Sermon Audio: Making the Last Words of Christ Our First Priority (by David Wheaton)
July 31, 2010
Podcast: Download (Duration: 36:43 — 6.3MB)
In the midst of troubling times in the world, our country, the church, and our own personal lives, how should we THINK and what should we DO? Some of the last words of Jesus Christ before His crucifixion and His ascension give us answers to these questions.
David delivered a sermon at an old-time summer church service on the shores of Lake Minnetonka near Wayzata, Minnesota on Sunday, August 1st. The sermon is entitled, “Making the Last Words of Christ Our First Priority” based on John 16 and Matthew 28. Be sure to hear this 35 minute message.
“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:19-20).
What The Great Commission Means For You
July 30, 2010
Podcast: Download (Duration: 50:48 — 8.7MB)
“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:19-20).
Last week on The Christian Worldview Radio Program, we focused on how Christians should THINK in the midst of all the bad news with regards to the direction of our government, the debasement of our culture, and the denigration of Christianity in the public square.
To maintain a biblical perspective in the midst of the bad news, you must “set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth” (Colossians 3:2). When we focus on God and His Word, His promises, His Son, we will have a peace in the midst of earthly trials that passes all understanding.
But God calls His followers not just to THINK, but to DO something in the midst of this sinful, fallen world. In some of Jesus’ last words to His disciples on earth, He commands them to take part in God’s redemptive plan — to make disciples, to baptize them, to teach them His commands.
This is known as the Great Commission. This weekend on The Christian Worldview, we will discuss how every Christian should be taking part in it.
Maintaining a Biblical Perspective In, Above, and Beyond the Bad News
July 24, 2010
Podcast: Download (Duration: 50:48 — 8.7MB)
“These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.” — Jesus Christ (John 16:33)
Watch the news, listen to talk radio, read the internet and you can come away borderline depressed at the situation in the world, America, and the church. Whether it is economic recession, government intrusion into our lives, or the general moral decay and continuing loss of religious freedom in our society, the tendency can be for Christians to hang their heads and ask, “What can I do about all this and is there any good news?”
Unfortunately, most churches seem blissfully unaware or impotent to help their congregants and instead focus on soft, trendy, and feel-good themes. On the other side, certain ministries seem to revel in the bad news giving short shrift to the good news and hope found in Scripture.
This weekend on The Christian Worldview, we will take a realistic look at some of the most troubling things Christians are facing but also look to Scripture for answers on how we should think and what we should do about it. Read more
The Snare of Beauty
July 22, 2010
Beauty, says philosopher Roger Scruton, “is never viewed with indifference.” Those words come to mind in light of a major article in this week’s Newsweek magazine that purports to document the fact that employers show a marked preference for attractive people in making hiring decisions. Add to that article a recent news report on a new sperm bank dedicated to the reproduction of “beautiful people.”
The Newsweek article, written by Jessica Bennett, begins by documenting what economists measure as the financial benefits of physical attractiveness. The “beauty premium” adds 5 percent to the lifetime earnings of attractive men, and 4 percent to the lifetime earnings of women. Economist Daniel Hamermesh argues that an attractive man earns an average of $250,000 of “beauty premium” income over his “least-attractive counterpart.”
The magazine surveyed more than 200 corporate hiring managers and almost 1000 members of the public and confirmed that “from hiring to office politics to promotions, even, looking good is no longer something we can dismiss as frivolous or vain.”
The mostly-male hiring officers also said (by 61 percent) that it would be advisable for a woman seeking a job to wear clothing to the interview that would show off her figure. No kidding. The managers even ranked physical attractiveness third on their list of criteria for hiring — above education.
A New York-based recruiter consulted by the magazine asserted that, in this job market: “It’s better to be average and good looking than brilliant and unattractive.” Women, it is argued, face an even more complicated equation than men. Attractive women have an advantage over less attractive women in hiring for low-level positions. But when it comes to high-level executive positions, attractive women face added questions about their qualifications.
