A father's cruciform manifesto: 6

It occurred to me this morning my cruciform take on parenting did not come out of nowhere. My father was a U.S. Foreign Service officer until the time came for him to take another posting overseas. Though, with his decades of experience and having last served as a consul, I’m sure he would have moved up the ranks, he chose to take early retirement. This was because he was up for what is called a “hardship post,” that is, service in a country neither entirely stable nor safe for U.S. citizens. He didn’t want to expose my younger sisters, still in the home, to danger, nor did he like the other option of sending them to boarding schools and breaking up the family prematurely. For the sake of his family, he gave up his career, and, incidentally, never brought up this fact to me or my sisters. I’m not sure he even gave the choice much thought.

While we’re at it, the fact we had a family in the first place was because my mother accepted being forced to resign her own commission as a Foreign Service officer to marry my father. What I learned from my parents’ example, then, was that one’s family and (potential!) children are far more important than oneself or one’s own ambitions. My sisters and I are not my parents’ legacy: they gave up their legacies and achievements that we might have and mark out lives of our own.

And in the wonderful irony of the Cross, their legacy is that I find myself setting aside whatever I might have accomplished during these years: time which could have been spent finishing this essay and writing more was spent with my son’s Cub Scout den. I do this so my children, my natural-born, foster, and perhaps adopted children, can have a father dedicated to them and they can take that fact entirely for granted.

We must decrease that they might increase.

Calvin's Institutes, Battles edition: page 11

Speaking of the Protestants, Calvin writes "Now, the very stronghold of their defense was not to disavow this very doctrine but to uphold it as true. Here even the right to whisper is cut off." In other words, the doctrine has greater credibility because its adherents are persuaded a right apprehension of it should lead to its being embraced.

Of course, fanatics and lunatics often hold a similar persuasion. Nonetheless, it's interesting to see how impressed Calvin is by the pious zeal of his coreligionists.

Calvin's Institutes, Battles edition: Introduction

The introduction is pretty obviously written in the late 1950s: it unashamedly judges Calvin from a modern perspective. The scholarship is refreshingly honest, however, in that it does not judge Calvin as though he himself were a modern.

A father's cruciform manifesto: 5

The more I think about it, the more self-evident it appears to me Christian parenting must be conducted in the way of the Cross. But it can’t be all that self-evident, or we wouldn’t have amongst us the Vision Forum. For the happily unaware, the Vision Forum is an organization much-beloved by a certain segment of the home-schooling community, particularly those interested in a reformed soteriology but not a presbyterian ecclesiology. Or much of an ecclesiology at all, as, so far as I can tell from their catalogue (which I didn’t ask for, but pastors get sent an awful lot of stuff in the mails whether they like it or not), there seems an unarticulated but clearly evident conviction the nuclear family is all- and self-sufficient.

From their website: "Our name — The Vision Forum — points to our desire that the Lord would use this work to be a forum for communicating a vision of victory to Christian families." I'm seriously concerned about the nature of the victory the Vision Forum has in mind. Victory over sin would be a good thing, of course, but flipping through their catalogue, the emphasis seems to be on victory over the society and culture around us. And the way to beat the snot out of said society is to turn one's children into culture warriors. So much for living quietly, minding one's own affairs (1 Thessalonians 4:11).

The presence of the Vision Forum catalogue in Christian homes gives me, as a pastor and a father, heartburn. There's something unnervingly worldly about the Vision Forum's anti-world vision. Again and again, one gets the impression each Christian family should be building a legacy which will endure for generations to come; not only that, they should be actively engaged in transforming the culture and reshaping it according to their liking. In other words, they are about building a name and a city for themselves and claiming a country in this world, during this age: a country which they hope, and even believe, will endure.

But this present age is passing away.

And as for me and my house, we are also seeking a country of our own, but not that country from which we came out. Rather, we desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore we are not ashamed of the Cross of Christ; for the God who became despised and nothing has called us to be likewise despised and nothing. He has invited us to live as aliens and strangers in this world. He has not invited us to build a city here because he has prepared a city with foundations for us.

Calvin's Institutes, Battles edition

I've begun working through John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion again for a reading group at Park Hill Presbyterian Church. We're using the translation prepared by Ford Lewis Battles for the Library of Christian Classics. I must say, it's a delight to read: nice large print, paper of appropriate thickness (print doesn't bleed through, but each of the two volumes can be comfortably held in one hand or fit easily into backpack or briefcase), and footnotes at the bottom of the page they way they were meant to be (a creation ordinance, don't you know).

The content's not bad, either.

Matthew 27

Peter Leithart has a number of interesting observations on Matthew 27 over on his blog, particularly regarding the women who served Jesus in his death.

