Something is wrong; everybody knows it. The world is not as it should be. Some great religious traditions look forward to a future when all our frustrated desires will be subsumed into a blissful oneness. Others look back to a long-lost paradise and speculate on a leader (or system) who will return us to that ideal state.
Last week we talked about judgment, admitting (perhaps grudgingly) that God has a right to judge. But there are times when his judgment doesn’t seem . . . well, right. We can accept bad things happening to bad people (which doesn’t include us, of course). That’s only just deserts. But bad things happening to good people is the main problem doubters have with a supposedly “good” God.
The Bible meets that problem head-on. It’s part of the problem, and no figure shows it better than the long-suffering, pitiful character of Job. The man has a lot of complaints, and they seem perfectly reasonable to us. But underneath all the apparent unfairness of the way he’s been treated, Job is most hurt about this:
I thought we were friends. I thought You were on my side. But now it seems I never knew You, and we don’t even speak the same language. Is there anyone who can come between us? Or will we be eternally a universe apart?
(This is a continuation of a series of posts about the “whole story” of the Bible. I plan to run one every week, on Tuesdays, with a printable PDF. The printable includes a brief 2-3 paragraph introduction, Bible passages to read, a key verse, 5-7 thought/discussion questions, and 2-3 activities for the kids. Here’s the Overview of the entire Bible series.)
On September 2, a couple of teenagers were spotted throwing smoke bombs on the Eagle Creek trail in Oregon–a part of the country that has experienced unseasonal dryness and too many fires in the last few years. A hiker confronted the kids: “Do you know how dangerous that is?”
Probably. But if they knew in theory how dangerous it was to lob fireworks in a tinder-dry forest, they hadn’t yet learned that real acts have real consequences. Such as an out-of-control wildfire that has consumed at least 30,000 acres of forest land, destroyed dozens of homes, and blackened some of the most beautiful scenery in the world.
They are young. The earth was young too, when a seemingly small act tipped it into a death spiral. The perpetrators, I’m sure, didn’t understand the consequences, even though they were warned. But the consequences played out anyway, in the people themselves (shame, deceit, murder, etc.) and in the scales of cosmic justice. God’s patience waited (I Peter 3:20) for several generations–and then, the flood.
Conservative Christians acknowledge that God has a right to judge. We have a little more trouble accepting that God is right to judge. Without judgment (which also involves putting a temporary halt to evil) we would have killed each other a long time ago. Without a final judgment, heaven would become hell. That doesn’t make widespread destruction any easier to think about (the children! the innocent animals! the towns and farms!), but a world without judgment would be even more destructive, and ultimately futile.
(This is a continuation of a series of posts about the “whole story” of the Bible. I plan to run one every week, on Tuesdays, with a printable PDF. The printable includes a brief 2-3 paragraph introduction, Bible passages to read, a key verse, 5-7 thought/discussion questions, and 2-3 activities for the kids. Here’s the Overview of the entire Bible series.)
(This is a continuation of a series of posts about the “whole story” of the Bible. I plan to run one every week, on Tuesdays, with a printable PDF. The printable includes a brief 2-3 paragraph introduction, Bible passages to read, a key verse, 5-7 thought/discussion questions, and 2-3 activities for the kids. Here’s the Overview of the entire Bible series.)
If the Bible is a story, it will share many of the elements of story, such as plot and characters. Last week we looked at another important (and often overlooked) factor of stories: setting. The setting God created was perfection, which makes it all the more ironic–if that’s the word–that the first characters to appear in our story rejected it. That introduces the first big story element: a problem.
They probably didn’t realize they were rejecting perfection, but they knew enough to not to do what they did. You may know the story, but have you ever thought about all the implications? You’ll have an opportunity to do so in this week’s challenge.
