Category: Fatherhood
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Like father, Like Father.
The devaluation of father and the death of God are the same thing. Or, at least, they comfort each other. They share an elective affinity. I’m not arguing causality here, in either direction. I don’t know that devaluing father causes the ideology of God’s death. Nor do I know that atheism leads to…
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Leaders, fear deference
I would not have written the laws and regulations about sexual harassment that control the American workplace in the 21st century. They over-reach. They facilitate the false grievances that cluster around “political correctness” in all its forms. But humans ARE corrupt, and so tend to abuse any power advantage. And these laws are an…
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Positive “Socialization” Is A Myth
We homeschool, and so we hear occasionally the concern about the “socialization” of homeschoolers. Homeschool families think this concern is silly, of course, and gladly take the debate every time another news story appears about some rotten event in a public school somewhere in America. Which is every minute or so. But I have to…
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To Turn, And Toddle: More On Love And Power
“…whoever does not turn and become like a toddler…” When Jesus enjoins childlikeness it has nothing to do with their “innocence”. Modern exegetes just insert “innocence” into this passage in an unthinking reflex. Jesus is indeed talking about “humility”, for sure, but from the context here and other passages (see Paul in Romans 12, for…
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To A Discouraged Leader
You walked into the meeting so upbeat at the opportunity to share your vision. But even as you talked, you could see the lists of objections forming behind the eyes of several listeners — the usual suspects, whose first reaction to most new ideas is to throw up a smokescreen of reasons why we can’t…
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The Moral Cocoon versus The Intellectual Cocoon
We homeschool. There’s a lot of talk about homeschool children growing up in a cocoon. Should they? Yes, and no. But first: almost every parent creates a cocoon of some type for their children. The instinct of even the least reflective parent is to control what strikes the child’s sense-organs. “Children should not grow up too fast”: it’s universal. In its…
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“Backtalk” and Authentic Prayer
It seems the sweetest of children eventually hit a stage when they mouth off about everything. Some parents call this “backtalk” and generally think it is to be suppressed as much as possible, or maybe just ignored. [Note: “Backtalk” may be a regional term. It’s familiar to me from growing up in small-town West…
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Pyramid Religion and Parenting
In Islam, God is the Ruler. He sits atop the pyramid of the cosmos and watches everything down below to keep them all in their right place. In this type of religion, the problem of our world is disorder and the solution is His will. Force. Dominion. Obediance or rebellion. All that matters is…
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Fatherlessness
This generation of evangelicals really is fatherless and adrift. They know that, they ache over it, they cannot pretend not to know it, but they have no intention of turning back to their fathers. And that means repentance has not yet been given. — Douglas Wilson, reviewing The Shack. Evangelicals have lost fatherhood, because they…
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Fathers Give Good Gifts
In the garden, in the cool of the day, God had the habit of visiting Adam and Eve. God didn’t live there, it was the couple’s home. God dropped in, every day. (In another real sense, God is everywhere – but the details of the biblical narrative are important and tell us real things about…