A Time to Laugh

It’s been eight years since we said goodbye to our Elise. I still get anxious as June comes to an end. I get urpy when the starry bunting goes up for sale. I still feel wistful when we watch the fireworks in uncomfortable lawn chairs. It still feels like someone’s missing.

I still try to make her extra short life meaningful and happy. I’ve smocked some dresses for other little girls who’ve gone to Heaven before their first breath. I try to do it every year, but once my little brood on Earth doubled, I had a hard time finishing. I started one dress three years ago (!) that I’m determined to finish this summer.

But my grief has changed. I’d like to think it’s “aged.” Like wine. Sweeter.

All because of these little people around me.

When they see a little girl in a picture book, Isaac explains to his brother, “Gavin, that’s Elise!”

When he asks about Heaven, he imagines that her house “smells like grapes.”

When they look at my baby charm bracelet, they ask about each charm — the ones for themselves and for their siblings in Heaven. I explain that they for sure had an older brother in Heaven.

“What’s his name?” Isaac wonders.

“Well, we didn’t name him, honey, because we didn’t get to know him enough. What do you think his name is?”

He thinks. For a long, long time. “Sonic. Yes, Sonic!”

Awhile back I told them that when they find a penny on the ground, that’s Elise saying “hello!” This helps them and me. They feel connected to their sister and it helps me remember. And it saves me from having to lean over to pick up any change we find.

On a recent and long car ride, Isaac pensively decided, “Mommy? I think that Papa and Sonic are sending me pennies from Heaven too.”

He is planning a party for Elise’s birthday. “She’s never seen a train movie. So I think it should be trains. . . . and red. She needs a red cake!”

Celebrating is so easy for him. So joyful. I think, thanks to these little ones, my grief is growing up to be more like theirs. It’s maturing to be more like a child’s.

A foretaste of Heaven, if you ask me.

Cross-posted on Mothering by Grace

A busy kitchen remodel and a frenetic Disney vacation have given me time to digest some of the more subtle but still dramatically different ideas I’m hearing outside of fundamentalism.

In fundamentalism, appeals to humility are a persistent trope. Keswick author Andrew Murray’s little book Humility is a regular assignment to BJU undergraduates, and so it both describes and prescribes fundamentalist preaching on the subject. You can read the text for yourself. In essence, Murray laments that humility should be the chief virtue we pursue. Which is like saying that we have to work hard at relaxing or we need to wash ON some dirt. That just doesn’t make sense.

It’s as (oxy)moronic as saying that we have to earn grace.

So I sat with my mouth hanging open this past Sunday during the sermon about “Putting off Pride.” Pastor DuBose described pride initially with Edgar Allen Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado.” The antagonist Fortunato falls into a drunken state and is immured — goaded by his destructive arrogance in his own prowess.

The definition of pride in this sermon?

Pride leads to isolation. Moral self-righteousness, correct doctrine, or elaborate formulas all let the walls build up and destroy community. They are all prideful.

What? I have never heard that one before. Never. Never, ever.

I know that my rank introversion makes isolation an easy habit. Being social or part of a large group is not my bent. And that natural and God-given personality quirk can be good. But it can also be insulating and dysfunctional.

Even (dare I say it) . . . separating.

Fundamentalism got it all backwards. In that ethic, humility is putting yourself down to put God up. It’s binary. It’s either-or. It’s individualistic. It’s something to strive for.

In this new world, humility is being with. It’s being with God and with your brothers and sisters and with your neighbors and with your “enemies.”

And because this is so new and so against my personality, I’m really out of practice.

How to be a Gadfly:

• Pick a cause that you’re passionate about, and ride that horse for all you’re worth.
• Start small. Your cause may be an item of earth-shaking significance or something utterly obscure, but you’re more likely to get attention, and risk serious consequences, if your views push people’s buttons. So be content with small victories in the beginning and work up from there.
• Share your views. Write letters to the editors of newspapers and to your elected officials. Create a Web site, or visit one of the existing ‘gadfly’ sites to talk with like-minded persons.
• Be prepared to swim against the current.
• Take heart from all the gadflies who have gone before. Know that you’re part of a proud tradition.

Humans are human because they are conscious of living within a community. When the sense of fellowship is lost humanity is lost.

Giambattista Vico

Symmetry works for me. Not a Jeffersonian kind of decorating symmetry where the left side of your house matches the right. But a symmetry of feeling. It’s almost a smell. A color.

