Relocating To Elfland

“I would rather have a boy of mine stand high in his studies than high in athletics, but I could a great deal rather have him show true manliness of character than show either intellectual or physical prowess.” (Theodore Roosevelt, in a letter to his son Kermit)

“Preaching safety to the child, safety above all, safety always, world without end, has the considerable advantage of instilling in him the expectation that life should be provided with boardwalks and handrails.” (Esolen, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child)

“A person recognizes how planned most days of most people are at the moments when surprises or accidents occur. The presence or actions of children make demands or cause tumult. The beckoning or threatening presence of the child reveals how captive of ordinariness our lives can be.” (Martin E. Marty, The Mystery of the Child, p. 36)

“The family is the basic form of human community, combining civil and religious life under the leadership of a single patriarchal prophet, priest, and king.” (Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, p. 4.389)

Two highly important (and woefully unappreciated) distinctives of Christian marriage:

1. The vows don’t include a return policy when one decides one has made a mistake.

2. No ledger book is permitted. Ever. Else grace is made void.

“Let it be the principal part of your care and labour in all their education, to make holiness appear to them the most necessary, honourable, gainful, pleasant, delightful, amiable state of life; and to keep them from apprehending it either as needless, dishonourable, hurtful, or uncomfortable. Especially draw them to the love of it, by representing it as lovely. And therefore begin with that which is easiest and most grateful to them (as the history of the Scripture, and the lives of the martyrs, and other good men, and some short, familiar lessons). For though in restraining them from sin, you must go to the highest step at first, and not think to draw them from it by allowing them the least degree; (for every degree disposeth to more, and none is to be allowed, and a general reformation is the easiest as well as absolutely necessary;) yet in putting them upon the practice of religious duties, you must carry them on by degrees, and put them at first upon no more than they can bear; either upon the learning of doctrines too high and spiritual for them, or upon such duty for quality or quantity as is over-burdensome to them; for if you once turn their hearts against religion, and make it seem a slavery and a tedious life to them, you take the course to harden them against it. And therefore all children must not be used alike; as all stomachs must not be forced to eat alike. If you force some to take so much as to become a surfeit, they will loathe that sort of meat as long as they live. I know that nature itself, as corrupt, hath already an enmity to holiness, and I know that this enmity is not to be indulged in children at all; but withal I know that misrepresentations of religion, and imprudent education, is the way to increase it, and that the enmity being in the heart, it is the change of the mind and love that is the overcoming of it, and not any such constraint as tendeth not to reconcile the mind by love. The whole skill of parents for the holy education of their children, doth consist in this, to make them conceive of holiness as the most amiable and desirable life; which is by representing it to them in words and practice, not only as most necessary, but also as most profitable, honourable, and delightful. Prov. iii. 17, ‘Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace,’ &c.” (Richard Baxter, A Christian Directory, p. 451)

It has been some time since I read anything with so much enthusiasm as this three-part article by Leon Kass: part 1, part 2, part 3. I was first introduced to Leon and Amy Kass through their work, Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar: Readings on Courting and Marrying. The present article should be digested by every serious-minded modern Christian; I do not believe there is any hope for the revolution Kass longs to see – and of which our civilization stands in the direst possible need – except through a revitalized Christendom in which God’s people resolutely refuse to continue their compromises with the spirit of the age. (For those who may be interested, and who wondered about the ellipses in Kass’s article, here is a link to the full original piece.)

“This is . . . the glory and honor of man as king of creation: ‘Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue and have dominion . . .’ (Gn. 1:25). Each family is indeed a kingdom, a little church, and therefore . . . a way to the Kingdom. Somewhere, even if it is only in a single room, every man at some point in his life has his own small kingdom. It may be hell, and a place of betrayal, or it may not. Behind each window there is a little world going on. How evident this becomes when one is riding on a train at night and passing innumerable lighted windows: behind each one of them the fullness of life is a ‘given possibility,’ a promise, a vision. This is what [marriage ceremonies] express: that here is the beginning of a small kingdom which can be something like the true Kingdom. The chance will be lost, perhaps even in one night; but at this moment it is still an open possibility. Yet even when it has been lost, and lost again a thousand times, still if two people stay together, they are in a real sense king and queen to each other. And after forty odd years, Adam can still turn and see Eve standing beside him, in a unity with himself which in some small way at least proclaims the love of God’s Kingdom. In movies and magazines the ‘icon’ of marriage is always a youthful couple. But once, in the light and warmth of an autumn afternoon, this writer saw on the bench of a public square, in a poor Parisian suburb, an old and poor couple. They were sitting hand in hand, in silence, enjoying the pale light, the last warmth of the season. In silence: all words had been said, all passion exhausted, all storms at peace. The whole life was behind – yet all of it was now present, in this silence, in this light, in this warmth, in this silent unity of hands. Present – and ready for eternity, ripe for joy. This to me remains the vision of marriage, of its heavenly beauty.” (Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World)

My father was a primary school educator for thirty-nine years. He and my mother reared a family of three children, all of whom are walking faithfully with the Lord. He did all this while serving as a lay pastor for some dozen years. Let’s just say he knows a lot about people, and about little people in particular. When he speaks, I listen.

Recently he and I were discussing why communication breaks down between parents and their “teenage” children (I don’t believe in the whole notion of “teens,” incidentally, but that’s another story). He gave me a huge window of insight when he told me that, in his experience, around the age of eight children stop looking for meaningful engagement (“connection,” as it is sometimes called) with their parents and start looking to their peers instead. But a main reason, he said, why children stop trying to engage with their parents around this age is that the parents have made it clear they’re not really interested. Often, the children have been not just neglected or ignored; they know their parents find them downright irritating. The reason for the social and attitudinal transition, then, lies in general with the parents, not the children (who simply take their relational needs to those who will respond, i.e., their peers).

