The Living, Loving Multitude

My wife and I were up until past three o'clock this morning talking, my wife close to tears much of the time and I not too far behind. The context? I had just watched Bret Baier's hour-long special on Kermit Gosnell and my wife, unable to take the graphic nature of the pictures, had only listened to the audio. Not like the audio descriptions of Gosnell's 'House of Horrors' were any less intense or oppressively gruesome. One didn't have to see Baby A's scissor wound or the jars full of trophy baby feet to appreciate the horrific gravity of the crimes committed. The words were more than adequate. And what a great many words there were...

But the tears came from other quarters, surprisingly enough.

My wife admitted to me that she was not crying so much for the babies lost, although their short lives are more than irreplaceable. No, it was for Gosnell's soul that she was sorry, terrified that he would follow the path of the obstinate and never repent of his wretched sins. God's judgment is far worse than man's,  we were reminded, and heaven help him if he does not repent.

There were actually two reasons tears had come to both our eyes speaking of this wretched man, however. One was the aforementioned. But the second reason was even closer to home. It was due to the fact that all of the past week my wife and I had been discussing what it'd be like to have another child, wondering with excitement if we might want to try to get pregnant again this year. Talk of babies and their tremendous beauty and fragility, and their ability to wrench love out of us humans. And then this story. A story of abject disregard for human life, a story of a man and a culture that don't give a damn about women or their unborn children, a story of subhuman acts of cold-blooded violence for financial gain. It is a story repeated again and again in America, a story of lies and hatred and fear. It all hit like a punch to the gut for us as a couple who have never even touched chemical contraception.

How did the family move from being such a revered unit of society to being the butt of every joke on network television? When did such a profound societal selfishness settle in that women are routinely taken advantage of by men, and are then encouraged or forced to abort the consequences? When did the great lie finally take so profound a root in our nation's heart, the lie that having a family is a millstone around one's neck and that the child is a weird leftover fluke of an act that evolution meant to be a mere pleasurable pastime?

All of these are grievously important questions to ask, to be sure, but the more important thing is that I do not ask them rhetorically. I am not whining for a bygone era supposedly drowning in innocence and charm. I am also not asking these questions in a state of shocked disbelief, in order to demand that standards be raised or some other such woefully inadequate response. I have seen evil before, and it does not shock me. I am asking these questions in order to dig to the heart of the whole big festering ugly problem and find an answer. An antidote.

Many have written and spoken of the corruption and demise of Western civilization and its corresponding values, including me, and it is not really my purpose here to rehash all of those arguments. My purpose here is to look at all those previously thrashed out 'why' arguments and formulate a simple 'how to' antidote. Because I firmly believe that there is a simple solution to this problem, a solution so simple it may be regarded as naive and even irresponsible by many. We suffer from a stream of consciousness culture that has no clue what a family is supposed to be, no hint of what real love looks like, and no idea what happiness is. So what's the antidote?

Get married and have kids. Lots of kids. And bring them with you everywhere.

It is simple, and also frustratingly difficult. C. S. Lewis once remarked that the really important and difficult concepts in our language are summed up in short, simple words: love, hate, heaven, hell. He couldn't have been more correct. I am the second son in a family of ten children, and so I was keenly aware of society's mockery long before I ever had a wife or children of my own.

Getting married is the first huge step. So many people, especially younger people, simply choose to live together without marriage. No vows, no commitment, just simple cohabitation centered around the convenience principle. There is no real love in this arrangement, because there has been no act of will, just a simple change of location. The 'union', if it could ever be called that, exists on the very thin ice of mutual selfishness. Marriage remedies this by destroying the blasé of convenience, of creating a relationship that exists on purpose and for a purpose.

Having kids is somehow an amusingly huge leap of logic for many even after they get married. One would think the knowledge that sex is how babies are made would be enough to make this clear but it is sadly not so.  The mere act of having more than one or two kids nowadays is an act of revolt against the established order. So revolt away and have many children. Demonstrate to the world that your empowerment comes from the fact that by a simple act of physical union with your spouse you can help create another completely unique and irreplaceable person. Demonstrate that your fulfillment comes in serving those new persons and providing for their welfare, and that your reward is their little grateful smiles and enthusiastic attitudes.

And finally, bring them out in public. Everywhere. Church, restaurant, park, you name it. There is so much negativity about large families in large part because people don't see enough of them. So show your kids off, let them be kids in public. Let them be the ones to demonstrate to the world how badly it needs love. Children do not judge, are trusting, vivacious, energetic, bold, brash, and funny. They will make the world less judgmental, more energetic, bolder, and will ensure that it laughs more.

