Values in Christian preaching refer to the principles and priorities that guide believers' lives, reflecting their true commitments and faithfulness to God (Romans 2:17-24). Illustrations often contrast worldly and godly values, using everyday scenes like finances, education, and culture to reveal what truly shapes character and conduct (Matthew 6:21). They warn against misplaced or declining values that threaten spiritual and moral health.
"Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are."
John Wooden
Former college basketball coach
Cited in BITS & PIECES
Sermon near Election Day. Romans 2:17-24
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VALID VALUES
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I. Values are Popular.
A. Politicians are focusing on it.
B. Has America lost its values?
II. Problem: Our Values Vary.
A. Cultural War?
B. In the Conflict of Values, Christians are losing.
III. Is the Bible all that clear on its values?
A. The Bible is a hard book.
B. Key values in the Bible.
1) Healthy living.
2) Sexual standards.
3) Society must be protected.
IV. Values alone are not enough. Romans 2:17-24
A. "Do as I say, not as I do."
B. Lived values carry the most weight.
C. Analyze your personal values.
What we spend our money on and what we watch shows our values. They are expressed by what we really do, not by what we wish for. Churches have failed to mold our values because they have capitulated to relativism.
A sociological study interviewed fifty people over the age of 95 on one question: "If you could live your life over again, what would you do differently?"
Three answers dominated:
1. If I had it to do over again, I would reflect more.
2. If I had it to do over again, I would risk more.
3. If I had it to do over again, I would do more things that would live on
after I am dead.
Value-neutral education is destroying American youth. Barbara Walters noted the decline of young people in a newscast. Colson says that the inversion of values is responsible. Moral standards and truth itself are reduced to personal choices.
Black preacher at Campolo's church tells graduates, "Children, you're going to die! After the funeral they'll go back to the church and eat potato salad." What testimony will you leave with these dying people? Pharaoh may have had the title, but Moses had the testimony!
Sermon in Family Series
"Whose Family Values?"
I. Recent debate over family values.
A. Endless speeches, ads, cartoons. (Emmy Awards)
B. Families under great social and economic pressures.
C. Society is paying a price.
II. What is a family?
A. Biological foundation.
B. Nurturing foundation.
C. The Bible stresses relationships.
III. Where the real battle lies.
A. Definition of a family is not as important as its values.
B. Everyone has values.
C. Society as a whole has a hard time agreeing on values.
IV. Where does your family get its values?
A. Society can set the values for you. Genesis 19:27-36
B. Families can set their own values. Joshua 24:15
V. Values Christian families should have.
A. Commitment to love.
B. Commitment to standards.
C. Commitment to faith.
VI. God is very concerned about families.
Evangelicals have a view of the family that is 19th century middle-class in its values. We value it more than church. However, the Bible places the church (and Kingdom) higher. Many passages almost put down the family to show how important the Kingdom is. Kingdom-centered families can make an impact in society (concerning divorce, sexuality, etc.).
Movie critic Michael Medved bemoans the standards displayed in many Hollywood movies. He has criticized them, and been rebuked by the establishment. He feels Hollywood ignores soul and substance, glorifies ugliness, assaults the family, and is hostile to religion.
“One of the symptoms of the corruption and collapse of our national culture is the insistence that we examine only the surface of any work of art. The politically correct, properly liberal notion is that we would never dig deeper - to consider whether a given work is true, or good, or spiritually nourishing - or to evaluate its impact on society at large.”
“In the visual arts, in literature, in film, in music of both popular and classical variety, ugliness has been enshrined as a new standard, as we accept the ability to shock as a replacement for the old ability to inspire.”
“Today, the movie business regularly offers us characters who are smaller than life, who are less decent, less intelligent, less noble than our own friends and neighbors.”
“Hollywood portrays a world ... in which ugliness - and emptiness - emerge as the new standard for our society.”
“A war against standards leads logically and inevitably to hostility to religion, because it is religious faith that provides the ultimate basis for all standards.”
I once heard of a child who was raising a frightful cry because he had shoved his hand into the opening of a very expensive Chinese vase and then couldn’t pull it out again. Parents and neighbors tugged with might and main on the child’s arm, with the poor creature howling out loud all the while.
Finally there was nothing left to do but to break the beautiful, expensive vase. And then as the mournful heap of shards lay there, it became clear why the child had been so hopelessly stuck. His little fist grasped a paltry penny which he had spied in the bottom of the vase and which he, in his childish ignorance, would not let go.
Sermon series on Old Testament Heroes: Solomon
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TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING
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I. Having it all.
II. Solomon as a tragic figure.
III. Solomon's early life is generally positive.
A. Idealization seen most clearly in his choice of wisdom. 3:9
B. His political prominence shows his success as a ruler. 4:1-28
C. His piety emerges from his building of the Temple. 5-7
D. His prosperity is revealed when Queen of Sheba visits. 10:1-13
IV. With so much going for him, why did Solomon fail?
A. His many wives, a perversion of intimacy of married love. 11:3
B. His marriage of foreign women, violating God's commands. 11:1-2
C. His sacrifice of the pure worship of God to idolatry. 11:4-8
V. These are not instantaneous choices, but evolved over his lifetime.
VI. At the end, Solomon learned his lesson. (Ecclesiastes)
A. Ecclesiastes is a hard book and often misunderstood.
B. Contrast is the key.
C. Life "under the sun."
D. Life under God.
E. Basic theme: Earthly values that lead to futility, or God's
values that lead to happiness and contentment.
VII. How much do we want to have?
A. Life is not measured by our accomplishments and acquisitions.
B. "Having it all" can mean ending up with nothing.
C. God wants us to have everything we need.
Sermon in Isaiah series. Isaiah's rebuke of prosperous society 5:8-24
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RIGHTSIDE UP VALUES
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I. The fires of California.
II. The isolation of wealth. 5:8-9
A. Prosperity brought a building spree.
B. God's judgment is isolation. 5:9-10
III. Party animals. 5:11-15
A. A sure sign of decay in society is the pursuit of intoxication.
B. There is nothing glamorous about addiction. 5:22
C. It matters what kind of heroes we have.
D. Once again, God's punishment for addiction is isolation. 5:13
IV. Cynicism about God. 5:18-19
A. The true nature of their sin is a cynical rejection of God.
B. Skepticism leads to a total reversal of values. 5:20
V. How to get your values rightside up. 5:20
A. A formula for moral choices, from 1 Corinthians.
1) Is it helpful - physically, spiritually, mentally? 1Co 6:12
2) Does it bring me under its power? 1Co 6:12
3) Does it hurt others? 1Co 8:13
4) Does it glorify God? 1Co 10:31
B. Holiness must be a total way of life.
VI. You don't want to cross God. 5:24*
The word "integrity" is curious. You will hear dozens of different applications of the word, but they all boil down to one succinct thought: A person of integrity is one who has established a system of values against which all of life is judged. For the Christian, this system of values is determined by a careful study of God's Holy Word. New insights may modify our system from time to time, but the entire system remains unchallenged and unyielding.
Integrity is not what we do as much as what we are. And what we are, in turn, determines what we do. Our system of values is so much a part of us that we cannot separate it from our personage. It becomes the navigating system that guides us. It establishes priorities in our lives, and it judges what we will accept and reject.
Integrity becomes the referee between conflicting loves. It determines which one will prevail over the other - which one will win the desire of our heart.
The cultural values we accept, not the ones we fight against, are the ones that will destroy the church. Before we "clean up" America there are areas Christians have to consider in their own lives.
Three areas that need to be evaluated:
1. Materialism vs. concern for poor and oppressed.
2. Political power vs. speaking the truth in love.
3. People-pleasing ministries vs. prophetic witness.
We often bring our class values into the church and call them Biblical values. Christians have to get back to reading the Bible "straight" without dilution from society's values. It almost requires a mysticism, but it has to be grounded in the historical stands of the Church. It takes hard work to maintain the counter-cultural perspective that is essential for Christian living.
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[Followed by a sidebar with Bible verses and blanks for input, and then "But the world says..." and blanks for input.]
Sermon on moral decay in America. Romans 1:32
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THE SLIPPERY SLOPE
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I. Changes I have seen in 40 years.
II. Moral decline nothing new.
A. Paul's stunning denunciation of pagan sin.
B. Is conclusion anticlimactic?
C. When values leave, the floodgates open.
III. Basic decision: where do values come from?
A. Secular approach - values are what majority agrees on.
B. Religious approach - values are established by God.
IV. Four approaches to relating Christian values to our society.
A. Christ against culture.
B. Christ of culture.
C. Christ above culture.
D. Christ transforming culture.
V. The biggest battlegrounds for values today.
A. Government.
B. Schools.
C. The media.
D. Churches.
VI. Transform our culture, with humility.
A. Work within the system and make our voice heard.
B. Christians have had huge blindspots.
C. We cannot force change on others.
[see #3454]
How warfare rhetoric is hurting the work of the church.
Talk of war is everywhere. It exploded into popular discourse when sociologist James Davison Hunter of the University of Virginia published “Culture Wars,” his book-length analysis of our nation’s moral impasse. In his follow-up book, “Before the Shooting Begins: Searching for Democracy in America’s Culture War,” Hunter argues that the conflict over values is so severe that our very democracy may be in jeopardy.
In his provocative book “Beyond Culture Wars: Is America a Mission Field or Battlefield?” Reformed theologian Michael Horton uses the same language of battle and claims the war has been fought and lost. Horton cites Jewish scholar Irving Kristol’s doleful lament: “In his [1992 Republican] convention speech, Pat Buchanan referred to the ‘culture wars..’ I regret to inform him that those wars are over, and the Left has won. … The Left today completely dominates the educational establishment, the entertainment industry, the universities, the media… There is no point in trying to inject ‘family values’ into these institutions. They will debase and corrupt the very ideal while pretending to celebrate it.”
Evangelical leader James Dobson of Focus on the Family also uses the powerful metaphor of war, writing urgently about “the ongoing civil war of values.” His newsletters rehearsing various battles of this “civil war” mobilize thousands. Other ministries and, indeed, Christianity Today authors comment on both victories and losses in this Herculean struggle.
Undoubtedly, the metaphor of “culture war” reflects the reality of conflict. Today Christians swim against a tide of sub-Christian behavior: drugs, distorted sex, greed, violence, abortion, abuse, broken families, children without fathers. Key institutions–the media, universities and schools, and government agencies–sometimes seem less concerned to change such behavior than to defend it from “Puritanism.” Christians who want to reverse destructive behavior may find themselves at odds with a culture that enables, encourages, or even celebrates it under the rubrics of personal expression and individual rights.
Activist Christians may also encounter anti-Christian attitudes–a spirit of condescension if not outright hostility. ABC News religion commentator Peggy Wehmeyer, herself an evangelical, observed in an interview in TV Guide: “The elite in this country–the courts, education, media, the arts–tend to view people who take their faith very seriously … with a smug, arrogant attitude.” On National Public Radio, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz noted that no evangelical Christian could be appointed as a faculty member at Harvard Law School. He lamented the fact that pluralism is often a code word for “ideologically correct.”
And yet, I believe Christians should be wary of adopting uncritically the friend-or-foe, either-or rhetoric of war. Such a metaphor is problematic for several reasons.
THE DANGERS OF WAR TALK
First, culture-war rhetoric can be self-fulfilling prophecy, exacerbating the very conflicts it seeks merely to describe. Repeated recourse to the language of war makes it harder to love our enemies–and it is already hard to do so–because it inflames angry feelings.
Second, culture-war rhetoric leads us to distort others’ positions, to see enmity in place of mere disagreement. It leaves no room for nuanced positions, or for middle ground.
Third, culture-war rhetoric distorts our own position, too–making our message seem mainly to be angry criticism when it ought to be mainly the reconciling gospel of Jesus Christ.
Fourth, culture-war rhetoric plays into the hands of extremists on the Left, who would like to convince Americans that “the Religious Right” seeks to impose a theocratic state on them.
Fifth, culture-war rhetoric tends to create division among Christians, even evangelical Christians–for in war, there is no room for question or hesitation, and those who are slow to march in lockstep seem to be cowards or traitors.
These concerns apply to all orthodox believers. Culture-war rhetoric may hurt our purposes–and hurt us.
I regret the haunting title of Hunter’s recent book: “Before the Shooting Begins.” Such rhetoric may sell books. But such rhetoric does little to foster an ambiance in which those Americans who are alienated from each other can seek reconciliation. Indeed, it reinforces the mindset of people like those extremists who laud the killing of abortion doctors and staff.
