Re: Homeschoolers Need Not Apply

I was reading something posted to Facebook this morning (Charisma Magazine Online Article - Fortune 500 Company: Homeschoolers Need Not Apply) regarding NiSource, an Indiana energy distribution company, having decided to commit to not hiring homeschoolers.

As I read the article, an interesting point was made with regards to Common Core in it which a high school friend of mine who is now a teacher herself commented on, explaining that she doesn't see the problem with Common Core, and that homeschoolers shouldn't have any trouble meeting the minimum standards which Common Core lays out. She also asked what home schooling standards are and provided a link to the Common Core website, I presume for the purpose of allowing me to familiarize myself with details about it which are not negative or critical. See below the response I wrote to her:

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That's the thing. "Home schooling standards" aren't a universal, one-size-fits-all, across the board monolith that anyone can point to and make broad assumptions about. And I can see how that might be argued against by some as being a significant downside to home education, but as I and many others see it, the decentralized nature of home education is a great deal of the beauty and the strength of it.

I honestly am not intimately familiar with Common Core, but I have read articles and heard radio programs that gave specific examples of parents being arrested at parent-teacher conferences for asking questions, voicing their concerns, or for taking umbrage at specific homework or reading assignments, textbook lessons, how certain specifics of the standards were chosen, how their child's progress will be measured and tracked and what it will be used for, etc. When I see parents being arrested for questioning or disagreeing with Common Core, that right there tells me all I feel I need to know to be opposed to the thing.

Don't misunderstand me. I can imagine scenarios in which a parent threatening violence would be justifiably removed from a public event by law enforcement. But the numerous videos I've seen on the internet of parents being arrested at parent-teacher conferences related to Common Core didn't show any indication of those parents having been violent or threatening, unreasonable, etc. Those videos I've seen show parents being punished, humiliated, and intimidated for earnestly attempting to have a say about how their children are being educated. Parents across the country are being treated in a way that implies that it's their job to shut up and salute, and that any inconvenient assertion of their rights which might interfere with the roll-out of this Common Core scheme is not to be tolerated. 

From what I've seen in those videos, we all need to be deeply concerned about how intrusive, controlling, domineering, and tyrannical our government has become and continues to become.

My children do not belong to the state. My sons and daughter are not merely being babysat by Lauren and I while we wait for them to mature into adulthood when they can quietly, submissively join in building the economy. 

Children are primarily their parents' responsibility, not the government's, and I reject the notion that someone who has attended formal training and indoctrination in how to shepherd a class of dozens of children toward a State dictated end-goal is inherently superior to myself or my wife in their appreciation of my child's intellectual, emotional, spiritual, or physical needs. Forgive me, but I don't see why I should assume that they will inevitably do a superior job of teaching my children reading, math, science, history, etc.

Quite the contrary, I feel confident that the statistics in the U.S. support my assertion that homeschooling parents are either outperforming the professional teachers in the public schools in their ability to educate their students. That, or else the professional training and structure is a moot point.

Home educated students, on average, consistently and significantly outperform their public school peers in every academic measure, in study after study after study. I would even dare say that quite often the social intelligence of homeschoolers is also superior to that of their public school peers. Yes, public schoolers have a lot more practice interacting with their own age group, but homeschoolers are getting individual one-on-one attention for much more of the day than one child in a sea of public education could hope to, and the ability to carry on an adult conversation is a side-effect of this.

It is my sincerely held view that homeschoolers are receiving a superior education experience to their public school peers, not merely with regards to the academic subjects they study, but this "socialization" which we are told is the primary downside of home schooling is, as far as I'm concerned, actually another advantage which homeschoolers have more-so, relatively speaking, to the kids in public schools. 

For instance, how often do you hear about homeschooled children shooting up their classmates and teachers? So when someone asks me what the problem with Common Core is, I feel confident in my skepticism. 

The troubling thing about Common Core is not so much the specifics of the standards themselves, which, as I've already said, I'm not an expert on. Rather, the philosophical and ideological basis on which those standards were developed, and on which they have been and will be implemented - that's what I take issue with. 

As is the case in almost every conceivable aspect of our lives as Americans today, the government increasingly gives us the fig leaf of saying that we own the details of our lives, that we are "free", while at the same time adding innumerable and repressive regulations which more profoundly and more convincingly and constantly demonstrate that they see themselves as more ultimately the owners of those details, since they presume the right to dictate, specify, and ultimately control them.

"The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world," as the famous William Ross Wallace poem tells us, and for the life of me I can't see why we should entrust the job of rocking our children's cradles to the State. Can you?

