Manners

Even a child is known by his doings, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right. Pro. 20:11

I frequently shudder at the work of my generation. We conducted a devastating assault on the norms of society back in the sixties and were quite successful. Universal truth claims were denied and morality became a matter of private, personal choice. What was left was a radical individualism that is still in the process of running itself to exhaustion. As an example, dress codes of all sorts were destroyed so that casual dress became the norm and downright outlandishness is now the mark of authentic self-expression. While most of us find some comfort in this free and laid back culture we live in, we also must acknowledge that common place manners have been sacrificed and laid aside in the process.

Now that we are free to stake out our own individual moral high ground, we can now decide where and how to defend it caring not how it might affect others. And in an odd twist of affairs, our age now allows self-righteous claims to individual moral visions to trump public conceptions of manners and etiquette. We tell our friends they are fat because we want to be honest. We can scream at people for wearing fur because it hurts animals. We can wrap all sorts of churlish behavior in a smug morality these days. Refusal to send thank you cards is justified if one “hates to write” or is seen as mere “slavish submission to convention.” Failure to attend funerals is okay if you want to “remember a person just the way they were.” And there is always the great, standby excuse for not saying the polite and gracious thing, “You wouldn’t want me to be hypocritical, would you?”

Unfortunately, manners are the oldest and most basic presuppositions of any society and precede the law in restraining lawlessness. The idea that the wishes of others do not matter is exactly what public manners and etiquette are designed to contradict. Even primitive societies many times have elaborate codes of behavior for showing respect and deference. A proper understanding of what constitutes good manners is essential for any classroom to have success. Our public schools are being overwhelmed with children who have not been taught to show respect for authority and one’s elders, to understand what constitutes rudeness, or what comprises salacious speech or dress. How is learning possible in the midst of a chaotic classroom where common courtesies have been successfully vanquished?

Many of you have insisted that your children speak when spoken to, to greet when greeted, to say thank you at every opportunity even if they do not have any sincere feelings attached to the words. I salute you and am growing ever more convinced that you are helping re-build a virtuous society by recognizing the legitimacy of manners. This is the front line in the battle against lawlessness and rabid individualism. I confess that I once wondered if requiring our students to stand when an adult entered a classroom was an antiquated custom of little value. I no longer do. And I now notice a sense of pride on the part of students when they do this spontaneously. I notice also that children made to say “Thank you” and even “I love you” become more thankful and more loving. Excusing a child’s uncivilized conduct in the name of “self-expression,” a “creative spirit,” or mere “personality” undermines the ties that bind not only families together but society itself.

Proverbs talks about a generation that curses their father and does not bless their mother and yet are pure in their own eyes. Could this be a picture of a world without manners? Lord, save us from that, I pray.

For more, see “The World’s Oldest Virtue,” Judith Martin, First Things, May 1993

Thanksgiving

The Lord will accomplish what concerns me. – Ps. 138:8

Or will He? Upon the verse above hangs so much of the emotional momentum of the human heart. David imbeds this line in a Psalm filled with praise and thanksgiving to the Lord. And as we enter the Thanksgiving season, we will be challenged to bend our knee to our God and, through the eyes of faith, say, “The Lord will accomplish what concerns me.” It is the essence of thanksgiving to be content with the grace meted out to each of us.

It is of great concern to the teachers of our day who see angry children in their classroom. Some have good cause to be when their parents drag them through divisive and horrible relationships, when they are victims of indifference forced to raise themselves in loveless homes, or worse yet, when they become innocent subjects of predatory adults. Such anger may be understandable but is, nevertheless, quite deadly to all concerned, especially the bearer. Anger is the antithesis of thankfulness and ulcerates a steady poison of bitterness to the soul. It is an emotion that we were never built to bear.

Most of the people I meet and the children we teach have little real reason to be angry. That is no matter, however, because the human heart is capable of magnifying even the most simple of offenses into mounds of resentment. You can do it, and so can I. For children, it is even easier. One child may wrestle with the sudden loss of a parent while another can be tempted into great bitterness because a living parent denies them their own TV. From there, it is a simple step to blame God for the curse of hateful or impoverished parents. I was tempted to anger against God for my appearance as a young man. After all, He made me.

Do we have some angry children at CFC? No doubt, for the same reason you and I struggle with resentment at the misfortunes we encounter in our lives. All children go through times and seasons of anger ranging from a brief pout to raging shouting matches. Not a pretty sight. What is of significant concern is the slow, simmering anger that resides just below the surface over substantial periods of time.

