Teaching Children to Lie

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Have you ever stopped to consider how often and in what ways we may be teaching children to lie? I’m not talking about birthday surprises; you’ll have to work out the ethics of that on your own. I’m also not talking about corporate espionage or political campaigning; those, too, you’ll need to figure out on your own. The lies I’m talking about fall somewhere between those two points of the spectrum; between, “don’t tell your sister what we got her” and “if I’m elected I will….” The lies I’m talking about are subtler, and they actually sound good—morally good, that is. We want them to be true, and they could be true, and maybe they even should be true. But….

Let me start with what I think will be the easier one, both to admit and to do something about: “Say, ‘I’m sorry.’ Go ahead; tell your brother you’re sorry.” You’ve heard that, haven’t you? Chances are you heard it from your parents and maybe you’ve even heard it from your own lips. It sounds so good; we desperately want it to be true, to be a genuine admission of sorrow. And it seems that it should be so easy to say, especially when the offending child hurt her sister entirely on accident! But kids don’t do sorrow and regret well—it is, for some reason, too closely linked to shame and guilt—and so to say “I’m sorry” means to admit guilt, and kids don’t want to do that. All we want as parents is to train our children to feel sorrow at someone else’s pain, and so we ask them to say, “I’m sorry.” And sometimes we compel them to say it…even when it really is a lie. After all, if I don’t feel sorrow, isn’t it a lie to say that I do?

Now, I understand that sometimes words must be said before the truth of them can be known and felt by the speaker. That is, sometimes saying “I’m sorry” will lead to, rather than spring from, genuine sorrow. In my own marriage I have often needed to express forgiveness before I felt forgiving; and in that statement of faith and obedience I begin to experience the freeing power of real forgiveness. But ritual for ritual’s sake seldom accomplishes that. Teaching our children to feel and express genuine sorrow when they have wronged another is far more important than teaching them to utter a lie. It’s also much harder.

The other lie we teach our children came to my mind today and I expect I’m going to get into trouble with some people for saying this, because it’s not in the realm of parenting but politics…and faith. And the intersection of those two is a hazardous one, wherein lies the wreckage of many an ideal of one or the other, each claiming right of way where neither is granted such right. But first, some background:

I pledge allegiance to my flag and to the Republic for which it stands—one Nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

That doesn’t sound quite right, does it? At least not for those of us born after World War II. But those twenty-three words comprise the pledge originally penned by Francis Bellamy in August 1892 as part of an effort to stir up patriotism among schoolchildren in a nation whose patriotic fervor had waned since the end of the Civil War. It is a compelling story, which deserves to be read in the words of the Pledge’s own author. [1]

The pledge has been changed three times since its original writing; the first change, two months after writing, belonged to author and was the addition of the word “to” before “the republic.” Thirty years later, over Bellamy’s objections, the American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution led a campaign to change the Pledge’s words from, “my Flag,” to “the Flag of the United States of America.” Another thirty years later, in 1954, the Knights of Columbus led the charge to add the words, “under God.” [2]

It sounds good, doesn’t it? At least for a Christian, and perhaps for some of other religions who appreciate the reminder that we live under the sovereignty of a divine being. Yet the Pledge of Allegiance to our nation’s flag contains, for many, a lie; and in seeking to compel the ritual recitation of the Pledge, we are teaching those children to lie in the same way as when we compel them to say, “I’m sorry.” Many children—especially immigrants (legal or otherwise)—have not shifted allegiance from their homeland to these United States. Perhaps they have escaped with their parents from a tyranny they do not even understand; all they know is they left in the middle of the night and can no longer see their friends or their relatives, and they are alone and strangers in a land where they do not even speak the language.

Those two simple words, “under God,” were added more than sixty years after the original writing of the Pledge of Allegiance? The Pledge’s author (according to his granddaughter) would have shuddered at the addition, having left the church the year before writing the Pledge. [2] As a Christian I’m fine with the words, in part because I grew up with them and in part because I willingly and knowingly submit to my God and pray that my nation does, as well. Yet the phrase does nothing to unite us as Americans, which was a primary intent of the Pledge when written. Rather, the phrase serves more to divide. After all, though more than three-fourths of Americans identify as Christian, there are also millions of Jews and Muslims, not to mention adherents of other faiths—many of which are polytheistic—as well as an increasing number of people claiming no religious identity.

I felt some of this discrepancy myself in elementary school, when my family moved to Canada. For five years, my school days started not with the pledge, but with the singing of “O Canada.” It always felt a little odd to sing, “O Canada! Our home and native land!” Home was true, but native was certainly not. Nor was I ever sure that I would “stand on guard for thee.”

The last line of the Pledge of Allegiance is perhaps most important of all, for it claims that in this great Republic we hold fast to the ideal of “liberty and justice for all.” If we truly believe that, then why do we insist on the divisive words, “under God”? Let us instead live humbly—as did the Lord we proclaim—and in that humility attract others to what it really means to live under God.