A father's cruciform manifesto: 4

I submit in evidence a trivial anecdote (although being a universally experienced anecdote, perhaps not so trivial). The other night, while my wife was at a Bible study, I tried to watch Lost, but the two year-old insisted on yelling, running around, and breaking the blinds while he was supposed to be asleep. What I was thinking, of course, was "Can't I catch a break? Can't I have a moment for myself, to do what I want to do?"

No, of course. I am a parent.

A father's cruciform manifesto: 3

So here’s how I found my cross, only to discover I had already taken it up.

My wife and I are certified foster parents in Adams County, Colorado. The social services department has labeled us "foster-to-adopt;" this is because while we hope to adopt the baby who was placed in our home in April 2009, we are officially her foster parents unless the parental rights of her birth parents are terminated by the courts.

At a recent meeting, a county attorney observed that people like us used to be labeled "legal risk parents” to help judges understand that children placed in our homes were not guaranteed to be taken away from their birth parents and be adopted away, an impression which some had taken from that moniker “foster-to-adopt.” "Legal risk" means that, by law, we take the (very real) chance of welcoming a baby into our home only, after some period of time, to have her returned to birth parents who have proven their competency to the courts.

For obvious reasons, "foster-to-adopt" sounds much better for recruiting purposes than "legal risk." And yet, there's something profoundly right about the latter term. Parenting is a risky business. It is the constant, and often realized, risk of loving a person far more than that person will ever love you in return. It is the risk of a life of sacrifice without reward. To be the kind of parent whose children will not be removed by social services is to risk the loss of one's self, of one's identity, for the sake of one's children.

To be a parent is to be willing to lay down your life for your children, and, in the infinite sacrifices and concessions by which we surrender our individual identities and are forever labeled by them (and by those around us) as, finally and ultimately, their parent, is to actually lose that life. To be a parent (or at least to be a parent who barely approximates deserving to be called a parent) is to take up your cross and, in imitation of your Savior, to crucify self and have that choice overlooked and ignored. After all, only Joseph of Arimathea seemed to have noticed a burial was necessary.

To be a parent is to be at risk. To be a Christian parent is to take up one’s cross.

Daylight Satan's Time

2010 will go down as the year Daylight Savings Time really began to worry me.

Of course, much of my alienation from the mainstream of political discourse in these United States is rooted in the fact I am a single-issue voter, and that one issue is opposition to DST. This year's great leap forward hit as hard as any I can remember not only because Big Government deprived me of an hour's sleep, but also because Foster Baby woke up crying twice that night, and Thing One and Thing Two behaved riotously for a couple hours past bedtime Sunday evening. To be clear, however, my opposition to DST is principled, not merely a sleep-deprived spirit of vengeance.

For starters, the whole ritual is annoying: it's a gigantic pain in the hindquarters to locate and change all the clocks and watches in one's life. And at what gain? Any energy saved by having more daylight during the evening hours is offset by concomitantly increased heating and cooling costs. In addition, studies have shown an increase in traffic accidents the Monday mornings following a "time change" (as though time could be changed).

Rather than accept the given order of things, though, Big Government has to tinker with reality, certain it can come up with something better, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. This arrogance finds it clearest expression in the choice of day on which to implement the change: Sunday. At the very least, one might hope the civil magistrate would respect another institution ordained by God, but instead it chooses to make it that much harder for people to show up on time for services.

(Why is it we often see members arrive an hour late in the spring, but never an hour early in the fall?)

In addition, I think there's a rather serious theological point to be made, one which emerged as I was reading Genesis 1 last year. God created the sun, moon, and stars to order the years and seasons: that is, the progress of time. Time is not, therefore, a social construct which we can change by common consent; it is part of the created order. I think it ironic, but not accidental, that from autumn to spring we are in "standard time." Daylight Savings Time is, by definition, deviation from the standard and, accordingly, a perversion.

And this is why I'm worried. I understand my obsession with this topic is, or at least ought be, a cranky preoccupation. But for the life of me, it daily appears a more and more serious matter, and I think everyone should not only pay attention, but object strenuously. I know I sound like a crank, like the kind of person who tediously holds forth on the merits of the gold standard and the moral hazards of fiat currency, but I can't stop myself. 2010 may be the year in which I slip past an ironic posture in to full-fledged, absolutely sincere curmudgeonry.

And, William Jennings Bryan notwithstanding, I find I do have a few things to say about the gold standard...

NPR showcases stupid for your convenience

I've been listening to a Fresh Air interview with New Testament "scholar" Bart Ehrmann. It seems Ehrmann's method of reading the Gospels is to interpret any views of Jesus which are not identical as necessarily contradictory, as opposed to complementary.

"Scholar." Doesn't that title imply one has gone to school?