I had a chance to chat this afternoon with Alex Botten on his podcast show Fundamentally Flawed regarding the perils and problems with teaching kids literal creationism. We had fun. And kind of ripped on advocates of literal creationism. I hope you will head over and check it out. If you are unfamiliar with my ideas regarding evolution and Christianity, I have a page on … Continue reading Fundamentally Flawed Podcast With Rebecca
A few years ago, I was writing an obituary for a friend’s father who had passed away suddenly. As many of you may have noticed, I do alright with the writing part of things most of the time, but I’m not quite so skilled as an editor*. So, you shouldn’t be too surprised at the fact that I accidentally put the word “believed” where “beloved” was supposed to go. So the first line read: “Mr. Bob Kennedy, believed father of Teddy and Linda Kennedy. . .” Suddenly it seemed like not such a bad thing that Mr. Kennedy’s ex-wife hadn’t shown up to help her children handle the arrangements.
(I spent the weekend with Mr. Kennedy a couple of years earlier when his son Teddy got married. We were both just-outside-the-inner-circle participants in the wedding. My ex was the best man and Mr. Kennedy was the now sober and present father. I am quite certain that Mr. Kennedy absolutely laughed his ass off over the whole thing. I mean, he valued his children more than men who never went without them sometimes do. But the whole thing was pretty rich. He would have seen the humor.)
Bibledude.net has a series of posts on the issue of fatherlessness that you can check out by clicking this picture I cribbed from him.
Everyone has a theory to explain the breakdown of the family: culture, government policy, the sexual revolution, poverty, racism, global trade, etc, etc. A few days back, I shared my theory: unresolved trauma from often horrific life experiences. I said I was going to write about what I think Christians have a moral obligation to do in response and that is what this post is about. Now, before you snort and click away, allow me to explain myself . . .
A few years ago, the ex told me about a woman he knew who lived in a high poverty area and had put her 14 year old daughter on birth control pills. The girl was an honor student, insisted that she wasn’t sexually active and didn’t intend to become sexually active, and didn’t really want to be on the pills but the mother insisted. I told my husband that I thought it was probably a good idea. Not necessarily because the pills themselves would keep her from getting pregnant, but because the discipline of having to remember to take one at the same time everyday would serve her well.
Many of us grew up in homes with bedtimes, we sat down for meals with our families, got handed a vitamin with breakfast by mom and could always find a quiet spot to do homework. Often we don’t appreciate the way these simple routines and disciplines shape and prepare us to manage our lives in the real world. Including using birth control methods effectively.
A fellow RA in college went to the local county health department and came back with a bag that looked like this. Flavored! Colored! Many sizes! The bounty overfloweth.
I was a poor single mom. I have known a lot of much more stereotypical poor single moms (ie not just the black sheep of an intact, well-educated, upper-middle class family). I can personally attest to the fact that is not hard to get condoms or birth control pills. People practically throw them at you when you’re a college student or a single mom. The problem is I have known more than one person who became a parent while a bag of condoms from the local clinic sat on a dresser across the room. Continue reading “Why Christians Have a Moral Obligation Not to Have Sex Outside of Marriage”
Train a child up in the way that he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it. ~ Proverbs 22:6
Awww, isn't he just precious? Bless his heart.
This is a much used and much abused scripture verse when it comes to parenting. Many parents hold onto it while raising their kids and think it means “If I teach him right from wrong, he’ll stay on the straight and narrow.” These same parents all too often find themselves wondering if maybe this was one of those bible verses which shouldn’t be taken too literally some years later. Sometimes it can be the source of a great deal of heartache. But there are several problems with the way this verse is often read.
First of all, there’s the “in the way that he should go” issue. I have written before about how our children come with their own personalities, needs and journeys to walk. Teaching kids right and wrong is a small part of parenting. It simply says “this is how people should behave.” That’s an entirely different issue than actually raising a kid. To raise a kid, we need to show them “here’s how to walk the path you will need to walk.”
