Couldn't Help Noticing

Life before marriage

Here's an interesting article on the pitfalls of co-habitation before marriage, in the latest issue of Psychology Today.

What is particularly interesting to see is how the research data is being interpreted, and how the obvious practical questions which the data poses are being dealt with by secular psychologists.

The author of this article discloses something of her personal biases when she begins the article with this personal anecdote:

Forget undying love or shared hopes and dreams—my boyfriend and I moved in together, a year after meeting, because of a potential subway strike. He lived in Manhattan, and I across the river in Brooklyn. Given New York City taxi rates, we'd have been separated for who knows how long. And so, the day before the threatened strike, he picked me up along with two yowling cats and drove us home. Six years, one wedding and one daughter later, we still haven't left.

Actually, if the strike threat hadn't spurred us to set up housekeeping, something else would have. By then, we were 99 percent sure we'd marry some day—just not without living together first. I couldn't imagine getting hitched to anyone I hadn't taken on a test-spin as a roommate. Conjoin with someone before sharing a bathroom? Not likely!

It's interesting to see the sort of superficial wordplay that goes on, rather than trying to understand the essence of healthy relationships—relationships which can form the basis of longterm family life. Why, for example, does she assume she is not ‘conjoined’ just because she and her boyfriend have not been through a wedding service? And how would you feel to be the person being taken for a ‘test-spin’? Can something that is viewed as a ‘test-spin’ ever be a valid ‘test’ of marriage, when marriage is based around permanent commitment?

Have you lost your Spirit?

Are you feeling run down, and in need of a good cleansing zap of spiritual power? Thought so.

And do you know how we could all tell? Well, it wasn't because your ‘miracle a day’ had dropped to a ‘miracle a week’. And it wasn't because your evangelistic conversations had stopped resulting in a flow of conversions, and started to turn to sniggers behind your back. It wasn't even because your popularity rating amongst your fellow-believers had plunged below 35%, your lowest in a decade.

No, we knew there was a spiritual power brownout when you started to compare preachers. ‘That sermon was too long.’ “This sermon was the best I've ever heard.” “This one was the funniest.” “That one was the most inspiring.” And when you invited us to come to the convention to hear the “most brilliant speaker ever” (your minister), and be amazed by the political dignitaries who made an appearance, that was when we knew you'd really lost it.

For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? For when one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not being merely human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.

1 Corinthians 3:3-7

Sex and violence - for kids: a response

Now, Karen. It may be that I'm a little defensive because I have kids, and may have failed them by not reading them the Pentateuch before they were seven years old. But here are some of the relevant questions that I'd like answered before I start feeling too guilty:

(1) Does ‘little ones’ (ESV) mean all children? Or just the children who could comprehend what was being said?

(2) If all the children were present, how many of them would have understood what was being said? Unless child development has changed enormously, I think we can be pretty confident that the infants, toddlers and nursing babies were not really listening that carefully! (Deut 1:39 suggests that some children were too young to even comprehend right and wrong.)

However, maybe some of the children twigged that what was happening was very important (because otherwise why would there be so many people here all sitting in silence listening to a book being read?). Perhaps for children the very occasion or ‘ritual’ of the ceremony may have been more important than the reading of the law per se. So that when they were older they might ask: “Dad, what was that all about, that day we all gathered?”

(3) Can we be sure that all of the Law (Pentateuch) was read out? At my church we often say “We're going to read the Bible now”; but this doesn't necessarily mean we start at Genesis and read through to Revelation. Could it have a similar meaning when Moses said “read this law”?

(4) And, most importantly, did they pause during the reading to let parents explain what ‘prostitute’ means to their children? Or to explain what a ‘rape’ was?

If not, then perhaps understanding all the salacious details of the stories was not the main thing for the children. Perhaps the main thrust was the overall message about God and his place in their lives, and his faithfulness to his promises, and his judgement and his mercy, and his sovereignty, and their obligation of obedience, and...

If this is right, then perhaps these are the things we should also focus on in our reading to our young children. Is it possible to do that without going into the details of rape and incest and prostitution? I think so.

Explaining to a seven year old what a ‘prostitute’ is, might actually be very interesting to him, but is it necessary or helpful to learning the main messages of the law? Certainly I don't think Deuteronomy 31:10-13 pushes us in that direction. Not without a few more answers anyway.

