Which kid do I leave behind?

I got a letter the other day - another one asking for money. This one was different, though - it reached out a hand and twisted a knot in my guts. This paragraph particularly:

Australians understand drought. We understand having to leave the fields because there is no water for our crops. But we are not forced to make the choice between abandoning one very sick child or fleeing to a relief camp with your other child who may have a better chance of survival. We don't understand the anguish of getting to that camp after a long and dangerous journey to discover there is not enough food.

The letter was from ChildFund, and was about the famine in the horn of Africa. It really hit my Dad-soft-spot, and my brain started whirling through permutations in my own family: how would I choose between staying to tend my sick child (so endangering my others), and leaving with the healthy ones for a camp? How would I make the call that my sick child is too sick to travel, and should be left behind? Who would I leave them with?


And the endless second-guessing of whatever horrific decision I made? How would I ever sleep afterwards?


In the days that have followed, I have started to reflect on how to introduce such topics to my own children. They are 7, 5 and nearly 2. To date I have not had to think about this - the letters come, we make a donation, the kids know nothing about it. But my 7-year-old is quite bright and perceptive. She is starting to be exposed to things like the 40-hour famine at school. She has already got a Leprosy Mission money box from our church that she periodically drops some change into. I pray all my children will grow up with a desire to alleviate suffering wherever they can. I can see that the process starts here. What do I say to her? How much do I tell?


I don't have any answers yet.  What do you do?


PS.  ChildFund Australia has many projects in the horn of Africa, and has a long-term commitment there. They are involved in both aid and development work. You can donate to their horn of Africa appeal by calling 1800 023 600 or online at www.childfund.org.au. I receive no benefit from ChildFund (although I have been a supporter of them for a long time, so there's some emotional capital invested!)

Olive shoots around my table

Do you enjoy your children?

As I write this I'm sitting in an ancient rectory about 1300 km away from my wife and children. The distance frees me a little from that constant, immediate worry about whether I'm doing the right thing for my kids. And if I'm perfectly honest with myself, it removes the little annoying things that they do, and allows me to reflect on God's grace in giving me those kids and the enjoyment they bring. What a round-about way of saying that I'm missing them!

I love listening to them play together. Most of the time they're pretty good – they cooperate in their games, finding room for everyone in the game. When they argue, I catch myself holding my breath: will they work it out for themselves, or will I need to intervene? (I love it when they work it out for themselves!)

I enjoy when we get the guitar out after dinner (if there's time), and the kids pester me for yet another Colin Buchanan song. Their favourite this month is an old favourite by the prolific songwriter “anon”, with the verse:

The butcher was cleaning the back of his shop
he stopped for a moment to lean on his mop
he sat on the slicing machine with a jerk
and found that he'd got all behind in his work

They are transfixed, and howl with laughter every time we sing it.

I love when they create performances for us. The crowning glory so far was when my daughters and four of their friends created a play for all the parents who were present. The six of us crowded into the darkened auditorium (one of their beds) to watch the stage (the other bed) and the grand performance (five kids whispering to each other about who had to start speaking, and my youngest daughter hiding under a blanket). Suddenly, the door burst open and my smiling, crawling year-old-son started laughing at having found us all sitting in the dark.

I enjoy when I cook a dinner for them that they really love, and they announce that it's going in the “winner dinner list”. I don't get that accolade very often.

I love when my boy won't let me leave his room at night until I've held his hand and prayed with him.

My kids aren't perfect. They are sinners, just like their Dad. There are many ways in which I fail them. But from my current vantage point I can see God's grace to me through them. The words of psalm 128 really resonate with me at the moment:

Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord,
who walks in his ways.
You shall eat the fruit of the labour of your hands;
you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you.
Your wife will be like a fruitful vine
within your house;
your children will be like olive shoots
around your table.
Behold, thus shall the man be blessed
who fears the Lord.
The Lord bless you from Zion!
may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem,
all the days of your life!
May you see your children's children!
Peace be upon Israel!