 

Footnotes:

[1] Bellamy, Francis, “The Story of the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag”, University of Rochester Library Bulletin, Vol. VIII, Winter 1953. 13 July 2014. <http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?PAGE=3418>.

[2] Baer, Dr. John W., “The Pledge of Allegiance A Short History”. 13 July 2014.<http://www.oldtimeislands.org/pledge/pledge.htm>.

 

In the Between

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Something is happening. I’m not sure what—or where—but it seems to be the quiet before the storm. The house is quiet; power outages have that effect. Coming on the heels of a week of activity, a sixty-guest dinner party, and a morning-after of cleanup, there is a quietness that goes beyond the silence of a powerless refrigerator and an air conditioner that cannot condition the air. And the blank stare of the TV screen—even blocked as it is by its closed cabinet doors—offers a reflective bliss. A nap, an hour of Maya Anglou, and a never-tired daughter lost in outdoor play. Silence. It is good.

But there is an expectant wondering in the silence, too. There is a question: What’s next? Beyond the momentary silence of the afternoon is the silence of change, the silence of death before life, the silence of the birth canal – between the in utero struggle of the now-but-not-yet life and the shocked and shocking cries of postpartum new birth. Our life is in the between….

School is done. Not just the kids’ school but mine, too. Eight years of constancy, of moving from class to class, semester to semester. Eight years of theology and christology and ecclesiology and school-ology; of hermeneutics and homiletics and escaping heretics. Eight years of study for a degree that, in someone’s mind, should only take two. But that someone didn’t, I think, have a wife, and three children in school. That someone didn’t have to balance declining Greek verbs with helping his son figure out quadratic equations. He didn’t have to decide between studying for a pneumatology exam or attending his daughter’s first band concert (the squeals of the clarinets winning out over the groans of the Spirit). He didn’t have the pleasure of escorting his Girl Scout to a daddy-daughter dance when the 1,500-page text book in 8-point font cried out for a double date. But whether two years or eight, school is in the past. There is no exam to study for, no textbook to read, no next-semester schedule to balance with a family vacation. All that is left is to walk in a ceremony, shake a hand, thank the family, and receive the hard-earned diploma. Silence.

Work, like school, is all but done. A few transitional tasks, handing over duties and keys, striving to finish well. But no new work, no inbox; only an outbox. The last messages have been preaced (and, I think, well preached. Oh, so much better than that first one with all the love song titles!) There are some reflective tasks (which I enjoy): what did I do well? What do I wish I’d done better? I enjoy the reflection, but not so much the evaluation; I’m very hard on myself. And, of course, there’s the packing. The books are in boxes, but the thought of defurnishing the office is a bit unnerving. Empty rooms once so full of life and thought are somber places, as if haunted by the ghosts of what was and what might have been.  Silence. Yet how different was that empty room the first time I opened the door? Then it cried out the hopes of all that would be, that might be. Perhaps this time when it is emptied it will again give voice to those hopes—hopes that not I, but another, will see. But for now, in the between…silence.

This home, too—so alive with guests and decorations and party not 48 hours ago—today stands quiet. And over the next weeks it, too, will be defurnished. The chalkboard finally filling the frame we have carried empty for 1,500 miles will be off the wall and boxed. The couches stored, the shelves emptied, the rugs rolled. This house, barely a shell when first our romance with it began, has become our home. We have, in a sense, become one with it. The fingerprints of my wife’s heart are forever embedded in its walls and windows and cabinets. How can we ever leave? How can we ever live in another house? It would feel almost adulterous! (But not quite.) This home, like my schooling, has been part of us, part of our lives, even if only for three years. My dear, creative, beauty-loving wife gave it her all and she deserves for her creation to fill the pages of magazines! But for now, only silence.

And so the silence of the power outage, this silence of the between times, so aptly suits our lives now. We are between the certain and the unknown, between birth and life, between womb and room. And in the quiet, pleasing stillness there is yet an unpleasantness in that unknowing. There is a confidence in God’s call yet a tinge of fear in the absence of direction. Silence.

And in the silence we listen for God.

In the silence we look for God.

In the silence we cling to God.

In the silence we hope in God.

In the silence we rest in God.

Stones on the Journey

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This is a synopsis of the message I preached yesterday at Cold Springs Church. It is based on Abram’s call and journey in Genesis 12. I see four “stones” on Abram’s journey:

The Stone of Separation: God’s call separates us from all that we find comfortable and familiar—from everything in which we find security apart from him. But he promises to replace our security with him: Abram was called to leave his country, but was promised a new land. He was called to leave his kindred, his community; but was promised a great nation. He was called to leave his father’s house, but was promised the presence of God. (Notice that this ties nicely into one way of looking at a theme throughout the Bible: that God creates a people, for a place, to enjoy his presence. We see that theme in creation, in the story of the people of Israel, and all the way to Revelation, as we see God gathering his people to a new heaven and new earth to enjoy his presence forever.) Where are you finding security apart from God?

