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On Reading Tragedies with Children

I just finished reading a book with my young daughter. I will refrain from sharing the title of the book at the moment because the author is still alive. I have learned from experience that when you reference a living author your post might end up on that person’s Twitter. Believe it or not I don’t really want that type of publicity! And also, for full disclosure, I am in a somber mood at the moment. That will likely come across in the post.

Anyway, the book turned out to be a bit of a Tragedy, ending in somber despair. I am not big on Tragedies, at least deep, dark Tragedies – Tragedies that are tragic all the way up and all the way down with no hope in sight. Those types of tragedies quite frankly aren’t true to reality…or are they? That’s the big question.

Nihilism is Tragedy (with a capital T). All is meaningless. Life sucks and then you die. And while, for some, life may appear meaningless, and while life may suck, and while they, and I, will surely die, the vast majority of humanity, not just Christians, have always realized that the premise simply isn’t true. We demand hope.

The question, then, becomes, Do we demand hope and therefore invent forms of hope to satisfy us, or Is this something engrained into us from the outside in? Is this an inside out thing – we feel the need for it, and so we invent mechanisms to provide what we need (hope in this case)? Or is the sense that tragedy is meant to be overruled and overturned engrained into us because of the Truth of reality? Are Freud and Nietzche right or are Tolkien and Lewis right? Freud says we invent big daddy in the sky in order to make up for the failures of little daddy down below. Nietzche says we need Supermen who, in the end, can’t save us anyway. Tolkien and Lewis say that tragedy and disaster are little stabbings of pain, shared by all of humanity, that never end a story ultimately. They never end the story because God himself took on flesh, in the person of Jesus Christ, to share in our suffering, that when we suffer we might be sharing in his – and that his resurrection might become ours.

So I do not believe that a good story ever ends without hope. It may not end the way we want it to. But the question is, Does the story leave you despairing, or does it leave you longing? Even if you are not rejoicing, are you at least crying out for the happy ending? Is there enough there to whet your appetite, as you close the book, for the possibility that something good good happen on the next page, if there were another page? That’s the tell-tale difference. And it makes all the difference in the world, and in your soul. If it doesn’t do that, then chuck it right across the room. I’ve done it before, you should try it. It’s no tragedy to quit a bad book.

The title of this post mentions children, and here is where they come in. Children should not be sheltered from sad books. I do not mean that children should be forced to read sad books. But when you read with your children, or when they share what they are reading with you, and they don’t want to read what comes next (this is what happened to us tonight), I do not think you should encourage them to stop. They need to see that not all stories, in the here and now, end happily. They need to see the main characters suffer, and even die. It is better for them to experience it there before they have to deal with it in their own literal experience. Having read of such givens them imaginative furniture to may lead to greater poise when real tragedy strikes.

There goes that word again – tragedy. I am not a fan of the word in general, because most things that we call tragedies are not truly tragic. And most books aren’t either. We have made cliches out of clouds and silver linings and songs about rainbows for a reason. So let the sadness of the book waft over the imagination of your children. But remember that your job is to teach them that Nihilism is a farce. Jesus Christ says that he is making all things new. If he rose from the dead, then indeed it is true. There is hope, no matter how bleak the present, or the present story, is. He calls light out of darkness. He really does. That is why Tolkien could never have truly finished The Lord of the Rings, or at least it could never have been the masterpiece that it is, if Sam Gangee had never said, ‘Is everything sad going to come untrue?’ Catastrophe is meant to lead to eucatastrophe, death to resurrection. That’s Reality, with a capital R.

So read on. Be sad. Cry if you need to. And then teach your children that we do not grieve as those in the world because our hope is sure. And if you’re in the Nihilist camp, then why do you care anyway? Just move on. This post doesn’t really mean anything anyway. And neither does the book you read. It’s all dust in the wind.

Sheltering Your Kids

True story:

In a discussion, a man who works at a bar (though we were not in a bar at the time) says to me, ‘You shouldn’t shelter your children.’

I respond, ‘Well, should I bring them to your bar?’

He says, ‘Lord, I hope you wouldn’t bring them there.’

To which I reply, ‘So do you do want me to shelter my kids!’

And the subject was quickly changed (not by me).

Leaving Children on Doorsteps (G.K. Chesterton)

Chesterton says that the modern Western world sees the existence of children as a problem. How does the world then handle said problem? In several ways, one being the following:

The third way, which is unimpeachably Modern, is to imitate Rousseau, who left his baby on the door-step of the Foundling Hospital. It is true that, among the Moderns, it is generally nothing so human or traditional as the Foundling Hospital. The baby is to be left on the door-step of the State Department for Education and Universal Social Adjustment. In short, these people mean, with various degrees of vagueness, that the place of the Family can now be taken by the State.

He wrote that in 1932. He continues,

And if all the babies born in the world were left on the door-step of the Foundling Hospital, the Hospital, and the door-step, would have to be considerably enlarged.