I felt that this week. I haven’t felt that symmetry in awhile — after all the upheaval we’ve endured. I found Monkey Joes — that white-noise-and-air-filled indoor playground over on the Motor Mile. Wednesdays are half-price. The food looks lousy. The clerks seem numb. The TV is always on the Food network which only makes the food look lousier. They have massage chairs you have pay to be nice to you. Wi-fi is free though.

The boys play hard there. Happily jumping and sliding and pretending. If you’re ever there, my children are the ones with the pool-noodle swords. They are always the children with the swords. How can a warrior — even a wee warrior — leave home without his sword?

And I read. I read so much the last two visits that I actually feel like a scholar again. I have about 50 pages of notes on that reading and an outline floating around my head for another book. It’s been bliss.

I know that I am a bit of misfit. I am the Square Peg who never fits in the round hole. And I’ve decided that despite what my previous world told me (that such oddity is probably the result of sin), this is how God made me. I’m supposed to be this way. I’m supposed to not fit. I have the gift not of making people comfortable (hospitality) but of making people uncomfortable. I’m a gadfly.

I sat at the Monkey Joes’ desk right near the action. I scattered my books across the top, got out my colored pens, and my legal pad. I had overstuffed my purse with random thoughts scrawled on post-its. And even though I was periodically interrupted by a runny nose or a lost Pooh hat, I read the whole time!

It felt just like my early months at Indiana University. I was not accepted into their Ph.D. program because my recommendation letters were “a little strange” (they were!) and because I was from an unaccredited school. While Grant was actually in a program, I was just a “continuing non-degree student” — neither fish nor fowl. Another Square Peg.

I didn’t have a study space on campus to call my own back then, so I’d sit in the Union in that beautiful limestone alcove that overlooked the Rhetorical Studies building. I had my articles and stacks of books in my overstuffed leather bag, my colored pens, and my legal pad. And I was occasionally interrupted by a friendly prof or classmate. It was bliss. Because I was doing what I knew I was plumbed to do. Nobody else knew it just yet though.

Now that I’m an “independent scholar” — another liminal fishy-fowl — it feels pretty much like it did then. Stealing moments to read and compare. Finding myself in my own head while my dearest examples of humanity spin and leap around me. This feels familiar. And very, very good.

So my idea is this: Even while Gen-X and Gen-Y fundamentalists reject the term “fundamentalism” qua fundamentalism, the separatist rhetorical forms persist in conservative Evangelicalism. Having reified the American ideal of individualism into a doctrine, these sectarians have shattered any sense of community in conservative Evangelicalism. They attempt to rebuild a notion of the community with their discourses of “biblical” living in order to woo and contain, but these attempts simply mask the egocentric and splintering rhetorical forms. They have become too individualistic to be fully human.

Or something like that. Does that irritate you? . . . Good.

If you kill a man like me, you will injure yourselves more than you will injure me.

Socrates, The Gadfly

If you caught my Ebenezer series (which ended with this final post), you’d be interested to know that the final chapter, removed from my book under threat of termination, is now published in this month’s Kenneth Burke Journal under the title, “Publish and Perish?: My Fundamentalist Education from the Inside Out.” It includes an explanation of those events leading up to that chapter’s expunging.

The following night the Lord stood by him and said, “Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome.”

Acts 23:11

A sermon from the previous October on Acts continued to ring in my head. It was one of those room-spinning moments. Surely God didn’t want us to leave! I know now that He was holding our hand through the dark tunnel and, at times, yanking us through to the safe side. Just like a toddler who digs in his heels, we didn’t believe leaving would be best. Surely not! But like I learned way back when, God loves us and He carries us through to His best.

The rest of the semester was brutal. We had several painful meetings. It’s all too personal to describe here. I was just glad that it was over come Convocation.

But it wasn’t over at all.

Grant and I were called to a meeting the second week after school let out, this time in the Administration Building’s “holy of holies” with BJU’s first- and second-in-command. Were we scared? You betcha.

The tone of the meeting was very, very cordial. I was asked to take down a blog post on an old, abandoned xanga blog. I agreed and did so immediately following the meeting. Now, I mentioned in this meeting that I had recently edited the post to remove a particular person’s name. I had heard from a former student about a phone call she’d received from that particular person. He explained to her at length how frustrated he was with me. I had a range of emotions at that time — from anger to disgust to hurt to complete confusion to finally sheer pity (to be so obsessed with me!). I had an email all written to him to say that “a little bird told me that you were frustrated by this blog post. I don’t want to add to your busy load. I’ve removed your name. Take care!” But I never sent it. I just edited the post. I figured that it would only fan the flames.