Unfortunately, our government is demonstrating daily that an ever-increasing, seemingly endless number and variety of measures and efforts designed to restrict, coerce, and manipulate us all today is not sufficient for them. They want to have complete and unfettered control tomorrow also, over what and how the next generation will think. By having dictated all of education, they will then have even more complete control of that coming generation than they have over this one, or were able to over the previous.

I find that to be a very troubling and unsuitable circumstance, one which I feel we must navigate with great care, and which we must not allow to be cemented into place.

That said, as far as Common Core does or does not currently relate to the hiring decisions which NiSource made with regards to homeschoolers (which I realize was what the article I linked to at the top of this post was discussing, having gotten somewhat, but not really, off-topic), I think it's worth me saying that we need to not be so limited in our evaluations of these things - Common Core, immigration policy, the right to privacy, religious liberty, etc. - that we only consider what is currently obvious and direct about what's being implemented or proposed. 

To the contrary, we must, when evaluating these developments in society - in education, the economy, foreign affairs, civil liberties, religious liberty, etc. - weigh and consider the potential future implications for precedents carelessly set now, and how these implications might be combined in the future to produce awful and regrettable outcomes for us and our descendants. 

I am concerned that, in these things, chains and shackles and prison bars have been and are being constructed which will entrap us and our families and our fellow citizens, which will limit our freedoms and our liberty, and which will increasingly make us more and more the slaves which we look back on history with condescension and are appalled by the condition of.

A single bar does not a prison make, but a prison isn't made in a day either. It takes time, is planned out and built piece by piece over time. Our government now, I am sincerely and wholeheartedly convinced, is willing to accept collateral damage in the pursuit of a Utopian vision for the future. And if that means destroying some things, some people getting hurt, or severely restricting those who might oppose them, they will regulate, manipulate, lie to, and in all ways oppose and castigate and vilify those who are not helping them to achieve their vision for a Utopian future.

I, for one, would rather maintain  and advocate liberty and independence for myself and my family than accept these measures which are being imposed upon us in America.

For instance, I'd like to keep more of my tax money in my own pocket, to be spent as I see fit, instead of paying it to our government so it can be used to fund foreign armies in Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan. 

...Or abortion clinics and public schools here in the U.S., where if our children are not murdered as infants, they are misled and neglected and set adrift intellectually and spiritually.

...Or an internal revenue service here which has been shown to officially punish American citizens who held political positions which were deemed inconvenient to the current administration's efforts and agenda. 

...Or an NSA which is conducting a massive spying operation on American citizens, treating us all as if we are guilty until proven innocent, where it is more true than ever before that "anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law." 

...Or the militarized police forces which aggressively conduct no-knock raids with the most trivial and tenuous of justification, injuring innocent men, women, and children, and causing Americans to feel that they are no longer really free in their own nation.

...Or lavish (and frequent) vacations taken by our President and his family to all corners of the globe.

Instead of paying for those things with my tax money, I'd rather spend the money I've earned as a free man would, making independent determinations according to his conscience, values, beliefs, and goals. 

I'd rather spend my own money, for instance, on educational opportunities and resources which I feel and am convinced and have good reason to believe are actually and directly beneficial to my children and our family. By contrast, I'd rather not helplessly and dumbly and meekly give my money over to our government to make all these determinations for me and my children as to what is best for us.

Where is $500 of my money better spent? On taxes that pay administrative fees for implementing a top-down, one-size-fits-all, dictatorial approach to education like Common Core? Or in taking my family on a trip to Yellowstone National Park? 

Where is $8 of my money better spent, on taxes that pay for the coffee and creamer for the teachers' lounge at the local public school, or on a subscription to Netflix where I can select educational titles for my children to watch which help supplement their coursework and enrich their understanding of the subject matter?

The problem with Common Core is not merely what it is, but more importantly what it isn't. What it isn't is my wife and I making decisions about how to educate our children, taking responsibility for the little people God gave us to parent and raise, and being good stewards of their hearts and minds, educating them to live happy, healthy, and holy lives in service to Him.

And beyond that, I have zero confidence in the American government to do the moral, godly, or honest thing with regards to things which only indirectly affect my family and I. So why in God's name would I entrust them directly with my children, to do what's best for them? Why would I place my children in their hands, or allow them to suggest that my role is only secondary and coincidental?

