Broken Homes
It's really hard to write. I have had ideas of late of writing something, trying to begin to write something, but so far it it is so difficult, I am not sure how far I am ready to get. No big deal, I doubt I will really have time or be ready to write for another 10 years or so. I tend to get kind of mean when I write. Not sure why that is. Maybe something I should pray about. SO, I guess take this little bit as in the vain of the prophetic ... it isn't directed at anyone specific as much as our whole culture and evil world, the one that Jesus came to overcome and save.
Broken homes –
Well the stats are that since the 80s 50% of us experienced the divorce of our parents. Of course that is only obvious brokenness, the family has been eternally under attack in this country (it is a land of industry remember … we ran all those family-oriented people out at the beginning, the natives as they are called). So what happens when you have experienced the disruption of something so basic as your two begetters splitting ways: well poverty, emotional and behavioral problems, higher risk of abuse and further breakdown as step-parents come and go. Quoting an article from the Atlantic Monthly in 1993, “Children who grow up in single-parent or stepparent families are less successful as adults, particularly in the two domains of life—love and work—that are most essential to happiness.”
Go figure. Our church is mostly people from college up to 35 and I see this struggle everywhere. Struggles to love and find love, desperation when love is lost or not found and struggles to identify work or to find vocation. Thankfully the gospel calls you into a household. The gospel calls you into a new place under the Father. This is not going to be an easy transition. The old idea that catechism is “conversion therapy” will have to consider this fact. We bring all our past ideas, painfully false though they be, into this new world of church.
When so many of us have suffered broken commitments our muscles of commitment are torn asunder by the many times we committed afresh only to have someone walk away or live apart. This is the WORLD. Accursed is the world for all the pain it wrecks daily upon the renewed face of our humanity. Martin Buber wisely interpreted the child as a creative reality, “the human race is born every hour in a thousand countenances” as what has never been comes to be. Yet we squander it all for personal happiness and through a corporate brokenness and loneliness and sinfulness. And no one speaks out. America no longer instructs us in dating and marriage and family, but only in lewdness and sexiness. We need to rise from the dead, but we have to admit we are dead first.
Decadence reigns, so I’ve heard, when the weakest and most valuable are squandered. I once heard a historian at Princeton commenting on Rene Renard’s philosophy that every society must have a scapegoat, that ours is our children. He meant abortion primarily, freeing both parents for career and work, but let us frankly admit that we sacrifice our children in a number of ways. Corporate America is a trite and defining term for our whole nation and the most liberal minded seem to miss that. Out of one side of their mouth they condemn Texas big business and out of the other side they send every able-bodied parent into the workplace to sacrifice their life upon the alter of careerism. Work is an idol in this country. We have lost our moorings and someone decided they would take cash. Its not just the ninth ward that is being plundered in during its catastrophe, the whole human capital in this country is plundered every day.
And that leads me to something else. We have all grown up being told we can do anything. Like candy in our brain, the government educators told us we could do anything if we just put our mind to it. They wrote curriculum for us so that our self would be esteemed. Well esteem it! No one actually esteemed our self and that is why we needed curriculum and textbooks … no one actually looked into our souls and said “I esteem you!” No one repeated those precious words of Sartre that justify our existence … “You are loved!” And so sitting in a room with 30 other kids our teacher read it to us from a textbook: “You can do anything, kids, if you just put your mind to it!”
And more acid brainfall we are told that everything is up for interpretation. Not only did we miss our sex talk and every other talk from our daddies, we learn from the free-thinkers (trickle-down from Paris coffee shops in 1900 no doubt) that everything is relative. You might have grown up thinking that there was right and wrong, but all that had to do with your parents and your church. So you get to decide your morality. You get to decide your profession. You get to decide the meaning of your life. Meanwhile, higher education kept getting higher and higher. Colleges were expanding and everyone needed a degree and then a masters and then a PhD. But what if you found out in your masters program that you actually don’t want to do that. Well get another one … its all on loan.
So in case you haven’t heard, there is a new life stage for this change. Its called adultolescence and it is characterized by (1) identity exploration, (2) instability, (3) focus on self, (4) feeling in limbo, in transition, in-between, and (5) sense of possibilities, opportunities, and unparalleled hope. No wonder. This is what we were all set up for. Without homes, without parents we are set to wander on a pilgrimage of self, usually accompanied by our pals who are also in search of identity and stability and self.
