Bill Nye, the ideology guy

My boys loved Bill Nye when they were little. Truth be told, I loved Bill Nye. How could you not love a goofy guy who made you hungry for science.

But that was then, and this is now. Bill has bounded out of the realm of science into philosophy, and not content with philosophy, he has donned the mantle of authority when it comes to how parents should train up their children.

Mr. Nye is a staunch evolutionist. In a recent video titled "Creationism is not appropriate for children," he said that when you ignore evolution"your worldview becomes crazy, untenable, itself inconsistent (1)." Honestly, most creationists think the same thing about an evolutionary worldview. Crazy. Untenable. Inconsistent. Fantasy.

Yet, despite incessant indoctrination from kindergarten through post-graduate studies, 46% of Americans remain young earth creationists according to a recent Gallup poll. Thirty-two percent believe God used evolution and only 15% believe (interesting word) in atheistic evolution. For that large a swath of the American fabric to still hold to a six-day creation, there must be something more substantial, more evidential to cling to than a fairy tale.

Mr. Nye doesn't think so and lets the insults fly:

"I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, that's completely inconsistent with the world we observe, that's fine."

Gee, thanks, Bill. Should they pad my room, too? He has gone beyond observation and experimentation into philosophy.  Despite over a century and a half since Darwin published Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, no proof has been found indicating one kind of animal has ever transitioned to become another kind. Dogs beget still dogs. Fish beget fish. Chimps beget chimps and yes, man begets man.

Had he only coughed up that hairball, we could get busy with dinner, but Mr. Nye went further:

"But don't make your kids do it (deny evolution).  Because we need them.  We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future.  We need engineers that can build stuff and solve problems."

That's creepy stuff. You need them?! So, Bill, you don't want me to teach my kids what I am convinced is true and that I am convinced gives dignity to humanity within the created order? You don't want me to teach him the foundation of "love your neighbor as yourself?" or why all mankind is equal?

To Mr. Nye, only an evolutionist is equipped to teach science of any kind (Astro? Aero? Civil engineering??) to our children. That's disturbing.

Teaching my kids a responsibility to the God who made them does not them scientifically illiterate. It didn't slow down Blaise Pascal or Robert Oppenheimer. 

Does worshiping the God who raises up and puts down kingdoms make one ill-qualified to vote? It seems to me that President Obama appreciates my tax-dollars despite my believing in the one who suggested that I render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's (which is everything, by the way). 

And how, pray tell, does believing in a Creator impair one from being a creator or problem solver? Wouldn't that naturally follow? 

Al Campanis, the general manager for the Los Angeles Dodgers, was rightly fired the day after the racism of his heart overflowed in a Nightline interview in 1987. But for the Bill Nyes of the world, it's okay to denigrate those who take God at his word. Such animosity is in season (here).

Few will bat an eyelash over his propaganda and slurring of Bible-believers. Well, Bill, not that you care, but you've lost one fan.

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 (1) Taken from CNN's "Bill Nye slams creationism" here.

Politically incorrect: Motherhood & living together

Among my daily reads, I came across two articles, both from National Review, that fly in the face of post-modernism, an ethic that says, "Anyway is a good way as long as it's your way."

The first deals with working moms.  It's sure to ignite a firestorm.  You'll find it here.

The second peaks beneath the covers of cohabitation (sorry), and the damage unmarried parents inflicts upon the children.  More fuel for the flames.  Read it here.

Bottom line to both:  Doing it 'my way' ends in misery.

I'll never forget the great advice my friend Brian Rath once gave me.  I was stewing in the misery of a job failure when he told me, "If we could orchestrate our lives exactly as we wanted them to be, we would be the most miserable people." The heart of the matter? God knows what's best. He has a plan. We must trust and obey.

Will we ever get it?

The five-year old "Why?"

Much of the anarchy in public schools today rests squarely upon the shoulders of the parents who have ill-disciplined their children.  Demand no standard of conduct in the home and you make it quite challenging for Mr. Mathteacher to demand a held tongue or focused attention amidst his lecture on the nuances of the null set.

Parents began giving teachers children ill-prepared for the classroom when they jettisoned the principles of biblical discipline for the pop-psychology du jour advocating self-esteem over self-discipline.  Rather than restrain the toddling tyrant with a loving dose of corporal punishment parents ceded the reign of their domain to their child leaving their home and subsequently the schools to look like the whirlwind they had sown.

One of the ways parents have neutered themselves is by feeling the need to explain to Little Joanie the reason behind everything she is told to do.  Newsflash:  when a child is told to do X by the parent, the only acceptable response is to accomplish X right away, all the way, and with a good attitude (a "happy heart").  Allowing the child to delay the task's completion by asking "Why?", while paying you as much attention as a brussel sprout, feeds and corrupts the inquisitive nature of the child.  Kids want to explore.  They're discovering the world.  The first half-dozen years of a child life ooze magic and wonder as adventures and discoveries dot the landscape.

