I’m going to admit I have certain issues with reading the Bible.  Don’t get me wrong, I love doing it.  I am just not very disciplined about it.  I have started several reading plans only to fail miserably three weeks in.  See, I’m easily. . . distracted.  Yeah, I know.  Everyone is.  But it isn’t the five kids, nor the dogs, nor the homeschooling, nor the moving, nor even Twitter.  It is the Bible itself.  I start to read but then I read the notes, follow cross references, and look things up.  Before you know it, I’m quite literally lost in the Word.  My plan says to read the first three chapters of Genesis and somehow I end up in Isaiah after detouring through Psalms and Matthew.

And then I fall behind.  And then I get discouraged.  And then I give up.  I don’t know why publishers put those annoying dates at the top of their reading plans.  If I get off by more than a few days, the sense of defeat inevitably leads me to throw in the towel.  So I decided to stop worrying about it, and while most plans I find online have dates attached, I seem to do OK, so long as I trim them off.

So you’d think I’d be bright enough to pass on the Bible in 90 Days thing, wouldn’t you?

Apparently not.

And I have fallen behind.  A whole book, actually, but for some reason it isn’t bothering me that much.  Part of me doesn’t really believe I’m going to come in anywhere close to the 90 day goal, and the other part of me seems to be OK with that for the moment. So I continue to plod along and have made a couple of discoveries.

Sixteen chapters at a time is an aggressive goal.  I want to finish so concentrate and use what little discipline I have to keep going.  I do not pause to reflect, I ask myself few questions and hence I do not flip around through the entire bible.  It keeps me on track with the schedule, but I haven’t decided yet how I feel about “just” reading.  Many people I chat with online have expressed excitement over what God will reveal to them through this challenge, and I’m afraid I will be too busy reading to notice His prompting.

Not skipping around means I’m on task.  It means that I don’t look at the clock and shake my head before laying my bible aside to go do whatever is next for the day.  It means I don’t respond as quickly to distractions because my goal is right there in front of me.  It means I don’t respond as quickly to the children’ squabbles, and leave them to sort themselves out a little before I intervene.

And they notice.  And Bug crawls in my lap to just sit for awhile before inquiring,

Mommy, will you read to me?

And for four chapters, I had the attention of all of my children for a longer reading than I have ever tried to impose on them just because they wanted to know what I was doing that whole time.

So I keep plodding on, thinking maybe this isn’t so bad after all.

Bible Bible in 90 Days Scripture

I may be treading into waters here that are better left untouched, but this sort of teaching had a profound effect on me shortly after my conversion to Christianity, and drove me into a sort of spiritual dormancy less than six months after my awakening.  Ironically, it was an atheist homosexual that re-awakened me, but that is a story for another time.  As I explained in a post about some of my personal journey to find my voice:

When I became a Christian, I did not have very good bible teaching. I attended church sporadically because of my schedule. Fred Phelps was very active on my campus and cast everything remotely Christian in the shadow of his presence. The single most memorable event in college was trying to get to the student union during Gay Pride Week. He staged a protest and I had to walk the gauntlet between the two groups, bombarded with signs saying, “God hates f*gs” and so-called Christians screaming hateful things and trying to shout down the speakers for the event.

I was horrified, but did not know enough to realize that what these people were doing was not Christian. So I did not identify myself publicly as a Christian because to do so meant I was involved with that. Instead, I was silent.

So what do you think of sermons like this?  [WARNING: Offensive language and you likely do not want your children listening to this. ]

I cannot listen to it outside my own frame of reference…as a new convert intimidated by the same tone, the same language, the same hatred.  As a Christian moved to silence and a witness muted due to lack of understanding of what was going on.

Pharyngula sees a “terrifying, crazy Republican woman” (referring to the author of Homeschooling Hints who has been posting on this issue).  I see another, more subtle, attack on Christianity.  As few in number as they may be, it is views like these which are driving legislation which will eventually affect all of us.  Not to mention the more important issue of the number of people they succeed in driving away from Christ rather than merely into spiritual dormancy for a couple of years.

What do you think?  And how do you respond?