Two corrections: The scripture reference in Question 4 is missing the chapter. It’s Genesis 3:21-24, not Gen. 21-24. Three verses instead of three chapters. Also, this week’s challenge is missing a Key verse. How about Psalm 107:43:
James Franco may be a little weird (for lack of a better word), but I like that he has wide-ranging interests, like philosophy. In his short-lived YouTube series, Philosophy Time, he and Eliot Michaelson talked deep with various academics. This video of their interview with Princeton Professor Liz Harmon was making the rounds four years ago, but it’s worth another look:
Did that go by too quickly? Here’s Prof. Harmon’s argument (if you want to call it that) in her words with paraphrases. The italicized responses are mine, but James and I seemed to be thinking along the same lines at times.
Harmon: Some of our terminology when talking about abortion suggests it’s, like, always sad to end a life, even if you, like, feel you have to. But nah, not really. “. . . what I think is that among early fetuses, there are two different kinds of beings,” and one has moral status (i.e., a right to keep living) while one does not. “Your future as a person defines your moral status.”
Uh . . . okay. But what if you, Dr. Harmon, had been aborted as a, whaddayacallit, “early fetus”?
Harmon: Not a relevant question. Because I’m here.
But, isn’t that kind of 20/20 hindsight? I mean, like, what makes the difference between this nice garden spot we’re talking in here and the medical waste bin behind a Planned Parenthood clinic (where you might have ended up if you didn’t have a future)?
Harmon: What makes the difference is “that [a woman’s] intentions negates the moral status of that early fetus.” If she decides to have the abortion, that is.
So . . . what you’re saying is, the abortion is permissible because you had it, but it wouldn’t have been permissible if you hadn’t had it. [At this point, circular arrows are superimposed on the screen, indicating what kind of argument it is.]
The professor tries to clarify: “If your mother had chosen to abort her pregnancy—”
Whoa, mama! I mean, literally: are you sure you want to use the word “mother”?
“—then that wouldn’t have been the case, that you had moral status . . .”
(My head is starting to hurt)
Harmon: “. . . You would have had this very short existence in which you wouldn’t have mattered morally.”
Speaking of “morally” . . . .
(By now the guys look politely confused, as if they had finally given in to their wives’ demands to stop and ask for directions, and Prof. Harmon was the first passer-by they stopped to ask. (Just wait until they roll up the car window again—the wives are going to get an earful.)
You have to be pretty clever to keep with this argument. It’s not rocket science; it’s quantum physics. Just as a particle can be there and not there, a developing human being in the womb—what the professor calls an early fetus and a doting grandma calls a baby—is endowed and not endowed with moral status. Just as the figurative cat in the box was presumed to be alive or not-alive on the whim of a single particle, the early fetus (or possibly even late fetus) is futured or unfutured, depending on the thought processes of someone who is not him or her.
The elephant in the room is the being in the womb—not a thought experiment, like Schrodinger’s live-and-dead Cat, but a real biological phenomena. The DNA identify it as a human: more than that, a distinct human, with sex and hair color and fingerprints already determined. Figments of the imagination can disappear without consequence, but 58 million aborted human souls (more or less, since Roe v. Wade) add up in unforeseen consequences of guilt, carelessness, sexual irresponsibility, and general devaluation. The subterranean effects of legal abortion are impossible to measure, but don’t be fooled: they exist. And one consequence is irrational rationalization like this.
(Today we begin a series of posts about the “whole story” of the Bible. I plan to run one every week, on Tuesdays, with a printable PDF. The printable includes a brief 2-3 paragraph introduction, Bible passages to read, a key verse, 5-7 thought/discussion questions, and 2-3 activities for the kids.)
Every story has certain elements in order to be a story. We often think of characters first–somebody has to act in the story, and there’s usually a hero, or protagonist. Usually, though not always, there’s also an adversary, or antagonist. And then, of course, something has to happen. Some kind of problem develops, or a conflict arises, that the hero has to solve or resolve. The plot develops around this conflict and resolution, working its way to a climax.
But there’s another story element that we often overlook, and that’s the setting. In some contemporary stories, the setting is not especially consequential: it could be any modern city, or Midwestern small town. But in historical fiction, or science fiction, or regional fiction, the setting leans in, shaping a plot that couldn’t take place anywhere else, or in any other time. (I wrote about the importance of setting in great westerns on my other website.)
