The Onion Makes Me Laugh: School-Homing

In true Onion fashion, a blatant mockery of public schooling follows. Enjoy!

The Pope, the Gates of Hell, and Useless Apologies

The devil's in the Vatican. Paedophile priests. A history of ambiguous relations to some of the most despotic and villainous leaders of all time (Hitler and Pius XII, for example). Residential schools. Witch-hunts. The selling of Indulgences to Europe's poor to facilitate the building of St. Peter's basillica. The Inquisition. Sociopathic Popes more inclined to murder and rape than teach doctrines of love and charity. Cover-ups and scandals heaped on cover-ups and scandals.

All of these things and more coming out of a church that claims a laughable duology of doctrines that it is the "one true church", and that "the gates of hell will not prevail against [it]". Assuming Catholic claims are true that it is the 'one true church', it would seem stupidly obvious that hell has not needed to prevail against its gates: hell has been rather successfully living itself out within the church for quite a while now. If there's to be any gate crashing, let's hope it will eventually be by an internal movement to get the hell out.

Fortunately, there has been a recent spate of sex abuse scandals in Europe that expose the current pope's collusions and cover-ups, and a rather wide ring of child-raping priests. The current pope, Benedict XVI (formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, and oft-named Pope Palpatine) has, for a long time now, been indisputably involved in not only shuffling off psychopathic priests, but also shuffling off the justice that should be visited upon them.

As Johann Hari reports:

Far from changing this paedophile-protecting model, Ratzinger reinforced it. In 2001 he issued a strict secret order demanding that charges of child-rape should be investigated by the Church "in the most secretive way... restrained by a perpetual silence... and everyone... is to observe the strictest secret."

It doesn't stop there, however. As Christopher Hitchens points out in his article The Great Catholic Cover-Up

The accusations, intoned Ratzinger, were only treatable within the church's own exclusive jurisdiction. Any sharing of the evidence with legal authorities or the press was utterly forbidden. Charges were to be investigated "in the most secretive way ... restrained by a perpetual silence ... and everyone ... is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office … under the penalty of excommunication." (My italics). Nobody has yet been excommunicated for the rape and torture of children, but exposing the offense could get you into serious trouble. And this is the church that warns us against moral relativism! (See, for more on this appalling document, two reports in the London Observer of April 24, 2005, by Jamie Doward.)

It would be fair of a Catholic apologete to question my sources. Both Hari and Hitchens are, admittedly, atheists. However, given the history of Catholic deceptions, and the urgent spot Catholics find themselves in at present, I have no reason to trust Catholic sources at all. Too much is at stake, and their practice of moonshining the public about their moral turpitude gives them all the more reason to diminish the impact of the situation through sophistry, and doublespeak (e.g., the Catholic church never errs in matters of faith and morals).

And the fact that Benedict XVI has delivered an apology to Ireland's abused today (March 20th, 2010) does nothing more to ameliorate the problem than an abusing husband's repeated apologies for kicking the shit out of his wife: the offense is still alive, and will likely continue to happen. Why? Because it's not the fact that paedophile priests exist in the clergy of the Catholic church that is the greatest concern -- though it is certainly an incredibly important concern. The reason why these kinds of offenses will continue is because the system of the Catholic church that enables and harbours paedophile priests is not likely to change. That, to me, is the greatest scandal in all of this: that there is no way to get rid of the abuse problem unless the Catholic system dissolves itself, a reality we know will not happen, but we'd all be better off with if it did.

When I Was 12...

...I was a ninja!

Default to Real Life

Underlying the very non-mainstream and counter-cultural-seeming decisions that I make is a practice that few others themselves undertake to explore. Because so many issues come up on this blog and in my life where my decisions seem rebellious or unnecessarily difficult to others, I thought it might be helpful to share the philosophical process in short-form that I use to determine my course.

When a question arises, I immediately default to another set of questions which form the foundation for my philosophical examination. These questions are the following:

1. What is the anthropologically established norm (AEN)?

2. Does this conform to the anthropologically established norm?

3. Is it beneficial, as in does it meet authentic needs?

4. Is it personally beneficial, as in does it meet needs in the way that the person for which this is being considered will appreciate?

5. Does it improve upon the anthropologically established norm? (I've NEVER seen this occur that something outside of the anthropologically established norm leads to true progress, so it is a theoretical question that I keep for the purpose of allowing for a missed understanding on my part)

Some definitions are probably helpful to others who don't know the particulars of my loaded questions.

'Anthropologically established' means that human beings are observably built for and have predispositions that anticipate the meeting of such needs as are also observable. These needs are not limited to but include aspects of the human being that we would label physical, emotional, spiritual, mental, intellectual, instinctual, creative, expressional, etc... So, it is a wholistic evaluation of the needs and expressions (also evaluated through needs assessment), which is always open to expressed needs according to timing and maturation, circumstances, etc...