No, when it comes to the public schools, I don't experience a surplus of confidence. It's obvious that something is profoundly and deeply broken there when I hear about school shootings, explicit and immoral sex-ed classes, fervent and aggressive secularization, suspensions over pop tarts being eaten into the shape of guns, bullying that drives children to commit suicide, godlessness, the advocacy and normalization of sexual immorality and abortion, scandals involving teachers having sex with their students, the teaching of Darwinian origins which tells children that we as a species originated from lower life forms over millions upon millions of years of death and dying and randomness, and that God may have been involved somehow if we want to believe that, but that the Bible is essentially a lie, unreliable and superstitious, inconvenient nonsense.

These things are rampant and, at least as it seems to me from my vantage point looking in from the outside, inherent to the philosophy and methodology under which the public education system is administrated. So, no, I don't trust our government to establish good and healthy and wise standards in Common Core which I would want to subject my children to. Look at what they've accomplished so far with the education system, and how can you be inspired to trust to their future efforts?

The proponents of Common Core and government dictated education systems may say that they have thus far not succeeded because they had not enough power and control before, but I am convinced that they had rather too much power and control, and that they should have less of both rather than more.

America's Response to Boys and Childhood Masculinity

RE:  Medicating Boyhood - Esquire

“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

― C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

My suspicion is that our public education system is increasingly being setup and oriented to focus on quantifying the development of children at younger ages, and to direct those children towards activities in which they can be measured, tested, and ranked relative to their peers - for instance, "teaching to the test." I think in such an environment of increasing pressure to conform to a standardized system, and to engage in things which can be converted neatly into a spreadsheet to submit to the authorities for review of one's performance as an educator or administrator of educators, there is a pivot or shift away from those activities which would engage young boys and allow them to feel they are free to assert themselves, explore, play, have adventures, and focus their energies in a positive direction.

That isn't even to speak of the mindset which has little boys being suspended for eating their Pop Tarts into the shape of a gun. As it seems to me, our culture has become so preoccupied with preventing another Columbine that much of the rambunctiousness and rowdiness of masculine childhood and adolescence is being quietly and subtly demonized in a misguided and disproportionate reaction to and attempt at prevention of school shootings.

Further, I think feminism has a part to play, insofar as there seems to be a conscious resistance to and attempt at reversing and counteracting societal norms with regards to gender which feminism sees as counterproductive towards egalitarian visions for the future. In short, little girls are getting encouragement to be assertive and reach their potential as leaders, and little boys are getting conscious feminizing out of a misguided attempt to make society more equal.

The problem with that being if little boys and little girls are hardwired differently, generally speaking, and if they are supposed to be permitted and encouraged to thrive along the lines of which they were created. It is my position that little boys have been endowed by their Creator with certain relative qualities which it's our job as parents and other authority figures to celebrate and guide, not suppress, amputate, reverse, or punish.

And it isn't just a waste of time, it's likely also a very great frustration to little boys, who then respond to these efforts to penalize and reverse their masculine nature by acting out and acting up.

Fathers not being present has very real and dramatic implications for the imparting of even reasonable instruction which isn't attempting a sort of gender-bending. The subconscious implication for a young boy who only ever receives instruction and guidance from a mother-figure is that she doesn't understand first-hand what it is he needs to prepare for: namely, manhood. She's a woman, so she could give this little boy guidance on what to expect if he were a girl, but the little boy knows he's not a girl, and if he's healthy he doesn't want to become a girl. Best case scenario, if the little boy is only receiving instruction from a mother-figure, with no father-figure consistently and reliably present, all that instruction is discounted in his mind because he's trying to leave himself an exit in case it turns out at some point that authentic masculinity is to be found along some other path than the one he's being told to follow.

Meanwhile, our society sees a little boy who's frustrated, distracted, defiant, and wayward; and if you throw in a lack of moral instruction and spiritual authority, a refusal of parents to administer corporal penalties (i.e. - spanking), or a confusion about when and how and why to administer corporal penalties, and a lack of will and commitment to consistently apply discipline, and not only a lack of support for this from society at large, but rather an ardent opposition, what's left for that boy except for psycho-pharmacology?

It is an epic tragedy, and the long-term consequences are going to be dire, I'm afraid.

I think another handicap to a boy receiving only mother-figure instruction is that it tends to, in my experience and observations, relative to preparing a boy to someday become a man, rely heavily on negative examples of masculinity which the boy should avoid growing up to resemble, and typically lacks sufficient positive examples of masculinity which the boy should pursue and emulate.

The high divorce rate in America, and the high percentage of children (including boys) who are born out of wedlock in the U.S. - it doesn't just have implications for whether a father-figure is consistently present in that boys life to instruct and guide him. It also means that there is likely a great and powerful stigma attached in the mind of the mother-figure to the male example who does have or would have had the greatest potential for impact on the development of that little boy, and this stigma is then passed on to the son. Those sons who grow up without fathers don't just grow up in a neutral rather than positive position; rather, they start behind the 8 ball, so to speak, when it comes to having an optimistic outlook on what to expect when they reach manhood. 