Does this psalm always reflect my feelings about my children and my family? No, of course not. I mess up, and feel guilty about how I parent. I am frequently unsure about how to deal fairly with my children day-to-day. And of course I don't know how my kids will end up. But there is such great hope in psalm 128 – do you see it?

“Blessed are all who fear the Lord”, and “Thus is the man blessed who fears the Lord”.

If I fear the Lord – if I am in awe of Him and walk in His ways – I can trust Him with my children and my parenting. He deals with my parent sins at the cross (just like all my other sins). As I entrust myself to His care and to His way, I find I can prayerfully entrust my children to Him. As my relationship with Jesus grows closer, my anxieties about my children recede and I find I can enjoy them more.

This is my prayer for you (and me) this fathers day:

The Lord bless you from Zion!
may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem,
all the days of your life!
May you see your children's children!
Peace be upon Israel!

Happy fathers day!

Sugar and spice ...

Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

Ephesians 6:4

If you have daughters, you will have heard the line "sugar and spice and all things nice, that's what little girls are made of." Well that line was written by a boy who was trying to get a girl - not by a man with daughters! To be sure, there is plenty of lovely things about daughters, but there is no doubt that they are full of all sorts of things that are not all nice. My daughters are a bundle of emotions, even at the tender ages of 7 and 5. They go from playing nicely together one moment, to screaming, physical violence and "I'm not your friend anymore, and I mean it!" the next. They can go from happily relating a fun night at the school disco to a complete teary meltdown because said disco ended 15 minutes early, and said daughter didn't get a spot prize.

I am not a particularly emotional man, so when the emotional whirlwind hits it takes me way outside my comfort zone. I'm definitely not in Kansas anymore, Toto!


My default position (to my shame) is "shut it down". I reach for whatever it takes to switch off the emotional storm - whether sending the offending child out of the room, or back to her bed, or bribing her with treats, or caving in to her requests. Although I know that this is not a good way to raise my daughters, I resort to this tactic all too often. When the crisis hits, my parenting range is too limited to change.


In the last couple of weeks, though, I have started to see a better way. It's nothing to do with me - it has entirely been the Holy Spirit prompting me. God is gracious even in my tiredness and inability to respond immediately to my girls - it has meant a precious few seconds of silence when I can hear the better way that the Spirit is leading me to. He has shown me that the better way is to weather the storm with my daughter, rather than to shield myself from it.


So the other day, when Eldest's voice was again raised in rage at her sister, I could encourage her to use words to express why she was angry, rather than relying solely on her tone of voice to convey the fact that she was angry. (Thanks again to Ross Campbell's book How to really parent your child, and particularly the excellent chapters on helping your children to nullify anger.)


And the other night, when my sleepless child melted into tears hours after the great disco disappointment, rather than blowing my top, I could take her in my arms and talk through her disappointments. I could tell her about similar times I'd had growing up. I could reassure her that she was normal, that she was precious. We could pray together about the tumult in her heart.  


And as we weathered the storm together, we both found that indescribable peace that Jesus promises.

Childicus offspringii

Chances are, if you are reading this post, that you have discovered an infestation at your place.  You may have a houseful of the noisy, destructive little critters, or there may only be one.  Make no mistake about it, even one of these creatures will completely take over your life.

But before you call the exterminators, you need to know that children (childicus offspringii) are legally protected, and I'm told that the penalties are pretty steep should you kill one of them.

"If I can't kill them, what can I possibly do?"  I hear you ask.  There is no need for despair.  True, these pests are wildly varied, so that it's not possible to give a 10-step guide.  Yet with a few carefully implemented strategies, and by following some basic principles, you can drive the little pests away from your home and hearth quite successfully, and then enjoy peace and quiet once again.  

"What do I need to do?"  You ask.  "I'll do anything, just give me my life back!"

Read on ... 

1. Love is a battlefield.  There is no point being a complete villain toward them - the tactic may backfire and see them try to save you from your problems.  Far better to make them think that the problem lies with them.  Make them earn your love and approval.  Nice behaviour and good marks gets affection  and smiles, disobedience gets the cold shoulder.  If there is more than one little devil infesting your home, why not switch affections around depending on who's behaving best?  Keep them on their toes.
   
