confused

A while back I blogged about the confusion caused by parenting as if the parents’ rules are the same as God’s rules. I talked about it in the middle of an extremely charged rant, so you may not want to go back and read it. Basically, it is my belief that in seeking sovereign rule over my household by imposing my preferences, desires, opinions, etc. as law, I create a confusion in matters concerning right and wrong, appropriate and inappropriate, better and not-so-better.
Parents do this all the time with hairstyles, music, fashion, etc. Somehow we send a message to our children that what we like and dislike are equal to right and wrong. For some, this is an attitude of, “I rule this house, and you will abide by my rules.” Others have become confused themselves and honestly don’t realize that what they like and dislike are not synonymous with right and wrong.
I have talked about this with some people who don’t see why the differentiation is important. They voiced that it is very important for them to obey their parents’ wishes anyway. I agree that it is very important for them to obey, but they need to know the difference between obeying and respecting their parents, and following the law of God.
If a child can’t distinguish his dad’s stuff from God’s stuff any rebellion against his dad’s authority will also be rebellion against God. All he knows is a stifling set of rules, and not knowing that some of them are real and some not, he rejects them all.
Where I’m heading with this will cause some to roll their eyes asking for how long will we talk about this. Some are past the need to talk about it, and though I seem to be beating a dead horse in blogland, in my context, the horse is still racing and the conversation is just getting started.
So, to some of my friends this will seem so yesterday, very simplistic and a waste of energy, but for many in my immediate sphere who are just finding my blog and who have heard some pretty outlandish stuff with some poor apologetics recently, maybe it will pique some actual brain activity.
Yesterday, as I climbed into the truck with Jack for the short trip to church, for some odd reason, a single thought from various perspectives popped into my head. So I began to preach to Jack for the next 9 minutes. When we arrived at church, he looked at me with wonder in his eyes and said, “dad, you’ve got to go write that down before you forget it.” Well, of course I’m not going to forget it, it’s a major defensive theme in my day-to-day, but I was greatly encouraged that my son tracked with me and understood my take on a cultural, sociological evolution and how it was a macrocosm of the parenting issues I mentioned already.
For him, I quickly explained a major factor in the thinking of the modern brain. That of rational, definable, observable requirement for belief, and that results must be measurable, definable and repeatable. If I am to believe it, then it must be observable. To make something observable that is not, we have to invent things about it that are observable. In the case of Chrisitanity, the modern view has created steps and procedures by which to participate. A behavior which leads to life, rather than what Jesus taught, life that leads to behavior. In the modern view, this pattern is cyclic, because in order to have life, you must adhere to certain behaviors and do certain things, say certain things, and the evidence of life is the same adherence, doing and saying. A complete confusion has as to cause and effect, because the behavior on either side of the equation can be completely manufactured. In fact, because the inheritance of life has nothing to do with steps and procedures, one can go about them and never live. By the same token, he can exhibit these same procedures as evidence of something that he never had. It has been about what he does all the way from the getting it to exhibiting it. He shows the same thing for it as he showed to get it. I’ve got to ask, what was it that you got? You were able to do that, on your own, to get it, now you do it to show you got it. What is any different? How have you been changed?
Ask most Christians who have ever heard the word post-modern for a definition and they will no doubt answer with relativism. In the Christian community, relativism is a synonym for post-modern, the rejection of absolute truth. I’ve asked here before, between these three people, who is worse off? 1) the man who believes there is an absolute truth, but rejects or ignores it, 2) the man who doesn’t believe there is any one, absolute truth, or 3) the man who believes that there is one absolute truth, but it is different from what you believe to be the absolute truth. Surely any Christian would decide that in the end, all three men were in the same dire straits. But by the Christian community’s narrow definition of something they don’t understand, only one of these men was post-modern. The other two were fully modern. For this reason, you’d think that modern Christians would welcome the post-modern era, for in comparing it to the past, they seem to think it has redeemed all of modern man.
How does all this relate to parenting and rules? A generation has come along that has rejected its parent generation’s stuff. It sees starving people, an environment going to hell, and violence all over the globe. It asks, if you believe in anything, why do you sit back and feed yourself and stuff your pockets while this is going on?
It sees a culture that can’t separate religion from politics, fashion, and entertainment. Christianity is a look, a lifestyle, a corporation, a social class. The culture has baptized preferences and made them absolutes. Hairdos, music styles, architecture, meeting places, all have become those things that evidence after the fact, and the failure to embrace these things evidences that you are outside the group.
See the parent who honestly thinks his child is lost forever because of the way he dresses, see the child who has not learned that there is any difference between what is important and what is not. The child takes truth with the same amount of sincerity as fashion, and rejects everything.
but that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.