The vast majority of other Americans are not hostile toward evangelical Christians and are not ready to shoot anybody. We would be more accurate to portray the bulk of the American public not as belonging to two giant phalanxes of the Right and Left engaged in mortal combat, but as religious centrists, remaining to varying degrees committed to Judeo-Christian values and to First Amendment guarantees regarding freedom of religion. There are theaters of cultural warfare, but millions of Americans are not self-consciously enlisted soldiers in them.
The recently released study of American sexuality, for example, “The Social Organization of Sexuality,” paints a more conservative portrait of Americans’ sexuality than we would suppose, given the lurid presentation often proffered by the television, film, and print media. Similarly, a recent Roper poll sponsored by Focus on the Family uncovered a spectrum of beliefs regarding abortion, not the monolithic divisions associated with a culture-war model. A majority of Americans lean toward the pro-life position, with 52 percent of men and 60 percent of women fitting this description. In their book “The People’s Religion: American Faith in the 90’s,” George Gallup, Jr., and Jim Castelli note the surprising finding that the formal beliefs of Americans have changed relatively little since the 1940s: “In fact, the nation in some respects has remained remarkably orthodox–even fundamentalist–in its belief.”
The imagery of a spectrum must be counterbalanced with Augustine’s famous descriptions of the City of God and the City of Man. Evangelical Christians do believe that only some follow Christ and the Spirit; these disciples are distinguished from others who follow the Evil One and the flesh (see also Jesus’ parables in Matthew 13). Moreover, hard-fought spiritual warfare is taking place on this planet and right in this country. Nor should we run away from the biblical passages that compare the Christian life to soldiering and fighting the good fight and contending for the faith.
But Augustine reminds us that, at the societal level, it is preferable if the citizens of the City of God and the City of Man live at peace on earth. The imagery of a spectrum encourages our seeking after civic peace, disdaining rhetoric that promotes unnecessary explosive confrontations.
Perhaps the spectrum might be envisioned in this way. On the Far Right are those Americans who want to impose Christian values by law on their fellow citizens and who appear willing to sacrifice constitutional guarantees regarding freedom of religion. The culture-war motif serves them well as a rationale for enlisting and inspiring partisans.
On the Far Left is a relatively small but powerful group of atheistic elites in education, government, law, and the media who want to drive anything but atheism from the public square. Their tactic is to woo the huge, confused middle by characterizing conservative Christian political activists as extremists who want to take away the civil rights of other Americans.
The culture-war motif also serves their cause beautifully. With their oversized media megaphones, they can try to persuade Americans in the middle that perfidious Christian extremists (read fundamentalists or the “Religious Right”) are the nation’s foes. And whenever a Christian leader speaks about a desire to recreate a “Christian America,” or a fringe extremist from the Far Right commits murder, he or she gives ammunition to those who would want to frighten the religious middle.
It would be wrong to confuse those in the muddled middle with the left-wing extremists. What many Americans in the middle are concerned about is the imposition of moral teachings by law. They cannot justify this approach with their perception of the Constitution’s guarantees regarding separation of church and state. For example, Hunter has found that some Americans oppose abortion but feel their personal beliefs should not be forced upon others. One woman told Hunter’s researchers, “I would say my views are true for me, but I can’t put that on someone else. I just can’t force my truths on other people.” Those of us who oppose abortion and believe the law should explicitly protect unborn children may sometimes misinterpret our neighbors’ concern as hostility toward us or our view of the morality of abortion. In fact, they may agree with us about the horror of abortion but come to a different conclusion when they wrestle with the issue of how its eradication should take place. They often view religion and morality as “private,” having no place in public life. It does not necessarily help, in persuading such people, to cast them in the role of “enemy.”
In an address to the National Association of Evangelicals, NAE president Don Argue declared: “The so-called Religious Right has lost its right to be heard by a large segment of the general public.” He continued: “Our positions regarding abortion and homosexuality are very clear, but we need balanced, articulate, biblical leadership” in order to avoid alienating “the very people we are trying to lead.” He lamented the fact that some evangelicals “have violated Jesus’ command to love their enemies and do good to those who persecute them.”
I would argue that the very use of “culture wars” rhetoric tends to reinforce that attitude. It pushes people into opposite camps instead of encouraging them to seek areas of common ground. It blinds us to our own shortcomings by keeping our focus on the wounds inflicted by our “enemies” rather than on addressing our own failings. Culture-war rhetoric can even stir misunderstandings within the evangelical community itself by creating a climate in which anyone who speaks up for civility can be suspected of inadequate courage in fighting for “Christian values.”
Can 'character education' save the public schools? Our local junior high school displays huge hallway banners reading, "Respect and Responsibility -- We Can Do It Together." Respect, this year's theme, is meant to pervade the multiethnic school. (Last year compassion and caring took the lead.)
At the annual back-to-school night, our principal took a few minutes to explain the theme to us parents, then turned the program over to the cheerleaders. They illustrated respect by lip-synching a bump-and-grind rendition of Aretha Franklin's song of the same name. At the final beat, they turned around, bent over, flipped up their cheerleader skirts, and displayed the word RESPECT, spelled out on pieces of paper pinned to their bottoms. I nudged my wife: "I don't think they've completely grasped the concept." Which is roughly what I thought when I learned of the existence of a movement in the public schools to teach children virtuous character. Are educators, I wondered, really ready for this? [used 7/7/96]
Still, the very existence of the character-education movement catches your attention. For some time, public schools have been saying that values are not part of their curriculum. It is news when a substantial group in public education says, "Yes, they are."
I have on my desk a brochure from the Character Development Foundation in Manchester, New Hampshire. Intended to attract teachers to a one-day seminar, it proclaims boldly, "You can teach kids to be smart & Good!" Good is defined (in language typical of the character-education movement) by the traits of self-control, respect, responsibility, honesty, courage, caring, courtesy, and friendship. Character education claims to teach old-fashioned values to kids who are not getting them at home.
It would be hard to be against such an undertaking. Surely it is part of a school's job to help parents turn their children into decent, responsible, moderately polite human beings. Yet it is also hard to entrust character confidently to the same people who embraced the values education of Planned Parenthood.
RIGHT AND WRONG REVISITED
In Washington, D.C., I attended a national conference put on by a coalition of organizations called the Character Education Partnership. Most of the several hundred people in attendance were schoolteachers or school administrators, cheerful and energetic people who were launching character-education programs in local schools all over the country, or thinking about it. Some very large school systems, such as those from Baltimore and Saint Louis, were represented, as were many smaller places. Vocal supporters ranged from a Democratic White House aide to a conservative Republican senator, and organizations running the gamut -- from the Rainbow Coalition to the National Association of Evangelicals.
By all the signs, character education is a grassroots movement, springing up in a hundred different places. There is, so far, no "right" way to do it. Its popularity is perhaps best shown by the fact that educational entrepreneurs are jumping in, looking for a profit. At my first seminar, I met Robert Barden, a friendly, long-haired representative of the Cumberland County Schools in North Carolina. He told me of all kinds of gimmicky presentations people had brought to his school system, including a high-energy performance from a salesman dressed -- for reasons unclear to Barden -- in a NASA jumpsuit.
I hadn't gone to many seminars before I realized that character education is not the same thing as the "discipline" parents often want in school. Character education is much more upbeat and optimistic than that. As one principal told me, "Some parents want regimentation, and this is the very opposite."
Character education does emphasize clearly defined and enforced rules, but that is just one part of it. Character education tries to form the kind of person who does what is right without his being told and when he is not being watched. Strict rules and harsh punishments may prompt compliance, these educators say, but the behavior will not necessarily carry over to another environment. As Thomas Lickona, a professor of education at the State University of New York, writes in his book "Educating for Character," "Good character consists of knowing the good, desiring the good, and doing the good -- habits of the mind, habits of the heart, and habits of action."
Character education is not shy about using the terms right and wrong. Lickona notes that just a few years ago, the question "Should the schools teach values?" would be answered by the retort "Whose values?" "With remarkable swiftness," he writes, "that has changed. Escalating moral problems in society ... are bringing about a new consensus." The "rights" and "wrongs" character educators want to bring back are consensus values, those that everybody can agree on. They ardently avoid including issues like abortion or homosexuality, putting the emphasis on teaching values that are, they claim, timeless and invariable across cultures. They talk about teaching "civic" virtues, those foundations of citizenship assumed in the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Character-education advocates are not very philosophical about it, though. They want to teach the agreed-on values of the community they live in. And they assert that we agree on a lot more than we realize.
For example, Robert Barden helped launch Fayetteville, North Carolina's program. One rainy night 700 interested people gathered in a school gym to decide on a list of values to teach. Every strand of the community was represented, from fundamentalists to feminists, Barden says, and he was not overly confident about reaching consensus. But to his and everyone's surprise, the meeting unanimously agreed on seven core values. Now, he says, the community is solidly behind the program.
People launching character-education programs often express surprise at the level of unanimity they achieve. The Saint Louis PREP program (Personal Responsibility Education Process) incorporates 23 different school districts, each of which chooses its own character traits to teach. Almost 50 different terms appear on their various lists: Respect and responsibility were chosen by nearly all districts. Honesty, cooperation, self-esteem, and perseverance were claimed by more than half. Traits like abstinence, reliability, and self-control were chosen by a few. What is remarkable is not the values, but the fact that schools are excitedly talking about values at all.
The "New York Times," in an article published in January of this year, estimates that one out of every five public schools has some kind of character-education program in place. Most character-education programs are in elementary schools; some are in middle schools; and a few are in high schools. The programs vary widely. Many include schoolwide recognition for kids who behave well, a virtue-of-the-month program (usually underlined by posters in the halls), literature-based lessons that emphasize moral themes (much like William Bennett's best-selling "Book of Virtues"), training for students in conflict resolution, cooperative-learning strategies like "buddy- learning," and programs to improve behavior in the cafeteria, on the playground, and on school buses.
Any of these programs can be added on individually to a school's program, but character-education leaders emphasize that a comprehensive program is best so that the various facets complement one another. Ideally, they like to offer training to the school's teachers and staff. Behind it all is an idea of what a school should be: a community of people rather than a building, a place where one generation transmits its knowledge and its morals to the next. That, obviously, is what church schools have been trying to do from the beginning. The idea that public schools can have much the same purpose and meaning is a new, invigorating one to many educators.
BEYOND VALUES CLARIFICATION
David Brooks, head of the Jefferson Center for Character Education, described overhearing a student asking his teacher whether a certain action was wrong. "That's for you to decide for yourself," the teacher said.
"I wanted to strangle that teacher," commented Brooks.
His response is typical of people involved with character education. They are weary of teaching kids that the center of the moral universe is in their heads. The notion that schools should be value neutral irritates them. Not teaching right and wrong is a value in itself, they say.
Character education often gets confused with "values clarification," a program of the sixties that explicitly rejected teaching right and wrong. The very mention of values clarification makes character-education advocates wince. Many educators see it as emblematic of a certain style of education, emphasizing the likelihood that kids, properly stimulated to reflect, will naturally choose to become caring, respectful individuals. Values clarification usually emphasized "hard case" predicaments and theoretical situations, asking kids to assign seats on an overcrowded lifeboat rather than to deal with cheating, fighting, stealing, and name calling.
Better, but still inadequate, were moral-education programs built on Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral reasoning. "Their focus was still on 'process' -- thinking skills -- rather than moral content," writes Lickona. "Teachers still didn't see it as their role to teach or foster particular values."
That, in a nutshell, is what gives energy to character-education programs: they are rejecting relativism, returning to old-fashioned virtues, teaching right and wrong. The means are prosaic. Nobody, surely, gets excited about putting up foil stars in the office and nominating admirable students, staff, and parents for "Shining Star" awards. Yet people do get excited about character education that majors on just such programs. The character- education conference seemed overrun with idealistic men and women who love kids and want them to become decent human beings. A good number volunteered to me that they are Christians.
One seminar I attended was led by Michael Loren, a physician who had profited from a moral improvement program he found in Ben Franklin's writings. Loren had adapted the program for school children, but as he explained, had felt it necessary to change some of Franklin's 13 virtues. "I thought, 'Chastity -- how am I going to sell this to the schools?'" He had replaced chastity with friendship, and changed temperance to alertness. But Loren, it seemed, had misjudged his audience. Someone raised a hand and suggested that he could have stayed with the original words, and others muttered agreement.
White House aide William Galston came to talk to the conference. "We're winning," he said. "We're winning this battle. The need for this work can no longer be denied." He said that a great social experiment had been tried in America, "based on personal freedom checked only by law," and the evidence was in: "No government and no society has enough courts to get people to do the right thing. The issue is knowing the good, loving the good, and, I would add, having a settled habit of doing the good."