The divorcee mother who resents and blames, openly or not, the boys' father who she's no longer married to due to a marital failure on one or both of their parts - this mother, intentionally or not, places a stigma on the first example of masculinity which that boy has to look up to and learn from. 

The single mother who was first impregnated, then abandoned by a dead-beat will always condemn, either by what she says of or by her silence about, that man who should have stayed and provided for and protected that family, and so again in that case the little boy is taught subtly or explicitly that he can look forward to shame, disgrace, and resentment when he grows up. Absent any positive examples of mature manhood which might enter his life, this will be all he has to go on. Even with the arrival of positive examples later down the road, however, there will always be that tinge of self-doubt relative to the infamy of his father.

And none of that even factors in the situations where the mother-figure may come to resent those masculine traits which she observes in her son which she has, consciously or not, come to associate with the husband who she is divorced from, or the sexual partner who abandoned her when she became pregnant. God forbid the mother blame the son for the sins and shortcomings of the father, but I fear this oft times happens, and its effect is not a positive one on the behavior and attitude of the boys in our culture. Women, like all people, can sometimes be vengeful creatures; and absent the father to punish, sometimes the sons are instead.

We must proactively encourage, guide, and celebrate the boys in our culture, since how we raise them today will impact greatly the kind of men we'll have in our culture tomorrow. 

Do we really want 1 in 7 men learning that their masculinity is something to tranquilize? Or what if the other 6 of 7 men look on from a distance at the 1/7th and feel compelled to either stifle themselves or risk being likewise medicated into submission? 

What will the implications be for alcohol and drug use and dependency for generations to come if we set and maintain this precedent regarding ADHD medication now?

What we need are men and women, fathers and mothers, who take responsibility for teaching and guiding their children, and the taking of that responsibility should start with figuring out what it is we're preparing our children for. My advice? Prepare your boys for manhood and your girls for womanhood.

The end goal should not be to raise a boy to adulthood who has learned (through the assistance of drugs, or out of fear of being put on drugs) to sit quietly and do his work without making a lot of noise or requiring much attention. The end goal should not be to drug a child into submission so he'll do well on tests, or at least not interfere with the other children and their tests. The end goal should not be an androgynous re-imagining of society.

No, our goal should be to raise young boys who take responsibility for themselves and those around them, and who towards that end use their God-given gifts, talents, abilities, and opportunities. Mistaking blessings for curses will be a terrible detractor from rather than benefit to this goal.

Much of my opinion on this matter has been tested and subjected to having four little boys of my own, but I suppose the "proof in the pudding," as they say, may not be fully realized until my young boys have themselves reached adulthood.

In the meantime, I find it somewhat surprising that such mainstream venues as Esquire and The New York Times are pointing out a disturbing trend which would seem to imply that America has the wrong idea about boyhood.

It isn't just as simple as the breakdown of families, though this is part of it. I say this is a part but not the sum of the matter because fathers aren't just absent from the lives of American sons, but also of American daughters.

When we diagnose with ADHD and medicate so many more American sons than daughters, I think we should conclude that there is a problem with how we view masculinity and femininity, maleness and femaleness, in our culture; there is a problem with how our views on boys and girls, men and women inform and shape the way we relate to boyhood development. Clearly there is a trend in the wrong direction which seems to indicate the need for a revision. If it were just that the fathers were absent from the lives of their children, wouldn't we see an equal rise in ADHD diagnosis for girls as for boys?

Parents leaving the raising of their children to educators is a large part of the problem. This is in part because the educators and aren't in a sufficiently advantageous position to successfully perform these duties for society, and even moreso because parents are, to the contrary, ideally positioned to do so.

An article or book like this one from Esquire comes my way, or I hear someone conversing on the subject, and I feel the need to attempt to reverse the societal trend, "being the change I wish to see in the world" as Ghandi so famously advised, by speaking with confidence as a parent myself, and taking my responsibility as a parent seriously; by proving with my confident assertions that a parent can and should observe carefully the trends of society, attempt earnestly to make sense of them, and think soberly and carefully about the impact these trends have and will have on their children, and respond accordingly and appropriately.

The initial push-back will likely be that to do so requires calling into question what many parents and authority figures have chosen to do in America. But I ask you this: How else can we as parents effectively guide our children in a way which will prepare them to live as adults in the world, as it is now and as it is swiftly becoming, unless we observe openly and honestly the pitfalls as well as the prizes which are inherent to our society?