Running this through the grid of my own experience, it’s important to know what my father has in mind when he speaks of meaningful engagement. I know a lot of Christian parents try very hard to be involved in the lives of their young children. They are not passive – the kind of dads who sit in front of the television all evening, the kind of moms who visibly want to escape from their children at every opportunity. But it needs to be observed that one can do a lot of things with and for one’s children (take them to soccer games, attend school plays and PTA meetings, even read books and play games) and still not necessarily engage them meaningfully. One can, as a Christian parent, even have consistent family worship, catechize, and talk to one’s children, and still not engage them meaningfully. The last preposition is important: talking to a child is not the same thing as talking with a child in a way that opens up his or her inner thought-world, the heart out of which issue the springs of his or her life. And it is this latter kind of communication my father has in mind, and which he and my mother practiced brilliantly in rearing me.

Building a bridge to another human heart takes effort, whether that human is young or old. One must ask questions without intimidating. One must take more time than one reasonably has. One must learn to think the way another person thinks, which is often about as much fun as learning to speak a foreign language. One must encounter alien fears, alien joys, alien sorrows, alien ways of processing information. This is acutely difficult with children, especially young children who know next to nothing about communicating (do tantrums count?). It takes effort to figure out why a child is angry or sad. It takes effort to figure out how to help a child connect what she knows with something she doesn’t yet know. It takes effort to value what a little boy values. It is painstaking to intuit what is making a child’s eyes gleam with pleasure, or flash with frustration. How is one to see and feel what a child sees and feels when the child can’t articulate it? But then, are these problems so very different from those we encounter with other adults? Is it ever easy to cross the grand canyon between ourselves and another soul?

But the proof of a pudding, as they say, is in the eating. When a child has grown up with parents who expend the effort to “connect”; when a child has never known a day when it is not the most natural thing in the world to talk eye-to-eye with mom and dad; when a child learns from day one that mom and dad care deeply about what’s going on inside him, even when (especially when) he is being a real brat; this is the capital from which a family draws in challenging years when self-consciousness emerges with a vengeance, and the world is filled with recalcitrant questions and drives. I passed through some very troubled water as a “teen,” but it was too late – my heart was already knit to my parents. Even when I slammed the door as hard as I could in their faces, I couldn’t escape the fact that I wanted them to beat it down. I wanted to talk to them about what was going on inside, because that was how it had been for years.

I might add that parents who have the hearts of their children, and energetically maintain this privilege, need not fear usurpation by peers. Influences will come, but there is a basis to work with a child in responding to those influences, as one sees in the opening chapters of Proverbs. There is no formula here, and cases are different, but as a general rule the child who enjoys meaningful engagement with his or her parents from the earliest years will not be eager to give this up. It will even be possible to draw peers into this engagement; it will be possible for parents to care for their children’s peers whose home lives are a wreck. It’s a gift that keeps on giving.

Scenario #1 [in a Christian home near you]: After a family dinner in which all present have been noisily discussing vacation plans, the father pulls his Bible off the shelf and reads a chapter to his family, interspersing one or two comments. The atmosphere in the room is instantly changed: the mother listens politely, without response; the children stare off into space, visibly waiting for this to be over, and answer their father’s occasional questions in bored monosyllables.

Scenario #2 [in the same home, at the same meal]: After closing in prayer, the father asks, “What did you all think of Iron Man 2?” The room fairly explodes with breathless responses (including extended quotations and reenactments), which carry on for the next thirty minutes.

So here’s my question: What has happened in this Christian home (and a thousand others like it), that the Word of the Lord of heaven and earth is treated not even with respect, let alone genuine interest, while a silly popcorn flick can carry the conversation for hours?

To be clear, I am not saying our response to the Word of God should resemble the way we react to a popcorn flick. Family worship shouldn’t look like movie night, any more than a Shakespeare reading should look like movie night. But something is wrong, surely, when those in a Christian household “check out” at the opening of the scriptures.

Few things are more discouraging to me as a pastor than seeing this household issue writ large in the church community. Sometimes I ask myself: What would it take to see fathers speak to their families in worship, with every member on the edge of his or her seat? What would it take to see discussions of Sabbath sermons in which every participant, young and old, is intently engaged? What would it take for God’s people to be so “into” the thought-world of their scriptures that they prefer to speak of its teachings, histories, promises, and precepts rather than the latest cheap entertainment? Warfront soldiers do not tolerate news of battle plans and progress; they long for any word that will give them encouragement, direction, and help in the struggle at hand. Yet to observe the soldiers of Christ in many homes and churches, one would think they are soldiers on holiday, who want nothing less than to hear anything about the realities of war.

In fairness, it may be that the father in our scenarios has never done the hard work of engaging the minds, hearts, and imaginations of his household. They may be bored because he is boring; and they imagine, then, that God and His kingdom are boring. Or he may be a hypocrite, full of pious words while living a pagan life, and they see right through it. And certainly a word must be said about personality: there are strong silent types who will never say much in response to the Word – but I have known big burly quiet types whose silence conceals a burning heart, and who stand ready in the moment of battle to do mighty exploits for their King.

“He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children, that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments; and that they should not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God” (Ps 78:5–8).

I know of no more urgent task in the modern church than to recover and execute this mandate. O God! make us faithful to it.