Wednesday, April 27, 2005
A time to live, a time to die...
By Russell King
Now that the furor over Terri Schiavo has subsided, I'd like to ask some questions about what lessons our words and actions are teaching our children about death. Because the Schiavo battle was fought mainly on religious—and specifically Christian—grounds, and because Christianity is my own spiritual and cultural framework, I’ll deal first with the questions that confront a Christian dad. But there are broader, non-theological questions for dads, and I’d like to raise them, too.
I was put off by the way Christian leaders treated death in the Schiavo case. The loudest voices promoted a position they called “pro-life” but is really just anti-death – and contrary to biblical teaching. As a cradle Free Methodist (that’s a church that makes Jerry Falwell look like a liberal secular humanist) and a preacher’s kid, I was taught that while we are not to hasten death, neither are we to postpone it or fear it.
The end of a life may be sad for those who remain and mourn their loss, but it is a joyous event for the one who has died. My son Jaden, 5, tried to explain death to my daughter Maya, 4, this way: “You go to sleep and wake up with Jesus.” We may not know what that means exactly, but if all of these folks — from parents to preachers and politicians — are Christians who believe Schiavo was a Christian, shouldn't they also believe it better for her soul to escape the withering husk of her earthly body and rush to the loving embrace God’s arms?
While this belief about what happens at death is not universally shared, even among Christians, it is part of the belief system professed by most of the folks we saw on TV during the weeks of fighting over Schiavo. Their words about their beliefs say one thing, but their actions say another. The clear implication of their fight is that death is something to be delayed by all possible means, because somehow this life – regardless of its quality -- is better than whatever comes after it.
Just last month, the liturgy reminded Christians that while Jesus suffered -- and probably had the option of postponing, even avoiding, death -- he ultimately chose to let God's will be done. My own dad shared with me that the most moving moment for him in the film The Passion of the Christ was when the beaten, bleeding Jesus crawled toward his own cross, toward his own death, in that final moment.
I don’t claim to know the mind of God, so I don't know what God's will was for Terri Schiavo. But the question of God’s will was lost in the political posturing, fundamentalist fund-raising and media manipulation that wrote the ugly final lines of Terri’s life. Christianity teaches that our life on earth is but a blink in the eye of our real existence, which begins at death and lasts for eternity in God's loving presence. Why did so many self-professed Christians, including “leaders,” send the message that we should cling to life at all costs and that this clinging represents some sort of moral achievement? There is a moment at which the Christian response to death is to let it come and be glad.
I hope that when my death comes the clergy comforting my children are not among those who cling so fiercely to life. What solace can they offer? I have to wonder, too, how they can prepare people of faith for the inevitable reality of death.
Which brings me to the non-theological questions: Are we not teaching our children that death is a natural part of life? Are we not teaching them that life springs from death, that life requires death? I think we are not.
We have become so urbanized, so sanitized, so removed from the cycle of life that our children get the notion life comes from the grocery store. Too few of us hunt or fish and eat what we kill. Too few of us have any contact with a farm, where we’d see the plants and animals that must die for us to live. Even the deaths of members of our own species are hidden away in hospitals and nursing homes so that we never witness them. This seems profoundly wrong.
What we do not witness, we do not know; what we do not know, we fear. I do not wish to include ignorance and fear as part of the legacy I pass to my children. One way or another, we dads are responsible for helping address the question of death. And I think we can do a lot better than what we just saw on TV.
Note: If you've enjoyed reading American Dad, you can show your appreciation by sending a donation to one of the three places listed here. I have good friends who are doing exceptionally good things at each of these places. Thanks!
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church ELCA, 5701 Raymond Rd., Madison, WI 53711
St. John's Lutheran Church, N3882 County Highway KK, Weyauwega, WI 54983-9736
Trinity Lutheran Church, 3 S 460 Curtis Avenue, Warrenville, IL 60555
By Russell King
Now that the furor over Terri Schiavo has subsided, I'd like to ask some questions about what lessons our words and actions are teaching our children about death. Because the Schiavo battle was fought mainly on religious—and specifically Christian—grounds, and because Christianity is my own spiritual and cultural framework, I’ll deal first with the questions that confront a Christian dad. But there are broader, non-theological questions for dads, and I’d like to raise them, too.
I was put off by the way Christian leaders treated death in the Schiavo case. The loudest voices promoted a position they called “pro-life” but is really just anti-death – and contrary to biblical teaching. As a cradle Free Methodist (that’s a church that makes Jerry Falwell look like a liberal secular humanist) and a preacher’s kid, I was taught that while we are not to hasten death, neither are we to postpone it or fear it.
