Fort Wayne Indiana Christmas (1/22/12 - 1/28/12)

This weekend Nicky and I, Mom and Dad, and Lois met in Fort Wayne Indiana for our third annual belated Christmas gift giving/celebration family time. Knowing this weekend was coming, I planned to have Lois, Mom, and Dad record some thoughts, a memory, or read a bible verse from their parent's bible. The following videos are the results of those interactions:

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Philippians 6-7, 13 (KJV):

Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.

And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.

The Head Versus the Heart? (1/8/12 - 1/21/12)

If you've not guessed by now, I've written on things that have struck me in the moment. Sometime during the week while looking through a bible, reading, or talking with someone, I get a great idea for another reflection on some topic about our family. I've reflected on our family’s inherent fundamentalism and evangelical nature and how that leads them to conclusions regarding God, the scriptures, and their world. In philosophy that is called a weltanschauung, or a "worldview." A worldview is sort of a framework for how people think, and leads them to what they think. On another reflection I've thought through the 5th commandment "to honor your father and mother." Leona and Jeanette both believed that the role of the parents in raising children was primarily to be a teacher of/provide a moral and spiritual center for their children’s life. These reflections have mostly been centered in the brain.

By "brain" of course I mean than they were primarily cognitive, that is, they were focused on thoughts rather than on feelings or emotions or gut reactions, etc. This sort of thinking come naturally to me since I've been raised in a cognitive world, I went to schools in a thought dominated educational culture. I've been raised in a cognitive dominated world, and that world has been influenced by a certain Judo-Christian mentality which sees the brain as more trustworthy, more reliable then emotions and feelings. So when I talk with some of my family members, coworkers, and friends who don't analyze the world with solely their brain I become very judgmental. I get really frustrated when people say, "oh that's just your interpretation," or "I don't need all this head knowledge, just give me Jesus," or "You know, I just feel that..." Just in the past couple of weeks Lois Baker responsed to my last entry with a wonderful story of her mother:

Every morning in the summer, she would walk 2 blocks to a Lake Huron beach and read her Bible and pray. I distinctly remember my mother sitting at her desk and 'seriously' studying God's word. She would write additonal thoughts in the margins of her Bible and would often connect what she was learning to her prayers for her children.

My first response was to treasure this memory. However my second response was "what specifically was she studying? Give me something more than just what I deemed superficial. See, I've always thought my family was similar to an iceberg, only showing 10% of the deep and rich 90% that was under the surface beneath. However I never could get them to reveal any of that 90%. Maybe I created this blog to help this 90% surface, and maybe in the darker places of my intentions, to show my family how intellectually superior I am!

This mind/heart distinction biblically goes back to Deuteronomy 6:5, "Love the Yahweh your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength" Later in the New Testament Jesus reiterates Deuteronomy when he says (with my comments added): "Love the Lord your God with all your heart (emotion, passion, feelings), with all your soul (spiritually), with all your strength (muscles, your body), with all your mind (the brain), and love your neighbor as yourself." (Luke 10:27). Sometime between then and now our western culture began to distrust the heart and the soul, and the brain, with its uses (reason and logic) began to be the center and basis and justification for all things - it became our worldview. My education is included in this comment. My brain grew but I think that my spirit/soul withered. 