Regarding teen pregnancies, Galston said, "Ten years ago, the conventional wisdom was that it was a problem without a solution." But now, he said, they had winnowed half a dozen successful programs out of hundreds and found one common component: they treated teenage pregnancy as a psychological and moral problem, not as a technological or medical problem. He called for a "clear moral message of personal responsibility, resisting temptation and, in many cases, resisting intimidation." The audience responded positively to the mention of abstinence-based programs, though some attendees told me they had avoided adding any sex education to their curriculum for fear of controversy.
After attending the Washington conference I had no doubt that character education was a real grassroots movement, appealing to a broad range of educators. What I could not figure out was how seriously to take it. Was it like those congressional resolutions to favor a balanced budget: all sensibility, no teeth? Does it do anything for children?
[see also #3630-31]
EDITORS' NOTE: The following comments about the nation's crime problem were voiced by Charles Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship, in a news conference prior to his address to the Southern Baptist Pastors' Conference in Atlanta.
We're at a moment in American life where our liberties are at stake. Not so much religious liberties, although they're certainly under assault. But our liberties as a free people ... because crime and fear have become so pervasive in American life that Americans will make the Faustian bargain ... that people in every society have made through the centuries -- and that is, when you're overcome with fear, you will trade your liberties for order.
In 20 years of prison ministry, in 69 countries, with 50,000 volunteers in America, visiting the homes of 430,000 kids last Christmas with Angel Tree gifts, I think we probably know the mentality of the people in prison and the subculture which produces most of the crime in America about as well as any group possibly could. We've lived among them.
I've watched over 20 years an incredible coarsening in American culture, a dulling of the conscience, a loss of moral sensitivities and moral training, a weakening and a breakdown of character in American life. These kids that are coming off the streets today are different -- completely different -- from the kids 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago.
The crime problem is largely a juvenile problem. If you took the juvenile crime rate out of the American crime rate, if you took the inner-city crime rate out of the American crime rate, you'd have about the same crime rate as Belgium.
But the complete collapse of the inner-city cultures and the complete collapse of the family structure among large segments of our population has created a crisis of character that really threatens to overwhelm us. I think the moral collapse at the center of American life has overwhelmed the capacity of our institutions to respond. And that's why we're building prisons faster and faster and faster and faster, and the crime rate keeps going up. It's gone up 560 percent since the 1960s.
But it's the character of crime that really has American people frightened to death -- and rightly so, because these kids are committing crimes without any remorse, without any reason, without any motive, without any purpose. ... (Their) conscience has never been cultivated.
I was in a prison in Indiana and it was probably the toughest place I've been in the last 10 years, maybe since Angola or Statesville or Walla Walla. This was Michigan City, Ind. I've been there five times. And the guys were looking at me -- these kids, 19, 20, 21 -- with the hardest eyes. ... There was literally apartheid -- the black inmates were over here and the white inmates were over here. When (former Chicago Bears linebacker) Mike Singletary spoke, the black inmates responded. When I spoke, the white inmates responded.
When it was over, I turned to Chuck Adkins, the assistant warden who's been there for 20 years. I said, "Chuck, has this place changed?"
I'd been there five times. I said, "It sure feels like a different place to me."
He said, "Changed? Ten years ago, I could talk to these kids about right and wrong. Today, I talk to them and they have no idea what I'm talking about." He said, "The biggest administrative problem I have in this prison is, the older inmates ask for protection from the younger inmates coming in off the streets." And that's the population group in America that's growing the fastest.
Now, ... we've reached the point of saturation, and the moral problem has overwhelmed the institutions' ability to respond. That's true. There simply is no institutional response to the juvenile crime problem ... . We don't have one. And I talk to corrections people all across America, and they tell me ... there's not a thing we can do.
And we as a church aren't there, taking the one thing that will make a difference -- the life-changing power of Jesus Christ to those inmates in prison and particularly to their families and particularly to those kids that are coming out on the street.
And I fear, I tremble, I shudder at what will happen to American culture.
________
Copyright (c) 1995 Baptist Press
Either Christians will turn a blind eye to America’s moral decline, and wave their flags anyway, or they will withdraw from mainstream society into a “class of permanent exiles.”
Stepping up to the platform at the Southern Baptist Convention a few years ago, I was met by a heaving sea of tiny American flags. Seventeen thousand delegates were cheering the speaker who preceded me, Ollie North.
A blend of Christianity and Americana is a staple in our country’s heartland. On any Fourth of July, thousands of churches host God-and-country rallies. And I understand the sentiment. As an ex-marine captain, I thrill to hear the Marine Corps Hymn, and to belt out (off-key) “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” Evangelicals have been the backbone of America’s civil religion: those virtues that bind a pluralistic society together. Admittedly, civil religion can be dangerous when it substitutes for true faith or baptizes the state. But at its best, writes Leroy Rouner of Boston University, it “has been a means whereby Christian loyalties and values have been indigenized and become effective in a modern, pluralistic society.” But not for much longer, it seems.
In the Baylor Law Review, David Smolin of Samford University raises a troubling question for evangelicals today: Is American civil religion still viable? Or has America moved so far from “Christian loyalties and values” as to fracture a two-hundred-year tradition of religious patriotism?
Smolin cites the issue of abortion, where the Supreme Court has abandoned any notion of a higher law — whether divine law in revelation or human law in the Constitution. In Roe v. Wade, Smolin writes that abortion “rights” were based on the arbitrary will of judges and hence became “lawless.”
In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Court went further: It transformed abortion from an implied privacy right into an expressed liberty — sweepingly interpreted as “the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” But if laws may not interfere with an individual’s beliefs about “existence” and “meaning,” then laws may not cover anything at all. Except for trivial procedural rules, all laws, tangentially at least, touch upon larger beliefs about right and wrong and the meaning of life. Hence, Casey undercuts the basis for law altogether.
Is it any wonder Christians feel increasingly alienated? In “The Naked Public Square,” Richard Neuhaus says that if laws do not reflect “basic propositions about right and wrong, good and evil, they will be condemned as illegitimate.” That’s exactly what many Christians are coming to believe about the laws of the land they love.
More disturbing, our political opponents throw the same charge back — arguing that Christian involvement in public life is itself illegitimate. Liberal political theory contemplates a public square where all arguments rely on universal, publicly accessible reasons. But particularist religious beliefs rely on claims of divine authority not shared by all, Smolin writes. Hence, Christians joining the abortion debate are denounced as “illegitimate political participants, and essentially ‘lawless,’ in the sense of operating outside the rules of the political system.” Christians are becoming political outcasts.
This was the clear message of Madsen v. Women’s Health Center, Inc., where the Court created a 36-foot buffer zone around an abortion clinic designed to exclude pro-life protesters, while leaving abortion supporters free to proclaim their message. Madsen exposed the Court’s blatant lawlessness: It abandoned equal justice under the law simply to silence pro-life activists. As Justice Scalia noted in dissent, the Court apparently felt anti-abortion protesters “must be taught a lesson”: that their contribution to public discourse is illegitimate.
How will religious patriots respond to this growing alienation? If the historic link between faith and country snaps, Smolin predicts two possible outcomes among religious patriots. On one hand, “the religion will accommodate itself to the patriotism” — that is, Christians will define deviancy down, turn a blind eye to America’s moral decline, and wave their flags anyway. Otherwise, “the patriotism will give way to the religion” — that is, Christians will withdraw from mainstream society into a “class of permanent exiles.” There may, in fact, be other choices (Christians in every age are called to remain prophetically involved in the state), but Smolin is correct in warning against too comfortable an alignment with a system that has become lawless.
An important historical precedent comes from Germany, half a century ago. Under far harsher circumstances, 139 German church leaders proclaimed independence from both the state and a co-opted church. Adopted on May 29, 1934, the Barmen Declaration contained no political references but asserted the independent role of the church in public life and led to the formation of the Confessing Church under Niemoller and Bonhoeffer.
The coming election will strain the faltering alliance between faith and patriotism even further. The Democratic party is already committed to abortion “rights,” and any Republican candidate will be under enormous pressure to race to the “inclusive” center — which means not rocking the boat on Casey and Madsen.
If this happens, our God-and-country rallies will become exercises in nostalgia. The America we love will live only in our memories. And we may discover that we are closer to Barmen than to the triumph of the Religious Right.
Copyright (c) 1996 Christianity Today, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine April 29, 1996, Vol. 40, No. 5, Page 64 ctap2996mrj6T50646417
Honesty does not come from out of nowhere. It is a product of your moral convictions. But what do you do when your convictions are challenged? It is faith that gives you the strength to go on believing. Though I am a Christian, I respect the religions of others, and I think that they play a vital role in our society. But I don't support convictions or cults that are negative and lead only to hatred and fanaticism. Faith must be positive.
Live your faith. Don't wear it on your sleeve; roll up both sleeves and do something about it.
A youth culture expert who visited Littleton, Colo., after the Columbine High School tragedy said adults need to recognize much teenager behavior stems from cries for help.
"The attitudes and behaviors we see aren't aimed at adults," said Walt Mueller. "They are cries for attention, affection, love, understanding, relationship and truth." What kids are looking for -- truth and stability in their lives."
A crucial mistake many Christians make is to "demonize" music, movies, video games and other things attractive to teens, Mueller said. When that happens, people become critical and aren't motivated to help, he said. "We try to take a balanced, biblical approach," said Mueller. "We want the church to be like the Good Samaritan, to go over and minister to them and meet their needs. Teens may act like they don't want us involved in their lives, but they desperately do."
Mueller listed four primary factors he sees as cries for help and practical steps adults can take:
1) CHANGING FAMILIES.
Many young people's lives are marred by brokenness and divorce, he
said.
He challenged fathers to examine their schedules, adjust them to
make time for their children and show an interest in their
activities and lives.
He also encouraged couples to evaluate the health of their
marriage and pay attention to each other before "it's too late."
2) MUSIC AND MEDIA.
This is the most powerful force filling the void left by those who
fail to be diligent parents, Mueller said.
In reality, the youthful attraction to these influences is a
search for meaning and direction, he said. Teens are seeking to
answer questions about personal identity, God and the future.
This is why parents must give their children time and listen
carefully, he said. "If we're not there to understand and direct
them to truthful answers, they will seek them from music and
media."
Teens' two major complaints are parents don't listen and don't
understand, said Mueller, the father of four children ages 6 to
15. They interpret that as rejection, which becomes resentment
and then rebellion, he said.
3) A CRISIS OF CHARACTER, expressed through MORAL RELATIVISM.
Many act as if there are no standards of right and wrong or
acceptable behavior, Mueller said. But that is really a cry for a
sense of truth, he said.
Parents need to grasp the importance of demonstrating truth
through their daily relationships, he said. "They shouldn't just
tell them right and wrong, but live it out for them. The best
approach is to live by biblical standards of right and wrong."
4) THE CRY OF HOPELESSNESS.
While this may sound foreboding, it's actually good news because
children aren't finding the answers to problems from non-Christian
sources, Mueller said.
Yet, if parents and others in the church don't deliberately and
aggressively reach out to kids, they won't have the answers, he
said.
"Fear and insecurity has a lot to do with it," he said of the
actions of killers Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan
Klebold. "It's a combination of a lot of things. It's not gun
control, media or music. It's all of these.
"I was saddened but not the least bit surprised," Mueller said of
the attack that shocked the nation. "It's only a matter of time
before it happens again."
Among factors he cited as creating a tough world for young people:
-- Daily, some 3,000 children see their parents' marriage end in divorce.
-- Tonight, 40 percent of the children will go to bed in a home without a
father.
-- Pressures, challenges and choices not known by previous generations.
For example, by the time they graduate, 80 percent of boys and 70
percent of girls will have had sexual intercourse. Each year, more
than 1 million girls in the United States become pregnant and more
than 2.5 million cases of sexually transmitted diseases occur among
adolescents.
-- Rates of substance abuse are skyrocketing. More than 80 percent of
today's graduating seniors have used alcohol, 42 percent smoked
marijuana and 52 percent used illicit drugs, Mueller said.
-- Suicide rates among American high school students have quadrupled in the
last four decades.
The Internet website for the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding is www.cpyu.org.
Have we lost the culture war? Many evangelicals seem to think so. Despite our best efforts, public morality is declining, while divorce, homosexuality, and abortion are continuing to rise.
Or are they?