The word “way” – Hebrew darkow – indicates a path or journey. When used in reference to God it indicates his way of doing things. We will each have our own way of doing what God requires of us. This is what we need to prepared for. Simply exhorting good behavior and punishing bad isn’t going to cut it, imo.
I am. That’s our goal. I am. We are children of I Am. Made in his image. I am. Are you? Ha!
Part of our problem is that we are convinced that I am – whether it be God, ourselves, or our present circumstances and surroundings – is something to be suspect of, probably terribly boring or terrible bad or terribly not me. Like the God whose main building tool is explosions is going to want us to stand around all day humming melodically. Seriously? (Sometimes when people talk to me, this just pops into my head.)
But we resist I am. If we didn’t we’d have to learn to slow down and be present. We’d maybe even have to let ourselves be irreperably imperfect. We’d have to face things we didn’t even know we’d be running from. And that would be uncomfortable. We’d have to do things the people around us might not approve of. It might be too hard. It might even drive you into the arms of God, no? Because it’s not easy to learn to just be. I would never want to have to do it on my own.
When you are determined to learn to embrace I Am whether it is the I Am God or the I am Rebecca or I am going through an unwanted divorce and I’m really embarrassed at what the people I’m related to will think of me because of this, then you will reach a place that I call zen – although it’s probably a terrible abuse of what the actual word means. To me zen is just a very deep acceptance. It’s when you can let go – even for just a few seconds at a time – of your emotional need for reality to be different than it actually is. It’s not letting go of desire – wanting something is part of reality, and acceptance of reality is what living with and in I am is all about. One of the differences between real zen and the Christian version, donchya know.
When I am at “zen”, I find that I have all the patience in the world when I need it. There is peace. There is joy. Things make much more sense from the point of zen than they do any other time. If I’ve ever said something that was so obvious that it made you feel stupid for not having thought of it that way before, it’s something that came from being in zen. Continue reading “I am. God is. Are you? Zen . . .”
“O lord, thou hast searched me, and known me.” (Psalm 139:1)
Perhaps the most frightening attribute of God is that He knows everything about us. Everything! He has “searched” (literally “penetrated”) us and “known” (“understood”) us. . . Furthermore, He is everywhere around each one of us (vv. 7-10), wherever we are or could be. He fills all space, and there is no escape.
Go ahead, ask me where I found that quote. Or even better, how ’bout I up the fun quotient and give you some options. Was it:
Suck it up, kid. You'll get a better one in heaven.
A friend recently sent a note in which she commented on the lack of “why me?” talk on my blog. Silly girl – I was raised Catholic. I can think of at least 100 reasons all of this is my own fault right off the top of my head! That, plus the fact that life has been handing me inexplicably little help for as long as I can remember means that I let “why me?” go a long time ago. There are only two answers: “you’re doing it wrong” or “because this is the way you need to go“. Either I’m screwing something up and should fix it – hence the Catholic guilt – or this is one of those things that will only make sense later. Frankly, Catholic guilt gets a bad rap – it’s downright empowering in light of the alternative!
This was a tough week. It was one of those weeks where an emotional rough patch and a life rough patch collided and made a mess all over the highway of my life. (I keep telling God he needs to pave the damn thing.) And just to make sure that all of this doesn’t get to be too routine, my wonderful parents were visiting, so I had an audience. (My poor parents; I’m glad and grateful that they were here, but I know it’s only marginally more fun to watch someone you love go through things you are helpless to do anything about than it is to go through it yourself. I have to remind myself that God must have his reasons for asking them to walk a path which includes me and my mess of a life.)