Those who refuse to learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them. And how will we know which choices in our society were mistakes unless we're willing to take an open and honest look at the results we're seeing in the present? It may be difficult, but the future of our sons (and daughters) is worth it.

PRISM and Me

I keep thinking about this whole PRISM scandal coming out recently, especially because I'm a very opinionated person, and am quite active on the internet in sharing my opinions via Facebook, my blog, etc.

Two things: 1) I'm not surprised to learn about PRISM - actually, I'd be more surprised if there weren't a program like that in place; 2) How much more extensive are these covert operations than we know?

The thing about PRISM (our government mining personal, private online data from Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc.) is that it's most concerning in conjunction with the IRS scandal, given that we know conservative groups and individuals were especially targeted and given a hard time when seeking non-profit tax status, and all because they were active in disagreeing with some of the policies of our President, policies which they viewed as detrimental to the health and safety of our nation.

What I mean is, how troubling is it to think that under that same administration, individual American citizens might have their private correspondence, photos, posts, etc. looked through without their knowledge, or that they might even face hassles in real life for the opinions and beliefs they shared in their virtual life? Surely there is no such thing as privacy anymore; I do hope there is still such a thing as liberty.

Should Christians Watch or Read Game of Thrones?

I can't speak to watching the HBO series, only to having read the first book through and having made it a few chapters into book two. The question of "should Christians watch Game of Thrones" has been part of what's prevented me from earnestly purchasing the series, or borrowing it from the library. Even though I find the plot rich and intriguing, the characters diverse and believable and engaging, and have very much been fascinated by the story so far as I've read it, I've read enough to know what to expect if I watch the series.

I don't feel the question is really about Game of Thrones. Rather, the question is about a more fundamental underlying issue: namely, how are Christians to interact with the sin and sinners around them? And another question, what does what we're interested in for media - books, movies, music, etc. - say about how godly we are, how pure we are, whether we love and follow Jesus, etc.?

It's too easy (and risky) to make a hard and fast rule across the board, to risk falling off into legalism and unlicensed judgment on the one side. Equally easy is falling off on the other side into relativism, amorality, emotionalism, minimizing, etc.

As I've studied the Bible and meditated on God's Word for all the years of my young adult life (not so many years, really), I've come to believe it matters more to God what our reasons will be for coming to the decision we do. In other words, God will care more about why we did or didn't watch Game of Thrones than he will whether we did.

Did I pick up Game of Thrones in pursuit of a vicarious sexual thrill? Did I publicly denounce Game of Thrones in pursuit of a reputation for piety? If both are wicked attitudes and mindsets, will God have any more approval for the one than the other?

I've read C.S. Lewis' Narnia series, as well as a handful of his other works, and enjoyed them thoroughly. I read through Tolkien's LOTR and The Hobbit and was and am a fan. What partly distressed me, or what kept me from completely embracing them, however, was the sense of artificiality, or perhaps of excessive moral sanitation. They’re excellent children's books, yes, and excellent books for an adult to read as well. Excellent stories, and obviously fantasy, but how real were the people? Were the outcomes too convenient, and would I develop unrealistic expectations in life from reading them?

It occurs to me that I feel this sense of artificiality because of having read the Bible since I was a young boy, and because I've read a good deal of human history, and neither the Bible nor history has led me to such a clean or cut and dry view of human events, or of the human heart.

I am concerned that some Christians who read the Bible just glaze over the portions which mention unimaginable violence and cruelty, or which tell (briefly, except in the case of Song of Songs) of sex, and which often mention sexual immorality.

The Bible is not crass in it's depiction of sex, even when Song of Songs covers sexuality at length (for an entire book!), but it does recognize that it exists!

My concern is that Game of Thrones goes unfortunately too far in it's depiction of sex acts; then again, perhaps it's difficult to fault a book for going into more detail about the sex acts in the story when every other bit of dialogue or action in the story is also covered with more detail; when minimizing sex in a novel or any other media, at what point as a writer do you risk inconsistency of narrative to become suddenly vague about one topic?

On the other hand, do we develop naive assumptions about what novels should be when we've digested LOTR and Narnia for years, books written primarily with children in mind which conspicuously avoid sexuality entirely (as I would want any children's book to do)?

I believe the Bible deals with sex more candidly than do either of those works, yet less explicitly than Game of Thrones. And, really, the sexual content in Game of Thrones is what concerns me most, due to its explicit nature.