The surprising news is that recent polls indicate a turn-around. An article in National Review reveals that, since 1981 the divorce rate is down 19 percent; since 1994 the birth rate for unmarried teens is down 7.5 percent; since 1990 abortion is down 15.3 percent; and since 1993 there's been a whopping 37 percent decrease in people on welfare. Even crime is down, despite a surge of teens in the crime-prone years.
What's more, a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC poll uncovered a startling change in attitudes: 84 percent of self-described conservatives say what's "important for society" today is to "promote respect for traditional values." Even more surprisingly, 33 percent of liberals agree.
People are finally realizing that the dominant worldviews fail to provide a basis for a safe and stable public order.
This represents a tremendous opportunity for Christians. Our culture is embroiled in nothing less than a clash of worldviews, and Christians must stop focusing on social issues one at a time. Instead, we must delve beneath the surface and identify the underlying principles, the broad worldviews, that give rise to social problems in the first place. Otherwise, we may win a few battles, but still lose the war.
Samuel Huntington of Harvard has said the world is divided not so much by geographical boundaries as by differences in ultimate beliefs-in worldviews. He is absolutely right. The task for us is to identify those worldviews, and to demonstrate that the Christian worldview is the only one that can be rationally defended.
Robert George of Princeton is a wonderful model. Last year Professor George debated abortion at a Convention of the American Political Science Association. His opponent was well-known deconstructionist Stanley Fish. In published articles, Fish had dismissed arguments AGAINST abortion as based on "religious conviction" alone, while suggesting that the case FOR abortion is based on "scientific facts."
But George argued that, on the contrary, what science supports is the pro-life view, by demonstrating that the fetus is fully human. Sonogram pictures show the unborn child responding to stimuli, and doctors are performing surgery on babies in the womb. Today the pro-life position can be supported by empirical evidence that is accessible to everyone.
Before the convention, George sent his paper to Stanley Fish, and when the debate opened, Fish shocked the assembled professors by throwing his paper on the table and announcing, "Professor George is right, and he is right to correct me. Today the pro-life position is supported by scientific evidence."
The audience sat in stunned silence.
Christianity cannot be dismissed as merely a private religious experience. Instead, it is the truth about all reality. And it can be supported by rational, empirical evidence open to everyone. That's why every Christian must learn to be an apologist, capable of comparing worldviews and discerning which are true and false.
Each of us must learn how to present Christianity as a worldview, supported by reason and evidence. And when we do, we'll discover that we can indeed win the culture war.
___________________________
Copyright (c) 1999 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.
*
I do a lot of management training each year for the Circle K Corporation, a national chain of convenience stores. Among the topics we address in our seminars is the retention of quality employees - a real challenge to managers when you consider the pay scale in the service industry. During these discussions, I ask the participants, "What has caused you to stay long enough to become a manager?" Some time back a new manager took the question and slowly, with her voice almost breaking, said, "It was a $19 baseball glove."
Cynthia told the group that she originally took a Circle K clerk job as an interim position while she looked for something better. On her second or third day behind the counter, she received a phone call from her nine-year old son, Jessie. He needed a baseball glove for Little League. She explained that as a single mother, money was very tight, and her first check would have to go for paying bills. Perhaps she could buy his baseball glove with her second or third check.
When Cynthia arrived for work the next morning, Patricia, the store manager, asked her to come to the small room in back of the store that served as an office. Cynthia wondered if she had done something wrong or left some part of her job incomplete from the day before. She was concerned and confused.
Patricia handed her a box. "I overheard you talking to your son yesterday," she said, "and I know that it is hard to explain things to kids. This is a baseball glove for Jessie because he may not understand how important he is, even though you have to pay bills before you can buy gloves. You know we can't pay good people like you as much as we would like to; but we do care, and I want you to know you are important to us."
The thoughtfulness, empathy and love of this convenience store manager demonstrates vividly that people remember more how much an employer cares than how much the employer pays. An important lesson for the price of a Little League baseball glove.
_______________
By Rick Phillips from Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work, Copyright 1996 by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Maida Rogerson, Martin Rutte & Tim Clauss
*
A recent poll asked people what kind of neighbors they would most like NOT to have to live next door to: Drug dealers? Used car salesmen? No. The number-one choice was fundamentalists, by which they meant any devout Christian.
This perception about Christians is especially sad, because the people most hurt by this attitude are the ones most in need of the difference the Gospel can make.
Rod Dreher, a columnist for the New York Post, recently learned how true this is when he went for a stroll with his wife and infant son in their New York City neighborhood.
A woman stopped to admire their son and struck up a conversation. She told them about her son, a senior at an expensive private school, and she said she was worried that the boy is drinking and possibly doing drugs with his friends. She had lost sleep worrying about him.
She also voiced frustration over the lack of support from other parents, and even her own husband. "My husband and I have fought about this for years," she told the Drehers. "He keeps telling me we can't ask too much of the boy.... I just don't understand why he's so permissive."
Then she asked the Drehers where they planned to send their child to school -- a question you can't ask too early in a city where people put their kids on waiting lists as soon as they conceive.
When Dreher's wife said they planned to home-school their son, the woman exclaimed that it would be difficult to do that in New York, "unless you're right-wing Christians or something."
Dreher told the woman that they indeed are Christians, and that it was the moral concerns she had just expressed that made them turn to home- schooling.
The irony of that conversation stuck with Dreher. On the one hand, the woman was "broken up about the lack of discipline and morality among kids these days." Yet, the way she said "right-wing Christians" expressed disdain for the very people who are raising their children with discipline -- the thing she most wants.
It was a case of a drowning woman refusing a life jacket. While, as Dreher notes, she "wants to have good kids," she's terrified of being like those conservative Christians.
What happened to the Drehers has probably happened to you. Your unbelieving neighbors want the kind of life that Christianity makes possible. But, like this New Yorker, they can't see past the stereotypes.
It's what I call the postmodern impasse. We want moral order, but we reject the one thing that gives it to us.
But this kind of situation presents a wonderful opportunity for us to show our neighbors the flaws their own thinking. What they're really admitting is that a secular, value-neutral worldview doesn't work. And they see the negative consequences. Only a worldview that affirms the existence of moral absolutes can create the cultural climate our neighbors say they want.
And that's, of course, what Christians believe in and are trying to bring back. Not because we want to impose our values on people, but because we love our neighbors, and want what's best for everyone.
Which ought to make us exactly the kind of people others, if they understood, would want living next door.
___________________
Copyright (c) 2000 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.
*
For a year now, the nation has gone through an agonizing soul-searching over Columbine. For some reason, we can't seem to get it out of our minds. But what have we really learned from this tragedy?
Politicians talk about gun control as if it would solve problems like Columbine. But Harris and Klebold planned a cold-blooded murder. Anyone who saw the videos they made before the killings could see that these were angry, murderous kids who would stop at nothing, whether a gun were registered or not.
They were influenced by the darkest aspects of American popular culture -- saturated with the most violent and sadistic images imaginable. Violent lyrics and films filled their minds, and yet the public still continues to patronize the industries that produce it.
Just last weekend the President and Vice President were in Hollywood scooping up millions of dollars in contributions from the very people responsible for spewing this sewage into society. Can't they see the connection? It's time we ostracize those who put this kind of rot into the minds of young people.
But there is good news from Columbine. This tragedy sent a powerful message to the American people -- a wake-up call. Some have called it "the Pearl Harbor of the culture wars." Because suddenly the nation saw two worldviews in stark contrast.
On one side we saw Cassie Bernall and Rachel Scott, their families and friends, the Christians who rallied behind them, and the incredible church services exalting Jesus. There were groups like Neighbors Who Care, a ministry of Prison Fellowship, that took the lead in the efforts to heal the emotional and spiritual scars.
Neighbors Who Care worked through churches to offer seminars and to minister to victims of crime. Their "Grace for Healing" seminars trained people in how to begin the process of recovery. And the whole community pulled together.
On the other side, we saw the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher who said "God is dead." This is the worldview that influenced Harris and Klebold, with their Nazi paraphernalia, their anger and profanity, and their agenda of death and destruction. They had abandoned any view of God or Western civilization, and sold out to a philosophy of evil.
Tragedies like this force people to see what happens when society embraces a secular worldview. It's as if God is saying to us today what he said to the Israelites of old, "I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life" (Deut. 30:19).
Frankly, I don't think America will ever be the same. Polls show that public attitudes have dramatically changed since Columbine. A vast majority say that we must do more to create respect for traditional values. Youth violence is now the number one issue for many Americans, and people are talking again about restoring our moral values in American society.
We ought to remember Columbine today by renewing our dedication to speak to the secular world, which is hungry and searching for answers. We need to share biblical truth in such a way that they can see what it means to choose, not the way of Harris and Klebold, but the way of Cassie Bernall and Rachel Scott. The answer to the modern dilemma of how we should now live is founded on this Christian truth: Choose Life!
___________________
Copyright (c) 2000 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.
*
Barry Bryson tells about a woman he knows who accepts with quiet dignity the fact that her husband and children ignore her and take her for granted but would shoot to kill anyone who dares squeeze the tube of toothpaste from the middle! Barry also tells about another couple who would hire anyone, even Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, as a babysitter as long as the price is right, but would spare no expense to get their poodle groomed.
A huge crowd had gathered in the street outside a hotel in Glasgow,
Scotland. They were giving an uproarious welcome to the local
football team, which was returning victorious from a game in England.
A quiet little man slipped into the hotel, unnoticed. He didn't
amount to much in that big crowd. He was just the man who discovered
penicillin!
A noted artist arrived at a European art gallery to look at a painting he had sent on ahead. When he gazed on it, he was furious. By mistake they had failed to hang his great work of art but had hung the wrapping paper (in which it came) on which he had a little dabbling.
While driving around in her new neighborhood Alice was fascinated to see a hair-salon chain offering $10 haircuts. How could local salons compete against such a low price? she wondered. Then a few doors down she saw a sign on the storefront of a locally owned salon which read, WE REPAIR $10 HAIRCUTS.
Messages...Film critic Michael Medved comments: To understand how to protect our children—and ourselves—from the current plague of pessimism, we must first understand the forces that contribute to this national addiction to despair. One of those factors is an immersion in mass media that engages most Americans for a significant portion of their waking hours. As a working film critic, I have spent more than a decade complaining about the levels of gratuitous brutality and loveless sex in American entertainment. The deepest problem with this material isn’t the possibility that children will imitate the behavior they see on screen—though we all know that this sort of imitation does occur. The more universal threat involves the underlying message of hopelessness conveyed by these ugly, consistently dysfunctional images in our society—a message that encourages both self-pity and fear.
We've all heard the adage about “selling your soul to the devil,” but what about selling your soul on eBay?
It's the same thing, some might say, but Nathan Wright of West Des Moines has a different take on it. “I just needed some cash,” he said.
On May 19, 2002, Wright, age 24, listed his soul for sale on the World Wide Web's biggest auction site, eBay. His soul, housed in a glass jar that “may or may not” have contained fudge at one time, was going for $5.50 by Thursday afternoon. The bidding started at 99 cents.
So what prompts a young professional Gen Xer to offer his soul up for spending cash? Wright said he simply couldn't resist. “It all started when I was selling normal stuff like a computer monitor and a mouse,” he said. “But eBay is kind of addictive. You start listing one thing and then you look around your house and say, “Well, what else could I sell?”
Wright, a Web designer for a local advertising agency, said selling his soul also was an easy way to get publicity for his online magazine, Monkeycube.com. “I am using this as a way to get the name out there,” he said. “I try to find fun, wacky stuff to do like that.”
Wright said selling such an integral part of who he is doesn't bother him, as long as it doesn't fall into the wrong hands. “Hopefully, the buyer won't be someone who uses it maliciously,” he said. “I'm not really worried about selling it, unless the devil has an account on eBay. I don't know, maybe that's something he's resorted to.”
Wright isn't the first person to try and sell his soul on eBay. PEOPLE magazine reported last year that 20-year-old Adam Burtle tried selling his soul in February 2001. Bidding was up to $400 before eBay officials pulled the auction from its site.
Wright said he's not concerned that eBay could remove his soul from the site before the auction is up. “It's in a glass jar. It's a tangible object,” he said. “Besides, they're getting buyer's fees, so I don't see the problem.”
Wright said his friends and family have stood behind his decision to unload his soul on the Internet, though his mom thought he was “weird” for doing it. “They have a sense of humor about it,” he said about his parents.
When the auction ends, Wright said he'll take the proceeds and donate them to his Web site.
As for future sales, Wright said his morals might be next up. “I would consider that,” he said of selling his morality for profit. “How much do you think I could get?”