Really, though, do they want the rationale behind why their socks belong in the dirty close hamper instead of decorating the floor of their bedroom?  When told to go to bed, do their hearts ache to hear the biological and spiritual need for the human frame to rest? NO!  They have discovered the means to delay the inevitable.  Ten more minutes of play become twenty.  Perhaps Mom will even forget the initial command and pick up Little Joanie's socks herself.  Cool.

Cutting to the core, if a child does not do what he is told by one who has authority over them, they have rebelled, conscious or not (this assumes that they knew how to and were able to accomplish the given task).

One of the best tidbits of parental advice I ever received dealt with the "why" question.  It ran something like this.  When your child asks you "Why?" when they are told to do something, you tell them that they may not ask "Why?" when told to do something.  They must do.  Right away.  All the way.  And with a good attitude.  Anything but will be met with appropriate discipline.  Once the task is accomplished, then and only then, if the question still remains in the child's heart as to the deep secrets as to why a specific task was demanded of them, may they ask (with respect and honor) "Why did you want me to do that, Daddy?"  99.9% of the time, you'll never get the question.  They really don't care.

There are legitimate why questions.  The other night, my five-year old daughter asked, "Why can we only see part of the moon sometimes?"  It had nothing to do with a command she was given.  Her wonder had turned toward the heavens and she truly wanted to know.  Plunge in, Dad, and feed her curious appetite.

The why-principle remains in the teen years, too.  "Hey, Dad, can I...?"  As a parent, it's important that I understand their request.  Ask questions.  Follow up.  Get the whole picture.  Some questions will require time and prayer.  It might require you to counsel with someone else or search God's word.  After objective consideration, decide.  When you decide, your decision stands.  Your child (under your authority) has one response.  Abide that decision right away, all the way, and with a good attitude.  No "buts" or slammed doors.  No rolled eyes or deep sighs.  They might not like it, but that's life!  That's the real world, and my job as Dad is to prepare my kids for the real world. 

Here's where communication enters the picture.  If after a day or so they would like to know the rationale behind my decision that they carried out, they are free (with respect and honor) to ask me that very thing.  Perhaps the ensuing discussion with my child will cause me to amend such decision in the future.  Perhaps it will help them see clearly the foolishness (if so) behind what they wanted to do and the wisdom (hopefully) behind my counsel.

Walk the halls of most schools.  How many of the kids have been taught to respect the decisions of those in authority, principals and teachers, coaches and counselors?  What a blessing it would be to those in leadership if they encountered young men and women who, when receiving an unpopular or distasteful decision from on high, abided that decision with as much fervor and respect as if they had gotten what they had wanted!  Instead, they deal with deception, disrespect, surly attitudes and blatant disobedience.

As parents, let's squash the why-question, unless of course our kids are asking about the moon.

Teaching Christ to my kids

"Some of us grew up in hate filled "Jesus-loving" families and churches and got it ramrodded down our throats in a most ugly and abusive way. No, it is not OK to do that to kids in the name of God or Jesus. If you think it is you are no different than Bin Laden!"  ~ Anonymous

Boy, that'll make you pause to catch your breath.  An actual quote, by the way.

I hear this more and more.  It goes something like this. 

Parents have no business telling their kids what religion to believe.  It's tantamount to child abuse.  Let them figure it out for themselves.

I suspect that most who advocate that kids need to discover it for themselves are also the same ones eager for greater and greater government involvement in the raising of our children.  Let's see, parents can't do it but Big Brother can?

Sorry, I'm off point.  Back to parents teaching their kids about God.  Do I let my children play in the front yard without supervision, trusting them to choose wisely when it comes to the street?  Or, as the parent, do I provide the guidance, wisdom, and boundaries of experience?

We have guns in our house.  Lots of 'em.  Do I let my five-year old have her way with my .40 caliber Springfield XD as she would with her Leapster?  Or will I, when the proper time comes, train her in the proper handling of a weapon?

Many would like to compartmentalize God within the lives of his followers in 2010 America, but God will not be compartmentalized.  We must bow to him as God of all.  If he is only God of my Sunday mornings and my private prayer life and he's not the God of my job or the God of my marriage or the God of my entertainment or the God of the universe in my thought, word, and deed, then I do not honor him as God.  The rich, young man walked away from Christ dejected because he would not submit to Jesus (Mark 10:17-22).

God created me.  Science points that way, but the Bible tells me so (Psalm 139).  Mankind is broken.  The newspaper points that way, but the Bible tells me so (Romans 3:10-18).  I am broken.  My own heart points that way, but the Bible clearly tells me so (1 John 1:8). 