The end of a life may be sad for those who remain and mourn their loss, but it is a joyous event for the one who has died. My son Jaden, 5, tried to explain death to my daughter Maya, 4, this way: “You go to sleep and wake up with Jesus.” We may not know what that means exactly, but if all of these folks — from parents to preachers and politicians — are Christians who believe Schiavo was a Christian, shouldn't they also believe it better for her soul to escape the withering husk of her earthly body and rush to the loving embrace God’s arms?
While this belief about what happens at death is not universally shared, even among Christians, it is part of the belief system professed by most of the folks we saw on TV during the weeks of fighting over Schiavo. Their words about their beliefs say one thing, but their actions say another. The clear implication of their fight is that death is something to be delayed by all possible means, because somehow this life – regardless of its quality -- is better than whatever comes after it.
Just last month, the liturgy reminded Christians that while Jesus suffered -- and probably had the option of postponing, even avoiding, death -- he ultimately chose to let God's will be done. My own dad shared with me that the most moving moment for him in the film The Passion of the Christ was when the beaten, bleeding Jesus crawled toward his own cross, toward his own death, in that final moment.
I don’t claim to know the mind of God, so I don't know what God's will was for Terri Schiavo. But the question of God’s will was lost in the political posturing, fundamentalist fund-raising and media manipulation that wrote the ugly final lines of Terri’s life. Christianity teaches that our life on earth is but a blink in the eye of our real existence, which begins at death and lasts for eternity in God's loving presence. Why did so many self-professed Christians, including “leaders,” send the message that we should cling to life at all costs and that this clinging represents some sort of moral achievement? There is a moment at which the Christian response to death is to let it come and be glad.
I hope that when my death comes the clergy comforting my children are not among those who cling so fiercely to life. What solace can they offer? I have to wonder, too, how they can prepare people of faith for the inevitable reality of death.
Which brings me to the non-theological questions: Are we not teaching our children that death is a natural part of life? Are we not teaching them that life springs from death, that life requires death? I think we are not.
We have become so urbanized, so sanitized, so removed from the cycle of life that our children get the notion life comes from the grocery store. Too few of us hunt or fish and eat what we kill. Too few of us have any contact with a farm, where we’d see the plants and animals that must die for us to live. Even the deaths of members of our own species are hidden away in hospitals and nursing homes so that we never witness them. This seems profoundly wrong.
What we do not witness, we do not know; what we do not know, we fear. I do not wish to include ignorance and fear as part of the legacy I pass to my children. One way or another, we dads are responsible for helping address the question of death. And I think we can do a lot better than what we just saw on TV.
Note: If you've enjoyed reading American Dad, you can show your appreciation by sending a donation to one of the three places listed here. I have good friends who are doing exceptionally good things at each of these places. Thanks!
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church ELCA, 5701 Raymond Rd., Madison, WI 53711
St. John's Lutheran Church, N3882 County Highway KK, Weyauwega, WI 54983-9736
Trinity Lutheran Church, 3 S 460 Curtis Avenue, Warrenville, IL 60555
Friday, April 01, 2005
Sex, truth and happiness
By Russell King
As an American dad, I’m ever on the lookout for cultural messages and “conventional wisdom” that pose threats to the health or happiness of my kids. It’s not too tough to find them: We’re drowning in them. The most visible threats come from the worlds of sports and entertainment, both of which thrive on outdated, unhealthy and downright degrading attitudes, values, priorities and images. Others are sneakier, which probably makes them more dangerous. It’s easier to avoid the more obvious traps in life.
One of those sneaky ones stuck its head out of the muck a few weeks ago when people were reacting to a congressional study of our federal government’s abstinence-only education programs. The study found that 11 of the 13 most commonly used abstinence-only programs contain serious errors, and lots of people had lots to say about it.
Examples: One popular curriculum falsely teaches that touching another person's genitals "can result in pregnancy." Another falsely teaches that "in heterosexual sex, condoms fail to prevent HIV approximately 31% of the time."
Giving kids bad, even dangerous, information about sex and contraception, though, isn’t what this column is about.
I’m not a fan of abstinence-only programs. My experience has been that anything-only is an inefficient, even counter-productive, way of parenting. No one approach ever works every time for every kid in every circumstance. True to form, these programs have been ineffective in reducing teenage sexual activity and actually increase teens’ risky sexual behavior.
Dumb ideas that put my kids at greater risk for unplanned pregnancy or early death through AIDS, however, aren’t what this column is about either.
The programs also came under fire for reinforcing false and demeaning stereotypes about women (and, I’ll argue, men). One program, for instance, lists "financial support" as one of the "5 Major Needs of Women" and "domestic support" as one of the "5 Major Needs of Men." Another tells the story of a princess who gives a knight good advice but loses his affection to a village maiden because the knight feels "ashamed" over needing the princess’ help. The moral of the story: "occasional suggestions and assistance may be alright (sic) but too much of it will lessen a man's confidence or even turn him away from his princess."