If you read my book The Upside Down World ~ A Book of Wisdom in Progress, you will remember that I first met God in a fit of enraged blasphemy. Which means that I’ve always felt free to itch and moan and be as upset as I want to be in prayer. Besides, Jesus was said to have prayed with “loud cries and tears” himself. So by the end of the week, my prayers had devolved into demands: “I can’t do this. I’m not going to do this. You need to fix this. Not just spiritually, but for real. In the real world. Continue reading “It Will Be Alright. Or So I’ve Been Told”
I heard a story the other day about a woman who needed potatoes. To make potato salad. And apparently she needed a lot of potatoes. I probably wasn’t listening very attentively, because I have no idea why she needed to make potato salad – church picnic, family reunion, Paula Deen was coming for a cook-out, I don’t know. But the woman needed potatoes and had no money for potatoes which was causing her a good deal of stress. People were depending on her potato salad. And then she got a phone call from a friend who worked at the weigh-station outside of town: “there’s truck here that’s 150 lbs overweight. It’s full of potatoes – do you know anyone who might need 150 lbs of potatoes?” Why, yes, yes she did. And potatoes fell down from the heavens like manna.
At the completion of this story, another man in the room exclaimed, “isn’t it amazing how God provides? Over and over I have seen things like that – even in my own family, God provides in the most unexpected ways.” Several others in the room nodded in agreement. Not me. I’m like the psalmist – I have heard of these things, but I haven’t seen them. Continue reading “Psalm 44: “You have made us a byword among the nations””
The room looks and smells not too different from the library in the middle school I attended while growing up. Walls lined with books. A floor covered with short, blue looped carpet. Encouraging posters dominated by animals reading books are pasted to any wall without shelves. Florescent lights buzz overhead. The room smells like books do when the humidity from hot Chicago summers seeps into their pages and yellows them. Missing are any of the trappings one finds in school libraries these days. No computers or technology of any sort. A typical, old school library; except this one isn’t in any school building. It’s on the lower level of a juvenile prison. Continue reading “When a Clown Loves You”
A couple of years ago, I was sitting on my front porch steps after dinner, watching my two oldest daughters playing and complaining to God in my head. I don’t remember what it was (nothing too serious), but the qxh (quasi-ex-husband) had done something to chap my hide. As I wound down my complaints and let the whole thing go, I asked God in an almost off-handed way, “do you ever have to deal with people treating you like this?” At which point I’m pretty sure all of heaven burst into hearty guffaws. But soon a funny thing started happening: as I dealt with people in my life, often some parallel experience between God and people would pop into my head.
Sometimes it was something little, like calling someone who did not answer their phone. How often does God try to reach out to people who ignore or reject the call because they are too busy, inattentive or just don’t feel like it? I would ask one of my boys to load and run the dishwasher only to discover at dinnertime hours later that we had no clean pots, plates or utensils. Suppose God ever asks people to do things that don’t get done? Ocasionally, I would have to deal with someone who insisted on talking over me, refused to listen to my perspective or treat it with respect. Yeah, I’m sure God never has to deal with stuff like that, right?
By the next summer a variety of calamities, traumas and disappointments had hit my family full force. As the qxh started to dissemble and then turn on me, these parallels became more pointed and poignant. Loving someone who is being supremely difficult, unreasonable and hostile turns out to be something that God is intimately familiar with. Continue reading “The Emotional God”
A few years ago, I was writing an obituary for a friend’s father who had passed away suddenly. As many of you may have noticed, I do alright with the writing part of things most of the time, but I’m not quite so skilled as an editor*. So, you shouldn’t be too surprised at the fact that I accidentally put the word “believed” where “beloved” was supposed to go. So the first line read: “Mr. Bob Kennedy, believed father of Teddy and Linda Kennedy. . .” Suddenly it seemed like not such a bad thing that Mr. Kennedy’s ex-wife hadn’t shown up to help her children handle the arrangements. 
I am. That’s our goal. I am. We are children of I Am. Made in his image. I am. Are you? Ha!
A couple of years ago, I was sitting on my front porch steps after dinner, watching my two oldest daughters playing and complaining to God in my head. I don’t remember what it was (nothing too serious), but the qxh (quasi-ex-husband) had done something to chap my hide. As I wound down my complaints and let the whole thing go, I asked God in an almost off-handed way, “do you ever have to deal with people treating you like this?” At which point I’m pretty sure all of heaven burst into hearty guffaws. But soon a funny thing started happening: as I dealt with people in my life, often some parallel experience between God and people would pop into my head. 
The Upside Down World 