I am issuing a challenge of sorts to all those who balk at new life, who claim it is too expensive, too draining, too much work, or who like Gosnell think it is just plain worthless or toxic. As you debate abortion policy, assist in the indefensible slaughter of our nation's children, or just plain decide not to have any children, my wife and I will be busily making our own. Not because we have no self control, as is so often suggested to those who decide not to load their bodies with toxic contraceptive chemicals, but because we are fulfilling a mandate. We were told to be fruitful and multiply, to fill this earth and subdue it. Every time we decide to have another child we are rewarded beyond our wildest expectations. Having children is work, but a work of joy.

Our society needs to relearn how to be normal, how to see the truth about itself and to not shy away in fear when presented with the difficult choices. And what better way than for us to lead by example? We need to see love, see it as normal, and see it as desirable. Only then will the world be rid of the likes of Kermit Gosnell.

God forgive them all, for they know not what they do.


Photo by Ernest F., Courtesy of Wikipedia.

The Sliding Puzzle

I had a friend a while back who, while visiting with us got a hold of an eight-piece sliding puzzle and attempted to solve it. The final result was supposed to be a three-dimensional lizard emerging from a pond, but my friend was not getting it to work and became more irritated and more humorous the more tries he made. Finally, in a fit of desperation, he took a butter knife to the edges and proceeded to pry the pieces out. Then he rearranged them correctly on the tabletop and re-installed them in the sliding frame in the proper order.

The only problem was that the frame was now loose at best, and broken in places at worst.

The more attempts that were made to solve the puzzle incorrectly (i.e., by violent prying at the edges with said butter knife) the looser the whole puzzle got. It would not be long before the whole thing would be broken and worthless.

Though funny, the episode says a lot about our fallen human nature. We are impatient, temperamental creatures, decidedly stupid on occasion. On a darker note, however, we are more often than not unwilling to take the time to stand back and understand something, before diving in and trying to "solve" it. This is, for example, the problem with much of modern philosophy, which concentrates on assumptions that are made before any real observation has be done. One can always construct a theory out of thin air and then force the facts to fit later. Humanity is often not interested in discerning something's true nature.

This inevitably leads to trouble, because in failing to understand something's true nature, we cannot properly assess the thing's value, and consequently very little meaningful interaction can take place between us and the thing in question. More often than not our interaction will result in damage and destruction, either of the thing or of us.

We do this with everything, it seems. Americans, I fear, are especially good at this sort of dense behavior. For instance, we look at the male and female sex of all different kinds of creatures, and we see them mate with each other, and we know that this process brings forth new life of the same species. Mankind has known this for thousands or even tens of thousands of years. When we are old enough to understand, we realize that we are creatures similar to the aforementioned observed animals, being male and female and possessing all the proper equipment to mate amongst ourselves. And yet we make the monumentally stupid leap of non-logic to the conclusion that sex between male and female humans has no connection or bearing on the creation of new life.

Or we look at government. Anyone with a semi-firm grasp of history knows that governments do not necessarily have the greatest track records when handed more and more centralized power. Imperial Rome crumbled under the weight of its own corruption and emperor-switching. Emperor Charlemagne's new Holy Roman Empire fell apart because it was built more on him and his charisma than on robust and widespread rule of law. The Soviet Union collapsed under the crushing pressure of unsustainable spending, repression to the breaking point of its subjects, the proven inefficiency of central planning, and the obliteration of the individual. And yet, parties on both sides of the American political spectrum will conclude that either centralized governance or centralized production and ownership is the key to solving all our ills.

Or look at guns and gun control. Or marriage. Or the concept of beauty in art. Or practically any other aspect of our lives. In every case, the loudest voices offering "solutions" to the challenges handed to us are also the ones that advocate tearing apart the frame of the puzzle in order to solve it without any observational work. And this approach has never worked. Not for very long, at least.

Our race is drowning in its own boneheaded sins. To refuse to understand the nature of the world for whatever reason is to doom oneself to incompatibility with that same world and the people in it. When burning fossil fuels for energy is all that we know or will accept, we will run out. When factory farming and mass pharmaceutical production is all that we will consider in those respective fields, we will continue to wonder why the modern man is becoming less and less healthy. When we accept that long hours of work in a factory is the only path forward to financial peace and happiness, we will wonder why we are burnt out and unfulfilled. When we rob from the wealthy to give "compassionately" to the poor, we wonder why both the wealthy and the poor no longer wish to work. When we "accidentally" conceive a child during an act of fornication or adultery and then proceed to have responsibility for it destroyed through abortion, we will wonder why the woman suffers psychological torment and physical ailments for the rest of her life. (And, in relation to that, we will wonder why men are such bums.)

We will wonder, and we will think about the problem after we have already screwed it up. We will suffer pain and regret and loneliness and hollowness because we did not try to understand the nature of the issue at hand, but only applied our own theory of operation to it and hoped like hell it would work. It is not a good way to live.