Zooming out, however, I find the framework and portrayal of characters to be more realistic and true-to-life in Game of Thrones, and I hope we as Christians will not hoist childish, naive objections on anything just because we wish all stories could be told with talking and singing vegetables.

There has to be a distinction between "keeping ones self unspotted from the world" and a reckless pursuit of naiveté. Whether we watch or read Game of Thrones or any other thing, I hope we Christians are able to make that distinction in word, deed, thought and feeling.

We are devolving! Or are we?

Researchers say Western IQs dropped 14 points over last century

We are devolving!

Half kidding aside, I'd be interested to know in more detail how they ensured consistency of methodology, and whether the statement "on average... those populations measured dropped by 1.23 points per decade" reflects only a comparison of data from the individual years 1889 relative to 2004, or whether it can be trusted to reflect all the years between.

For instance, I might have a big pot of oatmeal with blueberries in it. Suppose I plunge a spoon in at the far left side and come out with four blueberries, but only find three blueberries when I plunge the spoon in on the right. The bigger that bowl was, the more dubious would be my claim that a pattern could be predicted throughout that bowl based on the plunging of my spoon in just two places.

Further, I'd like to ask how they took their sample group, how they selected persons to participate in the testing. Did they advertise at the mall? Did they randomly call persons from the phonebook? Did they select college students in attendance? Whatever method they used, even if it might appear very similar in our general description to what the Victorians recorded themselves as having done, what effect would the changes within those institutions have on the kind of sample group a person might get from using them? 

If, for instance, they made it geographical, perhaps particular to a certain neighborhood or town or county, is there a way to account for how changes in the economy of that area may have influenced migration in or out of the area by more educated or intelligent citizens? In America, you might have a stark contrast comparing I.Q.'s of persons in Detroit, MI or Silicon Valley, CA from 1950 and 2010, and for obvious reasons. As major industries HQ-ed in those places, or as their economies cratered, migrations of skilled workers would effect the average intelligence of the population.

Questions of methodology and how to assure reliable data aside for a moment, I should wonder at the assertion that, essentially, dumb women have lots of children. I find that offensive and dubious, as my wife and I would like to have a large family, and I wonder whether such a conclusion is easily grasped for to soothe a Western society which is preparing now for a population contraction due to such low average birth rates? In other words, is there a bias towards suggesting that intelligent women have fewer children?

Today is Tomorrow's Past

What I consider to be the present as of this writing will someday be the distant past.

I've never been this age before. In twenty years, Lord willing I live that long, I can look back on the decisions I'm making now, and on the perspective I had on the world and my circumstances in it, and I'll have some context; I'll be able to name the mistakes and the successes. 

That's why they say hindsight is 20/20, isn't it?

When I'm 46 rather than 26, I'll understand better what an impact my having taken Josiah porcupine hunting today had on how he thought of himself, or the world, or me, or porcupines.

I'll understand how choices I'm making now on how to manage money set my family up for either more economic uncertainty, or else more peace of mind.

It'll be clear to me how the relationships and disciplines I forged at work helped me to build this or that kind of career and skill set, and how that career opened up opportunities or limited them for me and mine.

There are some things I'm sure I'll regret not having figured out sooner: people-pleasing, humility, how to appropriately and respectfully give and receive rebukes, how to tend to details without losing sight of the thoughts and feelings of those around me. 

I could go on. 

I regret those things now; why wouldn't I still regret them in 20 years?

I've been thinking about what I'll leave to my sons some day. My example, what I've taught them, memories of time spent with me - beyond that, what's certain? 

If I left them $1 million, would that be enough to hang a hat on? What about a huge property with thousands of acres? What about a profitable company? The wealth could be squandered, the property might be neglected, and any profitable company could be mismanaged or driven out of business by trickery or exceptional competition.

I consider myself a writer; perhaps I overestimate my ability to write well. But what if I left the boys a stack of books I'd written, or what if they were given a trunk full of my journals? Surely my writings could sit in obscurity, or be hidden away as amateurish or embarrassing, or they might be misunderstood or misinterpreted. In such cases, is there any lasting glory to my having written in the first place?

The fact is, despite my anxiety over potentially amounting to nothing in life, my self-worth and enduring legacy depend on more than just being able to generate a paycheck with a high dollar figure, or my ability to pass along significant property and wealth, or my ability to curry favor with the masses.

What if I become President of the United States some day? Would that mean my life was a success? Surely not, if taking a glance at others who've held that office is any indication. Often, there are nearly as many who hate the chief executive as there are those who admire him; and who but historians and professors can even name all the presidents who served in the 1800's, much less tell you the decisions each made and how impactful those decisions were on the world? So it will be in the 23rd century, I suppose, that there will be as little memory of who all occupied the oval office in the 21st as we have now for those who served in the 19th. That is, assuming our political system survives into the 23rd century - quite a big assumption, if you ask me, given the way things are going now.