Christianity homosexuality Stephen L Anderson Faithful Word Baptist Church

Update: It looks like my initial concern regarding the shooter’s religion and his mental health may not have been totally unfounded (emphasis mine):

Gothard’s teachings have been criticized by other conservative Christians who allege that he has deviated from true Bible teaching. He takes a stand against rock music — even Christian rock — and is suspicious of modern medicine, believing in spiritual roots of disease. He is against women working outside the home, and certain toys. Gothard warned followers in a 1986 letter that Cabbage Patch dolls can cause “strange, destructive behavior.” STLtoday

I do not think that homeschooling had anything to do with this, nor even strict religious beliefs. But I do have a concern that his mental illness was not being properly treated. We can blame the music if we want, but if you read his postings and if they have any accuracy whatsoever, he tried Jesus first. And when that didn’t work, he turned to the occult. He sounds much more like a young man with serious mental health issues, seeking an answer no one could give him.

And back to the original post…

An interesting discussion has begun in response to my post about the shootings in Colorado. Julie of Shanan Trail brought up a question about how Christians in particular view mental illness in light of her experience with her daughter.

What I have found in the homeschooling and Christian community is almost a denial that mental illness is real. Behavioral problems are all blamed on sin. I cannot tell you how often people who have never walked in my shoes take issue with my medicating my child or how often I have read blog entries in the homeschooling community addressing the issue of medication for childhood behavioral problems.

It is a view I have seen as well, although it is generally expressed as a general disdain for mental health professionals and any medications designed to aid the mentally ill. An article posted on the Internet by the Kingdom Baptist Church expresses this view well. It is summarized perfectly in the opening sentence of the third paragraph:

I do not like the counterfeit religions of psychology and psychiatry.

He goes on with typical divisiveness, accusing those who disagree of replacing God’s word with a lie:

Christians everywhere need to stand strong against this lie! Christians are intimidated to embrace the new religion of psychiatry with its new “biological, medical model”, just like many embraced psychology decades ago. Psychiatry, with its drugs, pills, diseases, and brain chemistry terminology, is too much for many to contend against. Why not simply embrace it, give in to the monster, and let it share a place beside our Christianity? It is a trick! Even many secular leaders can see through the scam. Replacing God’s truth (as revealed in the inspired Scriptures) with psychiatric brain dope is to embrace a broken cistern…

I do not know how pervasive this type of thinking is, and I suspect it isn’t really necessarily a uniquely Christian viewpoint. Mental illness is difficult to understand. I have run into this thinking most often among fundamentalist Christians, but I heard it first from the Scientologists. After each of these types of tragedies, my email box begins to fill with speculations about what kinds of psychotropic drugs the perpetrator was taking and how the field of psychiatry is to blame.

An article by WorldNet Daily which exposes the “shocking link between psychiatric drugs, suicide, violence and mass murder” connects several shootings with the medications the murderers were on and has been emailed to me more times than I can count.

But I have two very simple questions regarding this hypothesized connection. With “tens of millions of Americans” taking these medications and the extreme rarity of mass murder, how can we be so sure that the medication has any connection to the crimes? Is it not more likely that the underlying mental illness which presumably prompted the prescription is to blame?

This question is impossible to study in a controlled laboratory. It would require too large a sample size, given the rarity of these sorts of events, even with the prevalence of psychotropic drugs being used to treat the mentally ill. And it would involve leaving people with known problems untreated to see if they were any more likely to commit murder.

But the rising concerns of suspected over use of such strong medications has led the Food and Drug Administration to issue warnings about prescribing these medications which resulted in a dramatic drop in their use in 2004 and 2005.

The warnings led to a broad decline in SSRI prescriptions for all patients younger than 60, [Professor of psychostatistics and psychology Robert] Gibbons said. Prescription rates continued to rise among those older than 60, and this was the only group in which suicides dropped between 2003 and 2004, his study found. The Washington Post

With what is described as a “precipitous drop” in the prescribed use of medications such as Zoloft, Prozac and Paxil, suicide amongst American teenagers soared, rising 14% in a single year, the largest since the government began collecting suicide statistics. The phenomenon was more striking in the Netherlands. With a 22% decrease in the use of anti-depressants, they saw a 49% increase in teen suicides between 2003 and 2005.

