An open letter to pastors & adoptive parents

I found this blog post on Mrs. Curmudgeon’s Facebook wall, and I appreciated how the author spoke frankly of the challenges peculiar to parenting adoptive children and gladly put those in the context of God’s grace to sinful parents and children. As I read, it seemed to me there are some fairly obvious similarities between pastoral ministry and parenting adoptive children.

Pastors and adoptive parents both bear absolutely no responsibility for the development of the people under their care until they come under their care, and in neither case does that make any difference for their responsibility thenceforth. If the previous pastor turned a blind eye to drunkenness and fornication, the new pastor still has to deal with those sins graciously and forthrightly, just as he can take no credit for the elders his predecessor so carefully trained. An adoptive parent can’t boast in his child’s winning smile, but still has to comfort her through screaming fits night after night. You don’t dance with those who brought you: you dance with those the Lord has brought to you.

Hence, both must operate entirely on the basis of God’s grace through the Cross of Christ. You can’t make a sinner be a good person, whether said sinner is your child or your congregant. You can only pray and try your best to forgive, be generous and open-hearted, and then confess your failure to minister to your child or congregant to a Savior whom you know to be merciful to both pastors and parents. Otherwise, not only will you break, you will break many bent reeds.

Parenting and pastoring, then, are both extremely long-term propositions. I’ve been in my call for fifteen years now, and in all honesty, some of the spiritual progress I’ve been privileged to see can only be measured in decades. (If any in my congregation are reading this, rest assured I’m not talking about you personally. You’ve been growing like a spiritual weed. Okay, maybe that’s not the most flattering metaphor.) Likewise parenting. I like to tell people, and need to tell myself more often, that we’re not raising children, but adults. Whether our children are a constant challenge or joy at this very moment, we won’t know how they’ve turned out until we need them to take care of us in our old age. Parenting and pastoring alike: not a race, not even a marathon; instead, a garden which must be cultivated, pruned, watered and covered year after year, season after season until the Lord calls us to lay all our labors down.

And so two twinned challenges. Parents, but especially adoptive parents, should most understand the challenges and joys of pastoral ministry; pray for and encourage your pastor accordingly. Pastors, more than any other in the average congregation, should most understand the challenges and joys of adoptive parenting, and should consider adopting children.

How an atheist became pro-life

I don't know who first said (or wrote) "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention," but that would be a nice summary of Nat Hentoff's still-ongoing journalistic career. As memories of the American Republic and its Constitution recede ever further into the past, a great number of his columns on cato.org end with something very much like, "I keep repeating: Is this still America? And if not, who on earth are we?" And for this, he is to be ceaselessly praised.

The marvelously titled "Not Only Did Obama Lose (Hooray Constitution), but so Did Abortion," is not simply a celebration of the recent election results; in it, Hentoff explains how he came to "the most controversial position he has ever taken" (and the one which, the cynical amongst us are wont to suspect, was the real reason he was laid off by The now-disgraced Village Voice). He read some books on prenatal biology, and came to the inescapable conclusion that a fetus is a human person.

I bring this up (again) because I know what reasonable people think about people like me. To save time, I've begun explaining to those outside our ecclesiastical circles that "We're not the nice presbyterians; we're the reactionary, knuckle-dragging kind." (Yes, I literally say that. With a smile, though.) That's why I feel compelled to point out that our crazy views on the beginning of human life do not orginate in an irrational leap of faith, but rather in observation and an application of the scientific method. Indeed, the true irrationality is to suppress all reason and conclude, contrary to all evidence, that a person is not a person simply because said person is in the womb.

In other words: if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.

A visit from the happy lion

If you don't closely follow news from Europe, you may not know that the greater Parisian metropolitan area is all in a terrified frenzy over reports of a "big cat" on the loose. That reaction is quite unfortunate: we who spend every evening reading classic children's literature know there is no reason for concern.

Continuing education

As is the case for many others, one of the most important lessons I took away from graduate school is that I am not cut out for any higher educational endeavors. Nonetheless, on a recent trip to Berlin, Pa Curmudgeon found an educational institution which makes me wish I had taken a semester abroad.

On politics and liberty

Once again, a couple recommendations curated from the First Things website.

Peter Leithart offers a welcome reminder of the necessarily public, and therefore political, nature of the ministry of Word and sacrament in "Pastors Don't Need to Enter Politics–They're Already in It."

In the October issue of First Things, Yuval Levin observed that freedom from constraint is an impoverished political ideal because what every republic (and especially the American one) needs is a mature citizenry able to exercise its liberty responsibly. "Taking the Long Way" argues that libertarianism corrodes a free society if it does not allow room for the institutions which inculcate that social and spiritual maturity. I am reminded of James Madison's words in Memorial and Remonstrance:

Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe:  And if a member of Civil Society, who enters into any subordinate Association, must always do it with a reservation of his duty to the general authority;  much more must every man who becomes a member of any particuar Civil Society, do it with a saving of his allegiance to the Universal Sovereign.

