the easy road

“In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

It has been a rough week in Lake Woebegone. First it warms up enough to give one sweet dreams of daffodils and forsythia in bloom while robins bounce about in full play. Then it snows and drives us indoors where we gather around the wood stove to radiate in its warmth. The Democrats are rejoicing in the great stimulus package while Republicans continue to forecast impending doom. Hollywood’s millionaires convened and celebrated a movie about the slums of India, all at a very safe distance. A good friend pulled from out of nowhere the news he was fighting cancer but with such grace and quietude that it left me rejoicing in the peace that comes only from above. I watched with intense interest a student whose anxious anticipation betrayed a hard fought fight for an “all A’s” report card only to learn later that she missed it by one point. I listened with uncomfortable anguish as a parent poured out the pain of a heart broken at the moral failings of her child while I could only offer a lame, “We can work through this” in return. I read my first-ever poll of teacher feelings (everybody gets to evaluate them yet they never get a voice) and learned with shock and awe that I had feet of clay (surprise, surprise) as well as a collection of halos.

The sweet and sour forever follow us in a dance that always seems to leave the two closely entangled or never out of short reach of one another. Even one day can bring forth laughter and tears, joy and sorrow, ease and pain in mixed procession that can leave us, at times, gasping for breath at the roller coaster effect emanating from the highs and lows. I have often said that being administrator of CFC is the best job I have ever had. After this week, I still readily confess that to be true even though I might add that it is also the toughest. But I still remember very keenly the years I spent in relative ease making far too much money for what was demanded. I would not go back for anything. The dullness of that unchallenged life was stultifying beyond measure: a slow death that drains the heart from a man one day at a time.

How is it then that we find ease and luxury repellent and on the other hand, we can find in hard experiences like the Peace Corps, “the toughest job we will ever love?” Strange, but true. It is in the striving that we find the sweet solace of accomplishment, it is in the strain of the harness that we find fulfillment, and it is in the uphill climb we find the satisfaction of lofty views. The heat of battle is what calls forth the best of us and bids us offer that heroic last measure. But the pain of truths we find hard to face, the grind of long days that tire both flesh and spirit, the sting of rebuke from friend or foe, and the disappointment of efforts fallen short are hard to bear. Yet in the reaching we are stretched. In the storm, we are pruned. And in straining against the rock-face of resistance, we grow strong.

I hear quite often the groans of parents as they pour forth effort after effort to bend young lives towards a fruitful and productive future. I hear the frustrations of teachers who struggle against the fallen nature of man and child and suffer the slings and arrows of adolescent thoughtlessness. I see struggling students who cannot hide the tears when faced with demands that seem oh, so impossible. It is all part of the work of redemption, taking that which is broken and making it whole. We shun the broad road for the narrow path. We die daily as we pick up our cross; pilgrims searching for the Promised Land. It is only our enemy who offers us beds of selfish ease; a deadly snare for the unwary. Resistance is our reassurance we are on the right path. Faint not, for in due season we shall reap.

Young Love

“A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.” Proverbs 17:17 KJV

Valentine’s Day is upon us men once again. I took some boys aside the other day and tried to warn them about this nefarious minefield that is a hazard to all men, both young and old, single or married. Valentine’s Day is officially banned and illegal in some or most Muslim countries, a fact that affords in my more cynical moments my first twinge of empathy with Islamic culture. It seems they cannot abide any demonstration of romantic interest and or even the public intermingling of the sexes. Muslim men are thereby released by rule of law from all the inherent dangers of not bringing home the right combination of flowers, cards, and candy to their wives or girlfriends (or both). Hmmm!

Valentine’s Day just seems to get us men in trouble no matter what we do. If we spend too little, we are cheapskates. If we spend too much, we are profligate. If we ignore it altogether, we are toast. But for our young and single colleagues, the stakes are even higher. There is this insufferable madness that comes over young males at this time of year that says if we will just make our secret love known, it will be requited. Somehow all those heart shaped candies and little red bears, bouquets of roses and unabashed balloons, all speak to us in a moment of weakness and say, “I dare you to send me to your covert crush.” And we, like sheep to the slaughter, line up at drugstores and mega-marts to purchase these far from manly items and send them off with Marine like bravery seen only in times of war when soldiers storm ashore in reckless abandon for life or limb. The end result is a mixed bag of success and disaster with crushed and bleeding egos strewn about as hearts and affections are as often rebuffed as not.

The fever strikes at an early age. Cupids arrow starts its work for sure by 5th grade as some of our boys all of a sudden wake up to the fact that not all girls have cooties. And we just happen to have a fine collection of young ladies at hand to stand for that. So what advice do you give to your young man who finds himself smitten for the first time? First of all, I will if at all possible congratulate him for his good taste. It is never too early to affirm the Godly values you wish to see in a future mate. Secondly, my advice to our young men was that the worst thing in the world for you to do would be to tell this certain young lady that you were in love with them or single them out for an ostentatious show of valentine foo-fraw. I got a few ‘amens’ on this and could see that some had been primed already. I assured the boys that young ladies who receive such misguided attention will usually run in the opposite direction. Those whose heads are easily turned by such a display will usually end up getting a talk from mom.

