Forced Fatherhood and the Equal Rights Movement

There's a man out there who is suing for his right not to be a father. He had taken every step in his mind to prevent pregnancy, (except for not having sex), but alas, that pesky child made it into the world. His argument is that, if the mother had not wanted to have the baby, she had the right to either abort or give up the child without responsibility or his permission. However, if the man under the same circumstances wishes not to be a parent, he is forced to have her consent to abort or else take financial responsibility for the child he doesn't want. He claims that this is unjust if men and women are to have equal rights. The woman made the choice to have the baby, not him. This is stated as if abortion was the default position, and her choice of action to carry the pregnancy to term was the real choice.

If you accept the premise that men and women should have equal rights, then he is absolutely right. He should be able to invoke a right of the Roe vs. Wade variety. If the woman can make the decision to abdicate responsibility, the man is looking for an identical button to push. And yet it feels so very wrong. One must either accept that this guy can walk away from his child without responsibility, or one must admit that men and women are too different to have identical rights. There is no other way.

A Thought on Parenting

Parenting is the tedious attempt at removing the childish without tainting the child-like, as Michelangelo removed all the marble that wasn't David.

 

Practical Scriptural Interpretation

I've been doing some organizing in my head lately with regard to the way we read and interpret scripture, due largely to the influence of my friend, coworker, and tutor, Jason Hood. He's a firm believer that Scripture teaches us by example of its New Testament authors how to read itself. In fact, a paper he wrote on this very concept is getting a lot of buzz in scholarly christian circles. (Yes, those exist.) I was first introduced to the concept of multiple correct interpretations by D.A. Carson back in April when he spoke at a Union University Bible Conference on the use of the Old Testament by the author of Hebrews. Anyhoo, I think I've synthesized the main Scripturally-modeled approaches down into 3 categories. According to its own teaching, we must submit our lives to Scripture:

1. Doctrinally - Viewing lessons in scripture as intended to change our minds by correcting wrong beliefs (logos).
2. Morally - Viewing lessons in scripture as intended to change our behavior by distinguishing between right and wrong actions (ethos).
   
3. Typologically - Viewing lessons in scripture as intended to change our hearts by pointing to the ultimate Lover of our souls (pathos).
   

As you can see, I've run this collection through the classical transcendent categories to defend its sufficiency (is there another way?). I think it's possible (and indeed sometimes necessary) to read Scripture correctly through more than one of these lenses at a time, but I don't think one can honor the Scripture at all without seeing it through at least one of them.

Death, Love, and Duty

Velma Ford was groomed for this. She married a Navy man fresh out of the South Pacific in 1945 and she was prepared for what that meant. Or at least committed based on what she thought it meant. Sixty-four years of doting and serving later, she is just as faithful to him on his deathbed as she was to their marriage bed. The ideal of the 50's housewife stretched beyond a decade and into a way of life for Velma.

Tommy Smith was never an easy man to love. Just ask his children. As was the case with so many men of his generation, Tommy was as impenetrable as the line of defense he had helped to form halfway across the world. One would have to travel much further than Iwo Jima to find the heart he had so diligently buried. Even his grandchildren found him a mysterious creature; one whom you instinctively feared and deeply respected. He had built a small empire out of nothing based on good 'ole American opportunity and a hard Christian work ethic.

Having rejected with horror all the burnt bras of the women's liberation movement and the father-wound feeling Freudian opportunities over the years, Velma and Tommy now reside quietly in the den of their empty home together, survivors of the 20th century. Velma sits uneasily on the couch, half looking through shopping catalogs, half listening to the TBN preachers by whom she is reservedly convinced of her husband's self-inflicted faithless suffering.  Tommy lies contorted in his hospital bed, tubes and all, struggling to breathe, refusing to eat, begrudgingly choosing morphine over bone pain.

I ask her if she needs anything. "No," she says, "the Lord provides at just the right times." The Medicare I voted against pays for everything, even the hospice nurses. Kathy brings groceries and sometimes stays a while so she can go out to have her hair done. She doesn't know if he'll make it to Thanksgiving. She just doesn't understand why he won't eat. Maybe it feels like an affront to the lifestyle she's made out of feeding him for three quarters of a century. "He never was much of an eater," she consoles herself. "He'd rather have a cup of coffee and a cigarette and get on to his work." I remember that to be true. Barely a tear shines through. She has to hold it together. For him; for us; for herself.

When we visit, I tell him I'm here and I love him. He reaches for my hand or chuckles. I help move his small, withered body or I convince him to take a pill by non-verbal emotional blackmail. He's in and out of a room he never leaves. He lets out a half-hearted "oh me," like he's trying to let us know he's in pain without having to admit that it hurts. I think about the last time I tried to ask him something about his life. It was already too late. He proceeded to tell me a story which my dad later compassionately told me was a little less attached to reality than its historian had believed.