Plastic surgery is the answer for many. As Jessica Bennett reports, “We are a culture more sexualized than ever . . . with technology that’s made it easier to ‘better’ ourselves, warping our standards for what’s normal.” With plastic surgery and “enhancement” procedures becoming routine, a beauty arms race results, and those who are in competition find themselves “running to stand still.” Cosmetic surgery, Botox, and an array of technologies and product lines compete for an expanding market of people running hard in the race to stay or get ahead.
Bennett offers two interesting angles of argument in her essay. First, she argues for objective standards of physical beauty — a necessary assumption for her article.
In her words:
Biologically speaking, humans are attracted to symmetrical faces and curvy women for a reason: it’s those shapes that are believed to produce the healthiest offspring. As the thinking goes, symmetrical faces are then deemed beautiful; beauty is linked to confidence; and it’s a combination of looks and confidence that we often equate with smarts. Perhaps there’s some evidence to that: if handsome kids get more attention from teachers, then, sure, maybe they do better in school and, ultimately, at work. But the more likely scenario is what scientists dub the “halo effect”—that, like a pack of untrained puppies, we are mesmerized by beauty, blindly ascribing intelligent traits to go along with it.
The implication of this argument — blame evolution. Those who make this argument generally base it on a form of what might be called “aesthetic Darwinism,” or the survival of the prettiest. Yet, even without the evolutionary baggage, there seem to be objective standards of human beauty that even infants seem to recognize.
Secondly, Bennett argues that the current quest for physical attractiveness — perhaps even a current expectation among the young — is rooted in their generation’s experience of reality TV and popular culture “that screams, again and again, that everything is a candidate for upgrade.”
The other news report is even more troubling. CBS News reports that “an online dating service for good-looking people” has launched a sperm bank intended to produce beautiful babies. As the report states, “The ‘fertility introduction service’ aims to link wanna-be parents – handsome or homely – with good-looking sperm and egg donors who have registered with the site. The goal? Create a kid whose good looks stop traffic.”
The founder of the service told the Vancouver Sun, “Initially, we hesitated to widen the offering to non-beautiful people . . . But everyone – including ugly people – would like to bring good-looking children into the world, and we can’t be selfish with our attractive gene pool.”
How unselfish of the service — It will allow even those it would consider to be unattractive parents to purchase “attractive” sperm in order to breed attractive offspring.
Mark these reports as signs of our confused times. At present, there are no laws that would prevent such a fertility service from offering its services just as outlined here. While laws preventing discrimination are on the books, there is little to stop hiring managers from hiring the more attractive candidate over alternatives. This, as if you needed further evidence, is a demonstration of what it means to live in a fallen world.
Christians reading these reports must remember that beauty and attractiveness are not the same thing. Beauty, according to the Christian worldview, is established by God himself, and is inseparable from truth and goodness. Attractiveness is the mere delight of the eyes. In a sinful world, our eyes delight in many wrong things, and many of the most beautiful realities are, to the mere eyes, unattractive.
After all, we follow our Savior who “had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.” [Isaiah 53:2]. The cross is not pretty, but it is beautiful. This is the ironic foundation of a Christian understanding of beauty. We cannot merely trust our eyes, for our eyes will lie to us, and we are to find beauty in truth.
According to the Bible, every single human being is made in the image of God, and is thus, for this reason alone, truly beautiful. Truth wins over “enhancements,” and true beauty resides within an individual’s character. The Bible straightforwardly condemns the human quest for physical beauty as vanity.
Jessica Bennett concludes: “The quest for beauty may be a centuries-old obsession, but in the present day the reality is ugly.” She is right, of course. But the ugliness of our confusion about beauty is not merely a present day reality. That confusion goes right back to Genesis 3 — to a pretty fruit and the Devil’s lie.
I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.
Jessica Bennett, “The Beauty Advantage,” Newsweek, July 26, 2010.
“Beautifulpeople.com Sperm Bank: Is Your DNA Sexy Enough?,” CBS News, July 22, 2010.
How God Restores Shattered Lives
July 16, 2010
Podcast: Download (Duration: 50:49 — 8.7MB)
Guest: Frank Pastore, author, Shattered
“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away;
behold, new things have come” 2 Corinthians 5:17.