Is there anything I could say, or build, or do which will certainly have lasting value? 

It's impossible to say whether my great, great grandchildren will learn my name, or take any interest in what I've done. What's more, it's difficult to say whether they should. 

"A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children,

but the sinner's wealth is laid up for the righteous."

- Proverbs 13:22

That passage became a prominent one in my self-evaluation and planning a few years ago when I heard Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA talk about the biblical call for men to take responsibility for themselves, their families, their churches, their communities, etc. Between when I first heard mention of Proverbs 13:22 in that context and just yesterday, I think I've interpreted this passage to mean that if I'm a good man, I'll make sure my grandchildren have some sort of money or wealth set aside for them in my will.

That's probably still true, but just yesterday, as my thoughts wandered the way they typically do, another possible interpretation became apparent. 

What if the inheritance a good man leaves to his grandchildren is the good example he set for them to follow, and the good upbringing he gave their parents, and the fruit of the good decisions he made which caused a chain-reaction of blessings for them as well?

For instance: what if the inheritance I leave to the children of Josiah David Mullet, Elihu James Mullet, Solomon Emmanuel Mullet, and Daniel Joseph Mullet (etc.) is that I read the Scriptures to their fathers before bed? Or what if the inheritance to my grandchildren is that my wife and I steadfastly committed to educating their fathers at home? What if, regardless of whether I go to my grave an elderly pauper, I'll leave a legacy behind which is worth immeasurably more than a plump bank account, a grand mansion, or a famous name?

It's too easy to allow myself to be tricked into thinking I'll be worth only so much as the money I accumulate and keep. And, by extension, since the money comes from work, I'll be worth only so much as the job I'm able to land and keep and advance in.

What's infinitely more significant than missing 10 hours worth of overtime in my paycheck two weeks from now is losing my temper when the boys make a mistake or are behaving in an undisciplined way; what's far more pressing is that I don't make up foolish, unjust, oppressive rules they couldn't hope to follow, or which they would follow to their detriment; what's way more important is not setting a bad example by my own attitude, habits, relationships, speech, choices, etc. 

Lord help me.

There's Always a Bigger Fish

I recently went over to the home of a cousin of mine for the afternoon to shoot some firearms, 10 guns in all between his, his dad's, our Grandpa Mullet's, a rifle from his other grandfather, and a shotgun of mine.

Guns, like many things, have limitations.

Take my Remington 870 Tactical, for instance. It has the shortest legal barrel at 18", a pistol grip, adjustable stock; I've added a tactical flashlight to it just in front of the pump; it looks beastly!

Take it out trapshooting, however, and you're going to find it woefully inadequate next to my uncle's 870 variant with the traditional stock and longer barrel. They're both 12 gauge, but one performs markedly better at shooting clay pigeons accurately.

And that's how they've been designed. My shotgun isn't so much for hunting birds as they fly through the air as it is for tactical operations. I bought my shotgun in case someone ever tries to break into our home in the middle of the night, or in case some wild animal is roaming around the yard and threatens our boys.

I've been following the gun control debate these past months, and the rhetoric has me thinking - about politics, about polarization, about the difference between urban, suburban and rural mindsets, about the balance between liberty and security, and about the relationship of citizens to their government. 

Many provocative questions come to mind. For instance:

Are gun control opponents and 2nd amendment defenders paranoid or pragmatic about the possibility of a tyrannical government taking hold in America, and the need for citizens to be armed so as to discourage or deter such a government from blatant abuses?

If such a tyranny were to take hold, would it occur suddenly and conspicuously, or by degrees and quietly to where the majority of Americans would fail to recognize the tyranny until it was firmly established?

If such a tyranny were to take hold, would there even be any point in resisting, and is the 2nd amendment proposed as a safeguard against tyranny a moot point when our police forces and military are already so heavily armed, and are in fact the most advanced and powerful in the world?

Even if evenly matched, would there be a moral or ethical basis, support or framework for fighting against the official government of one's country, as the colonies fought against the British during the Revolutionary War, or as some argue the Confederacy fought against the Union in the Civil War?

Such questions are dangerous, perhaps, but they're too obvious to be ignored. 

The issue of the moment now is gun control. On the one side, the President and many prominent liberals contend that America is unsafe with certain guns, or so many guns, or certain people getting guns. In order to protect us from ourselves and one another, they must erect barriers to purchasing weapons, at least certain weapons, at least for certain persons deemed dangerous.