I’ll battle anybody who tries to give my kids the notion that women “need” financial support from men (they are incapable of making it on their own?), that men “need domestic support” (they can’t make it without a substitute mommy?) or that men are unmanned and turned off by women who share their knowledge, wisdom and opinions with their mates. That’s just insulting all around.
Giving kids bad information about what it means to be men and women – as bad as that is -- still isn’t what this column is about.
What I’m writing about today is the finding that one of the programs instructs kids that "women gauge their happiness and judge their success by their relationships. Men's happiness and success hinge on their accomplishments."
I’m not crazy about school programs that try to fit kids into gender molds by implying that the way things are in our culture right now is how things must be, should be or just naturally are. We all have choices, and our culture is the creation of choices made by those who have gone before us. We can make other choices.
What really struck me about this wasn’t that the programs were trying to fit kids into these molds, but rather that the programs’ critics thought this message was demeaning to women and flattering to men. They think the modern, liberated woman should be, or is, more like how men are described – finding happiness in accomplishments rather than relationships. They’ve got it backward. Big time.
The idea that accomplishments will (or should) bring more happiness than relationships will isn’t just wrong, it’s sick. It’s one of those insidious cultural messages, part of the frequently unwise conventional wisdom, that threaten the health and happiness of our children. I hope my three daughters are liberated from the cultural fences built around their foremothers, but I hope liberation brings them the opportunities and rewards men have enjoyed and women have been denied, not simply a trade of their fences for ours.
This sickness has taken a disproportionate toll on the lives of men, filling them with empty promises and locking them into impoverished lives on an emotional wasteland.
This is, in part, what makes absentee dads even of men in intact marriages, because they’re putting in those long hours at work, striving for accomplishments, rather than coming home and building and enjoying relationships with their spouse, their kids and their friends. It is, in part, what makes absentee dads even of men spending time at home, because they’re so emotionally drained and mentally distracted by the striving that they are absent even when present. We lose. They lose.
This is, in part, what makes men unable to express emotions and uncomfortable in intimate, honest relations: In short, bad husbands, bad friends and bad fathers. The man who refuses to work 12 or 14 hours a day because he wants to be with his family is considered less than dedicated, professional or dependable. His priorities are “wrong.” He’ll never be “successful.” He’s “weak,” perhaps even (gasp) “feminine” – which, of course, is just a half step from gay, so the stench of homophobic bigotry wafts in.
This is, in part, what causes men to die early of stress-related diseases and stupid, risky behaviors.
What makes this striving disease so nasty is that it only gets worse: The latest accomplishment doesn’t satisfy, it only creates a demand for another, even bigger, accomplishment. We men try to store them up as amulets to magically protect us from future failures, heal the wounds of past failures, or both. But there is no magic.
There is happiness in meaningful work, because meaningful work is an ongoing relationship. Work is the journey, accomplishment is the destination. The journey is real, the destination is myth. When you finally get there, you discover there is no “there.” The joy of meaningful work is rich and endless; the thrill of accomplishment is fickle and fleeting.
The truth of life is so old, so clear, and so simple, it’s amazing we miss it so often and so easily. The truth is that – despite what we’re told in TV, movies, music, magazines, school, industry and business -- happiness is not found in accomplishment. The truth is that – again, despite what our culture drills into our heads – happiness is found in relationships. The truth is that we American dads had better start teaching our kids the truth.
Note: If you've enjoyed reading American Dad, you can show your appreciation by sending a donation to one of the three places listed here. I have good friends who are doing exceptionally good things at each of these places. Thanks!
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church ELCA, 5701 Raymond Rd., Madison, WI 53711
St. John's Lutheran Church, N3882 County Highway KK, Weyauwega, WI 54983-9736
Trinity Lutheran Church, 3 S 460 Curtis Avenue, Warrenville, IL 60555
By Russell King
As an American dad, I’m ever on the lookout for cultural messages and “conventional wisdom” that pose threats to the health or happiness of my kids. It’s not too tough to find them: We’re drowning in them. The most visible threats come from the worlds of sports and entertainment, both of which thrive on outdated, unhealthy and downright degrading attitudes, values, priorities and images. Others are sneakier, which probably makes them more dangerous. It’s easier to avoid the more obvious traps in life.
One of those sneaky ones stuck its head out of the muck a few weeks ago when people were reacting to a congressional study of our federal government’s abstinence-only education programs. The study found that 11 of the 13 most commonly used abstinence-only programs contain serious errors, and lots of people had lots to say about it.
Examples: One popular curriculum falsely teaches that touching another person's genitals "can result in pregnancy." Another falsely teaches that "in heterosexual sex, condoms fail to prevent HIV approximately 31% of the time."