No doubt you know someone who grew up in a “dysfunctional” family. Maybe you did yourself. Of course “dysfunctional” really just means “lots of sin” whether in the form of multiple divorces, re-marriages, children out of wedlock, abusive words and relationships, lying, deceit, and you name what else.
Of course sin is present in every family and if allowed to run its destructive course, everything is turned upside down from the way God intended the family to function.
Frank Pastore, former Major League Baseball pitcher, current radio talk show host in Los Angeles, and our guest this weekend on The Christian Worldview, grew up in a highly dysfunctional family. In his new book Shattered: Struck Down, But Not Destroyed, Frank tells his captivating story of family, marriage, and baseball, and how God amazingly rescued him from bringing the dysfunction of his past into his own family.
If you have ever felt hopelessly mired in your own family’s dysfunction, or know someone who is, please tune in to The Christian Worldview this weekend to find out how God can restore even the most “shattered” lives.
Obama Administration OKs First Tax-Funded Abortions Under Health Care Law
July 14, 2010
As predicted by all reasonable people who knew that Obama’s executive order was disingenuous, elective abortion will now be paid for with your tax dollars. The Obama administration has just approved it. This is truly a “moral injustice of the first order.” Here are the details.
By the way, I don’t merely object to abortion because I’m now paying for it. Abortion is wrong no matter who pays for it. Tax-payer funding just adds another injustice.
Hard to Believe? Biblical Authority and Evangelical Feminism
July 14, 2010
Anne Eggebroten visited Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, and what she found there shocked her. As a matter of fact, she was so shocked that she wrote about that experience in the July 2010 edition of Sojourners magazine. Readers of her article are likely to experience a shock of their own — they will be shocked that Eggebroten could actually have been surprised by what she found there.
In “The Persistence of Patriarchy,” Eggebroten writes about “the wide reach” of complementarian views of manhood and womanhood among conservative Christians. Her article is subtitled: “Hard to believe, but some churches are still teaching about male headship.” Hard to believe?
Can anyone really be surprised that this is so? In some sense, it might be surprising to the generally liberal readership of Sojourners, but it can hardly be surprising to anyone with the slightest attachment to evangelical Christianity. Nevertheless, Anne Eggebroten’s article represents what I call a “National Geographic moment” — an example of someone discovering the obvious and thinking it exotic and strange. It is like a reporter returning from travel to far country to explain the strange tribe of people she found there — evangelical Christians believing what the Christian church has for 2,000 years believed the Bible to teach and require. So . . . what is so exotic?
She begins her article at Grace Community Church in California, where, in her words, “God is male, all the pastors, deacons, and elders are male, and women are taught to live in submission to men.” That is a snappy introduction, to be sure, but it requires some unpacking. When Eggebroten says that, at this well-known evangelical church “God is male,” she is echoing the arguments of the late radical feminist Mary Daly, who famously asserted that “if God is male, then male is God.” At Grace Community Church, as in the Bible, references to God are masculine, but God is not claimed to be male. Interestingly, she also missed the fact that Grace considers the role of the deacon in terms of service, rather than authority, so women in fact do serve as deacons with responsibility for particular ministries.
Nevertheless, Eggebroten is certainly onto something here, especially when Grace Community Church is contrasted with the Episcopal congregation visited by her husband on that same Sunday. In that church, a woman is preaching the sermon. We can’t miss the point when Eggebroten writes:
These two different worlds exist side by side: congregations where men and women are equal partners in service of Jesus Christ, and others where gender hierarchy is taught as God’s will and the only truly biblical option. On Sunday morning we all drive past one flavor of gender teaching to worship in another.
Well, on this Sunday Anne Eggebroten did not drive past Grace Community Church. Instead, she heard a sermon by Dr. John MacArthur, who for more than 40 years has served as pastor of the church. Beyond that, MacArthur has become one of the most respected and influential preachers of our times, with perhaps the most widely-disseminated ministry of exposition in the history of the Christian church.