The Bible story also starts with setting: the heavens and the earth. We often pass over it in order to get to characters and plot, but for this week, let’s linger and think about what the setting means for this particular story. What meaning is packed into the very first sentence of the world’s greatest story?
Prayer is not a part of Christian life. It is Christian life. It’s what your conversion was about: union with Christ. It’s your side of the conversation, your participation in the divine nature (II Peter 1:4). And so many of us suck at it.
That’s the problem most of us have in teaching our children to pray. But it’s no excuse—we teach children every day those things we may not be so good at ourselves: be patient, don’t yell, say you’re sorry (and mean it). We don’t want to hinder these little ones from coming to Christ. So, when thinking about how to teach them to come to him through prayer, we should first think about what hinders us? Some possibilities:
Bullet-point lists (excuse the self-referential irony). “Five tips for improving your devotional life.” “Top ten secrets of success from the experts.” “Six ways from Sunday.” Goal-oriented people can’t resist a list, but their neatly-numerated charm is deceptive. If a human being were a collection of parts that could just be oiled up occasionally we’d be easy to operate, but we’re no more likely to put a numerated tip into practice than a well-spoken word from mom or an insight from C. S. Lewis.
The automated head-tip. If you were brought up in a Christian home you should be familiar with the posture your body assumes at the words, “Let us pray.” We’re accustomed to bowing heads and closing eyes at meals, bedtime, before the sermon, after the sermon, all during communion. This is not to be despised, but it creates a ritualized fog around something that should also be personal and intimate, and the longer we’ve been in church the more automated our prayer life can get. When your head bows, does your mind go on auto-prayer?
Our Martha mode. We’re “anxious and troubled about many things” (Luke 10:41), including how to pray. Sometimes the prayer guides and books make us even more anxious, because the suggestions don’t seem to “work,” or what helps for a while doesn’t hold up. The Lord’s gentle reminder about “the better part” doesn’t always help either—easy for him to say!
Endless distraction. I wonder if it was easier for the saints of old to pray when their lives weren’t so crowded with entertainment, shopping lists, stuff to buy and stuff to get rid of, places to go, errands to remember—they pop up in our prayers like ads on a website. (And if those annoy us, just imagine how God feels about it!)
This weird, other-worldly relationship. You’ve heard the comparisons: if you had an appointment with the President of the United States, or even the president of the local PTA, you would have something ready to say and the proper attitude with which to say it. But if you were married to the POTUS, or the boss of the PTA was your mom, every encounter would be ad lib and subject to the emotions of the moment. What we have with God is intimate transcendence, invisible presence, everyday awesomeness . . . come up with your own oxymoron, and you probably wouldn’t be too far from the truth. But then, the whole Christian faith is stuffed with these alarming juxtapositions (that we could not have made up ourselves).
Lack of faith that God is really there and really listening. Is that really what it comes down to?
The good news is that grownups and children are on this journey together. We grownups actually never stop being children in the Kingdom of Heaven, and having actual children in the house gives us a chance to revisit those lessons we didn’t fully learn the first time.
My main suggestion, for lack of anything wiser, is to become just a little more intentional about prayer as the kids grow up. Bullet-point list coming up! Some of these ideas may help; if not, they may be useful as a stepping stone to other ideas for weaving prayer, or an attitude of prayer, into the hours as they pass.
The old ACTS formula—prayer consisting of four elements of Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication—makes a helpful outline for instruction. At prayer times (family devotionals, bedtime, grace at meals), you might emphasize one or two of these (not all four): What can we praise God for today? What should you ask forgiveness for? Is there anyone we can ask God to help?
Speaking of bedtime prayers, this is a great time to review the day. Talk about things that might be troubling them or things they might be especially happy about. Share things you’re thankful about, discuss ways God can help with problems, probe for faults that need to be forgiven, etc. These topics may pop up naturally at the end of an outstanding or traumatic day, but if it’s just ordinary, ask a leading question or two to draw out prayer material: What was your favorite part of today? What would you like to do tomorrow? Who do you know that needs help? Keep these conversations brief, unless some issue comes up that needs to be talked out.