2. They are going to get angry.  But you can't let something as trivial as their emotions upset your domestic equilibrium.  Force them to bury those ugly feelings deep, deep within - far away from civilised society.  Make sure that they understand that anger is a hideous and unnatural feeling, that they must never bring to the surface, and especially never in your presence.  This will have the delightful side-effect of ensuring that they don't bring any real problems to you, in case their shameful anger comes along too.   And after all, there are plenty of opportunities for them to vent their frustrations at an appropriate time - when they're married, when they're driving, at their workplace.
   
3. These two principles take quite a long time to be effective - anywhere between 18 and 34 years!  But there is no need to lose heart - there is a way that we have found that can shorten this time scale.  The critters will hang around as long as they are sheltered and secure.  Direct action is still illegal, but there are indirect methods that will see the pests actually wanting to leave as soon as they can.  The trick is to get them to believe that their security depends on their behaviour.  Impose a curfew, and then lock the door promptly at curfew time.  Open the kitchen for a few brief moments each day - eat then, or eat not at all.  The restrictions you could impose are limited only by your imagination, but the message remains the same: "You are here under sufferance - none of this is yours."
4. Finally, I know that you will need some hope for day-to-day life while you wait for these strategies to have their effect.  You want some degree of peace and quiet, and you're entitled to it right now!  You should, by now, be aware that a direct confrontation will produce all sorts of noise and inconvenience, so this strategy is simply to avoid confrontation.  Eventually the little monsters will tire of trying to wrestle with a jelly, and will leave you alone.  So let them eat what they want; watch what they want; go where they please whenever they like.  Give them access to video games and the internet (a great way of keeping them quiet, with the added bonus that it relieves you of much of your educational responsibility!).  Am I being inconsistent with principle number 3?  Not at all!  If they want to do something that really inconveniences you, you need to fight back.  But so much of what they do is very little trouble to your life, that it really is easiest just to sit back and let them raise themselves.  

Now if you follow these principles carefully, you should find that the severity and duration of your childicus offspringii infestation is dramatically reduced.

A final word of warning - in some quarters it has been put about that you could actually live with these creatures peacefully, happily and joyfully!  Some authors will actually advocate that you should love unconditionally, allow them to express emotions, provide security and stability, and try to train them up!  Some authors like Ross Campbell who wrote How to really parent your child.  

Be warned: Have nothing to do with such dangerous ideas.  Your life will never be the same if you do!

Husbands, love your wives...

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her

Ephesians 5:25 

One of the best legacies that my Dad left me was his example of how he loved my Mum.  It wasn't that he was showy and romantic (at least, not that we saw).  It was that his love was a bedrock for their relationship, and consequently for our family.  He anticipated her needs and wants.  He brought her tea in bed in the morning.  He chipped in with the housework and cooking.  He didn't work all-hours, came home for dinners, spent weekends with us.  He remembered important dates, and celebrated them appropriately.  He remembered unimportant details (often concerning us kids), and so helped carry Mum's burdens.  He always respected her, always spoke kindly and lovingly to her, never bad-mouthed her or her family, and never, ever hit her.


I always felt safe at home (even when I didn't like some of the rules!), and I never felt the least possibility that our home life would change before I left to make a home of my own.  The grace of God and the good example of my Dad was so solid that I had trouble understanding some of the family struggles of my classmates.


My first full-time job as a lawyer was a real shock to me.  As a Legal Aid lawyer, I was meeting people whose families were built on quicksand, not bedrock.  Would Dad come home tonight?  Would there be money left after the pub and the pokies?  Would he be quiet, or drunk and violent?  Or else the questions would be of a different kind: Why did he leave?  Did I do something to drive him away?  Who was he anyway?


As I grow older, and see more of the world (and more of my community), I am incredibly grateful to my Dad.  I value his example of one man giving himself completely for one woman - and so building a safe place for his family.