==================
A British version on this theme, from http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk
MAN SELLING HIS SOUL ON EBAY
(Posted by Stuart Miles 18 January 2006)
It’s the ultimate path to success, but one man is hoping to sell his soul not to the devil to bring him riches, but to anyone foolish enough to bid on it on eBay.
According to the description on the auction listing the Soul of Blain Brown comes with signed certificate and license of authenticity and purchase.
The auction also give you permission to be contacted in the afterlife for benign or malign purpose, the seller is not really bothered.
The listing goes on to say: “Ownership expires 1,000 years after date of purchase, and may be sold or passed on from person to person until the duration of this period is up.”
“Buyer may be human, extra terrestrial, a celestial being or even Satan himself, again the seller is not really bothered. If the current owner should cease to exist in anything other than natural circumstances then this will void purchase and ownership, and would most certainly cause wrath to be inflicted upon said purchaser, using methods such as haunting and poltergeist activities.”
“Once under new management, Soul must obey owner under said license agreement. Soul may be used in seances, contacted by the Ouija board, used in Voodoo traditions, used for private or personal prayer, or even used for Satanic purposes, again, seller is not really bothered.”
“Seller, also grants the right to try to contact said soul whilst still bound to human host. This however is only permissible whilst host is sleeping, as per license agreement. Please note that the photo is not an actual picture of the soul for sale, but rather a picture of the current human host, which is in this instance is myself. If I can figure out how to take a picture of this I shall send with the certificate and license, if not you will have to make do with the artists impression that I have created.”
The auction started 5 days ago and so far has received just one bid for £10.99.
Those keen to bid for a soul have until 17:22 on the 24 January 2006.
==================
No eBay auction, but Faust (from This Is True, 3/12/06):
Tresa Waggoner, 33, the music teacher in Bennett, Colo., invited Opera Colorado to perform a comic opera for students. She showed her students a 12-minute segment from a children's video she checked out of the school library, “Who's Afraid of Opera?”, to introduce them to the concept. The segment included scenes from “Faust”, which uses sock puppets to tell the story about how a man suffers when he sells his soul to the devil. Parents accused the teacher, a singer who has issued two Christian music albums, of being anti-Christian and a devil worshiper. “I think [the video] glorifies Satan in some way,” said one parent. Waggoner was suspended, and the school board ruled that Waggoner would not be allowed to return to the classroom. It also canceled the opera performance. “Do we look like bumpkins?” asked a cringing Town Board member, Rich Pulliam.
________
Rocky Mountain News, Denver Post
*
[Original illustration at this number was added to HolwickID #15896]
MORE than half of all cohabiting couples who have children will split up by the time their first child is five years old, compared with just 8 per cent of married parents.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that although it is now increasingly socially acceptable to have children outside wedlock, marriage still provides overwhelmingly the most secure environment for children.
A separate study meanwhile showed that fewer couples were divorcing. The divorce rate fell to 13 per thousand married people in 1998 from 14 a year earlier, taking the total in England and Wales down to 145,200. That was 15,000 fewer than the previous year, which was in turn 10,000 down on 1996.
The analysis of women's relationships five years after the birth of their first child shows that only 48 per cent of cohabiting mothers were still living with the child's father, compared with 92 per cent of married mothers, and 75 per cent of those who were initially cohabiting but later married their partner.
The study also showed that having children can have a powerful cementing effect on relationships, persuading many cohabiting couples to marry.
Nearly four in ten children are now born outside wedlock, compared with one just one in five in 1985. But nearly 20 per cent of parents who simply lived together before the birth had married a year later, rising to 40 per cent five years after the birth.
Kathleen Kiernan, of the London School of Economics, author of the report, said:"It is not necessarily the fact of marriage that makes people stay together. It may be that the people who decide to marry and very different from the ones who cohabit. Those who marry are likely to be more committed, while the cohabitees are less committed."
She added: "Cohabitation is still a relatively new phenomenon and in Britain it is still more common amongst young people and those living in poverty. Once it is more widespread among all social groups, it is possible that we may go the way of Sweden, where there is little difference in the rates of separation between married and cohabiting parents."
Whether Britain follows Sweden's example will depend, in part on social attitudes, Ms Kiernan said, and in part on the success of government policies to support parenthood.
One indication that Britain may not be following Sweden and other European countries, however, is in the number of "solo mothers", or women who have their first child outside a stable partnership.
While the solo mother rate in Sweden is just 6 per cent of all first-time mothers and just 10 per cent for Europe as a whole, in Britain it is 15 per cent, having risen from 6 per cent in 1982.
And while it is too early to know for sure why fewer marriages are breaking down, the explanation appears to lie in the growing trend for couples to cohabit and the rise in the average age of marriage.
Juliet Mountford, of the Family Policy Studies Centre, said: "If people are getting married later, then perhaps by the time they do it, they have become better judges of people. Unfortunately, it does not mean that fewer families are breaking up because you have to factor in all the cohabiting couples."
The government doesn't often make cheery pronouncements, but here's some much needed good news from Washington. The most recent numbers [which are for 1994] from the National Center for Health Statistics, a government agency, show a continuing decline in births to teenagers. In fact, this is the lowest birth rate among teens in the sixty years since such records have been kept.
Birth rates for teens aged 15 to 19 have dropped 20 percent since 1991.
All around us we see signs of continuing moral decay, but these figures are astounding. So what accounts for this dramatic turnaround?
Government analysts were quick to credit government sex-education programs. But in the past these programs have had no real positive impact -- much less a change of this magnitude. And abstinence programs, however well-intentioned, lack the support and prominence to explain this dramatic shift.
And sure, the strong economy and the attendant postponing of childbearing by people who want to work may have something to do with the shift -- as does the fear of contracting AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases.
But such an extraordinary decline has to be the result of something much more than these factors. I believe it is a change in what Tocqueville called the "habits of the heart."
We're finally seeing a reaction to the moral wasteland of the Sixties' counterculture of free love and cheap drugs. When the sexual revolution burst onto the scene -- and it was really Marxist in origin -- many thought the "liberation" it brought was wonderful. (Unfortunately, as I've argued in my book, HOW NOW SHALL WE LIVE?, liberating us from transcendent moral standards only imprisons us to moral decay and social disorder -- a tyranny all the more oppressive than Marxism.)
The Sixties' generation preached a lifestyle that was simply unsustainable -- it didn't work. Moral decay led logically to social chaos and gave us widespread disease, addiction, broken homes, and kids having babies they can't care for.
But people can't live with chaos. That's why today's young people and their parents are looking for a better way to live.
The moral desolation of the sexual revolution caused Boomers to start wanting to teach their kids traditional values. A Wall Street Journal poll shows that 33 percent of liberals and 84 percent of conservatives today favor restoring traditional family values.
The Boomers don't want their kids to make the same mistakes they made. And they want something better.
That's where the church comes in. We need to make the case for a biblical worldview that provides this generation -- and every generation -- with the most rational, reasonable way to live.
Now, these statistics are great news, but we mustn't become complacent about teen pregnancy. America's teen birth-rate is still 4 to 5 times higher than that of Europe or Japan.
But we're on the right track. Not only is the birth rate down, abortions are declining, as well. And more teenagers are abstaining from sex altogether. You see, when people discover the price they have to pay for so-called "liberation," they come back to traditional values.
Young people today aren't any less interested in happiness than they used to be. And they're certainly not prudish. They simply have seen that moral rebellion doesn't give them the answers they're looking for. It's the church's job to point them in the direction of the One who does. The really good news is that He is waiting for them.
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Copyright (c) 2000 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.
What would it take to prevent another Enron?
Experts in business ethics gathered at Rice University last week to work on an answer. Rice professor Duane Windsor suggested that what's needed is "more fear of a loss of reputation."
Well, the schools will be asking these questions for years: How could the auditors be so negligent? What new regulations are needed? What would be the effect of an environment of fear?
But in my view, the most crucial question is one secular observers and business school seminars may be unwilling to ask: Has value-free post-modernity -- the fruit of modern secularism -- undermined the moral foundation essential for democratic capitalism?
As theologian Michael Novak argues, western liberal democracy is like a three-legged stool. One leg, political freedom; the second, economic freedom; the third, moral responsibility. Weaken any leg -- the stool topples.
Enron's collapse exposes a decayed third leg -- moral responsibility.
Now mind you, Enron's leaders were the best and the brightest, pillars of the community. Enron's chairman, Kenneth Lay, boasted he hired only graduates of the top business schools.
What Enron's collapse exposes is the glaring failure of these business schools. Ethics, you see, historically rests on absolute truth, which our top schools have systematically assaulted for four decades. And business school graduates leave the schools, as I discovered when I lectured at Harvard Business School ten years ago, without a clue about ethics.
But the Enron debacle does offer a good chance for Christians to contend for the Biblical worldview in the economic marketplace. The Scriptures endorse concepts like private property, contract rights, and the discharge of debts -- all essential to free markets. The Bible also demands justice, warning of God's judgment against oppressors who withhold wages or take advantage of the needy.
The Scriptural system, in short, balances the acquisition of wealth with a demand for both justice and compassion. It requires people to subordinate self-interest to moral demands.
Through the centuries, Christians have fought to bring these moral demands to bear in the marketplace. For example, in nineteenth century England following rapid industrialization, conditions in the coal mines and factories were deplorable. Children as young as seven were forced to work twelve hours a day.
The great Christian statesman, Lord Shaftesbury, who famously argued, "What is morally wrong cannot be politically right," led a crusade against these conditions. He exposed what poet William Blake called "the dark Satanic mills." Hammonds, the economic historian, would later write, "[Shaftesbury] did more than any other single man in English history to check the raw power of the new industrial system."
The lesson of history, which our neighbors need to understand, is that capitalism is healthy only when subject to moral restraints derived ultimately from religious truth.
It is these moral restraints that have been dangerously loosened, as Enron reveals. The resulting chaos can only lead to bureaucratic regulations and the loss of freedom -- unless, that is, we rebuild the third leg of Michael Novak's stool.
This will require an heroic effort -- but it's one Christians are uniquely equipped to undertake.
For further reading:
Kristen Hays, "Watkins says warning too late, virtually ignored," Associated Press, 1 April 2002.
Os Guiness, STEERING THROUGH CHAOS: VICE AND VIRTUE IN AN AGE OF MORAL CONFUSION (Navpress, 2000).
Michael Novak, THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRATIC CAPITALISM, rev. (Madison Books, 2000).
Michael Novak, ON TWO WINGS: HUMBLE FAITH AND COMMON SENSE AT THE AMERICAN FOUNDING (Encounter Books, 2002).
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Copyright © 2002 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. 'BreakPoint with Chuck Colson' is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.
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I don't invest in the market; I don't have time. But I do have a retirement fund that's managed for me. It is considerably more anemic than it was some months back, and that is a cause of concern. I'm also concerned because when the market is down, contributions to Prison Fellowship decline.
But the news about Wall Street is more troubling than the impact on retirement portfolios or giving to the ministry. We're watching the unraveling of a big segment of corporate America.
Look at the WorldCom MCI debacle. The chief financial officer hid billions of dollars in liabilities and took them off the corporate books, falsely inflating the company's cash flow. Auditors from Arthur Andersen -- you remember them from Enron -- missed it. And they deceived some of the biggest banks in America. Similar news is coming from Tyco, Xerox, Global Crossing, Adelphia, among others. Arthur Andersen, convicted of a felony, will probably not survive. And now, of all people, we have Martha Stewart with allegations of insider trading and cartoons showing her tidying up a jail cell.
One or two cases could be explained. There are always a few bad apples, but this seems to be touching banks, accountants, and companies across the board. And the stock market is taking a beating as investor confidence plummets. It's an ethical crisis, but not surprising.
Recently I met a business school professor whom I greatly admire. He told me that at his school, there's no attempt to teach ethics because the faculty can't agree on objective standards. He went on to say they rely on kids to have learned ethics before they get to business school -- good luck.
Let me mention again the case of Harvard Business School. For years ethics courses there were pure pragmatism. Then they gave up teaching ethics, returning twenty million dollars to a friend of mine who had endowed the ethics course. What they discovered was that without absolute values, which historically came from the Christian revelation, they couldn't teach ethics. I did a quick survey thereafter of other business schools and found the same thing.
We're captive to this culture of relativism. There's no truth, so who are we to impose our values on anyone else? All anybody can do -- like a business school teacher -- is help people think through problems and arrive at their own conclusions while telling them that no conclusion is any better than any other -- a formula for disaster.