If you have more than two children, spending time with each at bedtime may not be possible. That’s okay; just try to arrange time for an evening chat twice a week, or every other day. If something comes up with a particular child, the schedule may have to be rearranged, but flexibility is a skill worth learning.
Remember Jesus. If you’ve ever read Mere Christianity, you may remember Lewis’s discussion of prayer as a kind of trinitarian group project. When we pray, it’s the Holy Spirit within prompting us, God the Father before us, and Jesus beside us. I’ve drawn great comfort from two verses about Christ’s intercession: “Who is there to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died and was raised and is now at the right hand of God interceding for us” (Rom. 8:34). Also Hebrews 7:25: “Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.” These passages would be good to memorize, and frequently thank Jesus for being there “Before the Throne of God Above” for us.
In times of crisis, don’t pray alone! When appropriate, include the kids in lifting up Grandma’s cancer diagnosis, Dad’s unemployment, big brother’s emergency appendectomy. Use your judgment about this, though. Don’t bring the kids alongside your marriage problems (they need Mom and Dad to at least appear unified) or burden them with too much trauma. Just show them that you, too, carry burdens that Jesus is willing to share.
Speaking of crisis, let prayer come naturally when you’re in a jam. Several years ago, during a car trip from Texas to Missouri, the alternator in our old station wagon went out. I didn’t notice the battery light, so we just ran it out until the vehicle simply stopped, giving me just enough time to pull over. Since my husband wasn’t along I was the only responsible adult, and my first impulse was blind panic (What do I do???). But the Holy Spirit prompted me to say, “We’re going to pray about this.” So I did, and within a minute after Amen a highway patrol car pulled up behind us. (My sister has a similar story about getting hopelessly lost in New York City.) Such a prompt reply is not necessarily going to happen every time, but pray anyway, and God will take care of the rest.
Make prayer a conversation. Even in informal settings, we tend to take turns, keep our heads bowed (furtively peeking when someone gets up), and if someone starts her turn the same time we do it’s so embarrassing. No one conducts conversations this way, unless it’s by the aid of a shaman-esque talking stick or mic. A group free-for-all wouldn’t work, but if it’s just you and Molly and Dan (for instance), you shouldn’t be afraid to ask a question in the midst of a prayer (“Who was that lady you mentioned?”) or add a coda (“And thanks for Molly’s first time on the big slide—that was fun!”). You may not even feel the need to bow your heads: hold hands and look up occasionally, or sing a short praise chorus or Psalm. (And singing during prayers is perfectly fine!)
If you have family devotionals, you might do occasional popcorn prayers, where you ask each child (and include Mom and Dad) to make a specific petition, offer a particular praise, thank God for something that happened during the day that made you happy, etc. You might even put slips of paper in a jar for each family member to draw out. That’s their prayer “assignment” for the evening. And it’s okay to swap.
If we’re in too much of a hurry to get to petitions, praising gets neglected. Cultivate a habit of praise during the day: if you hear a beautiful piece of music, enjoy a clear blue sky and a fresh breeze, witness a perfect figure-skating maneuver or home run, comment on it, and remember to praise God for it during prayer time. It’s fine, of course, to praise God for it in the moment, as long as the praise sounds natural and not calculated.
As I hope you can tell, all this is more attitude than checklist, habits of thought before action. I can’t tell you or your kids how to pray. Only God can do that—keep asking him.
You know the story, pictured in so many children’s Bibles and Sunday school literature: Jesus and the Children. When the officious grownups—his own followers—tried to brush off women who were bringing their babies for him to bless, his rebuke stopped them cold and still warms every mother’s heart: “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belong the Kingdom of God.”
This implies a lot—that little children would run to Jesus if they had the opportunity, that they are often hindered from coming, and that they possess some quality that preeminently suits them for membership in the kingdom of God. You’ve heard sermons on the “for such belongs” part, so I won’t dwell on it here. I’m interested in “Let them come” and “do not hinder.” Two questions: Would little children freely come? And if so, how are they “hindered”?