What can be done? First of all, we need to look within. We cannot expect spirits of gratefulness from our children if we still cling to our own resentments. Forgiveness for others and a quiet acceptance of our own place in God’s economy is essential in removing the speck in the eye of our child. Second, we need patient and loving relationships that will enable us to unlock the hearts of our children. It is inherently embarrassing for us all to admit the things we hold against God. Third, I would hope that we could model a heart that is composed and quieted like a weaned child resting against his mother (Ps. 131:2). How powerful are the stories of repentance and rest which we have experienced in giving over our own episodes of anger unto the Lord. Fourth, I would advocate a continual besieging of that stronghold until it is broken; not with threats or punishments, but with a quiet declaration that we know that the issues of the heart are of the utmost priority.

I think the most common parental error is that of inaction out of fear. Do we dare open that box of our child’s fears and resentments? What will we find? When our children turned “of age”, we made it a practice of asking them if there were moments, actions, or practices in our household and parenting which they remembered with particular clarity colored by feelings of injustice. We were genuinely fearful of what we would discover. To our relief, no one recounted any even though we, as parents, could have suggested a few. Perhaps it is time we all ask ourselves if we have undeclared grievances against God and if we truly believe that the Lord will accomplish what concerns us. Freedom to praise depends on it.

Suffering

To every thing there is a season, ...A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; Ecc. 3:1-4

It is part of my job to keep in touch with the families in our Co-op. As such, I partake in your joys and sorrows. Right now, the tide is washing up a good deal of sorrow on our shores. Though it would be folly to hope to treat the subject of suffering fully in one page or less, nevertheless, your experiences of the present and past month have occasioned more than a little reflection on the issue on my part. That, coupled with a reading of some of the work of Mother Theresa among the miserable warrens of Calcutta, makes me ponder the whole problem of pain and suffering in God’s creation.

Ultimately, suffering is the price we pay for dwelling outside the Garden where we must live by our wits and the sweat of our brow, all at the mercy of the elements. It was a choice we made, and in so doing, we took all creation with us. The dark of the night brings with it a thousand fears of what can happen, a place where beast devours beast and man does his worst. But suffering is endemic to all creation even apart from the evil deeds of men. Cancers devour, defects cripple, and accidents maim the innocent and guilty alike. Rational creatures that we are, we would love to see some rhyme or reason to it all. C.S. Lewis wrote that pain was “God’s megaphone.” Yet, this seems heartless in watching the young and the innocent die who don’t even have language of the heart to hear or understand. The poet William Blake offers another view:

Joy and woe are woven fine,

A clothing for the soul divine;

Under every grief and pine

Runs a joy with silken twine.

It is right it should be so;

Man was made for joy and woe;

And when this we rightly know,

Through the world we safely go.

Is it true that man was made for sorrow and woe, mixed also with joy? It seems so when we consider that we are able to experience joy because of being made in the very image of God, and equally so with sorrow when we consider the far reaching effects of the fall upon man and all creation. Fallen-ness and the image of God, all wrapped up in one frail creature. What a recipe for ‘angst’, that dark turmoil of the soul.

Many demand that suffering just should not be so and spend much of their lives trying to insulate themselves against it in any form; some with money and others with distance. Others blame and rail against God, turning their hearts to stone. Or there is always the ploy of flight, to run from it whenever it appears. But in fleeing from the pain, we invariably multiply the damage like some wounded bull run amok. Marriages are shattered, children discarded, and promises broken all to renounce the reality of the pain. I rather like what Malcom Muggeridge has said and must quote directly: “One can dimly see and humbly say that suffering is an integral and essential part of our human drama. That it falls upon one and all in differing degrees and forms whose comparison lies beyond our competence. That it belongs to God’s purpose for us here on earth, so that, in the end, all the experience of living has to teach us is to say: Thy will be done.” That is a tall order for any of us. Yet God himself identifies with our suffering through His own Son. At the cross, “God suffered in the person of a man but brought redemption for man in the person of God.” In this, we see “the greatest sorrow and the greatest joy co-existing on Golgotha.”*

I take great comfort knowing that God knows our frame, that we are but dust, and that Jesus was a man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief. I also take comfort in knowing that when one of us suffers, it brings out the best in those who are willing to share in that pain and help bear the burden. This dance of suffering and joy literally defines what it is to be human. May we embrace our humanity with courage and resolve.

*Something Beautiful for God, Malcom Muggeridge, p. 106