This is what modern worldviews teach. But what happens when you allow people to arrive at their own moral conclusions? They do what is right in their own eyes, and we end up with the likes of Enron and WorldCom.
But this is an opportunity for Christians to make an apologetic case that a free society can't survive without standards of virtue. And those standards have always been informed by Christian truth. The secular elites and a lot of our neighbors tell us we shouldn't be imposing our views on others -- okay. But until we recover a sense of absolute moral truth, we're going to continue to see scandals, and we'll also see our portfolios decline. I wonder if the people will be so eager to dismiss us as "religious bigots" when they realize that it's the lack of ethics in our society caused by the abandonment of a Judeo-Christian consensus that's causing them to lose their retirement plans. This ethical crisis poses a direct threat to the millions of Americans who directly or indirectly own stock.
Who wants to hear what these Christians believe? I submit that if we make the case right, it would be anyone who owns stock in a publicly traded company in America today.
For further reading:
Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, THE CHRISTIAN IN TODAY'S CULTURE (Tyndale House, 1999).
Howard Kurtz, "The Corrosion of Public Trust," THE WASHINGTON POST, 1 July 2002.
Mike Allen, "Corporate Penalties Planned," THE WASHINGTON POST, 1 July 2002, A4.
Ben White, "Note Appears to Back Stewart: But Investigators Still Have Doubts about Her Explanation," THE WASHINGTON POST, 2 July 2002, E03.
BreakPoint commentary no. 020514, "Getting over Ourselves: Why We Cheat."
BreakPoint commentary no. 020415, "Sharks, Stools, and Secularism."
Charles Colson, "The Cultivation of Conscience," a commencement address to the graduates of Wheaton College, 1 June 2000.
Charles Colson, "Doing the Right Thing," a baccalaureate address at Parkview High School in Lilburn, Georgia, 19 May 2002.
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Copyright © 2002 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.
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[Holwick - the following is a self-help expert's advice on values to instill in your children.]
Working with adults (as well as children and teens) for the past 12 years, I have noticed that there are just a few primary struggles that most adults face. I also see how better training as a child and teen could have given them the skills and attitudes that would have prevented the problems that they now face.
The primary areas adults struggle with are:
1. Money, primarily debt
2. Lack of discipline, or the inability to do what they want to be,
be it weight, money, work, etc.
3. Relationships
As I see it, much of the way we live our lives is groomed as we grow up. And while we can certainly change, it is harder to do the older we get. This can cut both ways: If we are taught correctly, we have a high chance of succeeding as adults and if we are taught poorly, there is a high chance that we will continue those poor habits into adulthood and face many difficulties.
The good news? We can put our kids on the fast track to success by diligently applying some basic success skills. To get you started, I've brainstormed some ways you can head off your children's problems years before they face them. Here we go!
To have successful relationships:
SHOW THEM UNCONDITIONAL LOVE. No matter what, we are to welcome and love our children. This does not mean that we won't get mad at them from time to time or that we won't discipline them when they cross the line. It means that we will always accept them and treat them with the respect they deserve as human beings, no matter what they have done. It means we do not hold grudges against them. We can disagree or even verbally tangle, but then we bury the hatchet and accept one another.
TEACH THEM MANNERS. There are acceptable ways of behaving. Unfortunately, many people today do not know them! Teach your children how to behave so that others are treated well and do not have to put up with our misbehavior. Why? Because they won't put up with it anyway. Many people will simply write you off and never tell you why.
HELP THEM LEARN TO FORGIVE. Most of the relationship problems I work with boil down to this: The people simply will not forgive one another and continue to hold past wrongs against the other person. Here is the fact, and you have to teach this to your kids: People will wrong you. It is what we do with that and how we react that will determine the health of the relationship in the future.
HELP THEM TO BE ABLE TO FOCUS ON AND SERVE OTHERS. Many parents make their kid feel like they are the center of the universe. One problem with this: They aren't! The world doesn't revolve around your kids and they can't get their way all of the time. What happens later on in life when little Johnny (who was the center of the universe growing up) marries little Suzie (the center of another universe growing up)? You got it, problems! Now they have to share a universe! Instead we should teach our children to help others. We should teach them to consider other people's interests as more important than our own.
To have successful finances:
MAKE THEM EARN MONEY. Sure you can give your kids money - we do. But we should also teach them to earn money. We should give them opportunity to earn money. I don't think a kid should get an allowance for doing chores. Chores are the responsibility of being part of the family. But you can give them extra jobs so they can understand fully the hard work they put in and appreciate the value of the money they receive. This will cause them to handle it better.
HAVE THEM GIVE MONEY AWAY. Greed works its wonders on some of the nicest people. That is what I have found. And the best way to break greed is to give money away. Our children give away 10% of every dollar they get. This builds generosity into their hearts. We have been doing it so long that it is just a part of them. How can you be greedy about something you are giving away? And when you give it away you can see the good that it does to the people and organizations you help. (One side story: When my son was younger and got one dollar a week in allowance he would give a dime away. He suggested it would be a good thing if he started getting two dollars - because then he would be able to give two dimes away. I don't know if he was being generous or shrewd!)
TEACH THEM ABOUT INVESTING. Yesterday I sat in the car explaining the law of supply and demand with my ten-year-old. Now he knows what something is "worth." Now he knows why Beanie Babies are so expensive, but a very efficient way of separating poor investors from their money. My kids hear about the old guns and butter theory. (Guns represent items that appreciate and butter represents the things that melt away. Invest in appreciating assets and you can have all the butter you want later on. Invest in butter and you won't ever have the guns.) These are basic principles that will allow your kids to be financially secure and not strapped later on. They will be the lender and not the borrower.
TEACH THEM TO DELAY SELF-GRATIFICATION. I touched on this in the last point. If we teach our kids to delay gratification, they can put themselves into a financial position wherein they can actually afford the item they want rather than put themselves into debt or a precarious position to get it. Besides, half the time when they wait, they don't want it in three weeks!
TEACH THEM TO NEVER HAVE ANY DEBT! No debt. Never. Period. Nada. Never, ever, ever. Pay cash or wait. Okay, did I get that through? Now let me be a little more temperate. Debt has created more problems I have dealt with than just about any other issue. Marriage problems, emotional problems, work problems, spiritual problems, and physical problems. We should engrain it into our kid's heads that the only acceptable debt is a home mortgage and they should be conservative with that and even pay cash if they can! I hear you, "But I can't get the car I want!" Too bad! See the guns and butter theory above! Your kids will visit your grave every week with flowers after you are gone if you love them and teach them to avoid debt.
To help them be successful in discipline:
HAVE THEM DO CERTAIN TASKS/CHORES ON A REGULARLY SCHEDULED BASIS. Discipline is, well, a discipline. Teach your kids to make their beds every morning. Or do wash every Monday. Or mow the lawn every Saturday morning. Building schedules builds disciplined people who do not procrastinate, who are methodical and who are diligent. These are the people who succeed.
LET THEM EXPERIENCE DISCIPLINE AND CONSEQUENCES. Consequences are the greatest teachers! Many people who I see fail are people who have never suffered consequences. I know a gentleman who couldn't hold a job. His employers were going to fire him. He was always late and couldn't be relied upon - even by his friends. You never knew if he was telling the truth. One day I was talking to him and he said that he had never been punished or disciplined! The light went on! I finally understood. You know the old saying, "Spare the rod and spoil the child?" I say, spare the rod and you'll raise a criminal! You may not want to let little Johnny experience the pain of consequences, but his boss will let him feel it 20 years from now! Prepare him for success now by making him realize that if he doesn't do what is right, he will spend a lot of time in his room or he will miss out on special things. He will grow up to be the most relied upon person in his office and he'll be the boss one day.
DON'T PROTECT THEM FROM LOSING. I coached little league football one year. It just so happens we were the youngest team in the league and we were terrible. One game we were getting beat 55-0 with about five minutes to play, and I was getting screamed at by an irate parent. I turned to them and said, "You know. I learned some of my best lessons in 55-0 losses. I took a few of them in my athletic career, and I handed a few out too!" Sometimes we win in life, sometimes we lose. We need to learn what it feels like to lose and then get right back out there. It will prepare your kids much better to lose until they win legitimately than to win all the time. I remember one basketball game when I was on my way to about thirty points and a parent from the other team was screaming about it. My brother, who is 13 years older than me, told the guy to sit down because I had earned all those points because of how many basketball thrashings I had taken at his hands through the years. Losing made me better!
TEACH THEM TO EAT RIGHT AND EXERCISE. Many people struggle with their weight and it is usually because we learned bad habits as kids. We weren't that overweight when we were younger, but as our metabolism slows it catches up with us. Teach your kids basic nutritional information. Teach them how candy bars plus milk shakes plus no exercise equals trouble! When we go to the health club, our kids can swim and play all they want in the pool - as soon as they finish their laps!
TEACH THEM TO MAKE TOUGH DECISIONS AND LEARN TO SAY "NO." The most powerful word in the world! We should teach our children to understand what is the most important - their priorities - and say "no" to everything else. So many people get themselves into trouble and overextended because they do not have the discipline to say "no." The reality is that you will act on an agenda - either yours or someone else's. Saying "no" enables you to stay on track. Teach them to make tough decisions because it is what is right or because it will be better in the long run, rather than on how it will make them feel.
ENCOURAGE THEM TO RISK FAILURE AND TRY NEW THINGS. I have met so many people who were always taught to play it safe. And guess what? They are playing it safe, leading, as the quote says, "Lives of quiet desperation." Teach your kids to try new things and give them the opportunity to do so. Help them see the bigger picture when they fail, like what they can learn from the situation so they can win the next time. It is the people who risk failure and try new things who change the world and lead the lives they want to!
PITCH THE TV. Okay, my soapbox: Get rid of the television. If you have to have the one-eyed monster in the house, just get a monitor so you can watch videos from time to time. I haven't had a TV for 12 years - and I LOVE IT! My kids are healthy, sociable, well-adjusted, smart kids. They have creative imaginations because they have to picture everything themselves rather than rely on someone else's interpretation. They read many grade levels above where they are. They have time to do all sorts of things that they want to because they have an extra 20 hours a week (1040 hours a year) that other kids their age don't! Someday I am going to write a book on benefits and reasons to get rid of the TV because the fact is you will be much better off without it than you are with it! And so will your kids!
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Chris Widener is a popular speaker and writer; chris@madeforsuccess.com
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"We seem to care more for the trivial than the important. People who should mean much to us don't, while people who don't even know we exist have become our idols. We overlook the faults of entertainers and sports celebrities, but won't do the same for our own family members. We might have multiple marriages, but we remain loyal to our favorite team."
-- Chuck Baldwin
Devoted mother Carol Dukes traveled 900 miles (1,450 km) so her son, the apple of her eye, could play with his GameBoy on a school trip.
Dukes, 41, spent 150 pounds ($220) on planes and taxis in the mad dash from her home in Berkshire to London's Heathrow Airport and on to Scotland to catch 11-year-old Charlie after she realized he had left the handheld computer game at home.
"If you decide to do something you do it and worry about the money later," Dukes told Reuters Tuesday. "But I think everyone was quite surprised to see me."
Charlie and 39 classmates were bound for the isolated island of Iona to learn about life without modern amenities.
When Charlie's mum caught up with her son's train at Dumbarton, near Glasgow, he was understandably embarrassed.
"He was a bit diffident when I caught up with him and I guess he was a tad embarrassed," Dukes admitted.
Dukes said she was not an overindulgent mum but she felt responsible for repacking Charlie's bag and forgetting to replace the game and his pencil case.
"I wanted Charlie to have a good time and the only option I had was to get the GameBoy to him in person," Dukes said.
Some friends of ours were recently at the Universal Studios Park in California. They wanted to see behind the scenes of TV and movies - so they went on the tram that takes you on their backstage tour. They had their pre-schooler with them - and they weren't too excited about him being terrorized by King Kong and the shark from "Jaws." So, when King Kong appeared on one side of this dark tunnel, they just turned his attention and to the tunnel - "Ooo, look at this dark tunnel! What's this inside your hat?" It worked. He never saw King Kong. Same with "Jaws." As the shark was jumping out of the water near his father's back, the little guy was studying the scenery on the other side. Never saw the shark.
Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A WORD WITH YOU today about "Looking At Something Better."
Now, we could discuss whether this couple should have taken their preschooler on that tour or not. But they did do something smart - when there was something their child shouldn't experience, they creatively turned his attention to something else. That's not a bad strategy for parents who are raising their children in a world that is increasingly filled with monsters that could hurt them and destructive things they should never experience.