Sex and violence - for kids

Most people would agree that children shouldn't be exposed to sex and violence. If such themes appear in children's literature, concerned parents are up in arms. If certain television shows screen such material during prime time, networks can look forward to a deluge of calls and public lobbying.

The way we feel about the issue also translates into the way we teach Sunday school. Although many books and resources will cover material on books like Genesis and Judges, most often they will leave out the unsavoury bits (like Judges 19 with the Levite and his concubine). We might teach about the great King David but we may completely leave out the fact that he committed adultery with the wife of a man whom he had killed. We might also tone down the subject matter, preferring to call Delilah Samson's “girlfriend” rather than having to explain to a seven-year-old what a prostitute is.

I was thinking about this (and Gordon's article in the August Briefing, “Should we tell our kids about hell?”) when I stumbled across this passage in Deuteronomy where Moses commands the Israelites concerning the law:

At the end of every seven years, at the set time in the year of release, at the Feast of Booths, when all Israel comes to appear before the LORD your God at the place that he will choose, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Assemble the people, men, women, and little ones, and the sojourner within your towns, that they may hear and learn to fear the LORD your God, and be careful to do all the words of this law, and that their children, who have not known it, may hear and learn to fear the LORD your God, as long as you live in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess. (31:10-13)

Initially I assumed that Moses was referring to the book of Deuteronomy when he says, “this law” but other people more knowledgeable than me say that he was referring to the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy—a collection commonly known as the Pentateuch.

So, once every seven years, everyone would gather—young and old, men and women, sons and daughters, primary schoolers, toddlers in their terrible twos and even nursing babies. They would gather and listen to the words of the law read aloud to them.

Apart from thinking, “How would they manage to sit and listen for so long?”, I marvelled at the fact that Moses was ordering little kids to hear such violent and explicitly sexual material like the book of Genesis. This is the book in which Cain murders Abel (chapter 3), Noah gets drunk and falls asleep naked (chapter 9), Sarai orders her husband Abram to have sex with her maidservant in order to bear a son (chapter 16), Lot's guests come close to being raped by all the men of Sodom (chapter 19), Abraham nearly sacrifices Isaac (chapter 22), Dinah is raped (34), Simeon and Levi put Shechem to the sword (chapter 34), Reuben sleeps with his stepmother (chapter 35), Joseph is sold into slavery by his own brothers (chapter 37), Judah commits incest with his daughter-in-law (chapter 38) and so on and so forth. There would have been no censorship taking place here—no casual deletion of material because of unsuitability of the underaged present. They would hear it all in its entirety. My, how the parents must have squirmed!

But consider why Moses made this command. It's not that he didn't have the kids in mind—in fact, they were at the forefront of his thoughts. He wanted this to be done so that their children “may hear and learn to fear the LORD your God”. For Moses, knowing God was far more important than parental scruples. Knowing God's ways and his laws were far more important than protecting kids from the unsavoury. Knowing God's character—his devastating judgement and his abundant mercy—was far more important than shielding the young from disturbing material. If children were not taught to know the Lord, they would not follow him. They would reject his ways and stick to their own path, oblivious to the consequences of their rebellion.

Moses gave this order but the parents of subsequent Israelite generations failed to carry it out. Perhaps they were too overprotective of their little ones. Perhaps they thought books like Genesis were unsuitable for under-12's. Most likely they were disobedient, lazy and hard-hearted. And so we read in the opening chapters of Judges,

And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD or the work that he had done for Israel. And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD and served the Baals. And they abandoned the LORD, the God of thir fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them. And they provoked the LORD to anger. They abandoned the LORD and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth. (2:10-13)

So perhaps we should re-think the way we do Sunday school. Perhaps we should not be so hasty to censor and edit the Bible when presenting it to kids. Even though a degree of sensitivity is required, perhaps we should not be quite so overprotective when it comes to acquainting our children with chapters like Judges 19. After all, we want our kids to know the Lord. Don't we?

Awards

Our warm congratulations to our good friend John Dickson, on winning the 2005 Christian Book of the Year Award for his book A Spectator's Guide to World Religions: An Introduction To The Big Five. It is well-deserved recognition of John's great, God-given gifts in writing.

Thanks to John too, for his kind words about Beyond Greed, by Brian Rosner, which was joint runner-up.

Read on for the Award judges' comments on the winning books.