With or without the particular person’s name, the blog post was too controversial to keep up, I was told. They were getting “several” letters about it. To their credit, they advised one letter-writer to go to me personally and discuss his concerns. He went to Grant (not me) and shied away pretty quickly from any actual discussion of the issues. I was now recognizing a recurring pattern of behavior in the culture: avoid controversy, avoid discussion, and avoid women.

The second thing on the agenda was presented as follows: “We still need to resolve this disagreement, so we’d like you to write a statement of your position.”

Grant turned very practical and asked pointed questions in follow-up emails. A statement on our position on what exactly? “Your position on sin.” Sin? Our position on sin?? What’s that mean? What’s that? You quote Romans 3 and maybe a couple of confessions, and you’re done, right? ::shrug::

Grant pressed for further clarification. “Your position on sin in the Christian life.” was the response. Ah. Gotcha. I had been clued in by another friend that those within that Chaferian view of sanctification believe that the standard “historical Protestant” (a euphemism for “Reformed”) position was “perfectionist.” Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. They were obviously trying to be vague enough, it seems, to uh . . . well, give us enough rope to hang ourselves.

What they really wanted, whether they knew it or not (and what we actually presented) was our view of sanctification. So we took a step back and set our sites on writing more of a “big-picture” document.

How would any of you feel if put into that kind of a position? We all know our theology in an “under the fingernails” sort of way: it’s woven into the moments of our lives and lived out in daily practicality. How many of us are ready to present a theological document that will stand up to the scrutiny of trained seminarians? Grant and I had four years of Bible classes under our belt, hardly a comprehensive view of systematic theology. But what I do know about is rhetoric, and I know from my friends trained in both rhetoric and religion that a good hermeneutic in one looks an awful lot like a good hermeneutic in the other.

Since I still had a task to accomplish, I did what any good researcher would do: I collected good sources and started writing. Right at that moment and through His providential care, God sent a complete stranger — or rather a friend I hadn’t met yet — to help. This gentlemen passed along a document that proved to be our chief resource. It was exactly what I was praying we’d find — a conservative, fundamental Baptist source. Anyway, I know that friend is reading, and I just wanted to tell him again how thankful I am for him and his listening to the Spirit’s prompting.

I wrote a rough draft, and then Grant dug in. We went through the usual back-and-forth approach we take with our joint writing projects. Then we had some friends read the document. An M.Div from Westminster. A few BJ Seminary grads. Another theology Ph.D. Other well-informed friends. One said quite concisely: “It’s a good summary of the standard Evangelical view of sanctification.” Good!

So some time in early June, we submitted our position statement on the doctrine of soteriology.

And then we waited.

I’m calling this Ebenezer “Vista” because nothing quite worked out like I anticipated. And after it was over, it seemed like downgrading to an earlier version would be best.

I’ve got to admit. I’d just rather not talk about this. I kinda get ill just thinking about it all. For my friends, if I’ve told you any of this whole story, I haven’t told you about this. But it’s important part of the ominous sense of dread that built up over that final year.

The summer of 2006 I renamed the “Summer of Isaac and Gavin” because for the first time in my life I was a stay-at-home-mom. It was a new and happy thing for us. My sons and I did “Letter of the Week” that summer, and you can read about all our fun in my archives. I saw a different side of the infrastructure of our county (where are the sidewalks?) and a different side to the interior of my refrigerator (Pink and fuzzy guacamole? How long has this been in there? Ew!!).

It all started . . . with Sean Paddock’s death exactly two years and two day ago now. You probably don’t remember him. He died as the result of some very, very bad parenting. Lynn Paddock, his adoptive mom, suffocated the four-year-old by wrapping him too tightly in blankets to keep him in bed. If you keep up with the trends among Evangelical parenting authors, it should come as no surprise that she avidly followed the worst example available: Michael Pearl.

The Pearls capitalize on quaint Amish icons and natural family living ideals. They privilege an homesteading aura that is very appealing in our McWorld. I get that. I even admire it.

But . . . you don’t have to look very deep to find problems in his advice. In the end, it is heretical. Plain and simple, he denies Original Sin and asserts a sin-free perfectionism for those who are as accomplished as he. He believes that young children are so amoral and so ignorant that they are no different from animals, and the parent’s responsibility is no different than a farmer’s to his livestock. Where that leads him is clear in his explanation of Romans 1:21:

Obviously the 2 year old can’t glory, the 1 year old, the idiot and the retard can’t glory in anything. But those who have reached a place of intellectual maturity will glory and are expected to glory in God.