A brief moment of clarity

Last night, a conversation with Mrs. Curmudgeon and Theatre Companion about election results led to a discussion of how difficult it is to remember what political parties "red" and "blue" signify in current media coverage. I suddenly heard myself saying, "Referring to the two major parties by color rather than by name or political philosophy makes it seem as though there's no substantive distinction between them. …Oh."

The sacred, the secular, & the beautiful (2)

But if the sacred/secular distinction is eliminated from how we judge our lives, then it must also be eliminated from our worldview. All the earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it (Psalm 24:1); our task is to render all we find to his service. Our quiet manual labor fulfills the dominion mandate given to man in Genesis 1:28. We rule by using things: not only plants and animals, but everything. This must include culture.

How do we do this? We take hold of pagan creations and use them to glorify God. Musical instruments were invented by Jubal, from the ungodly line of Cain (Genesis 3:21). Therefore, they properly belong to paganism. But Christians are commanded to seize Jubal’s harp and flute and use them to praise the Lord (Psalm 150:3-5). All things belong to the Lord; Christians act as his repo men.

This process is fairly simple to grasp when discussing seemingly neutral technology, like musical instruments. It becomes a touch more tricky when dealing with the cultural artifacts produced by that technology, such as music itself. Can Christians really use grunge rock and jazz, or ought we to stick with classical music and hymns?

Well, as the founder of the Salvation Army asked, “Why should the devil have all the good music?” As we approach our culture and world, our question should not be “Is this (music, book, scientific theory, historical argument) safe? Will we be contaminated by it?”, but rather “Can this be used for God’s glory? If so, how?”

We can only answer that question by knowing God’s Word, the Bible. There the Lord describes for us the world in its relationship to him. The Bible is the standard by which we ought to measure all we see. When we hold the artifacts of our culture up to its light, we can discern what is true from what is false. Its framework will enable us to determine what we should flee from, and what we may render to the Lord’s service. From Scripture we learn that God is the Beginning and End, that all purpose and truth rest only in him. Anything else is false and idolatrous. 

Because of his mercy and love for his people, and his desire to provide a good world for them to live in, God has not deprived all pagans of truth and beauty. We live as foreigners in a land which rightfully belongs to us, and its occupiers would ruin all its good fruit if the Lord did not restrain them. Thus, the creations which come from their bent hearts oftentimes have in them the ring of truth and the unmistakable presence of beauty. Shakespeare could be a foul-mouthed, obscene blasphemer, as his comedies demonstrate. He was also capable of writing more eloquently than most of the love between a man and a woman, as his poem The Phoenix and the Turtle proves.

One difficulty in exercising dominion, rendering all the earth to the Lord’s service, is that there are no mechanical rules for doing so. It’s hard, dirty work. If we say all dead Greek and Latin pagans are worthy and all modern pagans funded by the NEA are fit only for the dustbin of history, we’ve missed the point. We must instead pick up the cultural artifacts of the world, examine them in the light of Scripture, discard that which is foul, and delight in that which is beautiful. In the process, we can turn the pagan’s idolatrous cultural artifact into a testimony of God’s character.

Take the film Titanic. I think we can say with a fair degree of confidence that James Cameron was not setting out to make a Christian movie: the celebration of premarital sex which is at the narrative’s center proves otherwise. However, we learn from it some very true things about both God and man. Towards the film’s beginning, a character looks at the Titanic and exclaims, “Not even God could sink this ship!” This, at least, is historically accurate: when the grand vessel set sail, many said precisely that. And grand she was. Cameron does us a great service by showing the breathtaking scale and majesty of the Titanic. The massive turbines of the engine room, creating and harnessing enormous power, are astounding. The gifted craftsmanship behind its lavishly decorated interiors is inspiring. All this was the creation of man. Man truly is great, and Titanic shows us this. But for all man’s greatness, he is powerless before God’s creation. When the Titanic struck an iceberg, she was doomed. Hubris, the fall brought on by arrogance, proved to be the Titanic’s undoing, and this magnificent testimony to mankind’s creative power sits at the bottom of the ocean.

This is a story we have heard before. As at the Tower of Babel, as at the Fall, man tried to supplant God, to take his place as rightful Lord of all. In so doing, man was destroyed. Man is great, but the Lord is far greater. But how do we find this testimony in a movie designed to reap massive profits at the mall? Because we have eyes to see. Because we know who man truly is and what his fate will be. Because we have read the Bible, we understand how all things testify to the glory of the Lord. As we see the world Biblically, we will see how all things find their meaning in their Creator. As we quietly live our lives in his service, we take dominion over the world, rendering it beautiful to the Lord, making its song of praise increasingly audible.