There is a way out, a way forward towards the light. Or, more accurately, there are two ways out. One is divine and the other is earthly. There is a facsimile of the divine solution floating around, and it is probably the one thrown in people's faces more, pitched to mankind without its proper context or background, used unfortunately as an "easy fix" type approach. It is catchy to be told that Jesus is the answer to all our problems and if we simply believe in Him then everything will be okay, and the hole in our lives will be filled. The real divine solution is much more involved and all encompassing, a labor of love and a transformation of life, but it must inform and work in tandem with the earthly solution to be effective. The earthly solution is this: to be aware. To open our eyes and our minds and to struggle to understand how the world actually works. To reason our way from honest premises to reasonable conclusions. To embrace our intellect, to think for ourselves, and to demand that the world do the same.

It is not a hopeless cause, getting to the root of things. It just takes a healthy dose of humility to admit, as Socrates once did, that we know nothing. We need to look long and hard at every issue in our lives to determine if we are solving the puzzle or breaking it.

Because unlike the plastic eight-piece sliding puzzle, our lives are fixable.

Parenting: Don't Take It Too Much To Heart!

I tell you, you will learn more about life and love in one year of parenting than you will learn in fifty years of living the single life.

There is no sufficient way to describe the feeling of having your beauty rest interrupted by a screaming child, nor are there words for the joy of having your three-year-old son throw himself against your leg and declare that he loves his "daddy." My wife just redecorated the walls and floor of our bathroom with morning-sickness vomit and I had to clean it up, but she also dragged two feisty boys to our rental agency to pay the bill because I was too busy to do it myself. My children draw with chalk on the sidewalk, then decide it will be cute to walk through it with bare feet. But my older son figured out on his own how to draw a stick figure.

As I write this, both of my sons are sleeping peacefully in the room behind me, looking so adorable that it hurts.

As I said, I can't really express in words just how much I have learnt about life and love through parenting. And of course, I shall be cliche and say that there is always more to learn and that four years as a parent is comparatively small. But I must share with you all a little something that I learned over the past three months, about being a parent but also about being a child. I found it surprising and maybe even a little harsh, but true nonetheless.

My observation is this: of course there are parents who neglect their children and deadbeat dads and some deadbeat mothers. But of the parents who actually give a crap about what happens to their children, I have noticed that many of them take their role way too seriously.

It may sound counter-intuitive, but it seems the more I obsess about my children's future and consciously instilling certain values and habits in my children, the less effect it seems to have. It seems like I have the most effect as a parent when I just sit down on the floor and give a damn about them enough to play with them. Children, I realize more and more, are simply sponges that soak up love as fast as it is squirted at them. And like a sponge, when they are squeezed (and tickled) they tend to leak it back out again.

The real reason I say to not take parenting too seriously, though, is because I now can say I know how it feels to be hated by my child, at least temporarily. I have been hit by both my sons before because they didn't agree with whatever I was doing for them as a parent. They have both yelled at me. And I have done my share of losing my temper back at them. But I found that when I let their temporary hatred roll off my back and let the child cool down, then something special happens. That something is an understanding of sorts, that they don't really hate you, and that you are not really as angry as you thought you were.

Maybe this post is rambling a bit, but I have been suffering from a severe lack of sleep, an overdose of my job, and the looming prospect of an unborn child who was due yesterday. I hope this is an encouragement to those parents out there who give a care about their kids and yet lose sleep over those same kids' development and future. I am beginning to understand both those concerns.

Don't sweat it, you are all probably better parents than you think you are. However, it never hurts to try even harder. The next time it's a choice between washing dishes and playing with the kids, play with the kids. Those moments are when you are building up emotional capital to draw on when the time to discipline comes. You'll probably both be grateful for it later.

Be Aware, and have fun.

Savin' Me

If you haven't seen this music video yet, you should. One of the best I've seen.

Good Olde Norman

This is a beautiful piece written to honor my favorite artist of (pretty much) all time. I love Norman Rockwell's paintings precisely because they depict the relatively mundane. What about you?

The Schizophrenic Man

If you know anything about history you know that, besides just the drastic change in fashion statements and political structures, our world looks vastly different than the world of the early 1700's. “Lawn” was not a word used frequently, if at all, in the lexicon of middle to lower class families anywhere in Europe, America, or Asia, at least not to refer to their own land. The soil was something that produced edibles, like fruit and vegetables, or grass that was grown as food for the family cow. A cellar dug into the soil also provided a place to protect food for the summer and winter time. Trees provided shade against blistering sunlight when being indoors proved unbearable. Life, although highly imperfect, was an organic whole.