Category: relationships

The boy doesn’t…pay back evil for evil

Silva

Who is good enough for my daughter?  Parents regularly say that only those “good enough” can date or marry our children, right?  I wonder if most of us have figured out what that means before it’s too late (e.g., bubba just rang the door bell)?  In other words, what type of boy will I let in the front door?

We continue this short series on the character qualities of the kind of boy that I want to hear ask me for my daughter’s hand.  First was, courage.  Today’s is that he shouldn’t be inclined to pay back evil for evil.

The Bible is clear enough that when it comes to vengeance or retribution, only God is expert enough to handle it.  Thankfully, this evidence is clearly stated,

Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord (Romans 12:19)

O LORD, O God of vengeance, O God of vengeance shine forth! (Psalm 94:1)

Still, we try.  Clear examples are all around us.  For many (especially boys), it’s on the ball field.  Surely the boy will find himself on what we used to call the “field of friendly strife” (i.e., athletic field).  When he does, he will be learning important lessons about life and about his place in it.  I spoke to a good friend recently about how when boys get on the field, each one is desperately trying to establish and maintain his place of prowess in light of all the rest.  Sometimes the overflow of this is seen in red cards (soccer), face-masks (football), hitting a batter (baseball) or charging (basketball).  When it happens, you can be sure that one has challenged another’s position in the rankings.  These challenges are evil.  Strictly speaking they are retributions, punishments, and vengeance-efforts.

Will a boy resort to this?

  • Will his lifestyle be one of “bowing up” or “kicking against the goads”?  Is his answer to authority to always resist and sometimes rebel?

Listen dad, you, out there, parenting that boy that will one day show up at my door.  Sure, every man has his moment but I will turn him away faster than he can say “bonehead” if his lifestyle resembles these things.  And I should and so should you.

Just why do we think God would take the time to state, illustrate and command us that He is One in charge of justice and vengeance?  Clearly, it is because we are so prone to want to be judge, jury and executioner.  As we parent our boys, do we instill in them the vengeance-ethic?  “Real men don’t take that crap.”  “Real men don’t get run over like that.”  “Men don’t get mad they get even.”  We secretly believe this slimy code of conduct and we inculcate it in our young boys.  For the sake of my daughters, don’t do it.

In a stroke of what was clearly the wisdom from above, I recently had a conversation with my son about this issue.  Of course, we started on the field of friendly strife and ventured into other fields.  Namely, what to do when you’re in the hen house and another rooster wants to fight?  Enough of the metaphor: he tackled a kid in football, the kid got up and tackled him from behind after the play.  What do we do with this?  I detected in my son a couple of response options rolling around in his head: a) quit the game to deal with the embarrassment, b) bust the kid’s head or c)??.  He was dealing with a) and c).  What does a boy do when, in the front of all of his peers, he’s the victim of a vengeful act?  What would God have him do?

(Here’s where the wisdom from above came in).  I told him that vengeance belongs to the Lord and if he were to have busted the kid’s head, that would’ve been sin.  I convinced him that leaving the field was bad for several reasons not the least of which is that the other kid’s act was sinful, and God tells us to confront sinners (Luke 17:3, Matthew 18:15, Galatians 6:1).  So, dad tells boy that next time, he turn, and confront the kid on his actions – put the ball in his hands (so to speak) – and stand there and wait to see what happens.  “Let God work on that kid’s heart” I said.  Predictably, boy asks dad, “What if he gets mad and comes after me?”  I told my little warrior that he stand firm, wrap him up and help him remember that interactions of this sort are costly for him (there were warriors in Israel, remember).

Not wanting that to be the last word then (or here), we ended on the process: play fair, confront as needed, stand firm and defend thoroughly as appropriate.

Listen, dads, if a boy shows up on my door with a battle record that reveals truth, tenacity, and self-defense, we’ll move on to other areas gladly.  If not, then he’ll be home early.

The more connected, the dumber?

Silva

I make it a habit to listen to a weekly podcast called the Whitehorse Inn.  This year’s theme has been “recovering Scripture,” or to put it another way, they are systematically dealing with biases in the church and the culture that keep us from seeing the beauty and usefulness of the Bible.