Since India really, I've begun a sort of soul rejuvenation. It began with my love for the church and lead into a 3 year commitment as an Elder at my church, Church of the Servant. I knew I wanted to continue my education but not as the cost of my soul. I wanted to love Yahweh my God with all my heart, soul, strength, and mind. So I enrolled in a class called Spiritual Companioning at the Dominican Center here in town. In this class we learn to listen, both to God and to other people. Upon enrolling in August I ordered my books and finishing the first book by the first class, only to realize that the book was not "due" until late October. We meet only twice a month. I was again frustrated but the fact that their was not a lot of "homework", the reading material I judged to be "fluff," and the 6 people I have class with I deemed to be 2 clicks short of retarted. However after 4 months with these people I have realized my error and my terrible judgment of people. One gentleman in his mid 60's during about an hour and a half of silence said that he has this image of himself climbing unto the lap of Jesus and Jesus was holding him in security. He was crying telling this to us. Last week I was telling a story to the class. After I was done the class spent time in prayer asking God to give them the words to respond to me. I had explained to them that I have a fear that my friends are moving away and I am going to be alone (maybe an irrational fear, but one at the center of my being). I told them that I know I can't live in the past and that even if I could it would not be the same as what I think it would be. A classmate spoke up, "while you were speaking Jesus brought a song to my mind. It's called "Friends" by Michael W. Smith. I was shocked! This exact same song was played at my brother's funeral. It holds a place very near to my immediate family. Thank you God for speaking, not just to those with Masters degrees, not just to those who are charismatic leaders, not just to those who do whatever it takes to get it, but also to the poor, the dumb, the oppressed, the single mom, the grieving sibling, the lonely shunned - basically the normal people. This is my family and it in no way makes them mundane. For if God chooses these people than it means the opposite - that God blesses the hurting, grieving, dumb, single, poor, oppressed. I was not finding special meaning in my family not because it really wasn't there, but because I was only looking with my brain, while my heart and mind were decaying. I'm beginning to understand some things now about my families wisdom, about their love of the scriptures, about their love of memories, and most important, about their love of God.

"Honor Your Father and Mother" (1/1/12 - 1/7/12)

Often Nicky and I read to each other. However we are pretty terrible at getting completely through a book quickly or with due diligence. We've stalled out on two that we've been reading for over three years for reasons of dislike, theological difference with an author, or more likely because of how we feel when we both get home from a long day at work. The third book we picked up because our pastor had quoted it three or four different times. The book is called Mere Morality: What God Expects from Ordinary People by Lewis Smedes. Smedes was professor emeritus of theology and ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary from 1921 to 2002. Smedes is also well known in our church's denomination, the Christian Reformed Church, because Smedes was its flagship ethicist. Our pastor painted the image of Smedes as an eloquent and simple communicator, and a brilliant and erudite theologian and ethicist. In Mere Morality, Smedes is trying to get back to the basics of morality and ethics, particularly for Christians "in the world come of age." in a 282 page book, and after 84 pages, Nicky and I got to a very interesting section where Smedes begins to talk about "parental authority." The book itself is somewhat of a commentary on the 10 Commandments, and for the last 30 pages Smedes has been talking about the fifth commandment, "honor your father and mother." The following is a somewhat lengthy quote from mere morality which will help us connect Smedes' thought to my grandparents.

"The Judeo-Christian perspective, however, sees the circle of covenanted care as the right setting for the nurture of children into commitment to what is right and true about life. Parents are parents mainly to take care of the child initiation into faith and morals. And the two go together. Morality has to do with what is truly important and right about life, and what is important about life depends on what is true about God. So, the heart of family is the parents' calling to pass on the moral and spiritual reality of life to their children. The covenant of caretaking, then, creates the family. In this context alone we can understand how a parent has authority and why the child has an obligation to honor the parent. the family is not a spillover from our romantic passions, nor a product of society's requirements that parents provide their offspring with bed and board, nor a little circle of people deriving emotional support from living together, nor a social contrivance for keeping our broods in control, one which could become obsolete if a social planner or to find a better one. In a Judeo-Christian sense, family is rooted in the Creator's design for the ongoing nurture of children who bring faith and moral value into the next generation. To undermine, neglect, or replace it is to wreck the core community that makes all other community possible." (Mere Morality, 80-1)

After 30 pages, we finally get to the core of why parents should be honored, and according to Smedes, it is what makes or breaks all human community and familial lineage. Now growing up I constantly heard, "Eric, the Bible tells you to honor your father and mother!" "Eric, you're breaking the fifth commandment!" The one I remember very specifically was in the mid-1990s. My father had been asked at Oakfield Baptist Church to consider becoming a deacon. One day when I was being particularly naughty, my dad said he decided not to become a deacon because as he told me, "my child is disobedient and unruly."I thought I sensed in my father's words feelings of grief or remorse. What he had told me was a indirect quote from the book of Titus in the New Testament. The quote however is a indirect reference to the fifth commandment found in Exodus chapter 20, and in Deuteronomy chapter 5. If he was speaking with truthfulness (and not jest) then of course he was assuming two things, one, he had not lived up to the fifth commandment's assertion that a parent's role is to teach their children faith and morality, and two, I have not honored my father and mother. Communication is learned, but often too late. When I read Mere Morality I cannot help but think what the world would be like if parents and children could read and understand books like these. Children would know that submission and obedience to parents is not from some control for authoritarian privilege from power-hungry parents - but a deep and steadfast love. Parents would not have to worry that their kids would stray down the wrong path, that they would grow up with proper morals and values that reflect the world God created and the institutions God has crafted.