It is my macrocosmic view of a microcosmic organism relative to the universe. It is primarily an intuitive and instinctual assessment that I confirm through study, and not the other way around, which would obviously completely defeat the definition if it were reversed that way. Abstract enough? I'll run a test demonstration later in this post.

'Beneficial' means that the decision would yield an affirmation of or realignment of a wayward quality according to the AEN.

'Authentic need' means that the need is established as essential to the well-being and functionality of the human being within context, and that context includes the proper order of the human being- family, community, etc... Human beings have an essential need for community which is demonstrated by the qualities we possess that anticipate response- speech, creative expressions such as music, art and dance, etc...- and the more visceral utter interdependency of the human race for its survival.

'Authentic need' is distinct from 'manufactured/synthetic need' which includes things like weight-lifting shoes, which are not an authentic need, but reflect the synthetic grasping after what would otherwise be the authentic need- to use our bodies for physical work. Case in point: fire-wood collecting in the woods leaves little necessity for weight-lifting exercises at the end of the day. Can you imagine collecting straw and clay and sand all day to make bricks and then thinking, 'well, I better do some weight-lifting or my body will be weak'? So saying, weight-lifting is a synthetic substitute for an authentic situation and need, and so the shoes 'needed' to support the outsides of the feet to prevent ankle roll-overs are also a manufactured or synthetic need. This would not pass my test.

Because Sunday School is becoming and has been for over five years in my life, a hot topic, I thought I would use it as my example of how this works for me. Please understand that this is not comprehensive, so you're going to have to trust that in the past six years of my research and study, contemplation and observation, I may have already come across the accepted and mainstream defences of Sunday School's presumed merit. You'll see at least a portion of why it doesn't pass my test in the following:

What is the anthropologically established norm (AEN)?

Human beings need beneficial education.

Human beings receive beneficial education through common experience with parents first, siblings, family and bonded community members.

Human beings need to worship God.

Human beings learn continuously and are innately equipped to do so in the most efficient and beneficial ways.

Human beings worship spontaneously and are innately equipped to do so .

Does SS conform to the anthropologically established norm?

It does not provide a common experience for the parents, siblings, family and community except in retrospect. It requires the subdivision of the parents from the children and the children from their siblings in most cases and the family from the community.

It does not provide worship; this is a human expression and does not come from anything not specifically human such as a curriculum or program. Worship will happen there; worship happens everywhere and is not limited to location or activity.

It does not connect to or seamlessly coincide with and work within the natural learning rhythms of the human being, given that it is a time set apart and includes outwardly prescribed activities that the participants do not choose and may or may not be (likely not) relevant to the authentic needs of the participants.

It is like 'school' in all ways and for this reason any defence of SS is also a defence of mass schooling- both being completely outside the anthropologically established norm.

Is SS beneficial, as in does it meet authentic needs?

If it does, it is incidental and in spite of its utter inefficacy to meet the individual and communal needs of the human being. A human being's needs are met through relationship and that within family and community. SS doesn't offer either, and requires the separation of the child from the family and community as they spend their time elsewhere, excepting the 'teacher' who is not an adequate substitute for the richness of relationship that naturally occurs in a family and community. The education received under this circumstance can't be better than utterly inadequate.

Is it personally beneficial, as in does it meet needs in the way that the person for which this is being considered will appreciate?

Not authentically, but most people's manufactured needs are met in this way.

Does it improve upon the anthropologically established norm? (I've NEVER seen this occur that something outside of the anthropologically established norm leads to true progress, so it is a theoretical question that I keep for the purpose of allowing for a missed understanding on my part)

Absolutely not.

The anthropologically established norm is easily observed in the order of the human being. S/he is born from the mother whose body provides his/her nourishment and comfort, temperature regulation and heart rhythm regulation, amongst other hugely important aspects of well-being such as security through emotional and spiritual confidence and openness, etc... The child and mother are meant to be skin-to-skin as much as possible and both experience stress when this is not the norm or it has been stopped even for a few minutes. The father and siblings provide a support and network of interesting and familially/culturally relevant information and acceptance to the child.

As the child grows, s/he chooses to wander in increasing increments from his/her mother's body. The distance that occurs in every way establishes first independence in the child from the body of his mother and her direct control over his/her activities (since they do everything together initially), followed by the mature phase of the human being which is the consciousness of and contribution to interdependence. There is no phase-skipping. If the child is removed from his/her chosen incremental increase in space, the child loses the ability to learn and mature in that phase. A child who is required to separate from his/her mother will not gain independence, but survival coping strategies which are not at all the same thing. This child will not move into an understanding and maturation that is encompassed by the consciousness of interdependence until and unless s/he can pass through the phase of independence first. This doesn't ever happen out-of-order. It may take 12 or 56 or 99 years or never, but the order remains and the human being is meant to have moved through these phases in the opportune time when s/he is primed instinctually for such maturation- as in the earlier years of his/her life.