But that's not where we're left.  Jesus' death, burial and resurrection provided the solution to that brokenness (Romans 3:23-26).  History points in that direction, but the Bible tells me so.  It also tells me how that solution can be appropriated by me (Romans 10:9-11).  And my kids.  And it tells me how the God who loves me would have me live my life.  ALL of it.  What kind of parent would I be if I did not teach my children these things?

A final point.  We are independent moral agents responsible to God for our conduct.  Cutting to the root, our children, when grown, will have a choice.  They will choose whether or not to follow what dad and mom have taught them.

But for these few short years, God has delegated the responsibility for training up my children to me and my bride.  And so I will take up that enormous and terrifying mantle.  I am to teach them diligently to my children (Deuteronomy 6:6-7).  I am to not "provoke them to anger but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord" (Ephesians 6:4).

No threats to lop off their heads.  No surprise detonations on the playground.  No burqas for my girls.  Just exposing sin, disciplining when necessary, and teaching them about the freedom and joy of walking with Christ. 

Yeah, that's the modus operandi of Osama bin Laden.  All I need is the beard.

An open letter to Christian dads

Yeah, sorry.  Limited audience.  You're still welcome to read along, but you might not track with my tack.

Guys, remember the days of our youth when our eyes easily got snapped by a lass dressed in a manner that provided clear advertisement of all her wares?  What's that, you say?  You still have issues with that?  Oh, yeah, I'm talking to guys.

God created women to attract men.  What gets us?  The eyes.  It surprises maybe .00097% of Christian men that Job made a covenant with his eyes to not gawk at the gams of the girls.  The rest of us nod, "Smart man."  It doesn't surprise us that Jesus declared that if we look at a woman with lust in our heart, we'd committed adultery already.  Really, we already knew that, though we didn't mind the false loophole we'd concocted.

The world we live in does not make it easy to keep our eyes properly focused.  T-shirts no longer hang; they cling.  Necklines that at one time graced the hookers and behind-the-counter periodicals made their way onto the red carpets exposing the lion's share of Hollywood's starlets.  Those necklines now walk the halls of high school.  The girls are oblivious.  To them it's just fashion.  To guys, it's the kerosene and the match to their libido.

It bothers me, but it doesn't surprise me, that unbelieving women dress in such a manner.  What shocks me to silence is when Christian parents (dads) let their daughters dress that way!

Whoa, Keith, aren't you diving deep into the pool of legalism?  Maybe, but hang with me a bit longer. 

First, guys have a responsibility to guard their eyes.  Job did that (Job 31:1).  So must we.

Second, I can cite you no chapter or verse that defines appropriate hemlines or necklines, but I can give you a few principles to indicate a woman's responsibility to not cause men opthalmic problems.

• A woman's indiscretion is not seen as a character bonus (Proverbs 11:22)
• The indiscrete woman can derail a man's quest to walk rightly (Proverbs 6:25-28, 7:10, 23b)

Paul warns the Thessalonian church to abstain from sexual immorality (1 Thessalonians 4:3), but he goes on to state that each, men and women, are to tend to themselves so they they do not wrong their brother or sister in this matter (4:4-6).  It doesn't say it, but principally it would include how we dress.

No, women don't have to dress frumpy.  No, I'm not calling for burqas.  Men, you might think your daughter looks great, and she might think she's flashing the latest fashions, but other men are going to think your daughter looks hot.  Big difference.

Here's a suggestion.  Consider the "folding chair."  Can your daughter sit in a folding chair directly across from a guy (perhaps in Sunday school, perhaps during worship) and not cause him major issues everytime she shifts?  If not, her dress or her shorts are causing her brothers in Christ issues of eye, heart, and mind.

What about tops?  Go back to the "folding chair."  Can she bend down to pick something up and either not fall out or not provide a clear visual down to her navel?  If she can't, she might want to consider another top.  I have no guideline for clinginess, but you probably get the idea there, too.

Today's fashions make this tough.  Most prom dresses have three-square inches more fabric than the average swimming suit, and most of them violate the up and the down of the "folding chair."  While difficult to find beautiful and discrete fashions, they do exist.  Put forth the effort.

Men, help your daughter guard her purity.  Wouldn't you rather have a son-in-law who is more overwhelmed by her character than her cleavage?  At the same time, teach your sweetheart how to help her brothers in Christ guard their purity by honoring them with her attire.

Please.

Being a dad: The hill

As my sons have grown, I have often told them, "You can always serve as a bad example," not encouraging them to be such, but hoping they will learn from the mistakes and rebellions of my past rather than going through it themselves.

Having been a dad for twenty-two years now, I've bumbled a few (thousand?) times along the parental pathway. One event still makes me chuckle some fifteen years after the fact.

When we lived in Utah, our house sat nestled in a cul de sac at the bottom of a hill, a great place to sled through front yards but a challenging place to learn to ride a bike. So after Drew got a bicycle for his birthday, we pushed our bikes up the hill to practice riding in the very flat school parking lot. You know initial riding lessons. How to balance. How to break.