Fear at a 7-year-old's birthday party

Ok, so I'm not writing about the abundance of pink frills, girly squeals and kids tripping out on food colouring.  Although these are pretty fearsome things, they were in moderation at Eldest's birthday last week.  (And in the case of the food colouring, completely eliminated due to the brilliance of my wife and some strategically placed blueberry skins and raspberry jam).  No, the chilling topic today is the far more prosaic habit of children to try to scare themselves silly with ghost stories.

There are 0 ghosts in this picture.

We recently had four 7-year-olds and one 5-year-old huddled together in the darkened bedroom, with only a torch for protection, persuading each other that if they looked just right, they could see an eyelash.  That's right, THE EYELASH GHOST IS COMING!  Five little girls come pelting out of the bedroom, clutching at my legs for protection from disembodied optical follicles.  


"There's a ghost in my bedroom, Dad!  Friend#1 saw it.  It's real."
"Darling, there are no ghosts in this house, we don't let them in here.  Now what do you want on your pizza?"
"But it spoke to Friend#2, Dad.  I'm scared."


7-year-olds are really persistent.  So of course I exorcised the ghost as any good Dad would - turned on the lights, confiscated the torch, told the girls that ghosts weren't real and to come to the table and eat some dinner.  (I suppose I could've got my wife's eyelash curler and fought the ghost valiantly with that, but as the idea has only just occurred to me, I'm three days late with that bit of parenting brilliance.  Feel free to use it yourself if you haven't yet had your brush with 7-year-old eyelash ghosts.)


The whole incident would have passed with nothing more than a roll of the eyes if it hadn't been for the persistence of my daughters' fears after Friends#1, #2 and #3 had all left.  Suddenly we don't want to go to bed, because the ghost is in the room.  We don't want Dad to leave the room, because of the ghost.  What to do?


Plan 1.1, as usual, is: raise voice, issue ultimatum, and think up some suitably fearful consequence for disobedience (gotta be pretty big to compete with ghost-fear!).  Then I remember that I'm trying to wean myself off plan 1.1 - it just takes so long to do the job, and produces too much bad-parent-guilt.  So I try the newfangled plan 2.0.  It's hardly even out of the box, and I definitely didn't read the instruction manual, so I'm winging it.


"You know there's no such thing as ghosts, don't you?"
"But Friend#1 said she saw it."
"There are no ghosts.  I know, because they're not in the bible.  People think that a ghost is a dead person who has come back.   The bible says that when we die, with either go to be with Jesus if we love him (like you and me), or we go to hell if we didn't.  The people who go to be with Jesus stay there, and the bible also says that the people who go to hell can't get out of there.  So you see there's no way a ghost could come back to be here - they're all either with Jesus or in hell!"
(Brilliant!  This plan is working beautifully already!)


"But Friend#1 saw one!"
(Aha, I think, mistakes and misperceptions... )  "Whatever she thought she saw, it couldn't be a ghost, because they're either in hell or with Jesus."  (Quick, what else could it have been?)  "You know how God created angels, and some of them went bad like satan, well there are demons.  They're real."  (Uh, oh - this isn't going so well - from ghosts, which are a bit weird-scary, to demons which are, well, demonic.)
My poor scared little 5-year-old doesn't have any words left - just great big blue eyes.
"Here, lets read this promise that Jesus made" and so we read together from John 6:37-40.  We talk about how Jesus beat satan and demons, and that we now don't need to fear them because He keeps us safe.  We talk about how he promises never to let us go or lose us.  We sing the Colin Buchanan version of those verses.  And she settles down to sleep.  There is power in the word of God.


Epilogue
Driving last night in the car, the ghost theme came up again.  5-year-old protests: "There are no ghosts.  They're all in hell". 


Well, near enough.

Hearken to the evidence ...

I didn't catch the Q and A episode with John Lennox - it had started before it hove into my conscience, but some friends of mine on twitter were tweeting about it.  So it's in the iView queue, and I followed the thread on twitter for a while.  Two significant themes emerged from the tweets: One is an assertion that Christianity cannot be proved, and so should not be taught in schools at all; the second is that teaching any form of religion in schools is brainwashing.


Both views seem to be pretty widely accepted in our society, and both views are complete rubbish.  So I want to respond, and think about how we can inoculate our kids against these fallacies.