He’s neither saying that children are totally unable to save their full-of-sin selves nor is he saying that children are naturally good. In other words, he’s neither orthodox nor warm-and-fuzzy. And his bad theology pushes him to some really scary conclusions. He reasons that a parent can do whatever s/he needs to do to a child in order to “train” him — not discipline him since he’s not capable of receiving any sort of teaching. No, Pearl emphasizes training. He continually compares children to animals and overtly suggests that you train a child like you would a dog. For instance, what do you do when your dog has a housebreaking accident? You take him out and hose him down. You may respond to your 3-year-old’s potty accidents the same way, according to Michael Pearl. I kid you not. In his characteristic folksy style, he remembers advising a father to do just that in To Train Up a Child:

First, I pointed out that the boy’s mother, busy with the other children, would, several times a day, pick up this big kid, talk sweet to him, lay him on a bed, take off the dirty diaper, wipe him with a warm rag, rub a little lotion on the chaffed spots and then put a fresh, smooth diaper on him. Dumping in his pants was an opportunity to get his mother’s undivided attention. Now, we understand that there is no guilt or blame in this matter, especially on the child’s part, but there is something quite inconvenient–except for the kid who loved the experience and must have found it the highlight of his day.

So, my suggestion was that the father explain to the boy that, now that he was a man, he would no longer be washed in the house. He was too big and too stinky to be cleaned by the babywipes. From now on, he would be washed outside with a garden hose. The child was not to be blamed. This was to be understood as just a progressive change in methods. The next dump, the father took him out and merrily, and might I say, carelessly, washed him off. What with the autumn chill and the cold well water, I don’t remember if it took a second washing or not, but, a week later, the father told me his son was now taking himself to the pot. The child weighed the alternatives and opted to change his lifestyle. Since then, several others have been the recipients of my meddling, and it usually takes no more than three cheerful washings.

Doug Wilson sums it up:

The first part of the book [To Train Up a Child] reveals a sub-biblical theology on the nature of the child. The innate sinfulness of the child is denied, which leads the Pearls to sharply distinguish training from discipline. Training is what the innocent infants and toddlers get, and is identical to what puppies get when they don’t go on the newspapers. Discipline supposedly comes later when sin enters the picture. While this is not a book of theology, a Finney-like Pelagianism runs near the surface. And while there are some similarities between animal training and child-discipline, the distinctions between the two are not adequately maintained in this book. The result of this confusion is not only heretical, but also offensive to any parents who value the dignity of their children.

There’s more, but I’ll let you research that on your own, if you wish. It only gets more and more sad.

So . . . in the midst of a cyber-mourning for the Paddock family and the heresy that passes for biblical parenting advice, KatieKind stepped it up a notch with a challenge for all the Christian moms participating. She called us all to speak out when we heard Pearl being recommended in our little slices of Christendom.

Sigh. . . . I believe the Holy Spirit made me listen close to her urging. I knew that it was crystal-clear that Pearl was not biblical. I knew that people who supported him just didn’t know the whole story. I promised God that the next time I heard him supported I would say something. I’ve gotta admit — I didn’t think anything would come of it because the guy is a real nut!

Not too long later, I got the flu and was stuck on the couch comforting equally sick boys. So I read. A lot. You know how surfing materializes. That may even be how you settled here.

I landed in a big forum for fundamentalist Baptists. I’d read there a lot previously, but I had never joined. I could join — I could agree to the membership agreement and all — But I just hadn’t up to that point. Again I’m not telling you the name because I don’t want to start a war. I’ve seen that happen too often between blogs and large forums. If you’ve got a hunch, go find me in there. It’s not hard to search.

But, as you can guess from the way I’m telling this story, I landed on a glowing endorsement of Michael Pearl there. My stomach began to churn, and I remembered my promise. ::gulp::

Like a good fundamentalist, I kept my promise. I remembered all the sayings I had been reared on: “finish the job,” “the best ability is dependability,” “the test of your character is what it take to stop you.” I reminded myself that this Pearl stuff was wrong, and if anyone on the planet should be able to see that, I thought, it’s a fundamentalist, right? You with me on this?? Isn’t that what we do? Point out error? I thought that’s what I was taught while I read all those sayings above the chalkboards.

I took a deep breath and joined. The policy of that forum is to accept no anonymous members. You must use your real name and actual in-real-life facts about yourself (this policy might seem harmless enough, but in its working out, it’s not a good thing.). I poked around and found a lot of people I knew from junior high, high school, and undergrad. I found tons of my own students. These are my buddies, right? I should feel right at home. . . .

