So I finally made it official--I am giving up the paper route effective December 24th. There are some things I miss about it, but when it comes right down to it, it makes me, well, tired. Lately I have been too tired to do things with friends and family, too tired to serve families the way I would like at work, and too tired to write. My body has been having a harder and harder time even fighting off illness lately. I doubt I could go much beyond December 24th even if I desired to.
That said, we have heard whispers lately of people saying things like, "I don't feel sorry for him. It is his choice to not make his wife work." Please allow me to clarify: while, like everyone else, I do have my off days where I just feel miserable I do not intend to seek pity for this lot I have chosen. If anything I like to talk about it to model for my many younger or maybe a little older but not yet married friends. Allow me to explain.
Children. They say it takes a village to raise a child. There is certainly some truth to that. A child does need many good influences in his or her life and less favorable influences need to be limited as much as is appropriate. This is why, for example, as it stands right now my daughter would not be able to fly 1200 miles away from us to spend time with her mother-in-law. They are allowed to see each other of course, but not under that type of circumstance because she is not a healthy part of the village according to the way we wish to raise our children. However, as important as those influences may be, we believe the primary responsibility for raising a child falls to that child's parents. I know a lot of people would read that and nod their head in agreement, maybe even quietly utter an, "amen," but then these same people would move on to drop their children off at daycare for 10-12 hours leaving maybe 2-4 hours to feed, bathe, and spend time with their younger children each day while they are awake. Do they really believe then that the parents have the primary responsibility for the child? Who is providing the foundational beliefs that that child is going to have for the rest of his or her life? Not mom and dad. Sure there are parents who are single parents by no fault of their own, but those are the exception not the rule.
Assuming that parents are meant to have the primary responsibility for raising a child, the next step is to figure out the roles. I could talk about Paul's writing and endure all of the "scholarly" arguments against the integrity of God's word, but I do not wish to write a full length book today so I will focus on another passage instead.
Genesis 3:17-19 -- To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
Adam was commanded to provide the food from the earth. He was told to sweat. He was told to go out and work. While I am not opposed to giving women all of the rights and respect they are due there is one thing I have never been able to wrap my head around about feminist movements. God himself in giving the curse that shaped the world today thought "work" would be a fitting punishment for Adam. Work is a curse. So why DO women fight so hard to be able to compete with men for it? Sincerely, I don't understand.
As a totally unrelated side note, I find it amusing that Adam got rebuked for listening to his wife.
Genesis 3:16 -- To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
Women have been cursed with the pain of childbearing. I believe it is apparent that this manifests itself in many forms throughout a woman's life regardless of the actual number of children she does or does not have. First there is the menstrual cycle itself with all of its err...joys. That endures for several decades. Then, of course, there are the actual labor pains that first come to mind when you read that curse. Finally, as the woman grows old the curse enters another stage called menopause. I would propose that, given that broader description of how this curse applies it is not unreasonable to assume it can also include the emotional roller coaster that accompanies a large part of actually raising a child. Finally, God said the woman's desire would be for her husband. Some look at this sexually. I do not share that view. Look at the world around you and tell me if you think God cursed women to only feel lust for their own husbands. Not a chance. I believe the desire for the husband and the husband ruling over the wife indicate that the woman is depending on the husband to meet basic needs. She desires her husband's provision and subjects herself to him (to an extent that is clarified further mostly in the new testament) to ensure that he will continue to pass what he has produced on to her.
To finally bring this back around full circle to the reason I speak so openly about the difficulties of doing my paper route, my family had a time of need. We both believe that it is my responsibility to provide and my wife's responsibility is to use the provision to take care of the home and children. I fulfilled my duty. It can be done. We are in a world that tells you you cannot have a family without a dual income. I want to tell the young men and women out there that the world lies.
Showing posts with label theology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label theology. Show all posts
Discernment
The last few days I have been lost in thought about ages of discernment. It is a very important topic to those of us who have children and want to raise them up in a Christian household. For me in particular it was on the forefront of my thoughts because my three year old (more than half way to four) asked a little over a week ago how she could get Jesus to live in her heart. Fortunately we had just had a Sunday School lesson about Jesus rebuking his disciples when they tried to stop the children from approaching him so I gave her the completely serious, not dumbed down answer. And then she did it.
It took me a little while to wrap my head around it. Could a three year old really have the discernment to know what she was doing? Did she know enough about the world and about Jesus to make that choice? Does she need exposure to other lifestyles to even realize she was making a choice? And if she could make that choice at that age what does that mean for everyone else who...? God revealed three very important truths to me. One should have been obvious to me, another maybe a little less so, and the third one is a very painful, inconvenient truth.
First of all, yes, a young child can receive Jesus. He said so right in the passages we studied in the Sunday School lesson. In fact, Jesus said that heaven belongs to those little children. Let's not forget that when Jesus walked the Earth as God-Man a teenage person was a married adult so the people the disciples were shooing away were not the "enlightened" high school students we might think of today. They may well have been quite close to my daughter's age. Also the Holy Spirit leads a man to the Son who leads him to the Father so why couldn't the Holy Spirit act in my child's life when He chooses to act. Was I trying to claim to be able to limit God?