Eggebroten enjoyed the sermon, remarking that MacArthur’s message was “excellent.” She added, “I guess that’s how megachurches get started.” Well, one can hope.
The central part of her report from the trenches at Grace Community Church comes from an experience at a visitors’ reception after the sermon. Eggebroten asks a woman there (a physical therapist with a degree from the school where Eggebroten teaches), “Is women’s submission to their husbands stressed in this church?” The answer, of course, was yes.
I appears that Eggebroten could hardly have been surprised, for she wrote:
At least things aren’t as extreme as they sound on the church Web site. There, I had listened to Anna Sanders lecture women on how to live in submission to their husbands. “We need to beat down our desire to be right and have our own way,” she had said, citing John Piper, Nancy Leigh DeMoss, and Martha Peace—all authors published in the last decade. “It’s his way, his rights, his expectations, and his plans. … Be a helper.”
So, there was little ground for surprise when Eggebroten asked the question at the visitors’ reception. But there was more to come. She writes, “I’m stunned to find that the 300-student Master’s Seminary on the church campus enrolls only men.”
Well, let’s see. The Master’s Seminary, according to it’s own mission statement, “exists to advance the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ by equipping men to be pastors and/or trainers of pastors.” The logic is simple and straight-forward. The church believes that the Bible restricts the office of pastor to men. The Master’s Seminary trains only pastors and trainers of pastors, thus it limits admissions to men. What could possibly be stunning about that?
As Eggebroten acknowledges, seminaries that train for roles beyond the pastorate may enroll women for those programs without compromising this conviction. But Master’s does not offer those programs, so what is possibly shocking?
In the course of her article, Eggebroten continues her reports of conversations with members of the complementarian tribe before getting to the more deeply theological portion of her essay. In this passage she gets to the core issue:
Here’s the question: Is God permanently committed to the kinds of social hierarchy that existed in the first and second millennium B.C.E. and continued until recently, when education and voting were opened to women? Or does the vision of Paul in Galatians 3:28—“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus”—take precedence?
At this point the agenda becomes clear. Eggebroten argues that the church has simply perpetuated the patriarchal traditions of the Jewish and Greco-Roman cultures that formed the social context for the early Christian church. Against these she contrasts the Apostle Paul’s beautiful declaration in Galations 3:28 — “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”
But this is the kind of sloppy and agenda-driven exegesis that reveals the desperation of those who would reject the New Testament’s limitation of the office of pastor to men. In Galatians 3:28 Paul is clearly speaking of salvation — not of service in the church. Paul is declaring to believers the great good news that “in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith” [verse 26]. He concludes by affirming, “And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” [verse 29].
To read Galatians 3:28 the way Eggebroten reads the verse, you would have to believe that the Apostle Paul was in direct contradiction with himself, when he restricts the teaching office to men in letters such as 2 Timothy and Titus.
Or . . . you can try to deny that Paul actually wrote those latter letters. Eggebroten accuses conservative evangelicals of ignoring “evidence that the ‘pastoral epistles’ (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) were written in honor of Paul long after he died and reflect a second-century debate over women’s roles in the church–whether to conform to social customs for the sake of winning converts, or to advocate radical social equality (and even celibacy) in the last days before the Second Coming.”
What this reveals, of course, is the argument of many evangelical feminists that we can discard the teachings of the Pastoral Epistles. We can keep the Apostle Paul we like (taking Galatians 3:28 out of context, for example) and disregard the Paul we do not like.
Nor are the Pastoral Epistles the only biblical texts subverted by this line of argument. With reference to 1 Corinthians 14:35 (”Let a woman learn in silence with full submission”), Eggebroten suggests, among other options, that “verses 34-35 began as someone’s marginal comment, later copied right into the text.”
With this approach to the Bible, you can simply discard any text you dislike. Just dismiss it as a marginal comment, or deny that Paul even authored the text. This is where the denial of biblical inerrancy inevitably leads — the text of the Bible is deconstructed right before our eyes.