I pointed out the error in the Pearls as best as I could. It was met with a polite but inquiring surprise. They asked me to present my case, and I did. I joined the ladies’ forum and offered some prayer requests. It was a pleasant experience. I posted a few more opinions here and there. I’m pretty experienced with internet communication, so I know how to juggle some of the potential communication breakdowns.

Then it snowballed. Bad. The whole thing makes me too sick to go back there and review exactly when it all went south, but one poster seemed to be trying to “out” my position on punitive parenting. He asked me point-blank. I avoided an answer at first by joking it off. But he wouldn’t let go. And with Grant looking over my shoulder and cheering me on, I explained there publicly exactly what I told you a few posts back: “spanking is not biblically mandated.”

To keep things neat, I started a new thread with that in the title. It was a blood bath. I tried my best to keep things on task. I wouldn’t answer ad hominem attacks about how I was just a woman, illogical, uneducated, and inexperienced. I mean, I’m not perfect, so there’s always something to pick at (I’m happy to tell you those things, so you needn’t look too deep). I wondered where the forum moderators were! In my experience with internet forums, that kind of browbeating would not be tolerated. My blog statcounter jumped sky-high. I saw people googling me and sniffing me out. In the thread, I tried desperately to focus on the argument from Scripture since that was what I was trying to point out. I thought at the time that I did a pretty good job of that, but based on the outcome, I must have failed.

The thread quickly reached the forum’s 20-page limit and was closed. I have never posted again over there. I just can’t bring myself to.

But here’s the real kicker. A few weeks later I get an email from my then-employer that I was “blipping on the radar” because of those threads. His email was good-natured. I said that then and I’ll keep saying that. He did instruct me to never speak of my parenting views in the classroom (and I never did!). But overall he was friendly and fraternal.

Over time, however, the tone didn’t stay that way. Apparently, “several” letters were coming in to the administration about me and those posts. I don’t know if they were from members of the forum or not. I don’t know what was said. Months later I did find a poster bragging about disagreeing with a female faculty member, but I don’t know if he was speaking about me or not. In the end, I’ve never been afforded the opportunity to face those critics. It’s all been completely anonymous and very threatening.

I was told that those letter-writers wanted me fired.

So it seems, spanking is a fundamental.

Update on 8 March 2010 — Here are the threads from Sharper Iron that resulted in a significant professional and personal backlash: The beginning, additional, another, and the biggie.

Fundamentalists often hear and repeat, “My Bible is all I need.” And while I understand and affirm the sentiment that God’s Word is well. . . . GOD’s WORD, the expression is full of hubris. It’s not that God’s Word is incomplete or inaccurate or insufficient. We are. It’s the old four blind men and the elephant problem. If that Eastern example doesn’t do it for you, there’s always good ol’ Francis Bacon. In sum, idols distract us. We’re blinded by our infirmed humanity (idols of the tribe), our idiosyncratic personhood (idols of the cave), our reified culture (idols of the marketplace), and our inadequate education (idols of the theatre). One way of seeing around those idols that stand in our way of understanding God’s Wor(l)d is through a iron-sharpening looking outside of ourselves. Otherwise, we just see ourselves in Scripture instead of seeing God. That’s why God gave us the Church — to edify each other and point out our blindspots. We’re not islands unto ourselves. Or we shouldn’t be!

And that’s what these books did for me. Reading them is an Ebenezer — a monument to seeing my presumptions and my own microculture as badly flawed. All these books are, ironically enough, within the conservative Evangelical hermeneutic. I have some mainline liberal Protestant friends who read them and were left with only a “meh!” These don’t speak to them. But they do speak to us and are eye-opening, earth-shaking, Church-building, and Christ-centered.

I got into trouble for reading and for talking about these books. So if you want to upset the Powers that Be, read them. If you’re content with things as they are, avoid them like the plague. Trust me.

Heartfelt Discipline by Clay Clarkson. Clarkson set out to prove that the usual punitive advice that circulates in conservative Evangelical circles is from Scripture. He found out otherwise. That negative testimony is pretty persuasive. His basic argument is that if you take the rod verses totally literally (and I’m not saying that Proverbs are intended to be absolutely literal. I mean, does a stitch in time literally save nine?), then you would beat with a rod on the back (not with a hand on the bottom) of a na’ar — 5-20 (some say 15-20) year old boy (and not on an eight-month old baby!!!).

