.  While I point to naivety and a lack of common sense, I believe I was consciously motivated by concern for my children.  Once I started down the path toward “salvation” I became very sensitive to the shocking decline in morals and standards that I was seeing around me, but I think the reason had more to do with trying to protect my children than with me personally.  I thought it was the Holy Spirit working in my life and changing me, but really I suspect it was becoming the father of young teenagers for the first time and realizing the way the world had changed since my childhood.  Probably every generation of parents goes through the same thing.

My parents’ generation was morally outraged when Elvis Presley gyrated his hips on Ed Sullivan’s TV show in the late 1950s.  Compare that to the typical music videos of today!  With access to the Internet via mobile devices, today’s children have ready access to anything and everything that may come to their attention.  And with older siblings and friends, everything comes to their attention.  Among my own grandchildren I’ve noticed a range of readiness levels.  Some just are not interested yet in certain things and do not seek them out, but it is fully available when they are ready.  I can only hope that early and frequent exposure to “adult” material lessens the impact to the extent that young people can adopt a “Ho-hum; what’s new?” attitude.  I’ve never been to a nude beach or a nudist camp, but I understand that after a few exciting minutes, people start to pay little or no attention, as in “Ho-hum; big deal; so what?”

On a positive note, I think today’s young people are learning a lot more at an earlier age than I ever did about what is wrong with objectifying, bullying, sexual harassment and the like. Some of this comes from the school systems; some from the books they read and the movies and TV series’ they watch, where healthy concepts can be taught via stories and the portrayal of realistic, relatable situations.  I’m thinking of teen movies where the “mean girls” and arrogant jocks get their comeuppance, and the nerds and nice people are rewarded in the end.

I might even go so far as to suggest that the PG13 movies and PG14 TV shows are introducing young people to human sexuality in a more effective, beneficial way than either the parents or the school systems or the church can.  Thinking about my own children, they received almost nothing useful from me and not much more from Sandy.  As products of our own upbringing, we did not know how to introduce our children to the subject or the reality of that part of life – the part that they were inexorably being drawn into.  As products of our own generation, we had feelings of shame, perhaps some guilt, certainly some awkwardness and embarrassment.  Meanwhile, the school and church leaders labored under restrictive guidelines, and were from our generation or earlier, with hang-ups and hesitations similar to our own.

As I have watched the older of our grandchildren transition from the age of innocence to the age of knowledge and desire, I have transitioned from an attitude of dismay and regret to one of comfort and optimism.  Sexuality is such a blessing in our lives, and I now watch the young people learn about it, each at their own pace, as and when they are ready.  When Brianna is at our house watching one of her programs, I notice that the stories and the acting portray real life, relatable situations, where young people have to deal with their confusion, their desires, their sense of right and wrong, etc.  I think this is leading to a better, healthier transition than was possible in my day, or even my children’s day.

When our oldest grandchild, Ryan, was moving into the age of knowledge, I remember saying to Michelle, “Well, you can’t keep the tide from coming in.”  Now, just a few years later, I think, “Why would you want to?”  I have avoided using the phrase, “moving into adulthood,” because the generally accepted meaning of “adulthood” is at least 18 years old.  But the age of awareness, desire and loss of innocence (not saying loss of virginity – that’s not what we’re talking about here) begins around age 12.  All I am saying, I guess, is that if the parents and teachers are not very well equipped to help in this area, let the TV shows and movies do it.  It is said that most people learn better by “story” as opposed to lecture.  For example, the biblical Jesus taught in parables more than in speeches – the only speech that comes to mind is the Sermon on the Mount.  For easy reference, some of the parables are called: the Prodigal Son, the Rich Young Ruler, the Good Samaritan, the Widow’s Mite, the House of Many Mansions, etc.

I listed these from memory, but I’m sure you can Google “the parables of Jesus” and get an extensive list.  In fact, hasn’t education changed drastically since the arrival of the Internet age?  If it hasn’t, it should and I dare say it will.  There are a whole lot of names, dates, facts and figures that we do not need to memorize anymore.  When I was in high school and college, the information was in the expensive, hardbound books.  If I sold my text books back to the bookstore, I lost my access to the information they contained.  I either had to keep the books or keep copious notes, or memorize a lot of facts, or admit that I probably would never need that specific information again.  One other alternative in our day and earlier was the complete, expensive, soon outdated set of encyclopedias that nearly every home had.  The purchase of a new set usually came with a promise of annual updates, which came for a couple of years, then stopped arriving.  The sets looked nice if you had an appropriate room and bookshelf to display them on, otherwise they were piled up out of sight somewhere collecting dust. 

I would hope that, thanks to the Internet, education is taking place at a higher, more “big picture” level, at least in high school and college.  The date that a war started, for example, is not as important as why and how it started. What someone said is more important than whether it was Mark Twain or Benjamin Franklin or Winston Churchill who said it.  You can look that up, if you are aware of it.  If we are focusing on memorizing names and dates, we may not take the time to see the bigger picture.  But if we have the bigger picture we can quickly look up the details that we might need.

Brianna recently asked me why the United States feels like it needs to meddle in the affairs of other countries: Why can’t we mind our own business and save a lot of American lives and dollars?  I didn’t do a very good job of responding, though I’m sure she would have gotten bored with the whole conversation and wish she had never asked, if I tried to give her my version of how we got to where we are in international politics.  I think I did praise her for thinking about such matters and having an opinion based on what she has learned so far.  Teenagers have all the answers, as we know, so we should just let them run things (Not!).  She was only 12 at the time, but a very much aware and sensible 12 year old, and that is the kind of critical thinking and “paradigm questioning” that we need.  She can look up the historical details, if she knows enough to wonder.

Her question did remind me that I had heard that the United States’ defense budget is not only the largest among the nations of the world, but in fact exceeds the sum of the defense budgets of the countries with the next 20 largest budgets combined.  Even if that statistic is off a little or is a little outdated, it is no doubt close enough to raise the question in my mind of, not only how did we get to this point, but how do other countries feel about that?  If we are as peace-loving and trust-worthy as we say, why are we spending so much money year after year on national defense?  I know that the answers are many and are complicated, but smaller countries must still fear that we may choose to use some of our might against them, if they do not accept our influence in their affairs. 

They probably think that our system of electing our leaders is so crazy that we may someday elect a monster who militarily leads us down the path of world domination.  I don’t really think that there is even a remote chance of that happening, but the countries who do not understand us and perhaps live in fear of us may not think the chance is so remote.  We must look something like the kid in the play yard who is bigger than everyone else, has a body-builder’s physique, wears tank tops to show it off, but walks around saying, “I don’t want any trouble.”