Follow the logic. If it is the job of government to educate all children, then government cannot help but grow. He continues,

Now something like this is what has really happened, in the vague and drifting centralization of our time. The Hospital has been enlarged into the School and then into the State; not the guardian of some abnormal children, but the guardian of all normal children. Modern mothers and fathers, of the emancipated sort, could not do their quick-change acts of bewildering divorce and scattered polygamy, if they did not believe in a big benevolent Grandmother, who could ultimately take over ten million children by very grandmotherly legislation.

Did I mention he wrote this in 1932? He concludes,

Government grows more elusive every day. But the traditions of humanity support humanity; and the central one is this tradition of Marriage. And the essential of it is that a free man and a free woman choose to found on earth the only voluntary state; the only state which creates and which loves its citizens. So long as these real responsible beings stand together, they can survive all the vast changes, deadlocks, and disappointments which make up mere political history. But if they fail each other, it is as certain as death that ‘the State’ will fail them.

Marriage and the Modern Mind, from In Defense of Sanity, pp. 223-224.

A Small Home is a Big Place

In his essay, Turning Inside Out, G.K. Chesterton makes a case for the central importance of education in the home, especially by mothers. The essay is quite timely. He sees a world in which education is seen as a grand task – so grand that it takes great experts and specialists to accomplish it. But he doesn’t think this is the way the world actually is:

Private education [i.e. education in the home] really is universal. Public education can be comparatively narrow. It would really be an exaggeration to say that the schoolmaster who takes his pupils in freehand drawing is training them in all the uses of freedom. It really would be fantastic to say that the harmless foreigner who instructs a class in French or German is talking with all the tongues of men and angels. But the mother dealing with her own daughters in her own home does literally have to deal with all forms of freedom, because she has to deal with all sides of a single human soul. She is obliged, if not to talk with the tongues of men and angels, at least to decide how much she shall talk about angels and how much about men.

In short, if education is really the larger matter, then certainly domestic life is the larger matter; and official or commercial life the lesser matter. It is a mere matter of arithmetic that anything taken from the larger matter will leave it less.

Hence his case for the massive, and massively important, role of mothers in the education of their children.

Modern Western societies would argue that in going out into the world, mothers are leaving the cramped, claustrophobic confines of a small house for the big wide world of freedom and advancement; or the small, tedious interaction with a child or two or three for ‘life out there’ to seek their fortunes on the market and with the masses. Chesterton says this line of thinking is wrong:

Every word that is said about the tremendous importance of trivial nursery habits goes to prove that being a nurse is not trivial. All tends to return of the simple truth that private work is the great one and the public work the small. The human house is a paradox, for it is larger inside than out.

His argument goes like this: society says that the State should be highly, maybe most highly, concerned with education. Mothers have the greatest opportunity to educate their children. And if these premises are true, then why on earth would the state want them separated from their children? That’s the argument (look up the essay to see it fleshed out), but that last quote is the takeaway for me.

When your children are at home, do not let them get the notion, and don’t get the notion yourself, that they are trapped in a small world. The home is, or at least should be, a place filled with God, the heavens, the stars and planets, human history, art, poetry, drama, story, love, joy, and much more. A small home should be a big place. And it ought to produce big people – who will, in turn, create their own small-big homes.

Quotes from the essay Turning Inside Out by G.K. Chesterton, from In Defense of Sanity.

On Soulless Psychology

I am in danger of going on an extended rant here, so let me try to keep this post within some boundaries. This is not something I have just discovered, nor is it something I do not have many thoughts about. But, in this particular case, it hit home. So let me deal with the particular case.

I was researching for a paper on the subject of the initial intensity of punishment, specifically as it results to behavior change, for a psychology class. The research all points to the idea that the initial punishment must be strong if change is to effectively occur. If a judge, teacher, parent, or even a psychologist experimenting on a rat, uses mild punishment initially, it will only result in the need for the continuing escalation of punishment, as the ‘punishee’ will effectively develop a tolerance for punishment. The primary author I was dealing with noted that this causes problems because it is, to paraphrase him, essentially impossible to know what strength the initial punishment should be. In other words, we know that we need to make a strong statement with the initial punishment, but we have no way of knowing how strong it should be. We’re pretty much in a conundrum that can’t be solved.

We were asked, for the paper, to discuss this along with its implications for the parental punishment of children. The problem here is that children are not rats or criminals (at least not usually) and parents are not psychologists wearing white smocks or judges wearing black robes. Punishment (so-called) of children takes place in a context, and that context is not the laboratory or a courtroom. From a Christian perspective, the context in which the discipline (not punishment) of children takes place is a loving relationship (and a gracious one at that) based on the love of God, in Christ, for us.

The issue then, as far as the paper is concerned, became the fact that the natural science approach  to psychology (which the main text under discussion advocates) does not really allow for love. Love is not something that can be studied by science. Perhaps we can study the firing of neurons in the brain, perhaps we can study the accumulation of hormones in certain parts of the brain – but we cannot really study emotions. They’re intangible. Of course, this also means that we cannot study the soul. In fact, there’s not really any such thing as the soul, or even the mind for that matter. That’s philosophy, not psychology. We can only study behavior and the past behaviors that drive those behaviors.