“So what is the will of God for women today: silence or preaching, subjection or mutual submission?,” Eggebroten asks. She adds, “Many Christians in all denominations, including evangelicals aren’t even asking this question any more—yet the neo-patriarchal movement remains widespread.”
The answer to that question, as Eggebroten’s essay helps to clarify, depends on your view of Scripture. In order to reach her conclusions, you must accept her evasions of the biblical text. If you are willing to do that on this question, you will be willing to do so on other issues as well. The central issue is, and will ever remain, the authority of Scripture.
Anne Eggebroten has written a fascinating report that, like so many others of its kind, reveals more about the reporter than the reported. Eggebroten teaches religion at California State University, Northridge and she is a founding member of the Evangelical and Ecumenical Women’s Caucus. In her other writings she has, for example, profiled “the reality of abortion as a morally responsible choice being made by countless Christian women of all denominations.”
In what sense can any of this be bent to fit within evangelical identity? This essay reveals again how these arguments — and the magazine that publishes them — are so very distant from the beliefs of most evangelicals. If there is anything genuinely shocking about this article, it is the fact that the writer would attempt to lay claim on evangelicalism.
In yet another twisted use of Scripture, Eggebroten concludes by citing Galatians 5:1, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” As Paul asserts, in Christ we are free from the slavery of attempting to prove our righteousness by the Law. Paul is not liberating the Church from the Bible.
In the end, that is the real issue. There are Christians who would demand to be liberated from the Bible? Now that is what really should be shocking.
I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.
Anne Eggebroten, “The Persistence of Patriarchy,” Sojourners, July 2010.
Netanyahu Engages in Media Blitz
July 9, 2010
NETANYAHU ENGAGES IN MEDIA BLITZ: Noteworthy, PM is not indicating war with Iran is imminent; spends 90 minutes on Saturdays studying Bible with his son
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is engaging in a U.S. media blitz. In part, he is calling for direct peace talks with the Palestinians. In part, he is trying to remind Americans that there are fundamental areas of agreement between Israel and the Obama government, despite 14 months of tensions. But most noteworthy to me is that in his public statements, Netanyahu is focused almost exclusively on jumpstarting the peace process with the Palestinians, not on highlighting the growing danger from Iran. The nuclear reactor in Bushehr, Iran, will go “hot” in mid-September, it would now appear — not August as previously expected. And in a rare moment of Arab diplomatic clarity, the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to Washington said this week he thinks a nuclear-armed Iran is a severe threat to the Middle East and strongly hinted that preemptive military strike may be the only way to stop Iran from getting the Bomb. Yet, Prime Minister Netanyahu does not seem to be indicating that war with Iran is immiment. He certainly is not preparing the U.S. or the world for the need for pre-emptive attack in the next few weeks or months. Indeed, Sen. John McCain is telling reporters he does not believe Israel is preparing for an imminent attack. In the Middle East, anything is possible. But for the moment, it would appear the Israelis do not believe a summer war is needed, or wise. Let’s keep praying for the peace of Jerusalem and for peace throughout the region, as well as for wisdom for the Prime Minister and his Cabinet to know how best to deal with Iran in the weeks and months ahead.
In the last 24 hours, he has done interviews on ABC, CBS, and CNN, speaking directly to the American people, and I think he’s been doing a good job. During a 20 minute interview, Katie Couric asked Netanyahu why 71% of Israeli Jews dislike President Obama. Wisely, Netanyahu did not take the bait. He conceded there are disagreements, but he certainly did nothing to exacerbate underlying tensions. Rather, he noted that he had invited the President to visit Israel and looked forward to extending hospitality to the First Family and give them a chance to get to know the Israeli people. The President said he is ready to visit Jerusalem. Let’s hope he carries through.
In other events, Netanyahu met with U.N. Secretary General Ki Ban Moon. He also met with U.S. Defense Secretary Bob Gates. The PM is in New York today, and is expected to fly to Cairo on Friday to meet with the ailing Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak who is reported to have cancer.