It is a strategy actually directed by God in our word for today from the Word of God in Deuteronomy 11, beginning with verse 16. Like us, these parents were trying to raise their children in a culture where sin was cool and temptation was everywhere. God says, "Be careful, or you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods ... Fix these words of Mine in your hearts and minds ... teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up ... so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land."
God is calling godly parents to play offense, not just defense, in a spiritually hostile culture. Don't just try to keep your children from touching wrong things - help them look in the other direction and find better things to experience - God's things! You can't just say no to everything - you have to offer alternatives and positive reasons. For example, sex is something that's too beautiful to ruin by taking it out of the Creator's fence called marriage. Heavy dating can be morally dangerous - but why not be for guys and girls having some great times as friends in mixed groups? In fact, why don't you help set some of those up - maybe at your house?
If you don't want your kids listening to destructive music, invest in music they can listen to. Invest in constructive interests and constructive friendships they have. Make your house a fun and welcoming place for their friends - so they don't have to go to other homes where it's easier to get into trouble. Have great parties for your kids and their friends. And maybe you can give them the two words I gave my kids as they left for school each day - "GO MAD!" That's "Go Make A Difference!" I wanted them to see they didn't have to follow their friends down roads to nowhere - they could lead their friends to experiences that leave no scars and no regrets.
We need to show our children that what we're against is because of what we're for - things like living without guilt, relationships without regrets, the specialness of sex, the value of life, a good reputation, protecting the worth God gave you. We can't just be against the monsters and predators that are around our children - we've got to redirect their attention to all of God's good stuff!
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Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. 'Practical Answers to Real Life Issues'
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All people live by values. And values change in societies. In America today, a cultural war rages over opposing values.
In this collision, does one truth or one set of truths and values exist by which we can live? The Bible says quite clearly, "YES!"
2 Peter 1:12-21 outlines the method by which we live by the truths outlined in Scripture. By establishing in our hearts the presence of an absolute, reliable and relevant truth as displayed in Scripture, we will experience guidance for direction in life.
But let's talk first about today's culture and environment. I want to do so by way of illustration. A few years ago a cartoon appeared in USA Today that captures society's belief about truth. The cartoon had a picture of a young George Washington holding a hatchet in one hand, kneeling next to a felled cherry tree. In the cartoon he is looking up at his father and saying, "Dad, my teacher says I cannot tell a lie, I cannot tell the truth, and I cannot tell the difference."
The cartoon is humorous in one sense, but in another sense, quite alarming. This type philosophy invades our lives and, unfortunately for many Christians, this philosophy is exactly what we are accepting in this present generation.
How did we arrive at this place in our American culture? Well, we have embraced a new kind of "tolerance." Now, let me hasten to state: All tolerance is not bad. In fact, when we look at tolerance, it's designed historically to provide us all religious freedom and provide that we will be punished by law if we go out and hurt someone else on the basis of disagreement over belief.
But this has been taken in a way to give tolerance a completely new meaning. Some have come to believe that tolerance equals acceptance of and approval of belief systems different than your own. And that definition of tolerance equates to truth no longer being absolute but, rather, defined by the individual or community.
This is a wrong and destructive perspective. You see, tolerance has replaced truth for too many people today. But the new tolerance doesn't really play out all that well in practical life.
For example, when we look at music and musicians, we know that a conductor simply doesn't "tolerate" someone in the first violin chair playing on their own in spontaneity. Why? In an orchestra everything is set in order. One person playing to his or her own tune sets the whole orchestra in chaos. Another example of destructive tolerance is simple mechanics. Years ago my brother-in- law and I rebuilt an engine. When we bored out the piston walls, we knew that these measurements must be exact: They had to be within one-thousandth of an inch. Any more or any less meant the engine wouldn't function properly. They had to be "true to size."
In a practical way, tolerance fails both in music and mechanics because it creates chaos. In today's culture, likewise, we are called to be philosophically tolerant in morality, ethics and in our family. And again, dismissing truth and accepting this new tolerance creates individual, family and societal chaos.
If the tolerance mantra does not practically work, then what is our alternative model by which to live? Well, the Bible teaches us to live by truth.
In 2 Peter 1:12-21, the apostle Peter wrote to a group of believers who lived in a world that had many beliefs about the nature and the existence of truth. In this passage, he provided these Christians something concrete to hold to. So, he reminded them the Scriptures were absolutely reliable and relevant truth by which they could base and live their lives.
The same principle is timeless: As those Christians in that day lived their lives by the truth of Scripture, so should we who live in the melting pot of America. It's not easy and it's not the popular route.
But, to remind us of the validity of my argument, let's recite Psalm 119:105: "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." For our families, for our communities and for our own hearts, let's embrace the truth of Scripture and live our lives by that truth.
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Read: 2 Corinthians 4:3-6
Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts. — Matthew 15:19
Bible In One Year: Proverbs 10-12; 2 Corinthians 4
Some things just don’t seem to fit in our modern 21st century. A tribe of headhunters is one of them.
Yet there is one such group of people whose story is worth telling. A tribe living high in the Philippine mountains, a 3-day’s walk from the nearest city, has only within the past 10 years given up their tradition of displaying heads of captured enemies.
The leader of this tribe, a man who got that position because of his head-hunting success, was instrumental in the change. It came about because two women risked everything to travel to the village to live among the people and tell them about Jesus’ love. In 1999, 5 years after the women first visited the village, at least 50 people, including the chief, had trusted Christ to save them. As a result, the people’s lives were transformed, and they gave up their killing ways.
Headhunting may seem primitive, but its source is no different from the most modern sin. The “Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done And on the labor in which I had toiled; And indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun” — Eccl 2:11
Solomon was an amazing man. As a young leader, he renounced gold and power in favor of wisdom when God offered him a choice. He chose wisdom so he could lead his nation in right paths. He thus became the wisest man ever to live. In the process, he was granted both wealth and power. And what did he do with it? Read the book of Ecclesiastes and you will certainly have your eyes opened! He squandered it all in search of pleasure. He had more wives than any man could enjoy. He topped that with concubines to serve his every wish. He amassed great wealth and spent it upon himself. He built beautiful cities as monuments to himself. He spread his influence around the known world — to draw attention to himself. All of this and more did he do — to please himself.
Near the end of his life, he penned the words to this revealing book. Multiple times he repeats some variation of today’s verse. “All was vanity.” There was no profit in it. It served no lasting purpose. After all. Where are all of Solomon’s buildings? In ruins. And his military accomplishments? In dust. His great wealth? Gone with the wind. Even the majestic Temple he built as a dwelling place for God was destroyed, smashed to bits, plundered, and hauled away by Israel’s enemies. In the end, Solomon realizes that all earthly things are “vanity”. The only thing that lasts is what a person does for God. Serve God. Live for Him. Spend all the energy you have in His service and you will be building up great treasures — not on earth, but in Heaven where it really counts!
Yet God in Christ can make a change —
Through faith in Him we are made new. — Fitzhugh
Our heart is like a crooked fence — all the paint in the world won't straighten it out.
In a recent survey conducted by Roper Worldwide, and published in the December 8th issue of Newsweek Magazine, 1000 adults were asked to complete a survey on what was truly important in their lives.
94% rated “the freedom of choice in how to live my life” as #1. 89% rated “the chance to have a good family life” #1.
Family and freedom both outranked “owning my own home” (70%), “a rewarding career” (70%), and “to be able to afford to do the things you want to do” (66%).
Men outranked women on the desire to become wealthy (41% versus 25%). Yet this category is surprisingly low by comparison to the leading categories.
Seems that we live in a world that desires balance. I am a firm believer in this concept. Even though this quality is desired -- it is often elusive. My observations tell me that one of the balance-stealing culprits is the accelerated pace we live in. As our world speeds up...our time seems to shrink.
Secondly, we live in a world of “option overload.” Faced daily with a myriad of people, distractions, and things all vying for our time and attention. If you don't plan your day...other people will. And if not careful, you will find yourself cramming your days full of things that take more than they give.
It's easy to over-commit.
However, like going through the line in the cafeteria, we pile our plates high but many of the “foods” fail to satisfy. We over-indulge and life is less fulfilling and more pressured.
It has been of importance to note that most of my work now is knowledge work. Is yours? It has long been known that thinking consumes more energy than physical labor. And...
We never get away or take a break from knowledge work. If you are passionate about what you do (I hope you are) you tend to eat, live, and breathe it. If you are fortunate enough to work with a loved-one (again I hope you are) your work, mission, passion tends to consume your conversations at breakfast, lunch, dinner and beyond.
The answer -- greater focus. Commit to less so that you may finish more. Place as much emphasis and importance on “being” as on “doing.”
Remember we are human beings not human doings. Schedule your quiet time - it will pay BIG dividends.
Find your passion. Determine what is truly important FOR YOU. Anything that is not taking you in the direction of this passion becomes secondary (if at all).
Learn to say no -- kindly and respectfully.
If you choose to assist others in providing balance in their life, to allow them to do all of the above: have family time and freedom, a rewarding career, as well as wealth... Congratulations!
But you cannot give what you do not have.
You will never be blessed when out of integrity. In other words, preaching what you don't practice.
Become truly successful in the five areas of life: Spiritual, Intellectual, Professional*, Physical, Relational and you will have a fulfilling and long-lasting life. Make your life magnificent!
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* Original said “financial”
• Maybe God wants us to meet a few wrong people before meeting the right one so that when we finally meet the right person we will know how to be grateful for that gift.
° Don’t go for looks; they deceive.
° Don’t go for wealth; even that fades away.
° Go for someone who makes you smile because it takes only a smile
to make a dark day seem bright.
° Find the one that makes your heart smile.
• When the door of happiness closes, another opens, but often times we look so long at the closed door that we don’t see the one which has been opened for us.
• The best kind of friend is the kind you can sit on a porch and swing with, never say a word, and then walk away feeling like it was the best conversation you’ve ever had.
• It’s true that we don’t know what we’ve got until we lose it, but it’s also true that we don’t know what we’ve been missing until it arrives.
• May you have enough happiness to make you sweet, enough trials to make you strong, enough sorrow to keep you human, enough hope to bring you joy.
• Always put yourself in another’s shoes.
• If you feel that it hurts you, it probably hurts the other person, too.
• The happiest of people don’t necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way.
• The brightest future will always be based on a forgotten past, you can’t get well in life until you let go of past failures and heartaches.
• When you were born, you were crying and everyone around you was smiling.
• Live your life so that when you die, you’re the one who is smiling and everyone around you is crying.
• Be blessed and comfort someone else with these words.
At this time the candidates for president from all three political parties are in full swing, each trying to build a convincing case as to why he should be the choice of the voters to unite our country, solve our problems, restore sanity to politics, enrich the lives of all, solve the problems of crime, divorce, killings in schools and the workplace, and an incredible list of other things.
Personally, I’m excited about the political process. While it has some flaws, the fact that our Republic has survived these 200+ years is solid evidence that overall the political system works. However, I am convinced there are some things we can do that will certainly make it work even better. It is my conviction that it all starts at home: Character does count, and since 60-65% of a child’s working vocabulary has been acquired by age three, 80% of his or her character by age five, and 90% of the personality by age seven, those early years are critical.
Unfortunately, much of the language children learn is from television, popular music, videos, classmates or associates who have been educated via the same source, so we start with a language problem. Language shows respect or disrespect, anger and violence, or love and compassion. When we express ourselves in loving ways, research conclusively proves we are far more likely to be loving individuals. Research also shows that when we express ourselves in violent language, we are far more likely to behave violently.
In case you wonder what this has to do with the elections, I encourage you to listen to the words of the candidates, how many of those words are filled with unrealistic promises about what they as individuals can do to right the wrongs in our society. It’s my conviction that when the words spoken reflect unity, getting together, looking at the common good, restoring character in the home, spreading it to schools and then into the marketplace and government, we will have made a huge step towards solving the problems of our society.
History also conclusively proves that the one who wins the job is the one who is the most persuasive, has the most organizational ability, and the willingness to let us know where he stands. Regrettably, as recent events indicate, the most promising of the candidates seldom deliver on their promises. It is for this reason that I am personally persuaded that we need to explore the character of the person who is making the promises. We should never be surprised when a proven liar doesn’t deliver on his promises. The following parable is one of the best examples I’ve come across:
A young man climbed to the top of a mountain to enjoy the beauty of the view. There he was confronted by a rattlesnake that maintained he had been left there by a previous climber and was suffering from the cold. He wanted to be carried back to the bottom of the mountain in the warmth inside the young man’s shirt. The young man protested, stating he couldn’t do it because he was afraid the rattlesnake would bite him. The rattlesnake responded, “Why would I bite you if you saved my life?” Reluctantly, the young man consented and put the rattlesnake under his shirt. When they were virtually at the bottom of the climb the rattlesnake bit him. The young man, knowing he would soon die, asked, “Why did you do that? You promised you wouldn’t!” The rattlesnake answered, “You knew what I was when you took me in.”