Am I to object if the criminal, the bad man, is prevented from acquiring a weapon prior to breaking into my home? Surely if he's disarmed before disturbing our domestic tranquility this is for the best, and hopefully I'll not ever have to fire my own weapon at such a man! That is my preference. But will gun control legislation achieve such a goal, or will it simply penalize me, with time or money or some other inconvenience, for acquiring a weapon? And if penalizing, will it prevent in so far as it discourages?

And if the President and other liberals have considered that criminals are not stopped by gun control laws, that only law-abiding citizens obey laws about guns or any other thing, and if these liberals proceed with gun control legislation anyhow, it's not difficult to see how gun control opponents can quickly object on the grounds that a tyrannical government must first disarm it's citizens in order to minimize their ability to resist tyranny.

But there again, what is tyranny? If I disagree with a law, is that enough to make that law tyrannical, or is the government which enforces that law therefor oppressing me? Surely not, since then every man in a prison could contend that he is not at fault for having stolen his neighbor's stereo, or raping that woman, or beating that man to death at the bar; no, his government must be the one at fault for having made laws which he deemed tyrannical and overly-restrictive. But that can't be! Such would be anarchy and ridiculous.

The intelligent, thoughtful proponent of liberty will contend that this is not what is meant by tyranny, however. Tyranny is taking a freedom away from me which my exercising would not have harmed any other person. But who will decide what is harmful to other persons? 

Is my selling you a 16 oz. soda which might contribute to your becoming obese or contracting diabetes, considering that obesity and diabetes are clearly harmful, different only by degrees from my shooting or stabbing you? I've never heard anyone dispute that the government should make and enforce laws against unlawful, unprovoked shootings and stabbings; but many are offended by NYC Mayor Bloomberg attempting to outlaw large sodas. 

Is Bloomberg a tyrant, however benevolent, or are those who object merely ignorant peasants who don't know what's best for them, who object like an inmate who's been convicted of larceny, rape, assault or murder, that the government is at fault for making a law they don't want to obey?

Is Obama a tyrant, or are those who object simply rebellious and insubordinate subjects who need to be reminded of their place?

I get to thinking, even if we were ruled by tyrants, what responsibility have we as Christians? We must speak the truth in love, boldly and clearly and courageously. But what would we have said in the days of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln? 

"Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God."

Romans 13:1

Was King George a tyrant, or were the colonists traitors who offended godliness and order by opposing him as they did? Was the Confederacy a legitimate motion to affirm the liberty of those States which seceded, or was Lincoln a hero for boldly opposing a wicked and racist society which had chosen to take up arms against it's government rather than submit to reform?

I don't know. If you've read this far, perhaps you were hoping I'd make some lofty, impassioned argument one way or the other. Perhaps you're undecided and you wanted me to help you make up your mind. Perhaps you're firmly in one camp or the other and you were hoping to hear me affirm your presuppositions about the topic. I can't do that, though - not sincerely, anyhow.

The fact is that I have misgivings about universally defending liberty against restriction; there are freedoms which I and others clearly benefit from forgoing, even if only when we restrict ourselves willingly by conscience and good judgment.

I am deeply inclined in my heart and mind and soul to oppose tyranny with forceful, firm arguments, and to look with disdain on threats of violent opposition to government, which I see as disorderly and wicked, and such a disdain could only be parted with in very extreme and dramatic and obvious circumstances. I consider myself open-minded when it comes to laws and legislation, except where my conscience dictates that this or that matter is firmly in the black or white, and then I vote with my conscience.

Meanwhile I look on politics as being eternally adversarial, but also increasingly polarized and polarizing in this country. I continue to wonder, without some moderating or unifying event, issue or character, whether we will find America embroiled in another civil war in my time. And if there were a civil war, what would I do? Again, I realize this is dangerous to suppose publicly, but what is more dangerous is for the trend to continue in our nation until two opposing sides have no ability to both save face and compromise. 

What concerns me more than the possibility of raising eyebrows is the notion that our political system, that our civil institutions, cannot find resolutions for the tough questions with all sides conducting themselves with integrity and mutual respect.

Just like a gun is designed with certain purposes and limitations, so too are arguments and proposals. My cousin and I spending the afternoon cheerfully taking turns shooting at targets to see who's the better shot, and to test out how each firearm performs - this is dramatically different from he and I taking turns firing at one another to do each other harm. One scenario will see us concluding the day, each with more experience and a smile on our face; the other will end tragically, with tears and bloodshed. 

So goes the nation. 

"Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it."

Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)