Drew picked up the concepts of pedaling forward to move forward and back-pedaling to brake the bike. As we made our way home and stood on the sidewalk at the top of the hill, I asked Drew if he thought he could brake himself down the hill. You know, dad's have to challenge their sons beyond that which they are capable of handling. He nodded with nervous confidence. My plan was to ride alongside him and grab onto the scruff of his jacket to slow him down if he got to going to fast.

That was my plan.

Drew got started down the hill, and I started to follow. "Brake," I encouraged hoping he would apply what he had just learned. Instead his eyes widened at the mountain he began hurtling down. "BRAKE!" I yelled as the foolishness of my plan unfolded before my eyes.

From behind I could see his shoulders freeze into a panicked hunch as his fingers attempted to squeeze the handlebars into submission. His feet stopped moving as the bicycle approached the mach. I began to peddle faster imagining the aftermath to this ill-conceived idea. How will I explain this to Tracy? How bad would eight broken bones look?

"BRAKE!" I pleaded. I may as well have been speaking Japanese.

I can only attribute the fact that that swervy, training-wheeled bike missed three mature trees, a fire hydrant and two very nice, driveway-parked cars to God's divine hand because Drew sure wasn't steering. Ker-thunk! At the bottom of the hill, having passed five houses, he struck the spare tire on the back of the jeep in our neighbors driveway and came to an abrupt halt.

When I caught up to him, Drew lay on his back blinking into the cloudy sky. He was huffing and puffing like he'd pedaled uphill and his eyes had the look of suprise one gets when they find they have not died. No, Drew did not die that day. Nor did he acquire an broken bones. Not even a gash. Not a scratch.

There's a line from Star Trek that runs, "Fate. It protects fools, little children, and ships named "Enterprise."" If I may. God. He protects fools and their little children who they send down the hill on their training wheels three minutes after teaching them to use their brakes.

We get a huge belly-laugh whenever we recount that story--with a humongous tip of the hat to the Lord!

Kid's shows: Imagination Movers

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I grew up watching HR Puff 'n Stuff. If you can't do a little then you can't do enough. Thinking back on that show, I wonder how many points my IQ suffered as my gray matter oozed out my ears. It's equally inane spin-off, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, also sucked the marrow from my melon. But, oh, I loved 'em. Then.

As a parent now for twenty-one-plus years, I've let my kids watch some equally disturbing stuff. Barney rockets to the top of the list. The Wiggles are way up there, too (though their era was pretty much in the gap between my boys and my girls). The Doodle-Bops come to mind as well. Kids love them as much as I loved HRPnS and SatSM.

The thing that rankles me about those shows as I look back on them is condescension. The producers have the idea that little kids need something bizarre or absurd or cultic or effeminate to capture their attention. I don't think it has to be that way, and a recent bit of Saturday morning fare shows the way.

I love the Imagination Movers. It's four dudes in blue coveralls who work in the Imagination Warehouse. But they are dudes. No compromise apparent San Francisco ties like some y-chromosomes on kids shows. And they have fun cutting up like guys do. They are good friends like guys need. And they play fun music.

Each episode they solve some problem without the excessive condescension in typical fare. No cultic mysticism. It is targeted to younger kids, yes, but as a parent sitting on the periphery, I don't have the need to tote a barf bucket, and I occasionally find myself sitting beside them enjoying the delight of my kids and the delight of the musicians.

Understand this. It's secular television. Christ is nowhere named. At the same time, I would not be surprised if these four guys are Christian because the things lauded and praised are things that honor God. It wouldn't seem out of place to have them break into prayer in the middle of an episode to ask God help them solve some predicament. They exemplify the fruit of the Spirit.

Two thumbs up to Rich, Scott, Dave, and Smitty for cranking out Kids TV that I don't have to be embarrassed letting my children watch. Or watching myself.

Emulation

Once upon a time, a three-year old girl wanted to "chalk" in her driveway. Her daddy, busy pondering the expanse of the universe and the microcosm of his life, said sure.

With effervescent excitement, she began to scrawl. With the honesty of Lincoln, that's the best that could be said of her etchings.

Her name was discernible. And there might be a stairway in there. But one line followed another with little purpose, with little end.

The daddy smiled at the Picasso and moved away from the driveway to the clean slate of the sidewalk. Upon selecting his canvas, he began to draw. His princess came up from behind and took the adjacent slab of concrete to watch what Daddy would do.

As soon as the giggly imp recognized Daddy's drawing, she got to work herself. One shape and then concerted study. Another shape. A line. More examination. More lines, but this time, the picture emerged. And a big smile from two faces.

No lessons were given. No corrections were made. A daddy just drew for his little girl, and the apple of his eye tried, and succeeded, to draw just like him.