The answer to the first question is probably yes and no. In himself, Jesus is inherently appealing, as every excellent and beautiful thing we cherish in this world owes its very existence and character to him. But our minds are clouded by less-than-excellent and beautiful motives, distractions, and impulses. If we could see him clearly, we would all run to him, not just the little children. But we can’t, so most of us don’t, and that includes little children.
However . . . let’s say our motives are honorable and we have welcomed Jesus as our Lord and Savior and earnestly desire our children to do the same. Can we still hinder them?
Yes—with the best motives in the world. Here’s how:
A too-literal interpretation of Deuteronomy 6:7: “You shall teach [God’s law] diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise . . .” It’s one thing to apply God’s law in ordinary conversation, and another to drop leaden exhortations. Character education was a thing back in the 80s and 90s—remember that? (And did you notice any general improvements in character as a result?) Often this came in the form of reminders to “Be diligent” or “Be kind” coupled with mini-biographies of people who modeled these virtues. Too often it sounded like school, as though everyday relateable Mom or Dad switched off for a moment to let Preacher Mom or Dad make an announcement. As soon as Preacher Mom comes on, the kid tunes out.
“Jesus” training. You know the Sunday-school joke about the right answer to every question being “Jesus”? (It happened to me just a couple of Sundays ago, when I asked what the first five books of the Bible were. The answer, of course, is “Jesus.”) The statement “Jesus is the answer” is literally true but not always truly literate. That is, it takes a few steps to get from the problem to the answer, so when the kids come to you with a problem (or clearly have one they don’t want to talk to you about), don’t be so quick to solve it with the Jesus answer. Take some time to explore the issue, and as you do, you’ll find that Jesus almost certainly said something that applies. And if he didn’t say it, he did it.
Shutting down honest doubts. If you ever get a fluttery feeling in your stomach when your kindergartner wonders how all those animals could have fit inside the ark, or your pre-teen asks who made God, or you high-school senior demands where God was during the Holocaust . . . relax. It’s often a good sign; it means they’re thinking. Talk through their doubts, share (where appropriate) your own questions and uncertainties, explore possible answers, and offer to look into it further. You can be sure every question has been answered and no doubt necessitates unbelief all by itself.
Non-engagement with the culture. You will not protect children by isolating them from the world. Their main problem is within, not without. The question about how much to “engage” is a vexing one that parents need to think through carefully, since what may be appropriate for one family could be damaging for another. A mom’s background in literature or psychology, for example, could help guide her teen daughter through a suicide novel like 13 Reasons Why, where another mother with a super-sensitive son might be well-advised to skip the novel altogether (and the TV series even more). Don’t ever forget: They’re going to grow up. They’re going to leave you. They’re going to have to make these decisions about engagement on their own. Your job is to prepare them, not protect them.
Creating your own “culture.” As a homeschool mother from 1985 to 1996, I encountered parents who told me that homeschoolers were God’s new shock troops who were going to change the culture. They related everything to religion, scattered Bible quotes throughout the house, referenced Jesus everywhere, spoke in a certain vocabulary and dressed a certain way. Especially around their children. Many of these kids turned out just fine, but many others broke loose at the earliest possible moment. And by the way, they didn’t change the culture.
Relying too much on ourselves and our own resources. See “Creating your own culture,” above. With some parents, the impulse is almost frantic: If I don’t do x, my kids will fall into y. Chances are, they’re going to fall into some kind of sin; you may steer them away from drinking but they’ll stumble at sex. Or if they avoid all the fleshly pitfalls, they’ll fall prey to spiritual pride, which is even worse. Your Savior is also their Savior, and he is supremely able to do what you can’t.
Failing to be genuine. Is your speech more “religious” when speaking to your kids than when you talk to your peers? You can be sure they pick up on that, too.