A recent podcast is called “Distracting Ourselves to Death.”  Host Michael Horton is interviewing college professor T. David Gordon.  Dr. Gordon has written a number of books like “Why Johnny Can’t Preach” or “Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns” (great books that play on the theme of the bestseller “Why Johnny Can’t Read” by Rudolph Flesch).  These books take the unfortunately ubiquitous church phenomena of poor preaching and poorer worship and unpack its source material.

This particular podcast regarded distractions.  Specifically the same theme about which author Nicholas Carr wrote in the Atlantic Monthly in 2008 in his article “Is Google Making us Stupid?” We are distracted, it seems, by more than simply our commitments to ease, comfort and the satisfaction of the senses: our thinking may be in the process of being remade in the image of our connectedness.

Years ago, I exhorted a group of young single people to fight against the temptation to live with mediated communication.  In other words, that they would not be satisfied with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.  Instead, they’d want to be personal.  In this podcast, Dr. Gordon mentions that we have “plastic neurology.”  He said something like we make tools and then they make us.  He has observed in his college classroom that while students bring in laptops ostensibly to take notes, they are in fact using them to surf the web, send email or chat.  Nevermind, says Dr. Gordon.  What really bothers him is his theory that the students would not be able to function without all of this.  That if he told them to check their computers at the door, there would be a mutiny.

(Where would you be without your text plan?  What about your Facebook page?  How about internet connectivity?)

Plastic neurology is our God-given neurological malleability.  Check this quote from Mr. Carr’s article:

The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information [i.e., the internet] are many and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded.  “The perfect recall of silicon memory,” Wired‘s Clive Thompson has written, “can be an enormous boon to thinking.”  But that boon comes at a price.  As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information.  They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought.  And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplations.  My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.

We come close to the line of responsibility in all of this.  Who exactly is responsible for our behavior?  We are – we do what we want to do all the time.  This is the clear conclusion of the Bible.  Yet, as we engage in what we love and welcome and use in technology, that medium may be exerting an influence back on us.  The effect of which makes other things harder.  I think we are in trouble in two areas: thinking and relating.

First, thinking.  More able writers can and have unpacked this concept of distractedness or plasticity (The Shallows, RAPT are book titles; www.roughtype.com is Nicholas Carr’s blog and there are titles that can be found there).  Consider this ancedotally: do you find yourself willing and able to wade through old writers, Puritans or poetry, perhaps?  In reading, do you bore quickly and find you need to get up or that you need to do something else?  Can you sit down with a passage of Scripture and study it: word study, history, grammar and connections to other books?  Must you always have music on?

Consider also recent political actions: health care, financial reform, or bail-outs.  Did you remember hearing that those bills were 1000’s of pages long and our representatives didn’t even read them?  (They should’ve; check this: Preventive Care Mandate.)  What was astounding to me was that this was never an issue with the majority of people.  None of us would blindly sign some document that had serious and grave implications on our family’s lives, would we?  But they did.  Maybe their brains are so effected that they can’t read, but did the populace give them a pass thinking, “Man, who has time to read all of that anyway?”

Biblical Christianity is a thinking religion.  Of course, it is a whole-person religion, but not before it presents to us truth claims that must be considered.  If we have lost our ability to think through things, then we are going to see our churches move more and more away from biblical Christianity.  Our people will move away from what it means to be people of grace and truth.

Second, relating.  Relationships take time and effort.  Facebook and its annoying clones and predecessors are not facilitating social connectedness.  That used to mean (rightly) time together.  Voices heard, expressions seen and analyzed, misstatements challenged, rebukes and forgiveness exchanged.  Not anymore.  Now, we believe it is adequate to rail against someone slanderously via an email.  Google might be making us dumber but it has certainly made us more cowardly.  The medium of pop-ups, broadband, multiple-tabs, and chat has reshaped our relationships so that we want them just like those other things: exciting, fast-paced, multiples, uncommitted and surface.