Grace-Based Parenting by Tim Kimmel. Kimmel is a great alternative to the punitive monopoly in Evangelical parenting advice books. He’s experienced, logical, and biblical. He asserts that all children need a secure love, a significant purpose, and a strong hope. They need the freedom to be different, vulnerable, candid, and to make mistakes. All that’s only possible with Grace as a guide. I can’t say enough good about this book. I found myself seeing God and my responsibilities to my sons in a whole new way.

Why Christian Kids Rebel by Tim Kimmel. Here Kimmel scared me. I saw so many of my students in his words. It changed the way I talked and interacted with them. He describes Compulsory Christianity (where the religious practices become a hobby for the family. Like that pirate family on Wife Swap.), Cliché Christianity (the kind of life foregrounded in Christian education, according to Kimmel. “The problem lay in the fact that everything about the school was designed to prop up your ability to appear spiritual. With very little effort, you could act and talk ‘Christian.’”), Comfortable Christianity (an easy Prayer-of-Jabez kind of focus on material acquisition and loss), Cocoon Christianity (a.k.a. The Village. Shyamalan showed us how well that worked.), and Compromised Christianity (A parent living under the veneer of a top-notch Christian but who abuses his family and drives them away from the faith. Notice that the compromise is not in whether or not the family watches movies or plays video games, but in whether the mom and dad see themselves as needing a daily dose of the Gospel as much as their kids.).

What will always ring in my memory is his chapter on the Prodigal Son. I had never heard the story explained in that way. God, as the perfect Parent in the story, acts differently than the Clueless parent, EMT parent, or the Special Forces parent. It really hits “home” when Kimmel points out that in contrast to God’s way of parenting us and welcoming us back after our sin, “some [prodigal] kids never go home because they can’t recall their parents dealing with them in understanding, patience, and grace” (66).

And I saw so much of a very familiar discipline system in his critique of “Special Forces Parenting”:

Families don’t live in war zones. If there were any kind of zone a family should be living in, it would be a grace zone. Unfortunately, if Special Forces-type parents aren’t careful, they can create a war zone in their child’s heart.

There was a time when this autocratic style of parenting actually worked. The gears of industry and the wheels of commerce turned under the inertia of an autocratic system. . . .

Special Forces parenting makes a lot of noise, offers up a lot of threats, and tries to rule by intimidation. When it’s time to deal with a problem in a child’s life, these SF parents love to pull out the heavy artillery and often turn to some form of punishment. Unfortunately, that tends to miscarry with overuse. That’s because punishment is one of the least effective forms of correction. Why? Lots of reasons.

Punishment is more about getting even or balancing the score than it is about correction. It’s also about communicating who is boss. But it is ineffective because it’s not the way our world deals with short-comings. . . .

As we’ll see in the story of the prodigal son, the most effective form of correction is consequences. And the more natural the consequences, the better. That’s the way the real world operates, that’s the way God operates, and that’s the method most helpful to rebellious kids in figuring out why what they are doing is unacceptable.

Another reason why the autocratic control of a Special Forces parent doesn’t work well over time is because it conditions children to respond to outside voices and forces in their lives. They get a little bigger and a little older and it’s easy for them to start submitting to the barking orders of overbearing boyfriends or girlfriends or the outspoken voice of the crowd. I guess you kind of figured out that Special Forces parents make it easy for their kids to find their way into rebellious lifestyles. (56-58)

Families Where Grace is in Place by Jeff VanVonderen. This book jarred us both from the unbiblical errors and extra-biblical extremes that run rampant in our previous life. Most startling is VanVonderen’s rather matter-of-fact correction that the Bible doesn’t say that I’m supposed to make my husband love me, nor is he supposed to make me submit. I have my responsibility to submit, and he has his responsibility to love. That’s our division of labor, so to speak.

The same goes with parents and children. My responsibility to not provoke my sons to wrath is actually greater than their responsibility to obey/honor me. I can’t make them honor me, but I need to act honorably. VanVonderen was the first for me that made that very simple, mind-blowing point.

Tired of Trying to Measure Up by Jeff VanVonderen. In talking about this book, I might even say “it all started with reading VanVonderen.” It still makes me giggle that whenever I mention this title to anyone inside fundamentalism (even those at the very “top”), the reaction to the title is always the same — a jaw-dropping, eye-rolling, sighing, empathetic, but sardonic laugh that says “Ha! Somebody gets it!”

This book got me into some deep trouble. It so poignantly speaks to the problems in our former life that I bought a dozen copies and had them stacked on my desk, ready to give away to the next frustrated student or colleague that unloaded on me (and yes, I gave them all away quite quickly). Once this got up the food chain, the Powers that Be weren’t pleased. The Gospel is usually unsettling.