If none of these apply to you, you are the perfect Christian mom or dad. Bad news: You’re not. Good news: Though you have a vital job to do, its success doesn’t depend on you. Even better news: God is fully aware of your weakness and has already accounted for it. That’s what the cross is about. So everybody take a deep breath and then we can get practical.
Once we become a little better about not hindering, we can start encouraging. The children in the story didn’t come to Jesus on their own accord; their mothers had to bring them. Even today, in a society vastly removed from first-century Palestine, it’s usually the mothers who bond early and teach their little ones to walk and talk and eat what’s good for them . . . and take their first steps toward God.
One very basic step along that road is learning to pray. Chances are, the very first person a child hears praying is a parent. It should be so easy, yet it’s hard to teach. In fact, the inspiration for this blog post is a mother asking me for advice in teaching kids to pray. She had little confidence that her children, ages 10 and 12, had never learned to pray on their own, in spite of all her modeling and teaching.
I told her I could at least think about it. So I did, and I came up with some thoughts. But you’ll have to come back next week to see what they are.
Mark Zuckerberg may be feeling a wee bit guilty. He’s had six months to reflect on how Facebook, his own brainchild, disseminated enough false information to swing an election and betray all the liberal values his heart holds dear. So he would like to redeem that wrong by making Facebook more of a force for good, to bring people together instead of driving them apart. Like a church, you know—or a little-league team.
That’s the reason Zuckerberg has been touring the U.S., stopping in every state. Political observers can’t help observing how much time he’s spent in Iowa, but maybe he likes the corn. His stated goal is to spread the gospel of community-through-Facebook across the land and eventually the world. That was the theme of the first-ever Facebook Communities Summit, held in Chicago late last month. Group administrators were invited to attend free of charge in order to network, share ideas and feedback, and hear from Facebook executives, including Zuckerberg himself, “about new products we’re building to help admins grow and manage their groups.” The founder elaborated on this vision in the Thursday-night keynote speech: “People are basically good. Everyone genuinely wants to help other people.” With that principle in mind, Facebook intends to make it easier for good folks to join other good folks for good purposes online.
The church, he said , used to meet that need and supply that sense of purpose. But with the decline in church participation, as well as in other local organizations like sports leagues, community spirit has taken a hit. “We started a project to see if we could get better at suggesting groups that will be meaningful to you. We started building artificial intelligence to do this. And it works. In the first 6 months, we helped 50% more people join meaningful communities.”
Good for him. The executive board seems to be grappling with some of the implications of balancing free speech and social responsibility—see the Hard Questions they’ve posed. I’m going to assume Zuckerberg is completely sincere about these means and ends . . .
But surely he must recognize that the internet, and social media in particular, is one reason local communities began to fall apart in the first place. Or if not a cause, at least a facilitator. Where else can you stream a movie, watch a football game without commercials, join a whole platoon of World of Warcraft gamers, and order a comfy couch (with free shipping) to serve as your base of operations? The internet allows us to live our entire lives inside our four walls if that’s what we want. It takes effort to pull yourself off the couch and go to church or a little-league game, still more to volunteer to teach Sunday School or coach a team. With so many family bonds broken already, more and more people see less and less reason to bind themselves.
Here are a few Hard Questions for Mark Zuckerberg:
If people are basically good, and everyone genuinely wants to help other people, why is there so much meanness and nastiness on Facebook?
If meaningful communities are formed around common interests alone, what’s to keep them from becoming echo chambers where everyone has the same opinion and dissent is not encouraged?
Also, if common interest is the glue, what happens when group members lose interest?
What is a “meaningful community,” anyway? Are there any guidelines in place? Will Facebook reserve the right to disallow any communities it thinks are not meaningful?
Facebook now has over two billion users, and I am one. I’ve joined a few groups and I’ve found links to interesting articles and I’ve enjoyed seeing pictures of weddings and grandkids. But I never confused it with community, because true community is not based on convenience, or even interest. The strongest communities, it turns out, are not voluntary: family, church, military, nation. You don’t choose them; they choose you. The glue is shared responsibility, and that can only be face to face. Not Facebook.