So now, psychology, which originally meant the ‘study of the soul’ or the ‘study of the mind’ cannot study those very things. Hence the maxim, ‘every institution tends to produce its opposite.’ Psychology has become ‘Natural Scientific Psychology,’ which has become no psychology at all. And we are left with Darwinistic Behaviorism (that’s my own term, but I’m sure it’s been used by someone else before).

How can you shepherd a child’s heart when you cannot allow that a child has a heart to shepherd? C.S. Lewis was right. How can we help but produce ‘men without chests?’ We will demand love and obedience from them while effectively cutting off the ‘organ’ of true love and obedience because it cannot be scientifically explained.

Family Worship: Biblical Examples

I picked up Thoughts on Family Worship, by J.W. Alexander from the church library today. In the opening chapter he gathers evidence for the practice of family worship/family religion (though the word ‘religion’ is much maligned these days) in the Bible (as well as in church history). In this post I have collected some of the texts he used as examples, for my own future reference, along with a few texts I have added and some introductory comments. And as if that weren’t enough, I throw in a relevant Jonathan Edwards quote that I think summarizes the biblical picture of family worship well.

1. Noah led his family into the ark:

  • Genesis 7:7 And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him went into the ark to escape the waters of the flood.

2. Abraham was commanded to teach his family ‘to keep the way of the LORD’:

  • Genesis 18:19 For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.”

3. Isaac ‘not only renews the fountains which his father had opened, but keeps up his devotions, building an altar at Beersheba’ (J.W. Alexander, Thoughts on Family Worship, p. 13):

  • Genesis 26:24 And the LORD appeared to him the same night and said, “I am the God of Abraham your father. Fear not, for I am with you and will bless you and multiply your offspring for my servant Abraham’s sake.” 25 So he built an altar there and called upon the name of the LORD and pitched his tent there. And there Isaac’s servants dug a well.

4. ‘The book of Deuteronomy is full of family religion; as an example of which we may specially note the sixth chapter (Ibid, pp. 13-14)’:

  • Deuteronomy 6:6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

5. Not Joshua alone, but all those under his authority, in his house, will serve the LORD:

  • Joshua 24:15 And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.”

6. Job’s faith led him to consecrate his children to the LORD, and offer up sacrifices for them habitually, even when sacrifice had not yet been explicitly commanded:

  • Job 1:5 And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and consecrate them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, “It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.” Thus Job did continually.

7. David not only pronounced benediction upon the people of Israel but saved a special benediction for his family:

  • 2 Samuel 6:18 And when David had finished offering the burnt offerings and the peace offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the LORD of hosts 19 and distributed among all the people, the whole multitude of Israel, both men and women, a cake of bread, a portion of meat, and a cake of raisins to each one. Then all the people departed, each to his house. 20 ¶ And David returned to bless his household.

8. Perhaps David had learned the importance of family worship from the practice of his own parents:

  • 1 Samuel 20:6 If thy father at all miss me, then say, David earnestly asked leave of me that he might run to Bethlehem his city: for there is a yearly sacrifice there for all the family.

9. God calls families to his solemn assembly:

  • Joel 2:15 Blow the trumpet in Zion; consecrate a fast; call a solemn assembly; 16 gather the people. Consecrate the congregation; assemble the elders; gather the children, even nursing infants. Let the bridegroom leave his room, and the bride her chamber.

10. When God brings Israel to repentance over the death of the Messiah, he will do so by families:

  • Zechariah 12:10 ¶ “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn. 11 On that day the mourning in Jerusalem will be as great as the mourning for Hadad-rimmon in the plain of Megiddo. 12 The land shall mourn, each family by itself: the family of the house of David by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Nathan by itself, and their wives by themselves; 13 the family of the house of Levi by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the Shimeites by itself, and their wives by themselves; 14 and all the families that are left, each by itself, and their wives by themselves.

11. Parents brought their children to Christ to receive his blessing:

  • Luke 18:15 ¶ Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them. And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. 16 But Jesus called them to him, saying, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.

12. Believing spouses and parents have a sanctifying effect on all those in their house:

  • 1 Corinthians 7:14 For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.

13. The ‘household’ passages of the New Testament demonstrate household religious practice:

  • Acts 16:15 And after she was baptized, and her household as well, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay.” And she prevailed upon us.
  • 1 Corinthians 1:16 (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.)
  • Acts 18:8 Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord, together with his entire household.
  • Acts 10:1 ¶ At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion of what was known as the Italian Cohort, 2 a devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms generously to the people, and prayed continually to God.

14. Aquila and Priscilla, ‘Paul’s “helpers in Christ Jesus,”…were able to teach a young minister the way of God more perfectly…You will find that one reason for their familiarity with the Scriptures was that they had a “church in their house” (Alexander):

  • 1 Corinthians 16:19 ¶ The churches of Asia send you greetings. Aquila and Prisca, together with the church in their house, send you hearty greetings in the Lord.

A Jonathan Edwards quote comes to mind, so with it I close this post:

Every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church, consecrated to Christ, and wholly influenced and governed by his rules. And family education and order are some of the chief means of grace. If these fail, all other means are likely to prove ineffectual. If these are duly maintained, all the means of grace will be likely to prosper and be successful (reference coming).