Giving kids bad, even dangerous, information about sex and contraception, though, isn’t what this column is about.
I’m not a fan of abstinence-only programs. My experience has been that anything-only is an inefficient, even counter-productive, way of parenting. No one approach ever works every time for every kid in every circumstance. True to form, these programs have been ineffective in reducing teenage sexual activity and actually increase teens’ risky sexual behavior.
Dumb ideas that put my kids at greater risk for unplanned pregnancy or early death through AIDS, however, aren’t what this column is about either.
The programs also came under fire for reinforcing false and demeaning stereotypes about women (and, I’ll argue, men). One program, for instance, lists "financial support" as one of the "5 Major Needs of Women" and "domestic support" as one of the "5 Major Needs of Men." Another tells the story of a princess who gives a knight good advice but loses his affection to a village maiden because the knight feels "ashamed" over needing the princess’ help. The moral of the story: "occasional suggestions and assistance may be alright (sic) but too much of it will lessen a man's confidence or even turn him away from his princess."
I’ll battle anybody who tries to give my kids the notion that women “need” financial support from men (they are incapable of making it on their own?), that men “need domestic support” (they can’t make it without a substitute mommy?) or that men are unmanned and turned off by women who share their knowledge, wisdom and opinions with their mates. That’s just insulting all around.
Giving kids bad information about what it means to be men and women – as bad as that is -- still isn’t what this column is about.
What I’m writing about today is the finding that one of the programs instructs kids that "women gauge their happiness and judge their success by their relationships. Men's happiness and success hinge on their accomplishments."
I’m not crazy about school programs that try to fit kids into gender molds by implying that the way things are in our culture right now is how things must be, should be or just naturally are. We all have choices, and our culture is the creation of choices made by those who have gone before us. We can make other choices.
What really struck me about this wasn’t that the programs were trying to fit kids into these molds, but rather that the programs’ critics thought this message was demeaning to women and flattering to men. They think the modern, liberated woman should be, or is, more like how men are described – finding happiness in accomplishments rather than relationships. They’ve got it backward. Big time.
The idea that accomplishments will (or should) bring more happiness than relationships will isn’t just wrong, it’s sick. It’s one of those insidious cultural messages, part of the frequently unwise conventional wisdom, that threaten the health and happiness of our children. I hope my three daughters are liberated from the cultural fences built around their foremothers, but I hope liberation brings them the opportunities and rewards men have enjoyed and women have been denied, not simply a trade of their fences for ours.
This sickness has taken a disproportionate toll on the lives of men, filling them with empty promises and locking them into impoverished lives on an emotional wasteland.
This is, in part, what makes absentee dads even of men in intact marriages, because they’re putting in those long hours at work, striving for accomplishments, rather than coming home and building and enjoying relationships with their spouse, their kids and their friends. It is, in part, what makes absentee dads even of men spending time at home, because they’re so emotionally drained and mentally distracted by the striving that they are absent even when present. We lose. They lose.
This is, in part, what makes men unable to express emotions and uncomfortable in intimate, honest relations: In short, bad husbands, bad friends and bad fathers. The man who refuses to work 12 or 14 hours a day because he wants to be with his family is considered less than dedicated, professional or dependable. His priorities are “wrong.” He’ll never be “successful.” He’s “weak,” perhaps even (gasp) “feminine” – which, of course, is just a half step from gay, so the stench of homophobic bigotry wafts in.
This is, in part, what causes men to die early of stress-related diseases and stupid, risky behaviors.
What makes this striving disease so nasty is that it only gets worse: The latest accomplishment doesn’t satisfy, it only creates a demand for another, even bigger, accomplishment. We men try to store them up as amulets to magically protect us from future failures, heal the wounds of past failures, or both. But there is no magic.
There is happiness in meaningful work, because meaningful work is an ongoing relationship. Work is the journey, accomplishment is the destination. The journey is real, the destination is myth. When you finally get there, you discover there is no “there.” The joy of meaningful work is rich and endless; the thrill of accomplishment is fickle and fleeting.
The truth of life is so old, so clear, and so simple, it’s amazing we miss it so often and so easily. The truth is that – despite what we’re told in TV, movies, music, magazines, school, industry and business -- happiness is not found in accomplishment. The truth is that – again, despite what our culture drills into our heads – happiness is found in relationships. The truth is that we American dads had better start teaching our kids the truth.
Note: If you've enjoyed reading American Dad, you can show your appreciation by sending a donation to one of the three places listed here. I have good friends who are doing exceptionally good things at each of these places. Thanks!
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church ELCA, 5701 Raymond Rd., Madison, WI 53711
St. John's Lutheran Church, N3882 County Highway KK, Weyauwega, WI 54983-9736
Trinity Lutheran Church, 3 S 460 Curtis Avenue, Warrenville, IL 60555