As painful and as frustrating as this scenario is, I can't imagine what it would have been like if Tommy and Velma had not been committed to each other though all the ups and downs. I don't remember them ever agreeing about anything, but that didn't matter: anything less than faithful love and dutiful service was simply out of the question. My parents' generation, with all their liberation and their feelings and their self-actualization, probably wouldn't have put up with this kind of self denial in the name of a silly covenant made by young sweethearts in the midst of deep naivete before God and their few witnesses. My parents' generation also won't have nearly as many people to sit with them as they lay dying because all their otherwise allies ended up as casualties in their war against responsibility. Even though we may have disagreed on theology or emotional intimacy or anything else, I'm so grateful for my Grandma and Pop and what they continue to teach me about true love and duty.

I'm going to miss him. I already do.

An Excercise in Faith and Reason

Let us imagine that, in the midst of a heated discussion on faith and reason, you've exposed an apparent contradiction in the Christian Scriptures for which I simply cannot account. I will then experience a phenomenon psychologists call "disruption." Rational beings are compelled to make rational sense of their world and will restlessly seek to reconcile contrary concepts until they are settled. A disruption is an opportunity for a man to either subject his life to reason until the discrepancy is resolved, or to delude himself into thinking that there is no discrepancy in his foundational tenets at all, or to weigh the gravity of the discrepancy to determine what action should be taken in light of it.

So now, back to the scenario. I am faced with a disruption, and a choice must be made. You, the anti-scripturist, likely have an irrational expectation that I will now reject entirely the basis of my life reasoning, (which is my faith in the reliability of scriptures), to accept the basis of your life reasoning, (which is your faith in the unreliability of scriptures). I say this is an irrational expectation because what you fail to take into account is that this is a deeply invested lifestyle I have, and it would be irrational to move from it toward anything short of what I could rationally accept as a superior lifestyle. Imagine I'm climbing a cliff and I realize that my foothold is not as secure as I believed it was when I took it. If I have no where better to go, then it must suffice until I can get further up the mountain, or else I fall to my death. Any lifestyle will have points of discrepancy for which faith must account until total truth is discovered (or revealed). My choice then is based not on those truths to which I can hold firmly, but those truths to which I must hold by necessity.

Truth be told, my cliff-face still looks better than yours, even with my loose foothold. The rational system through which I make sense of the world gives me basis to believe that men are created equal; that life is sacred; that integrity is honorable; that authority should be respected; that property should be protected; that marriage is for life; that people ought to be free. As I see it, without these Scriptures, I have nothing to convince me that these truths are evident at all, which would make it impossible for me to teach others to hold them with any rational integrity. Society will have taken a severe downgrade as will have my private life. You may point to the utility of these beliefs as basis to hold them, but utility is meaningless without an aim, and nihilism is aimless. Advancement of the species, you say? Without Scripture, I have no vested interest in anything beyond my personal experience.

The choice then to delude myself into thinking there is no discrepancy would be a relatively rational one, since, practically speaking, it would keep me functioning in a positive sphere. However, self-delusion as a whole is a non-rational lifestyle and I believe (because the Scriptures teach me so), that I am created to live in the light of sober-minded truth; not make-believe happy-land.

Since I cannot simply sit around until I resolve every rational discrepancy in the world, and since I cannot reject my lifestyle because I have no better position to which to retreat, and since I cannot in good conscience ignore the problem, the only rational action I can take is to say, "Good move, old chum. Can't argue with that one." And be on my merry way.

How Does One Define the Transcendent?

Truth is the perfect articulation of goodness and beauty

Goodness is the perfect response to truth and beauty

Beauty is the perfect expression of truth and goodness

I just don't know how else to do it...

Identity in Christus

Today in Chapel at Crichton College, Julie Nichols gave us a sheet with a series of questions aimed at revealing the things in which we place our identities. I felt compelled to answer each in two ways. Here are my answers.

1. How do I measure my worth?
In the flesh - By how many people need me
In the spirit - By how much my ransom cost

2. Whose approval am I seeking?
In the flesh - People of whom I approve
In the spirit - My master, who can declare "well done."

3. In what or whom is my confidence placed?
In the flesh - My abilities and achievements
In the spirit - Nothing but the blood of Jesus

4. What am I depending on to give my life meaning?
In the flesh - My legacy through God
In the spirit - God's legacy through me

When I am operating in the flesh, my identity depends upon the fragile and finite works of humans. I think I'd prefer to lean on the immutable and infinite work of God.