Those days are behind us, they say, except when some irritating male trait pops up in the workplace or too many men gather around the hyper-masculine president while he’s signing a bill. Patriarchy deserves no respect. The new definition is toxic masculinity, two words that tell you all you need to know about the proper way to think about what we used to call a “man’s man” or “all boy.” It’s not that we’re down on men, just that they need to stop being men, for their own good. “Toxic masculinity” is killing people, and the toxic males themselves are primary victims. Studies show it’s a leading cause of suicide among Canadian men, and no doubt elsewhere in the western world.
What is it? The article linked above teases out the following factors: “winning, emotional control, risk-taking, violence, dominance, playboy, self-reliance, primacy of work, power over women, disdain for homosexuals.” Telling boys to “man up” is a quick route to tearing them down.
I’m sure some boys are raised to this caricature; I’ve seen it in the movies and read about it in novels and memoirs. Stereotypical men exist, or there would be no stereotype. But some key elements are left out of this description, elements that round out the picture:
Solitary. What about comradeship, brothers-at-arms, or just good buddies?
Emotional control. I guess this refers to the “real men don’t cry” cliché. But anger and fear are also emotions—shouldn’t they be controlled?
Risk-taking. Well, of course–where would we be without that?
Dominance. For most men, a better word might be competition.
Self-reliance. As opposed to what—welfare reliance?
Power over women. In the past, well-brought-up boys were taught to use their power in defense of women. And wise women understood their power over men as well. It’s a subtle power, which is why it’s often overlooked, even squandered, by girls who aren’t taught to recognize it.
Maybe one reason for high suicide rates among men is that simple (non-toxic) masculinity is no longer affirmed or valued in an information-based, sedentary, air-conditioned, risk-averse culture. In fact it’s often mocked and disdained: Men have made a mess of things—it’s time for the women to take over. Neither sex has a corner on virtue, so I’m not especially optimistic about a culture ruled by women. Before saying goodbye to the patriarchy, however, here’s a partial list of what we owe to it, with gratitude toward the high-achievers, deep thinkers, bold adventurers, and everyday working stiffs who pulled on their boots every day and went out to do their part in all kinds of weather:
Tall buildings (and short ones, too)
Roads and railroads
Steel and concrete
Quarries
Universities
Philosophy
Safe neighborhoods
Banks
Electrical grids
Nations and governments
Democracy
Western civilization, based on Christianity, which introduced the idea of equality, liberty, and justice for all to the world.
It should go without saying that the patriarchy would have achieved none of this without a matriarchy to stabilize and civilize it. Disbanding both seems like a wrong move. Passive, dependent, powerless males may live longer, but I suspect their societies won’t. Because there will always be men of the opposite type who will storm the gates once they know the virtuous men have been shamed out of their manhood.
Since my husband and I married some decades ago, we’ve never owned a television. That used to be saying something: now not so much because any show can be streamed over any electronic device, and we do have a few of those. Still, the very idea of owning an entire TV series would have never occurred to me until I fell hard for Friday Night Lights. I have friends who never tuned in to FNL because they hate football. But as any fan will tell you, It’s not about football! The game is the metaphor. What the show is really about is fatherhood.
Okay, maybe not all about. But after watching every episode at least three times, I’m struck by the full spectrum of father-son relationships:
Billy and Tim Riggins’ father is a deadbeat, forcing Billy to be a substitute dad for Tim—a role he’s
Behind every successful man is a good woman.
no way ready for.
Matt Saracen’s father has a tough time with relationships, bonding with the U.S. Army instead of his son.
Jason Street’s father has a great relationship with his son until tragedy strikes and throws them both into uncharted waters.
Landry Clark’s father loves and supports him—almost to a fault.
Brian “Smash” Williams’ father met an untimely death, leaving a hole in the heart.
J.D. McCoy’s father worships his boy’s talent but can’t accept his weaknesses.
Vince Howard’s father is in jail, after planting a tangle of mixed emotions and resentment.
Luke Cafferty’s father can’t understand his son’s need to break away .