While other bloggers have looked at this case and postulated the involvement of psychotropic drugs (see the comment section on Why Homeschool’s entry), my first reaction was the opposite. Particular with his involvement in a fundamentalist church, founded by Ted Haggard (made famous by his involvement with the youth camp better known as “Jesus Camp” because of the movie), I questioned first whether his mental illness was being treated at all. Or was this troubled young man being treated with only the laying on of hands, prayer and admonitions to read the bible?

Please do not misunderstand me. These medications are strong, with a list of side effects that is frightening. And some of the more common side effects of these medications are often the very symptoms they are designed to relieve. Little is known about their effects in children and their use should always be monitored by trained professionals who can chart their progress. Parents need to be well-educated about what to watch for. But mental illness is equally as frightening, both for the victim and the victim’s family. Unfortunately, children can suffer from these serious diseases, as well.

If we shun the use of all psychotropic drugs, how are we to treat mental illness? And will our children suffer as a result?

[tags]pharmakia, mental illness, fundamentalism, Christianity[/tags]

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is one organization that is perfectly clear in how it would change the US Constitution if given the chance. And they are taking their message on the road through a campaign to “place freethought billboards around the country, wherever an irreverent billboard is needed — which is practically everywhere!” Like this one, standing just off the west Beltline in Madison, Wisconsin.

If I did not know what they meant by that, I might tend to agree. Religion and dogma are not the same thing. And freethought and dogma are not necessarily opposites. A smaller billboard to go up in a place where it will be passed by nearly everyone leaving the airport in Madison will read, “Imagine No Religion.”

Imagine a world with no religion. Dawkins has. And he is bringing his campaign to the United States in order to realize it.

I would free children from being indoctrinated with the religion of their parents or their community. The Guardian

To what lengths are we willing to go to free society of this “virus of the mind?” Billboards and foundations do not bother me, but the absolute intolerance for the beliefs of others does. I suspect that in the near future, we may long for the days when moral relativism was the dominant philosophy. But we are moving into a “new age” where there is an “absolute truth” and that absolute truth has no room for the religious.

Imagine a world without religion. The Khmer Rouge did. North Korea has. Yes, there has been violence in the name of religion, but there has been extreme violence and widespread genocide in the name of eradicating it, as well. Am I saying that Dawkins would be a willing part in such a thing? Or even that this is an imminent threat? Certainly not. But I am reminded of the words of Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl writes in The Doctor and the Soul,

I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.

Ideas have consequences.

religion, Dawkins, FFRF, Freedom From Religion Foundation

I must confess I have a bizarre fascination with Richard Dawkins. If it weren’t for that, I might not have been interested in the fact that 25% of the British have some sort of belief in astrology. Or even in the fact that this constitutes more believers than any other single established religion. I could guess what Dawkins would have to say on the matter, but this entry by Wired Science took me completely off guard. After summarizing Dawkins’ stance on the issue and giving us a lesson on the history of philosophy comes this gem:

But in both cases [Girard and Nietzsche], a nuanced analysis of religion led to examination of that fundamental human characteristic, resentment–a characteristic that swelled to monstrous proportions during the 20th century genocides of Hitler and Lenin and Mao and Pol Pot, all of which were decidedly secular, and more recently during wars in Eastern Europe and Central America and assorted parts of Africa.

Studying religion in a sophisticated way could help us understand the human dynamics underlying such tragedies. It was a task worthy of many of the 20th century’s greatest intellects, and could also be worthy of Dawkins. Too bad he’s wasting his time making dowsers cry. Wired Science

It is so refreshing to not have religious beliefs looked upon as the root of all evil. And this is about the closest to the real roots of the world’s conflict I have seen a secular source come: resentment. Indignation or ill will as the result of some perceived grievance. The belief that you deserve something that someone else has. Self-centeredness. Sin.

Dawkins, on the other hand, believes otherwise.