Any action of society or the surrounding community must reinforce the bond and purpose of the individual family units within its context, and where that doesn't occur, where the importance of marriage and the bonds between parent and child are not recognised as primary for the well-being and survival of the community or society, a break-down of both family and society or the community is inevitable.

What are the mechanisms by which a family is reinforced in its primary role in the nurturing of both its members and the community? Firstly, it is assumed that the family remains as a whole- nourishment, education, skill-building, socialising, creativity, play, all occur as a wholistic and integrated mechanism of the natural outflow of the family dynamic simultaneous to the contribution of the community toward the family. In other words, when the community has a party, everyone is invited, not as special thing, but as a matter of course. Nobody says 'you can bring your children' because there is no opposite, nothing that relates to the separation of children from their parents, not to mention the obvious problem with if the children were left at home, who else would be assumed to be uninvited while looking after them?

Education comes from being in the presence of parents doing real work and building real relationships with the people around them. This means that the children also learn from the other people. The potential for education is then exponential. No school of any sort can provide anything that even merits comparison to this.

Nobody learns anything of true value under constant duress, except how to cope with constant duress. That seems a sad goal for a human being of immeasurable worth and potential for love and expression such as we are. Schooling has nothing better to offer than duress, and it cannot because the essential bonds that provide the security within which the human being learns most effectively and happily are assumed to be absent and strategies for coping with this are abundant, but still woefully lacking in substance since it turns out that there is no true substitute for parents and community.

This topic for me is vast and to really give it the time and justification for the years of my life that I've spent studying it, warrants a book, so I'll leave off with a simplification of the practice that I find so useful and effective in determining the natural course for myself and my family.

When something is presented to me, my question is not 'why shouldn't I?' as is generally asked of me when I deny something mainstream, but 'why would I?' Why would I send my children to Sunday School? Why would I give them antibiotics and flush out their gut flora? Why would I force them to wear shoes? Why would I feed them boxed white flour pasta products with chemical approximations of the flavours of real food? What would the potential benefits be? Why WOULD I?

I presuppose that the human being is equipped to live a human life. I wasn't born with a disposition to receive disconnected instruction or to have my natural gut flora removed, but rather strengthened, so when I ask the same question of the naturally occurring way, I come up with the answers that make sense. I would and do eat microbe-rich foods because they keep me healthy, those microbes being interconnected with my own body within the larger living organism which is our home- earth. I would and do go barefoot because the human foot is our equipment for walking and does so superbly well. I educate my children as we walk along the road, as I go about my work, as I sit with them observing our geese's foraging habits, as we eat free-range organically-raised roasted chicken, etc... They are continually cognizant of the gift that the Lord has given us in whatever we are enjoying, and even suffering.

Default to nature, not to the mainstream. Ask questions that probe to the core, and not just to below the surface. That's not deep enough. Not even close. At least not for me.

Children and Worship (Old Article)

On July 19th, 2008, I published an article concerning children and worship.  I think it bears reviewing since the topic of Sunday School has come up as a specific concern in the article "Bad Christian".

My wife just pointed out, interestingly enough, that the terms 'children and worship' and 'Sunday School' illuminate the giant chasm between what I am concerned about in present day evangelicalism, and what evangelicalism typically offers as an answer to that concern.  And after reading the article (which is still due for its second installment), I hope that anyone interested will have a better understanding of my thoughts on children and worship and the inadequacy of Sunday School as part of the vocation of the church.

Children and Worship, p. I

On any given Sunday, Christians from all over Christendom gather together to celebrate Christ. Some gather in an informal, loose way; others gather in an ancient pattern of worship known as the Liturgy (of which there are, granted, many different forms, though all are fairly formal, predictable, and therefore reliable). One thing most of these faith communities have in common is the separation of children from the Ministry of the Word, and the Sacrament of the Alter (at a later date, I will write an article expressing my views concerning the exclusion of children from the Eucharist). Quite basically, children are dismissed from the central functioning of the local church – the worship of Christ – at some point not long after, and sometimes even before the service begins.

Now there are some who would say that this is so because it reduces the amount of distractions in the congregation at any given time. Any person who is a parent should rightfully take offense to such a sentiment. Of course children can be a distraction, but only if your mind is focused on (and thereby already distracted) the exclusion of children as a valid, worshipping population of your congregation. That is, if the pattern of worship that people have come to accept, and expect is such that children are prompted to absence by the over-popular verbal valet, “could the children's ministry leaders now lead the children to their classrooms, please?” then an unnecessary, dare I say 'ungodly' assumption that children are a segment of people that need to be segregated from the 'real' worship becomes the guiding psychology of the congregation.