Most interesting to me was an answer the PM gave to Larry King towards the end of their hour-long conversation last night. King asked Netanyahu if he ever has the chance to relax. Netanyahu said yes. On Saturday — the Sabbath — he rests and relaxes and he noted that one thing he looks forward to is reading the Bible for an hour an half with his youngest son, who recently won a contest on Bible knowledge. He said the time refreshes him spiritually and that he and his son are learning a great deal from God’s Word. I really appreciated the PM’s remarks and it reminded me of Psalm 119:97-100, “Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. Your commands make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me. I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes. I have more understanding than the elders, for I obey your precepts.”
- CNN Larry King interview with Netanyahu — Part 1
- Larry King — Part 2
- Larry King — Part 3
- Larry King — Part 4
- Larry King — Part 5
- CBS Katie Couric interview with Netanyahu (20 minutes)
- ABC Good Morning American interview with Netanyahu (8 minutes)
Why Are Parents So Unhappy?
July 9, 2010
Why Are Parents So Unhappy? And Who Would Settle for Happiness, Anyway?
For those interested in the fate of our culture, New York Magazine is an indispensable barometer. This single magazine, perhaps more than any other periodical, offers feature articles that catch the cultural conversation. Granted, that cultural conversation is largely Manhattan-centric and geared to the highly educated and economically secure classes. But, since those are the very people who tend to direct the cultural conversation, what interests them will almost surely soon interest the rest of the nation.
This week, the issue is children and happiness. Not the happiness of children, but the debate over whether having children makes for parental happiness. Looking first to the sociological and psychological data, the picture looks bleak. According to the current scholarly consensus, parents are more likely to be depressed than non-parents, and parents report themselves as less happy as well.
In her article, “All Joy and No Fun: Why Parents Hate Parenting,” writer Jennifer Senior wonders aloud why parents seem to be less happy than non-parents, but simultaneously claim that parenthood is such a great thing. What is the disconnect?
“From the perspective of the species, it’s perfectly unmysterious why people have children,” writes Senior. “From the perspective of the individual, however, it’s more of a mystery than one might think. Most people assume that having children will make them happier. Yet a wide variety of academic research shows that parents are not happier than their childless peers, and in many cases are less so.”
Trust me on this — you really do not need to read through those academic research papers. Here is a summary: The “scholarly consensus” is that children and parental happiness just do not go together. According to the data, parents are less happy than non-parents, parents of infants and toddlers are especially not happy, single parents are less happy than married parents, and mothers are less happy than fathers. Except, that is, when it comes to single fathers, who are the most unhappy of all.
And yet, people continue to insist and hope that having children will make them happier. Why? “One answer could simply be that parents are deluded, in the grip of some false consciousness that’s good for mankind but not for men and women in particular,” Senior explains.
There is good reason to doubt the value of much social science research and many psychological studies. Nevertheless, taking the data at face value is an interesting exercise in thinking about the nature of parenthood and the question of human happiness.
In the most important section of her article, Jennifer Senior tellingly suggests that what might have changed is the way we view children and parenthood. In her words, “the possibility that parents don’t much enjoy parenting because the experience of raising children has fundamentally changed.” This is where her article becomes especially important.
She writes:
Before urbanization, children were viewed as economic assets to their parents. If you had a farm, they toiled alongside you to maintain its upkeep; if you had a family business, the kids helped mind the store. But all of this dramatically changed with the moral and technological revolutions of modernity. As we gained in prosperity, childhood came increasingly to be viewed as a protected, privileged time, and once college degrees became essential to getting ahead, children became not only a great expense but subjects to be sculpted, stimulated, instructed, groomed. (The Princeton sociologist Viviana Zelizer describes this transformation of a child’s value in five ruthless words: “Economically worthless but emotionally priceless.”) Kids, in short, went from being our staffs to being our bosses.
Interestingly, Senior introduces this article with a spectacularly horrifying account of a mother trying to cajole her eight-year-old son away from the computer in order to do his homework. The account comes from the massive film project undertaken by the UCLA Center on Everyday Lives of Families. These hundreds of hours of recorded middle-class family life show over and over again that many, if not most, parents see themselves as constant negotiators with their strong-willed children. The absence of parental authority and control is genuinely horrifying. One UCLA graduate student described the experience of watching the recordings as “the very purest form of birth control ever devised. Ever.”