The Stone of Promise: Sometimes God’s promises are unbelievable, impossible, or unimaginable. But that doesn’t keep us from trying to imagine how God will fulfill the promise—we just usually get it wrong! (Because, after all, “our thoughts are not God’s thoughts; nor are our ways his ways.”) What we need to cling to, though, is not the promise; we need to rely on the character of the promise-giver.

The Stone of Obedience: We want to obey God; we really do. We want to do God’s will, but we often hesitate in uncertainty; God has said Go, and we want to know where to go – or at least what direction. We are too often frozen into inaction by our very desire to do God’s will. But his will is sometimes simply, Go. And we need to obey the call…even when it doesn’t seem to make sense.

The Stone of Remembrance: When Abram obeyed, he came to the place where God said he should be: “To your offspring I will give this land.” And there—where the Lord had appeared to him—Abram built an altar. Continuing on the journey, Abram built another altar to call on the name of the Lord. One line in the old hymn, “Come Thou Fount,” says, “here I raise my Ebenezer.” An Ebenezer is a stone of remembrance. We need those. Maybe it’s an actual stone; maybe it’s a memory; maybe a journal entry or a photo. However you remember, when God shows…remember. For me, May 28, 2009, is a stone of remembrance. On that day I prayed a very specific prayer that God answered very specifically and very immediately. God showed up, and that date is engraved in my mind.

Separation. Promise. Obedience. Remembrance. Stones along the journey of faith. It’s a journey with no road map, only milestones. But once you start on the journey, the risk – the adventure – will get into your blood and course through your veins and you’ll never again be satisfied with the comfortable, secure, risk-free life you once knew.

Peace That Doesn’t Make Sense

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Recently a friend asked me a question that went something like this: In the midst of all the uncertainty you’re facing, how do you still have peace? To be honest, I have often wondered the same thing, because “peaceful” isn’t a word that I would typically use to describe myself. But for some reason I have experienced an uncharacteristic peace over these past months—what Paul described as “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding” (Philippians 4:7) and what I like to call “a peace that doesn’t make sense.”

In just a few weeks, I’ll have…

  • a house but no job
  • expenses but no income
  • a calling but no call
  • a journey but no map
  • a destination but no direction.

Not exactly peace-giving circumstances!

But I will also have then what I already have now: a God who cares for me, and who has proven himself faithful; not only in the pages of Scripture—which, I confess, can seem a bit too easy at times—but also in my own life. Five-and-a-half years ago, a lamenting phone call to my parents introduced me to a stranger who became a pivotal contact for landing in the pastoral role I am in today. Six months later a desperate prayer spoken with too little faith was answered as clearly and explicitly as any I can recall.

God has not always answered my prayers quite so clearly or immediately. He has not spoken to me as plainly as he seemed to speak to people in the Bible. In fact, I am not entirely certain what to expect if God were to speak as plainly; after all, as I read through the Bible I see him speaking through burning bushes, talking donkeys, women and men; I hear him speaking in whispers and bellowing voice, at midnight and midday and midmorning; he speaks through angels and through dreams and visions. The only thing usual about how God has spoken in the past is that it is almost always unusual.

So how is it I can have peace in the midst of uncertainty? How can I trust in a God I can’t see and sometimes don’t hear? To be honest, I can’t. Not on my own, anyway. But God has given me a gift: the gift of peace that doesn’t make sense.

Satisfied with God’s Presence?

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Over the past eight years, I have had the privilege of studying under some great professors – men of God who are passionate about helping students learn, grow, and prepare to lead well in churches and other ministry settings. One of the best is Dr. Gerry Breshears, a pastor, scholar, theologian, counselor, and lifelong learner. I love that last part, especially. I remember one class during which this wise, learned, always-studying professor admitted that his theology and teaching (in a particular area) had changed markedly over the last thirty years. I love, too, that Gerry asks questions – except when what I want from his is answers!

Recently on his Facebook page, Gerry posted this question:

In John’s gospel Jesus makes the bold promise ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. The condition is if you remain in me and my words in you in 15:6 and if it is in My name in 14:14. HUGE promises that surely don’t seem to be happening. Am I just not obedient enough?

That’s what I wrestle with. What keeps our prayers from being answered? What about all those times that we pray for what certainly seems to be in God’s will, but God doesn’t answer them? Or when we really do delight in God, but we don’t receive the desires of our heart (Psalm 37:4)? Or when we so desperately want to see God, to hear his voice, to know him – to have some sense of his presence – and yet he remains distant and silent?

Job experienced the agonizing silence of God, piled on top of the tortures he’d already felt in the loss of his family and wealth and the torment of the lesions covering his body from head to toe. At first he pled his innocence and almost arrogantly demanded an audience with God. Later, though, his pleading was simply to face God, to hear something, anything from the One who could take up his plea.

In the end God did speak up. Not, perhaps, with the words of comfort Job wanted, but with the booming voice that had spoken creation into existence. And without answers to his many questions, Job was satisfied. “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:5-6, NIV)

Am I satisfied simply with faith that God is present? Or do I demand answers to my questions?