On October 16, 2006, I was told to stop recommending this book. I agreed. I said, “I figured you would ask me that, and I’m okay with that. I’ll just point people to Romans and Galatians instead.” Tee-hee. My little joke got lost, I think. Later I was told that VanVonderen had “very dangerous theology.” In response to that declaration, I smiled and said, “We’ll have to agree to disagree on that point.”

Go see and read for yourself why it would be unsettling or dangerous. Fact is, it’s pretty standard stuff for the rest of Christendom. It’s fundamentalism that’s out-of-sync with the Bible. That fact alone might make you stop reading me. I understand. I remember that feeling too.

Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse by Jeff VanVonderen and David Johnson. I’ve heard from other believers around the world that many autocratic Christian leaders despise this book. Of course they do! I read it the first time in a rather cursory fashion. I’ll admit it, I first came to the book trying to deconstruct the definition of “spiritual abuse.” Some descriptions just sound like bad management — something that could happen at Disney or Microsoft. But I found in VanVonderen and Johnson, who coined the term, a very substantial case. I was still in denial though. Not here, right? No, no. . . . not here. Please, please not here.

On the second reading though, I wept.

Soul Survivor by Phil Yancey. Yancey is hands-down an excellent writer. He’s just a joy to read. And this is the first book of his I read in the Fall, 2006, thanks to my old buddy’s recommendation. While he introduced me to Chesterton and Dostoevsky, I couldn’t shake his rebuke of Southern conservative Evangelical organizations for never repenting of their racist sins of the past. Sigh. . . .

What’s so Amazing About Grace? by Phil Yancey. Yancey at his finest. Babette’s Feast is now one of my favorite films after Yancey explained its mirroring of Christ’s gracious love feast within a harsh, cold, unhappily pious world. In the middle of all our abuse in that last year, I couldn’t forget Babette’s culinary demonstration of grace. If you can only read one chapter, though, read the “The New Math of Grace.” God’s calculator defies any one that we create. Ironically enough, Yancey says he got in trouble for the chapter/article as well. We Christians are so protective of the status quo.

With these books, I found a story of redemption in Scripture that I had never heard before. And I realized that the Church had been proclaiming this Good News for millennia, independent of my sliver of Christendom. I discovered the Gospel anew.

And that led to another book. . . . But we’ll talk about that in a future post.

[tags]Phil Yancey, Jeff VanVonderen, Tim Kimmel, Clay Clarkson, David Johnson, Francis Bacon[/tags]

This is a very hard blog post to write. But in order for the next post to make sense, I think I need to face the music.

In the Spring semester of 1999 at Indiana University, I took Children and Religion with Robert Orsi. The best thing I learned from Professor Orsi was how to conduct a class discussion; he was a whiz — a natural. And the texts he assigned still ring out in my memory. All in all, a very successful class.

But my project, now, is an embarrassment. I think admitting that might be good for other grad students, good for scholarship in general, good for understanding where I stand now, and good for imagining where I might stand in the future. It’s all very humbling.

Nine years ago, all the rage in conservative Evangelicalism was a little-known man named Gary Ezzo who claimed that his child rearing expertise was “God’s Way.” What had started as a “parenting class” at John MacArthur’s church became nothing short of an empire.

All my contemporaries were having babies (while I was “nursing” textbooks and endnotes), and they were all talking about Gary Ezzo and his approach to “Growing Kids God’s Way.” I decided to pick this trend for my project for Orsi’s class. Seemed obvious enough.

I will reluctantly show you the paper. Go ahead — you can read it. But before you do . . . let me just say — I was wrong. As a mom who now calls herself an Attachment Parent — Ezzo’s ridiculous, muddled-headed foil to his seemingly commonsensical, Godly parent — I know I was wrong. My denotative descriptions of Attachment Parenting are pretty fair, I would say now, but the moral conclusions I make are just incorrect. Sure — there may be parents who would fit that negative description, but that would be like judging all Americans on the antics of Paris Hilton.