What Jennifer Senior actually chronicles in her essay is the fact that parents now see children as projects to be developed. These children — especially those in middle and upper-middle class families — are constantly en route to one practice or another, subjected to class after class, and pushed into the level of academic and social success that their parents think absolutely necessary for success in life. These parents feel guilty if they allow a single opportunity for organized play or a learning activity to pass.
Yes, parenthood has changed. Many parents do see their children as described by Senior — as “subjects to be sculpted, stimulated, instructed, groomed.” Parental authority is replaced by constant power struggles, lest the children be psychologically warped by a parent who stands in authority. Discipline is replaced by never-ending negotiation. The peace of the home is replaced by constant activity and frenetic energy. The earliest years of a child’s life are increasingly filled with organized activity and institutional settings.
No wonder parents are less happy now. Add to this the very important insight Senior offers about the age of parenthood. As she suggests, when couples postpone parenthood for so many years, building careers and social lives and professional profiles, parenthood can seem more an interruption than a blessing.
Senior cites psychologist Jean Twenge, “They become parents later in life. There’s a loss of freedom, a loss of autonomy. It’s totally different from going from your parents’ house to immediately having a baby. Now you know what you’re giving up.”
The Christian understanding of children and parenthood just doesn’t fit these categories. The first problem is the isolation of happiness as the major concern. Interestingly enough, the Bible doesn’t seem overly concerned with human happiness. One reason for this is surely that happiness is just too passing as a perception, and too inadequate as a category. In a fallen world, the wrong things will make us happy or unhappy. Add to this the fact that we seem to be largely incompetent at making ourselves happy, or even at knowing what will make us happy. Go figure.
The second problem is the fact that marriage and children now appear on our cultural screen as personal choices, rather than as the norm and expectation. Once these responsibilities are transformed into choices, the only reason to choose them is if we believe they will make us happy. If we do not find ourselves adequately compensated — especially in emotional terms — for making this choice, we assume it was the wrong choice.
The third problem has to do with the changes in parenting that Jennifer Senior documents in her essay. From a biblical perspective, these are not healthy changes. When children gain control of the household, the home is robbed of order, health, and peace. The child is robbed of what he or she needs most — a loving parent who is undeniably in authority.
Christians must see children as gifts from God, not as projects. We should see marriage and parenthood as a stewardship and privilege, not as a mere lifestyle choice. We must resist the cultural seductions and raise children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and understand family life as a crucible for holiness, not an experiment in happiness.
And when it comes to happiness, we must aim for something higher. Christians are called to joy and satisfaction in Christ, and to find joy in the duties and privileges of this earthly life. Every parent will know moments of honest unhappiness, but the Christian parent settles for nothing less than joy.
I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler.
Jennifer Senior, “All Joy and No Fun: Why Parents Hate Parenting,” New York Magazine, July 4, 2010.
Apocalyptic Economics and the Road to Revelation
July 9, 2010
Podcast: Download (Duration: 50:49 — 8.7MB)
Guest: Jay Richards, author, Money, Greed, and God
“Know well the condition of your flocks, and pay attention to your herds; for riches are not forever, nor does a crown endure to all generations” (Proverbs 27:23).
Watching the news for the last couple years, one would conclude that the world’s financial system is hanging by a thread. Many people are asking: Is America headed toward a “double-dip” recession? What does our enormous and growing debt mean for the future? Is our government doing the right thing with stimulus spending? And, what should we be doing as individuals to withstand this financial and economic turbulence?
In the midst of the cacophony of conflicting voices, Jay Richards is one of the very few that brings a biblical worldview to bear on the critical economic issues of our day. He is the author of Money, Greed, and God
NEED TO READ ARTICLES:
- Tax Hikes and the 2011 Economic Collapse
- Six Months to Go Until The Largest Tax Hikes in History
- Jay Richard’s Articles on “The American”