Firstly - evidence for Christianity.  The standard argument that there is no evidence is usually one that relies on there being no scientific evidence for Christianity: that the existence of God, or the occurrence of miracles, or the efficacy of prayer cannot be tested under laboratory conditions.  Therefore they are unprovable scientifically, and therefore there is no evidence for a belief system that includes these things.  But if we look at these statements, it's clear that there are many things that will fall outside the field of scientific enquiry.  I know that my wife loves me; I know that I can trust my close friends to keep my confidences; I know that I can believe what my parents tell me: but there are no scientific experiments that can prove these things.


Perhaps nearer the point, most of us only know what our children did at school today because someone who was there told us.  We only know that Hadrian built his wall, or that Stalin killed his millions, or that Hannibal crossed the alps on elephants because of historical documents that record what witnesses to those events observed.  Most of us only know that there are microscopic things like atoms, molecules and cells because someone has told us about them (and certainly not because we've undertaken the scientific experimentation ourselves!)


The fatal flaw in the "no evidence for Christianity" argument is that it overlooks other categories of evidence in exclusive favour of scientific evidence.  As a criminal lawyer for 8 years I saw this same error occur at times in jury trials.  Extremely persuasive and cogent eyewitness testimony was rejected because there was no forensic scientific evidence.  If we refuse to take note of any evidence that is not scientific, we exclude significant sources of reliable knowledge.


I think it is important to teach our kids about this!  Not everything can be known through science.  Not everything that science tells us is necessarily reliable.  Our kids need to be taught to sift through and evaluate the evidence.  Just as our kids need to be taught to sift through and evaluate other forms of evidence - eyewitness testimony, historical record and the like.


And that leads to the second false view circulating - that any teaching of any religion amounts to brainwashing.  In my view, the fact that the term is bandied about so freely in the religion-in-schools debate is either a display of ignorance about how religious education is (or can be) approached in modern schools, or else a misleading piece of rhetoric.


Let's assume ignorance to start with - I suppose that hangovers from the 40s or 50s might lead some to assume that any religious education in schools will be rigid, dogmatic, programmatic and allowing of no dissent.  Where belief (or expressions of belief) are coerced, then perhaps this does fit a description of brainwashing, such as occurs under some totalitarian regimes and in some times of war. It cannot seriously be suggested that Christians or the churches currently have the social or political power to coerce belief, even amongst children.  It cannot seriously be suggested that the churches would use a fear-based technique that would bring such fleeting and superficial results.  But do we truly believe that teaching kids the tenets and historical foundation for the world's greatest faith amounts to brainwashing?  Laying out a belief and providing reasons and evidence for that belief is not brainwashing - it is education!  


I suppose there might be some Christian parents who enforce belief in their children through objectionable means - but given that this is a universal parenting problem that spans all beliefs (and lacks-of-belief) - it's stretching things too much to credit this evil to the Christian side of the ledger.  The argument might more strongly be put that atheist parents are brainwashing their children by refusing to present the evidence for Christianity - certainly in the current prevailing culture those children are less likely to see both sides of the debate fairly presented.


Which brings us to the use of "brainwashing" as a rhetorical device.  If the real concern is coercive Christian education, why not say so?  We can understand that we are happy for our kids to learn about Christianity, but not to be pressured into a decision.  We can then truly agree, perhaps, that we want each person to make up his or her own mind by reference to all of the evidence and arguments.  I suspect, though, that this is precisely what many aggressive atheists do not want - they do not want every person to have the opportunity of fairly and individually assessing the evidence for and against Christianity: they want to push any discussion of Christianity out of the public sphere altogether.  They want the field to themselves.


Again, what to do for our kids?  Just as our kids need to know about different types of evidence, and need to learn how to evaluate such evidence, our kids need to know about different types of argument.  They need to be prepared to meet these different worldviews in their school yard, from their teachers, from their teammates.  They need to be prepared to present and defend their own beliefs (even as they are being formed and refined!), while they can carefully assess (and where appropriate, attack!) the beliefs that are being pressed on them.


Now how on earth do we do that!?