At this young age, it is enough of a challenge to be able to talk with the opposite sex in a way that is non-threatening. Having friends that are girls is an art for any boy (and vice versa) and one that requires all the years of middle school and high school to perfect. For Eros to truly bloom, the other person must feel comfortable and safe in the presence of any admirer. And the safest place to learn this skill is in a group situation. Pairing off at an early age is like a two person ocean crossing: fraught with all sorts of danger. My advice for boys on Valentine’s Day is to make all the young ladies in their class feel special. They will end up looking like heroes.

My most serious word to young romantics is that they will very likely retain and treasure the same-sex friendships they make through the grammar school years, but only in the most rare cases will they marry a childhood sweetheart. It seems logical then as to where to put one’s most serious efforts.

Becky Ashe still does not ‘get it’

Becky Ashe still does not ‘get it’ (Evolving debate, Feb. 3, Knoxville News Sentinel). Her blind and unswerving devotion to evolutionary theory is obvious and laced with the kind of one-sided arrogance we have grown to expect. She wants to ‘keep the lines of communication open’ yet implies that if only public school teachers had only done a better job of educating people about the scientific process, the debate would be over. (Read: “All who disagree with me are uneducated about the scientific process.”) Her claim that Knox schools do not teach human evolution is insipid deception that only the most naïve would swallow. Either humans are part of the evolutionary chain or not a part of “all life.” She claims to stick with only what science is able to show us but in so doing reveals a prejudice so deeply ingrained that requires one to ignore the most startling discoveries of the past 50 years. Micro evolution, the kind that animal breeders regularly exploit, is a given. The spontaneous generation of life and macro evolution still require great leaps of faith and are coming under increasing skepticism in the scientific community. The true scientist finds himself truly humbled at the staggering complexity of even the most simple cell, a fact not known or even vaguely anticipated in Darwin’s time. I find Ms. Ashe and Prof. Wellman the ones who are woefully lacking in the information needed to have an intelligent discussion. Check out Ben Stein’s movie “Expelled” to get a good look at what a closed mind looks like. This is not the spirit of modern science. It is knee jerk subservience to what some have called “a fairy tale for adults so that they can determine their own sexual mores.” Knox Co. is behind the curve in merely “teaching the assigned curriculum” while castigating opposing viewpoints as adherents of “mythologies.” And then they wonder why so many families jump ship from this lumbering ark of educational intolerance.

Allan Bloom

“I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts.” Ps. 119:99-100

Before writing about the Declaration of Independence last week, I pulled down a few old works to refresh myself, among them being my well underlined copy of The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom*. It should be required reading for every college or pre-college student or for those who hope to be parents of college students someday. Before investing $80,000 or more and four years of blood, sweat, and tears into a college degree, this book will help parent and student alike distinguish between chaff and solid food. Navigating the educational channels in a way that is actually profitable has never been more challenging than it is today. Bloom described the educational system in 1987 as “a technical smorgasbord” that is characterized by a “…utter inability to distinguish between important and unimportant in any way other than by the demands of the market.” Little has changed.

While he is best remembered for his scathing indictment of the impoverished world of academia, he does not spare the family for its failure to instill “a basic element of fundamental primary learning: religion.” It is not the unhappy broken homes he takes to task. It is the failure of relatively happy ones where parents are devoted to their family but have “…nothing to give their children in the way of a vision of the world, of high models of action or profound sense of connection with others.” By religion, he speaks openly of the influence of the Bible which transmitted “the wonder of the moral law” and made it possible to “raise” children, not merely “educate” them. He laments how people “sup together, play together, travel together, but they do not think together.” In this setting, “educational TV marks the high tide for family intellectual life.”

It is the Bible that used to furnish our culture with a uniting sense of common belief for rich and poor, young and old, simple and educated. It was “the very model of model for a vision of the order of the whole of things” and a key to all of Western culture, art, and literature. Without knowledge of that book, Bloom pictures a world where the very idea or hope of truly integrated knowledge and order is lost. Without the Scripture, parents lose “the idea that the highest aspiration they might have for their children is for them to be wise – as priest, prophets or philosophers are wise. Specialized competence and success are all that they can imagine.”

He blames the invasive and overwhelming influence of media that comes to control the atmosphere of the home, wresting it away from parents who have even “lost the will” to control it. Instead, we desperately need lives based on “the Book” that will provide us with access to the real nature of things, great revelations, a sense of the epic, and the human condition. Without a firm and real moral education that imparts a “vision of the moral cosmos and of the rewards and punishments of good and evil,” education otherwise “becomes the vain attempt to give children ‘values’.” Bloom characterizes the “values-clarification” classes springing up as little more than propaganda pushing values that will inevitably change as public opinion changes. As a college professor, he seems to weep over the ensuing result that “there is less soil in which university teaching can take root….” Far less, indeed.

It is interesting reading that gives a whole world of meaning to what most of you are presently doing. It will make you feel the earth move beneath your feet the next time you do family devotions.

*Alan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, Simon & Schuster, 1987