I won’t torture you or me by going line by line over all my errors. Instead I’ll just back up a tad and identify the reasons for the problems:

• My method was so totally new, and I was completely unprepared. I was attempting to do an ethnography — what seemed to me to be a rhetorical analysis of regular conversations. I didn’t know how to collect those conversations, and I was running into many brick walls. I didn’t know my way around or over them.
• Because I was having trouble finding people who were willing to talk to me, more than a few of my subjects were close friends. I wanted to tell their story as best I could. I wanted to be more than fair, I think, and I wanted them to think I was being fair.
• There was so much criticism of the medical problems in Ezzo that I really couldn’t parse it all. There I was — a Ph.D. student in rhetoric and religion and an Associate Instructor. I was just plain overwhelmed, and I had to draw the line somewhere. I wasn’t trained to judge medical info, and so I just cast that aside for this project. I said to myself, “I’m not a doctor. I can’t interpret all that. I can only talk about their words.”
• And quite honestly, I wasn’t a parent. What did I know about any of this stuff?
• I could only get the secular, watered-down version of Ezzo’s plan from Babywise. I couldn’t really get the comprehensive Ezzo text — Growing Kids God’s Way — because they wouldn’t let it out of “trained hands.” I’d have to take a big series of classes in order to get at it, and that’s something a busy grad student can’t do. Sure — alarm bells went off at that point, but I was desperate to think the best about this organization.
• I have to repeat and unpack that last sentence: I was desperate to think the best about this organization. Every good fundy knows that we have to field more than a normal share of criticism. It doesn’t take long in your adult life to realize that the media can really be pretty sloppy in dealing with the facts. As you grow up in the subculture, you catch the idea that the real problem is that people inside the group just don’t have the words to express themselves or the arguments to defend themselves. They need an apologist, right? A loyal, er . . . rather an empathetic, skilled apologist. That idea of loyalty pushes any criticism out of bounds as simply unreasonable griping and immoral living. I was still learning that at this point in my study. At IU, I researched many, many approaches to social change, and it seemed to me that those inside any culture were more effective at enacting social change than those outside (i.e. Martin Luther King does more than Malcolm X. Or so it could be argued.). And I was fully, loyally inside. I needed to prove to the Ezzo community that I was inside. And that meant to deliberately choose to think the best of the organization (and push all criticism outside the boundaries).
• I took Ezzo’s criticism of Attachment Parenting at face value. I shouldn’t have. He presents a very, very skewed view. His unflattering snapshot of attachment parents, I now know, more closely represents Alfie Kohn’s advice more than William Sears’.
• I didn’t know child-rearing literature enough to know that the things I was praising in his text were not at all new to him — baby signing, including children in the family, anticipating and scripting solutions, love languages, etc. That all exists elsewhere and in qualified sources.
• And . . . unfortunately, I let myself get bullied. Early in my research, a GFI employee called me and yelled — yes, yelled — at me for even thinking about doing this project. In escalated tones, he bellowed, “Why should we trust you? Why should we think you’re going to be fair?” And I shrugged and said, “You can’t. You just have my word is all. I’m a fellow Christian, and I want to do the right thing.” After hanging up, my mind was reeling. How can I communicate that I’m not out to get them? This is a test case for me. If I am going to write the dissertation that I want to write, I have to be empathetic (i.e. prove my loyalty) to my research subjects. . . . You can see why this was a tough crossroads.

So there you have it. For what it’s worth.

What’s amazing to me now is how God — in spite of my goofy, short-sighted conclusions — was already using my error to make something beautiful. I’m just amazed at that. But I’ll save it for the next post.

If I ever run into Prof. Orsi, I want to tell him all this. I don’t think he’d mind, but he’s a very busy and important man. I don’t know if he’d remember. I know he was a little befuddled by my conclusions. So am I now. And I’d like to tell him how God used him and that class and my errors for His best.

More to come. . . .

[tags]Children and Religion, Robert Orsi, Gary Ezzo, Babywise, Attachment Parenting, William Sears, Empathetic Rhetorical Criticism[/tags]

Today was just wonderful.

• I tried a friend’s recipe for Cider-Roasted Pork Loin. It. was. wonderful. You have to try it! I’ve never had better.
• While cleaning up from the wonderful dinner, my sweet hubby reintroduced me to an old friend — the little-bit-crazy-but-wholly-genius Glenn Gould playing The Well-Tempered Clavier. Of course, I never played that prelude that fast. But . . . wow — it was so long ago that I was a piano nerd. Grant said he’d never seen me stop and listen to music like that. Usually I multi-task. Someday when we get a piano, that is what I’d spend my idle moments playing. I still have all my piano music.
• Gavin danced while we listened to the rest of The Well-Tempered Clavier. There’s nothing quite like watching a newly-19-month-old “interpret” baroque piano music.
• At the same time, Isaac hunted down all the “A” magnets on the fridge and spelled out his name over and over. Learning is so fun.
• And I started reading a book that is oh-so-controversial. But it seems pretty reasonable so far.