Distortion

Have you seen this graphic circulating around facebook?  I saw it in the context of the gay marriage debate - the underlying message being: "There's no such thing as traditional marriage.  You can't say it's the exclusive union of one man with one woman unto death, because there are so many forms of "traditional" marriage that are sanctioned in the bible!  Look at them all."

No doubt if I've misrepresented the implication, someone will correct me politely in the comments below.  But I don't think I have.

This approach is either ignorant or deceitful - the creator of the graphic has either misunderstood what the bible says about marriage (and all the distortions of it); or they have deliberately misrepresented it to bolster their position.  Here are some problems with the argument:

1. No Christian arguing for traditional marriage is arguing for marriage practices that happen to have existed at some time in human history.  They are arguing for marriage as it has been created and sanctioned by God.  They recognise that people, including people in the bible, fall short of God's standards.  This includes God's standards for marriage.
   So mere appearance of a practice in the bible is not an indication of approval of that practice.   Otherwise we would defend adultery (King David and Bathsheba) and murder (David doing in his rival Uriah, Bathsheba's husband).  No reasonable person would argue that these practices are sanctioned.  Similarly, one cannot argue that polygamy or concubinage or taking the slave of one's wife is sanctioned in the bible, particularly in light of Jesus' affirmation that marriage is one man, one woman, one lifetime!
   Yes, God can choose to bless sinners in polygamous or concubinous relationships, just as he blessed the adulterous and murderous David.  Yes, he uses them to fulfill his purposes.  But this is not an indication of his approval of their sin.  It's an indication of his astounding grace in loving people who rebel against him again and again.
2. The graphic confuses the marks of marriage with the motivations for marriage. This is a common mistake in the marriage debate - arguing that marriage is all about love, and that therefore two people in love should be able to marry regardless of gender.  The problem is that one motivation for marriage (love) is confused with a mark of marriage. 
   The "info"graphic represents different motivations for marriage: some of them bad , some more honourable, but none of them touch the marks of the marriage:

• The graphic imports some extraneous rules about marriages into its description of marriage.  So in the "man + woman" box, there are a number of dot points which describe various cultural practices or religious laws that were connected with marriage.  But these practices and rules have always varied.  They continue to vary - take the change in divorce laws as an example, or the tendency to marry for love rather than economic reasons.  What hasn't varied is the description of marriage as one man united exclusively to one woman for as long as they both live.
• The requirement for a man to marry his brother's childless widow is designed to ensure continuity of the brother's name, and provision of support for the widow in later life.  The motivation to marry reflects an imperfect situation.  It solves a social problem in a way that we do not condone today.  But the institution is still a marriage - one man with one woman.
• The requirement that a rapist marry his victim was a merciful requirement - otherwise, rape victims likely would never have married, as no man would have her.  Although the motivation for marriage is to make the best of a bad situation, the marriage itself would not differ at all from other marriages.
• Similarly with the prisoner of war situation - in circumstances where women were likely to be prey to the rape and pillage of an invading army, requiring marriage gave a woman some protections.  Again, the motivation to marry is likely just lust and self-interest, but the marriage would still be one man, one woman.
• The situation of slaves would have been the same.  Although the parties had little to no choice in the matter, the marriage was recognisably the same as a marriage contracted between two people for other reasons, whether economic, socio-political or emotional.

No, the assertion that there is no "traditional" marriage is either ignorant of history, or is a willful, deceitful distortion of the truth.  
Sure, there have been many examples of people falling short of marriage, either through multiple marriages (concurrently or consecutively), or through adultery, or through cruelty and abuse.  
Sure, there are many marriages that are contracted for motives that we abhor today.  
Sure, the ideal of marriage is something that we frequently strive after, but rarely attain.  
But there certainly is a commonly held, historically grounded understanding of what marriage is.

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.

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!?

more than words ...

Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.  1 John 3:18

Did you see Apollo 13?  If so, you will remember that gripping 4+ minutes towards the end.  After days (was it only days) of things going consistently wrong in space, the 3-man team aboard are re-entering the atmosphere.  Houston knows that they will lose contact with the ship for the 3 minutes it takes to get from stratosphere to splash-down.  Mission control is tense, but not panicked.  But then the 3 minutes pass, and there is still no contact.


In my memory, the film makers slow the pace of the movie to real-life speed.  4 minutes is such a long time.  


"Apollo 13, do you copy?"
Silence.
"Apollo 13?"
Silence.


Radio crackle.  Heartbeats.


And then Tom Hanks' voice: "Houston? ..."


I'm sure that at every screening, every audience member unclenched his fists, sat back in her seat, breathed out long and slow.


The message was being broadcast - it wasn't being received.

Which is a long-winded introduction to the scene at the Oakley house this evening, in which Number Two bounded up to my lovely wife Sally with her hands peaked on top of her head.  "Goodnight Mummy.  That means 'I love you' in Squiffy language" she says.


After the "aww"-moment passed, I started thinking.  We tell our children often enough that we love them - we're broadcasting the message - but are we being received?  


My Eldest understands love through gifts.  I first realised this when she was raging about someone touching "her things".  Aha!  Now some of her other behaviour makes sense!  She loves to give little presents to me and Sally.  She's always at me to buy Sally flowers (I really should listen to her more.)  She always sneaks little things she's been given to school to show her friends.  


Suddenly a lot of the fights between her and Number Two made more sense.  Suddenly I wondered: has she been on a starvation diet for these last few years?  Not receiving the message of love I've been broadcasting?  As she grows she'll see my love for her in the day-to-day things, but for now, I'm trying to speak her language.  I'm praying that, in recent months, that message has been getting through.


And Number Two?  I think she's a cuddler, which is quite alright by me.


I found Gary Chapman's Five Love Languages a really helpful book to understand that Sally expresses and receives love differently from me.  He's also written versions specifically for kids and teenagers.