Some of the girls have complicated relationships with their dads, too, especially Lyla Garrity, and mothers are more of an issue with Becky Sproles and Tyra Collette. Tami Taylor, school counselor and principal, mothers troubled students relentlessly. But the show is more about dads, mainly Tami’s husband Eric, the Coach.
Coach Taylor has no sons, only daughters, and his relationship with teenage daughter Julie is a particular challenge for him (to be fair, Julie would be a challenge for anyone). He’s by no means a perfect father, but at various times he supplies that need for Tim, Matt, Jason, Smash, Vince, Billy, and Luke. He’s the necessary presence to tell them to suck it up, to be a man, to push harder, to stand up, to stand down, to make it right. He’s a catalog of traits that in another context might be called Toxic Masculinity. He’s not one to cry, and when he can’t think of anything to say he says nothing. But he’ll be there. Every player on the team knows he can knock on the Coach’s door at any time of the day or night, and the Coach will be there, even if he chews them out first. If he makes a mistake, he’ll correct it sooner or later, and if trust falters he’ll gain it back.
Riggins learning to man up
Buddy Garrity, one of the most frustrating characters ever to appear on network television, is the big contrast. As a man with misplaced priorities—for him it really is all about football—Buddy fails at fatherhood spectacularly, first by driving away his wife and then by alienating his favorite daughter. Buddy is Eric’s foil throughout the series, his opposite in almost every respect: emotional, spiritually weak, untrustworthy, and conniving; more a wayward son than a father. But even he might be getting a grip on the fatherhood thing when his own son comes home. Likewise Billy Riggins, a father of three by series’ end, who has screwed up throughout all five seasons but at least picked a good role model in the Coach.
What’s a father? What can he do that a mother can’t? Mothers like Tami, Corinna Williams, and Katie McCoy provide emotional support. They cry and hug and plead. Every kid needs emotional support, but what the Coach provides is mind and will support. The keynote event of the first season, and in a way the whole series, is star-quarterback Jason Street’s unfortunate tackle that leaves him a paraplegic for life. In a single second, a young man’s strength is cut off at the knees, and it could happen to anyone. It does happen sooner or later—to everyone. That’s what a good father knows, and at the same time he knows that strength must be exercised. Not grimly, but joyfully: “There’s a joy to this game,” he tells his rookie team at the beginning of Season 4, just before they go out on the field and take the worst mauling of their lives.
Temperamentally, mothers make the home a place children can always return to, while fathers prepare their children to leave. Mothers teach security; fathers teach risk. “Give us all gathered here tonight the strength to remember that life is so very fragile,” the Coach prays after Jason’s accident. It’s a prayer repeated in the promotional video for the last season:
We are all vulnerable and we will all, at some point in our lives, fall.
We will all fall.
We must carry this in our hearts: that what we have is special,
that it can be taken from us, and when it is taken from us, we will be tested.
We will be tested to our very souls . . . .
It is these times, it is this pain, that allows us to look inside ourselves.
Coach Taylor has plenty of opportunity to look inside himself, and when he faces his own ultimate test (which is not what you think) he doesn’t fail. The decline in American fatherhood is well-documented and probably a big reason why the kids are so sad. They haven’t learned that strength is for testing, that failure is inevitable, that pain has a purpose, and that there can be joy in it all. The best person to teach all that is a good father.
hindered from coming, and that they possess some quality that preeminently suits them for membership in the kingdom of God. You’ve heard sermons on the “for such belongs” part, so I won’t dwell on it here. I’m interested in “Let them come” and “do not hinder.” Two questions: Would little children freely come? And if so, how are they “hindered”?
too many men gather around the hyper-masculine president while he’s signing a bill. Patriarchy deserves no respect. The new definition is toxic masculinity, two words that tell you all you need to know about the proper way to think about what we used to call a “man’s man” or “all boy.” It’s not that we’re down on men, just that they need to stop being men, for their own good. “Toxic masculinity” is killing people, and the toxic males themselves are primary victims. 