Broken homes –
Well the stats are that since the 80s 50% of us experienced the divorce of our parents. Of course that is only obvious brokenness, the family has been eternally under attack in this country (it is a land of industry remember … we ran all those family-oriented people out at the beginning, the natives as they are called). So what happens when you have experienced the disruption of something so basic as your two begetters splitting ways: well poverty, emotional and behavioral problems, higher risk of abuse and further breakdown as step-parents come and go. Quoting an article from the Atlantic Monthly in 1993, “Children who grow up in single-parent or stepparent families are less successful as adults, particularly in the two domains of life—love and work—that are most essential to happiness.”
Go figure. Our church is mostly people from college up to 35 and I see this struggle everywhere. Struggles to love and find love, desperation when love is lost or not found and struggles to identify work or to find vocation. Thankfully the gospel calls you into a household. The gospel calls you into a new place under the Father. This is not going to be an easy transition. The old idea that catechism is “conversion therapy” will have to consider this fact. We bring all our past ideas, painfully false though they be, into this new world of church.
When so many of us have suffered broken commitments our muscles of commitment are torn asunder by the many times we committed afresh only to have someone walk away or live apart. This is the WORLD. Accursed is the world for all the pain it wrecks daily upon the renewed face of our humanity. Martin Buber wisely interpreted the child as a creative reality, “the human race is born every hour in a thousand countenances” as what has never been comes to be. Yet we squander it all for personal happiness and through a corporate brokenness and loneliness and sinfulness. And no one speaks out. America no longer instructs us in dating and marriage and family, but only in lewdness and sexiness. We need to rise from the dead, but we have to admit we are dead first.
Decadence reigns, so I’ve heard, when the weakest and most valuable are squandered. I once heard a historian at Princeton commenting on Rene Renard’s philosophy that every society must have a scapegoat, that ours is our children. He meant abortion primarily, freeing both parents for career and work, but let us frankly admit that we sacrifice our children in a number of ways. Corporate America is a trite and defining term for our whole nation and the most liberal minded seem to miss that. Out of one side of their mouth they condemn Texas big business and out of the other side they send every able-bodied parent into the workplace to sacrifice their life upon the alter of careerism. Work is an idol in this country. We have lost our moorings and someone decided they would take cash. Its not just the ninth ward that is being plundered in during its catastrophe, the whole human capital in this country is plundered every day.
And that leads me to something else. We have all grown up being told we can do anything. Like candy in our brain, the government educators told us we could do anything if we just put our mind to it. They wrote curriculum for us so that our self would be esteemed. Well esteem it! No one actually esteemed our self and that is why we needed curriculum and textbooks … no one actually looked into our souls and said “I esteem you!” No one repeated those precious words of Sartre that justify our existence … “You are loved!” And so sitting in a room with 30 other kids our teacher read it to us from a textbook: “You can do anything, kids, if you just put your mind to it!”
And more acid brainfall we are told that everything is up for interpretation. Not only did we miss our sex talk and every other talk from our daddies, we learn from the free-thinkers (trickle-down from Paris coffee shops in 1900 no doubt) that everything is relative. You might have grown up thinking that there was right and wrong, but all that had to do with your parents and your church. So you get to decide your morality. You get to decide your profession. You get to decide the meaning of your life. Meanwhile, higher education kept getting higher and higher. Colleges were expanding and everyone needed a degree and then a masters and then a PhD. But what if you found out in your masters program that you actually don’t want to do that. Well get another one … its all on loan.
So in case you haven’t heard, there is a new life stage for this change. Its called adultolescence and it is characterized by (1) identity exploration, (2) instability, (3) focus on self, (4) feeling in limbo, in transition, in-between, and (5) sense of possibilities, opportunities, and unparalleled hope. No wonder. This is what we were all set up for. Without homes, without parents we are set to wander on a pilgrimage of self, usually accompanied by our pals who are also in search of identity and stability and self.
Comments
I heard the other day that Wendell Berry is a big read, but who is following his life example. It is great that everyone is reading such a man, but we must start living it out.
Frankie Lee said,
"Where I have come to roam?"
"It's not a house," said Judas Priest,
"It's not a house . . . it's a home."
This classic line from Mr. Zimmerman came to mind after reading this.
It seems that most Americans have charged off in life looking for the house of brick and mortar, while eternity suggests a home of love and grace.
A career can produce material to build. A life lived through love and grace from our LORD will produce humility, the home of all homes.