Leona's Bible reveals to us a deep longing and passion for her children's faith and morals. On the backside of the front free page (to use technical book speak) which you can see below and on your left, Leona had diligently written down the salvation and baptism dates of her immediate family. However if you notice Leona was either not worried about her own or did not know the date (This bible was given to Leona by Homer on April 1, 1963.

 

The following is a re-presentation of these dates:

Homer saved          Dec. 28, 1934

Leona saved           Dec, 1932

Marilyn saved         May 14, 1948

Dale     saved         July 6,     1948

          Baptized July    27, '52

          Joined church   Aug 3, '52

                  (Oakfield)

Lois & Jean Saved          Feb. 9,   '58

          Baptized               Aug 21   '60

   Joined Oakfield            Oct. 6,   '66

Houseman's 1st Service at Oakfield 

                                   Oct. 9. 1932

Accepted in Hiawatha Baptist Mission 

                                    March 1957

Marilyn & Jerry accepted in H. B. M. June 7. '72

Moved to Prince Albert - Sept 20 '72

   To Teach at Parkland Baptist Schools

On the front side of this same page was a prayer written down by Leona. Click on the picture to see a larger image of it. The prayer reads:

                    My Prayer

I do not ask for riches for my children

Nor even recognition for their skill

I only ask that Thou wilt give them 

A heart completely yielded to Thy will.

I do not ask for wisdom for my children

Beyond discernment of Thy grace

I only ask that Thou wilt use them

In Thine own appointed place.

I do not ask for favor for my children

To seat them on Thy left hand or Thy right

But may they join the throng in heaven

That sings before Thy throne so bright.

I do not seek perfection in my children

For then my own faults I would hide

I only ask that we might walk together

And serve our Saviour side by side.

                (My earnest prayers for our 4 Children)  (Marilyn, Dale, Jean, Lois)

 

My conviction that Homer and Leona would agree with Lewis Smedes' idea was of course contingent upon their reflection upon the biblical text as well. So I opened Leona's Bible and turned to Deuteronomy chapter 5. Leona had underlined and scored a number next to each of the10 Commandments (Deut. 5:7-21). Leona wrote down next to Deut. 6:4 "Response". She believed that the proper response to the 10 Commandments was this central verse in the entire Old Testament, and thus its centrality. "Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God is one LORD: and thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." next to "soul" Leona wrote "sincere" and next to "might" she wrote "strength" (these of course being common clarification notes for herself). Two verses down (6:7-9) Leona filled her margins with comments regarding how a parent should teach these to their children. Here again is a re-presentation of how Leona annotated it:

"And (thou) (- parents) shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt (2) talk of them when thou sittest in my house, (3) and when thou walkest by the way, (4) and when thou liest down, and when thou  risest up. (5). (6) And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. (7) And thou shalt write them upon the posts of the house, and on thy gates."

In the margin Leona wrote a very interesting note, "Gen. 3:6 - woman who had wrong seat of values." I was puzzled with this at first, but my puzzlement came from not being very bright. After a light bulb turned on in my head I turned the Bible to Genesis 3:6. Without going into too much detail, the three temptations that Eve faced in the garden of Eden were commonly boiled down in preaching in Leona's time and in mine (for I heard the same thing espoused in my undergraduate bible classes) to 1. lust of flesh (the fruit was good for food) 2. lust of the eyes (the fruit was pleasant to the eyes), and 3. pride of life (it gave humanity the desire to make one wise apart from God). Leona was connecting her role as a parent to Eve's role as the mother of all generations that came after her. The picture of her notes in Genesis 3 is below:

After 10 years of biblical studies, reading the Bible, poring over the Hebrew, and reading many many books on biblical studies, I had never once thought to connect Eve with the parent's role in teaching their children. But there it was before me, Leona had done it! My grandma was wise indeed. Her prayer for her children had been answered. Now I have a much more solid and firm foundation both in the God whom I love, and in the family I belong to.