Who can really solve this by turning things off, you know?  That will hardly do.  Instead, at some point, the church will have to recognize we have discovered a new country with new joys and new sins.

When Language Becomes Worthless

Silva

I’ve observed in the last few years a shift in our communication.  Now, I’m not so sure it’s only been in the last few years (others would probably tell me it’s been longer) but I have certainly noticed it as it has invaded my circles.

Worthless language takes many forms.  I have observed that people say things that don’t actually say much at all.  In other words, if I have to ask you what you mean several times – over one statement – it is likely that what you said either was profoundly unclear or unintelligible. Now, of course the third option could be that I’m clueless (that’s always an option).  Let’s assume that I’m not.  (We have to assume something…)

Worthless language can be crude and curse-filled.  In that case, that language, while descriptive, is usually not helpful in advancing dialogue.

What I’m talking about in terms of useless language is user-defined language.  In other words, using words whose meaning is ultimately subjective or user-defined: it means what I say it means.

This language, as far as I’ve observed, is most prevalent when words that were previously used to describe physical ailments, and were at one time metaphorically used to describe our inner existence, crossed over into literal, inner descriptors.

Huh?

Here’s a popular one: “I’m hurt.”  What the speaker means is not something physical and measurable (like the yellow jacket stings I received yesterday) but some kind of inner experience that only the speaker knows about.

“I’m wounded”

“You’re unsafe”

“This relationship is unhealthy”

“That’s abuse”

“You hurt my feelings”

Each of these phrases depicts an inner, subjective experience that defies external definition.  In other words, there’s no real way to test, measure, or gage what the speaker really means.  And we all like it that way.

A problem with user-defined language is that once it is spoken, its meaning is both a secret and controlled by the user.  I have to figure out what you mean and if I don’t I can’t ever do anything to please you.  Maybe vindictive speakers like it that way; most probably don’t realize what’s happening.  But for the hearer, it is a kind of verbal servitude – you own me because you’ve used words that I’ve heard before but whose meaning you’ve defined.

I’m both stuck and beholden.

It didn’t use to be this way.  Formerly, language, while usable in different arenas had specific functions.  Now, those meanings have all been conflated – combined, condensed, melted-together.  And we’re all stuck.  If I’m hurt or you’re unhealthy, we’re slaves to each other until we figure out what the blazes that all means.

I have a better idea.  How about we don’t give a “tinker’s rip” about each others language and we agree instead on a common tongue.  When we talk about our inner experiences – what we think and value and believe – why don’t we adopt a time tested vocabulary and start from there?

The Bible.  The Bible provides for us both descriptive and prescriptive words.  It both describes and explains our inner experiences.  If, for example,  I experience a hardship at your hands, I can tell you that:

“I believe that your words were full of wrath and that you sinned against me” (see Colossians 3:8).

“You were slandering me to my friend and you sinned against me” (see same verse)

“You lied with your words and you sinned against me” (see Colossians 3:9)

“Your speech was obscene and it was offensive; you sinned against me” (see Colossians 3:8)

“Your words were harsh and unloving; you didn’t have my best interests in mind” (see Ephesians 4:15 and Philippians 2:4)

You see, when we use an external, neutral language that both describes and prescribes, things can happen. I can be held accountable and you can get some justice and mercy.  Do we not see that our culture’s current use of formerly physical language is ultimately unhelpful?  Throwing around terms like “abuse” and “safe” and “health” just don’t get us anywhere with each other.  (We’ve seen this for years in the ambiguity of pro-abortion argumentation standing on phrases like the “health of the mother” and then filling into “health” whatever ones wants.)

If you tell me that I’m not “safe” I have no idea what to do except what you tell me.  But, what if what you are telling me to do to be “safe” is contrary to the law of God?  In other words, what if you tell me that I must “stay away so that you can be safe” when in fact the Bible says that I must draw near to reconcile?  What do we do then?

When it comes to the language of blessing and the language of conflict, we cannot let ourselves devolve into subjective, user-defined, worthless speech.  Instead, we must humble ourselves and use the language of Another.  Then we will be able to assign a universal meaning and maybe we can reconcile.