Second, a three year old surely can know enough about Jesus to make the decision to follow Him, and the rest of the world doesn't matter. The Word doesn't say teach your child apologetics and let her decide for herself. Nor does it say exposure your child to all the junk the world has to offer and tell her which way you think she should take. Proverbs 22:6 says, "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." That's it. Teach them about Jesus (the Way). Nothing more. The rest of that, the part about needing to know more about the world, that is my liberal arts education shining through. Besides, who, upon praying for their own salvation, knows everything there is to know about God or about the world? Who knows all of these things at death even? No one. Am I qualified to say that a certain quantity of knowledge is required then you can be saved but not before? No, definitely not. My child has been raised with Jesus and has accepted her seal. She is raised this way and when she was older she will still follow this path.
Finally, who goes to heaven? Heaven is for all people who have accepted Jesus as there Lord and Savior. These are precisely the requirements, no more and no less. Jesus is the only way to heaven. But what happened to the age of discernment that is frequently discussed? I have been told, by a catholic, that the age of discernment is at 12(ish) when you are able to go through the catechism. I have been told by a Methodist that the age of discernment happens when you reach a certain level of intillectual capacity so that a toddler can go to heaven. An adult with a severe disability might never reach this age of discernment and also be sealed for heaven. The Lord revealed a problem with this. We are trying to create more than one way to Heaven. We are all born in sin. Handicapped adults who have not received Jesus do not go to heaven. Even more tragicaly in my mind, young children who have not accepted Jesus do not go to heaven. These groups may not be able to verbally say they receive Him, but we still need to witness to them. They are still capable of praying even if they cannot speak, and even if their thoughts are truly muddled the Holy Spirit can still move in them and guide them to Jesus. I guess the important point here is start witnessing to your children the moment they are born. This isn't just "preach the gospel always; when necessary use words." In fact the more I learn the more I realize that is a horrible man-made proverb. Use words.
Now the next question I have to wrestle with even though I know the answer: Should we actually be telling children about Jesus *before* they are born? I believe abortion is unconditionally murder. I also believe what makes a human human is the soul, so is there a soul that needs saved in an unborn baby? And here we get to some of the depths that I prefer not to think about so here I stop.
It took me a little while to wrap my head around it. Could a three year old really have the discernment to know what she was doing? Did she know enough about the world and about Jesus to make that choice? Does she need exposure to other lifestyles to even realize she was making a choice? And if she could make that choice at that age what does that mean for everyone else who...? God revealed three very important truths to me. One should have been obvious to me, another maybe a little less so, and the third one is a very painful, inconvenient truth.
First of all, yes, a young child can receive Jesus. He said so right in the passages we studied in the Sunday School lesson. In fact, Jesus said that heaven belongs to those little children. Let's not forget that when Jesus walked the Earth as God-Man a teenage person was a married adult so the people the disciples were shooing away were not the "enlightened" high school students we might think of today. They may well have been quite close to my daughter's age. Also the Holy Spirit leads a man to the Son who leads him to the Father so why couldn't the Holy Spirit act in my child's life when He chooses to act. Was I trying to claim to be able to limit God?
Second, a three year old surely can know enough about Jesus to make the decision to follow Him, and the rest of the world doesn't matter. The Word doesn't say teach your child apologetics and let her decide for herself. Nor does it say exposure your child to all the junk the world has to offer and tell her which way you think she should take. Proverbs 22:6 says, "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." That's it. Teach them about Jesus (the Way). Nothing more. The rest of that, the part about needing to know more about the world, that is my liberal arts education shining through. Besides, who, upon praying for their own salvation, knows everything there is to know about God or about the world? Who knows all of these things at death even? No one. Am I qualified to say that a certain quantity of knowledge is required then you can be saved but not before? No, definitely not. My child has been raised with Jesus and has accepted her seal. She is raised this way and when she was older she will still follow this path.
Finally, who goes to heaven? Heaven is for all people who have accepted Jesus as there Lord and Savior. These are precisely the requirements, no more and no less. Jesus is the only way to heaven. But what happened to the age of discernment that is frequently discussed? I have been told, by a catholic, that the age of discernment is at 12(ish) when you are able to go through the catechism. I have been told by a Methodist that the age of discernment happens when you reach a certain level of intillectual capacity so that a toddler can go to heaven. An adult with a severe disability might never reach this age of discernment and also be sealed for heaven. The Lord revealed a problem with this. We are trying to create more than one way to Heaven. We are all born in sin. Handicapped adults who have not received Jesus do not go to heaven. Even more tragicaly in my mind, young children who have not accepted Jesus do not go to heaven. These groups may not be able to verbally say they receive Him, but we still need to witness to them. They are still capable of praying even if they cannot speak, and even if their thoughts are truly muddled the Holy Spirit can still move in them and guide them to Jesus. I guess the important point here is start witnessing to your children the moment they are born. This isn't just "preach the gospel always; when necessary use words." In fact the more I learn the more I realize that is a horrible man-made proverb. Use words.
Now the next question I have to wrestle with even though I know the answer: Should we actually be telling children about Jesus *before* they are born? I believe abortion is unconditionally murder. I also believe what makes a human human is the soul, so is there a soul that needs saved in an unborn baby? And here we get to some of the depths that I prefer not to think about so here I stop.
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