Parents feel ashamed that their children make noise, other parishoners react in irritation if they miss a refrain in a hymn, long-time attendees seem to forget their own children made noise too, and treat other parents as if they're doing a poor job disciplining their children to silence. Soon pastors, priests, bishops, and circuit counselors are brought in to set up a system to deal with the 'disorder' and 'unruliness' bludgeoning the silence congregants would prefer, but which is not necessarily a moral issue in need of such serious mitigation. What is missed in such drastic manouevers to establish a passive, receptive atmosphere to the mechanical revolutions of church worship is fatal and far-reaching.

The first fatal and far-reaching effect is, as I said earlier, that a psychological pattern is set up by partitioning children from the rest of the congregation. That pattern is the immediate pattern that seeps through the adult population and leadership of an assembly. What of the children though? What pattern is possibly set up in them when we routinely separate them from 'adult' worship?

I would like to submit that we're teaching our children that their uninhibited expressions, and spontaneity are first, a displeasure to God, and second, an irritation to the overall community of faith. Such weighty impressions being thrust on vulnerable, nascent minds, I believe, sets up a schismatic, possibly dissociative scheme in the psychology of our children. For example, we know that church attendence drops significantly when children are confirmed (in whatever way the local church does that), and/or reach their mid-teens, and that those 'drop-outs' tend to find acceptance in other circles that may, or may not have a positive influence on them. In any case, those same children who were once separated from the general congregation eventually find themselves leaving voluntarily because they've found acceptance in crowds outside the church; groups that accept regardless of volume, naivety, or age.

And really, why shouldn't those children – the same ones who received a 'shove-off' when they were young – find acceptance with people outside the church? Afterall, the latent hypocritical pattern of displacing the youth in our midst and then expecting them to join the rank-and-file later on is simply setting ourselves up for failure: divide the demographics of the congregation because of naivety and age, and then expect unity through doctrinal assimilation, and age, in the future. It is quite like cutting off the branch you're sitting on: the future generation of the church must be cut off from the goings-on of the church in the present. But cutting off the future from the present simply for ease of worship means only that the future is worked against, and more probably damaged by an ever-increasing depopulation of disenfranchised youth. Consequently, the 'ease' sought after by congregations morphs into a 'disease' that, rather than filling the pews with undistracted members, sees the pews being emptied out.

This kind of dividing is simply a microcosmic perpetuation of the greater, macrocosmic schisms in church history: the Great Schism of the East and West, the Reformation, and the numerous sects, denominations, and affiliations that have sprung up as a result. And although those church divisions continue to happen, some of our focus has turned to dividing ourselves from ourselves due to the relative age of the people within a local assembly. So while myriad external pressures play against the functioning of the church in this world, a very significant, dangerous pressure infects and divides the church internally. I call these particular internal pressures theological snobbery, and age-segregation. And these particular pressures, I contend, receive no place in Scripture.

In my next installment in this series, I will explore Scripture and make a case for the second fatal and far-reaching effect of segregating children from the central worship service of a church: it forces the probability of apostate generations, relies on the dubious hope of prodigals, and turns preferences into moralisms.

Raising My Grandkids

Here's something from a while ago. I'm re-posting it here at my blog because I thought it would be nice to have something up that would read with less bite to it.

It's 1:22 a.m. and I'm still up. Have to rise to the alarm at 6:30 a.m., and grump my way down the stairs to get the kids' breakfast ready. Not exactly sure why I can't sleep. Seem to have this slideshow of my life whizzing by in my head; projections of future failures, aspirations, successes.

Fine time to have an existential moment. At 1:22 a.m., that is.

Must've been brought on by a comment my wife made earlier. Yes, I'm blaming her. The blame is good though. She said, in a moment of marital insightfulness, "we're raising our grandkids." From the outside, that's a comment worthy of a sidelong glance, a twisty face that says, "Er, wha?" 'Cause from the outside, we're only 30 and 33 years old with three kids [*four now] under the age of 4.

But the view from the inside is different. There's a vault opened up in my head now: family patterns, cycles, history, mistakes, problems, joys, memories... Really, it's that slideshow I mentioned earlier. So, I think back to my wife's comment, and understand that the way we deal with our family now is the way our kids will deal with their families then (whenever 'then' is). And more, generational problems in my family can be worked out in future generations if Sarah and I do something about it now, with our kids.

That's a good thing for me to think about. Gives me the opportunity to love whoever my future generations will be, even before they are. Let's me start in motion a smoothing-over process. You know, break the bad patterns, start good ones in their place. Lets me say "I love you" into the future, into the hearts and minds of the wee ones to come.

It's also a bad thing for me to think about: keeps me up until -- what is it now? -- 1:40 a.m. Time to try and sleep again...