There’s a great lesson in that parable. We need to be politically astute and vote for the candidate whose record clearly establishes who he is and what he stands for. Everyone leaves a trail behind. If they have been in the political world and have been elected to public office, they have a voting record. Check it. Find out where he/she stands on the issues that are important to you. Don’t be fooled by the way they look on TV or overwhelmed by their promises or personality — look for substance. That substance, regardless of your party affiliation, should include character.
NOT “How did he die?”
BUT “How did he live?”
NOT “What did he gain?”
BUT “What did he give?”
NOT “What was his station?”
BUT “Had he a heart?”
And
“How did he play his God-given part?”
NOT “What was his shrine?
Nor “What was his Creed?”
BUT
“Had he befriended those really in need?”
NOT “What did the piece in the newspaper say?”
BUT “How many were sorry when he passed away?”
Was he ever ready with a word or good cheer,
To bring back a smile, to banish a tear?
These are the units to Measure the Worth
Of a Man as a Man, regardless of birth.
This fall, I spoke at an event that encouraged me greatly. It was a conference in Indianapolis organized by Teenmania, a group founded by youth evangelist Ron Luce, an energetic and able leader. According to its mission statement, Teenmania seeks “to deepen young people's spiritual maturity, passion, commitment, and effectiveness for Christ.” It's a great fast-growing movement.
There were three thousand youth pastors. My subject was how to teach Christian worldview to teenagers and prepare them to defend their faith in college. The response was terrific. The pastors got it: They seemed to understand the importance of teaching worldview to kids. Instead of just sharing the basics of faith, or just communicating a faith based mostly on good feelings, they understood that their task is to show kids a whole new way of looking at the world — a way that's radically different from the moral relativism that contemporary culture teaches them. These youth pastors can provide honest, intelligent, biblically grounded answers to the serious questions many of these kids are asking.
Let me tell you, there's a desperate need for youth workers, educators, and parents who will do exactly this. In a recent survey, pollster George Barna reported that 83 percent of teenagers in this country today believe that “moral truth depends on the circumstances.” Think of it. And “only 6 percent believe that moral truth is absolute.” Perhaps most disturbing of all, “only 9 percent of born again teens believe in moral absolutes” — only one in ten of our Christian kids.
The sad truth is that these kids don't understand what they say they believe about God, and they have no idea how their faith should affect their thinking and their lives. That's frightening not only for them, but for the Church as well. If our future leaders don't believe in absolute truth even though they say they know the God who is the source of all truth, what kind of a future can we expect?
But the encouraging news, you see, is that the kids are asking the right questions. And in growing numbers, adults are lining up, ready to teach kids about worldview. Already Teenmania is running a worldview course based on HOW NOW SHALL WE LIVE?, the book Nancy Pearcey and I wrote, at its Freedom Academy, a one-year course that students take between high school and college. And we here at BreakPoint are planning to step up our own efforts as well. We've had a great response whenever we've talked about the need for Christian worldview training for kids or when we have suggested resources for parents and teachers. As a result of that, we're developing our own teen worldview curriculum with the help of Mark Eckel, a professor at Moody Bible Institute, who has extensive experience in this area. Mark taught worldview for sixteen years at a Christian high school, and he's one of the best qualified people I know in this field.
This effort to teach our youth has become a passion for me. I'll be speaking to the Young Life staff in January as I did to Teenmania. And I want to keep doing as much teaching as possible with young people. I hope you'll consider doing the same. Keep checking our website for updates on the curriculum that we are developing and for other resources you can use to help in this crucial work.
In Ephesians, we're told that we are to work toward “the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry.” That is the job of the Church. Well, I say start early. I can't think of a more urgent need than enabling young people to understand their faith and preparing them to defend it against the onslaught of secular thought that they will be encountering in their schools and from popular culture.
FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:
• “Teenagers,” summary of research compiled by Barna Research, 2001. See also the following press releases at Barna's website: “Teenagers Embrace Religion but Are Not Excited about Christianity,” “Teenagers' Beliefs Moving Farther from Biblical Perspective,” and “Americans Are Most Likely to Base Truth on Feelings.”
• “Teens More Conservative on Some Issues,” FOX News, 9 December 2003.
• Stuart Silverstein and Andy Olsen, “Evangelical Colleges Make Marks in a Secular World,” Los Angeles Times, 30 November 2003.
• Stuart Silverstein, “Colleges Fail to Encourage Spiritual Ideas, Study Finds,” Los Angeles Times, 21 November 2003, A19. (Archived article; costs $2.50 to retrieve.)
• See the BreakPoint commentaries, “It's All about Profit: Exploiting Kids for Cash,” “Me, Myself, and I: What's Really Wrong with Teen Culture,” “Bankrupt at Age Twenty-Five: Marketing to Teens, Tweens, and Kids,” “Image Is Everything: Losing Identity at the Shopping Mall,” “A New Generation Gap,” “The Third Millennium Church,” “The New Counterculture,” and “Putting Worldview to Work: Christ and Culture Week at Covenant Life School.”
• Visit past “Worldview for Parents“ pages for resources on specific issues and questions.
• Nancy Fitzgerald, “Teaching Worldview to the Next Generation.” Nancy leads a worldview study for teenagers in her home in Indianapolis; this page provides a basic outline of the curriculum she uses.
• Charles Colson, Answers to Your Kids' Questions (Tyndale, 2000).
• Robert Webber, The Younger Evangelicals (Baker Book House, 2002).
• Colleen Carroll, The New Faithful (Loyola Press, 2002).
• We've recently developed some worldview resources for adults: an online course based on Chuck Colson's book How Now Shall We Live; a small-group curriculum called “CounterCultural Christians,” and a newly released small-group curriculum on bioethics called “Playing God?“. Call 1-877-3-CALLBP to learn more.
• The “Worldview for Teens“ resource guide includes information about books on worldview, education, ethics, justice/law, life, science, the arts, popular culture, and work, as well as information on camps, ministries, and multimedia resources.
• Budziszewski, How to Stay Christian in College (NavPress, 1999). A newly updated version will be released next year and will be previewed in BreakPoint WorldView magazine.
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Copyright (c) 2003 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.
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I love my Job, I love the Pay!
I love it more and more each day.
I love my Boss; he’s the best!
I love his boss and all the rest.
I love my Office and its location–
I hate to have to go on vacation.
I love my furniture, drab and gray,
and the paper that piles up every day!
I love my chair in my padded Cell!
There’s nothing else I love so well.
I love to work among my Peers–
I love their leers and jeers and sneers.
I love my Computer and all its Software;
I hug it often though it doesn’t care…
I love each Program and every File,
I try to understand once in a while!!
I’m happy to be here, I am I am;
I’m the happiest Slave of my uncle Sam.
I love this Work: I love these Chores.
I love the Meetings with deadly Bores.
I love my Job — I’ll say it again–
I even love these friendly Men–
These men who’ve come to visit today
In lovely white coats to take me away!!!
Crowds gathered at a lake to hear Jesus teach. He sat in a boat pulled up to the shore so that they could hear him without pressing in on him. He said to them, “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it” (Matthew 13:45).
Let this story spring to life in your imagination. The pearl merchant has spent years, perhaps a lifetime, buying pearls. When he finds the pearl of great price, he knows that the only way he can own it is to sell all that he has. This does not mean simply his house or his animals or his clothes. This includes the precious stones that he has acquired through careful collection. He loves these pearls, but he must choose between them or the one perfect pearl. This pearl is so worthy that he is willing to sacrifice everything else that he prizes to possess it.
We are a society that values quantity, in which more is better. Few are willing to sacrifice quantity for the sake of quality. This desire to have it all extends beyond our lust for possessions and our endemic over-commitment into the realm of ideas. People acquire beliefs as if they are accessorizing, paying little mind to whether or not the beliefs they are accumulating can coexist. More is better, even when it comes to adopting multiple conflicting worldviews! The marketplace of ideas has become the arena of the “impulse buy.”
But Jesus presents a different way; he suggests that there could be something so lovely, so worthy, so true, and so good that it would make you willing to sacrifice everything else to gain it. This pearl of great price is his kingdom. If we enter the kingdom, we get all the fullness that is found in Christ himself. But the kingdom is costly, and we cannot enter it if we are clutching pearls of lesser price.
Augustine famously wrote, “He loves Thee too little who loves anything together with Thee which He loves not for Thy sake.” There are many pearls in this world of compelling beauty. Whether it is the beauty of ideas, or relationships, or of creation, God created it all for us to enjoy. But it should always point us to that which is most beautiful, the costly Lamb of God. To possess his kingdom, we must be willing to forsake anything that rivals him who is all in all.
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Copyright © 2005 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.
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The great Christian thinker Francis Schaeffer once wrote that philosophy — often dismissed as irrelevant — is, in reality, a powerful engine that drives cultural change. Ivory Tower ideas filter down into popular culture, including films. There, they influence millions who often have no notion of what they're consuming along with the car chases, love scenes, and popcorn.
This brings us to the 2005 Academy Awards of Sunday night. If you watched them, you already know that the films Hollywood chose to honor had little to do with quality and everything to do with philosophy and worldview. As Christian film critic Barbara Nicolosi acerbically put it, Hollywood's choices affirm, once again, “just how very, very sick America's storytellers have become.”
Several awards, including Best Picture, went to Million Dollar Baby, a film that promotes euthanasia. Five Oscars went to The Aviator, a film that celebrates billionaire Howard Hughes, the man who bedded dozens of starlets, made unwelcome advances to many others, and ultimately died of syphilis-induced insanity.
Oh, and then there's the nasty little film called Sideways. This film suggests that it's fine — even funny — for a man to engage in an orgy of sex with strangers just before his wedding. That got an award, too. Films that were nominated, but did not receive awards, included one intended as a warning against making abortion illegal, and one that celebrates Kinsey, a twisted researcher whose now-discredited theories continue to degrade America's view of sexuality. Meanwhile, one of the greatest films ever made, one of the biggest box-office hits of the year, worldwide, and the biggest independent film in the history of the world — that is, The Passion of the Christ — was ignored.
It's gotten to the point where you can't help but laugh at the pretense that the Oscars actually honor the best films, and at the intrepid efforts of Hollywood to make its choices seem relevant. And, I might add, laughter is a better response than simply getting mad. Critics who do little more than count up the four-letter words and sex scenes, and then issue an outraged press release, only boost the audience. Instead, Christian critics like Barbara Nicolosi take a more sophisticated approach, pointing out that movies like Million Dollar Baby and The Aviator are mediocre films, and they celebrate degraded values — not worth the price of a ticket.
That is the message we need to press home to our friends and to our impressionable kids. They need to know that everyone embraces one philosophy or another — a worldview that defines his or her conception of the world, of reality, and of human life. These beliefs are woven into movies — often in subtle ways that viewers miss. That is why it's so important that we teach our kids how to find the worldview message in every film.
This week, especially if your kids are home because of the snow, why not teach them a little philosophy. Rent some of the better films and watch them together. Help them identify, not only the filmmaker's philosophy, but also what makes for artistic excellence.
Schaeffer was right. Philosophy is a powerful engine that drives social change. And the time for philosophy lessons is before our kids walk into the multiplex — not when the lights go out.
FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:
• Barbara Nicolosi, “The 'Passion' Oscar Snub: Revenge of the Blue States?“ Beliefnet, 26 January 2005.
• Gina R. Dalfonzo, “Only in the Movies: Hollywood, Film Critics, and Christians,” BreakPoint Online, 24 February 2005.
• Diane Shreve Singer, “Surrendering to Grief: Another Look at Million Dollar Baby,” BreakPoint Online, 28 February 2005.
• BreakPoint Commentary No. 050211, “Fighting for What's Important: Million Dollar Baby and House.”
• BreakPoint Commentary No. 041130, “Taking Sides: Kinsey.”
• Elbert Ventura, “Best in Show: The Value of an Academy Award,” New Republic, 24 February 2005.
• Robert K. Johnston and Catherine M. Barsotti, Finding God in the Movies (Baker, 2004).
• For more film reviews and articles on movies, visit Thunderstruck. Also see Christianity Today's movies section.
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Copyright © 2005 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.
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