As a scientist, I don’t think our indulgence of irrational superstition is harmless. I believe it profoundly undermines civilization. Reason and a respect for evidence are the source of our progress, our safeguard against fundamentalists and those who profit from obscuring the truth. The Enemies of Reason (YouTube)

Irrational superstition, be it astrology or Christianity, profoundly undermines civilization. Elsewhere, he has compared religion to a malignant virus of the mind, complete with an imaginary medical textbook to discuss the symptoms. While I don’t believe he has ever made any statements remotely close to, “the infidel must die,” he has laid the groundwork. The mind, the seat of reason and the source of our thoughts and feelings, cannot be so easily controlled. If the virus is to be treated so that civilization may be spared its debilitating effects, an adequate vaccine and treatment must be discovered.

I wonder what acts this philosophy’s “resentment” is capable of. For me, it calls to mind images of reeducation camps. But maybe the public schools will suffice.

Dawkins, science vs faith, education, religion, atheism

What is the most dangerous idea in religion? The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wanted to know.

Religion is one of the most potent forces in human affairs. It has inspired some of history’s most sublime moments, but also some of its most barbaric.

The Inquisition, the bombing of abortion clinics, suicide bombings in Iraq – all have their roots in some form of religious ideology.

To get a grasp on just what is so dangerous about religion, writer John Blake asked five leading religious thinkers to answer the question. Obviously, he didn’t ask me, but I’ll answer at the end, anyway.

1. Violence in the name of God.
–Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

2. Follow our rules or else.
–Wayne Dyer, prominent self-help speaker

3. My religion is right.
–Rabbi Harold Kushner, influential Jewish thinker

4. Converting others to your religion. (Some things seem to keep popping up around here.)
–Dr. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naiim, internationally recognized scholar of Islam and human rights

5. A tribal view of God.
–Depak Chopra, chairman and co-founder of the Chopra Center for Well Being

The illustrative quotes are, well, illustrative and well worth reading, even if they are being used as yet another attempt to cast religion as the root of the world’s evil.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say they are all wrong.

Let’s look at these points again, from a different angle.

1. Violence in the name of turf. Also known as gang violence.

2. Follow our rules or else…mass executions, also known as the Red Terror.

3. The state is right. Also know as Tiananmen Square.

4. Converting others to your…disbelief. Also known as the Cambodian genocide.

5. An evolved view of human relationships. Also known as Darwin’s body snatchers.

The problem is not religion, per se, but men seeking power who subvert religion to gain that power. It has historically been a convenient means to gather people around a cause, but certainly not the only means. The real problem with religion is that it is frequently controlled by humans.

As we seem to be moving out of the age of moral relativsm and into the age of scientism, these are moments of human history which cannot be forgotten. And exactly what we are dealing with cannot be ignored. From PBS’ Faith and Reason glossary:

Unlike the use of the scientific method as only one mode of reaching knowledge, scientism claims that science alone can render truth about the world and reality. Scientism’s single-minded adherence to only the empirical, or testable, makes it a strictly scientific worldview, in much the same way that a Protestant fundamentalism that rejects science can be seen as a strictly religious worldview. Scientism sees it necessary to do away with most, if not all, metaphysical, philosophical, and religious claims, as the truths they proclaim cannot be apprehended by the scientific method. In essence, scientism sees science as the absolute and only justifiable access to the truth.

In other words, they are guilty of exactly the same type of absoultist thinking so often attributed to the religious. They see in those who believe otherwise as a danger which must be eradicated.

religion, scientism, fundamentallism

A church in Tampa, FL is planning on building a daycare center and preschool it says “the neighborhood desperately needs.”

We target working families that can’t afford a quality pre-school.

I hope that means that they will be providing a quality pre-school at an affordable rate, but the marketing language directed at people has always bothered me, particularly when used by churches. We aren’t “targeting” anyone. But the statement seems almost perverse considering the difficulty this proposed daycare/preschool has caused.

It is to be built next to an apartment which houses sex offenders.

The owner of the complex warned the church prior to filing the paperwork and also asked the council to deny the daycare. It went ahead and approved the permit Thursday. At least the apartment owner recognizes that this might not be a good idea. Why is nobody listening?

I think the closing paragraph of the story holds a clue.

State law says that sex offenders can’t live within 1,000 feet of a school or daycare center, but attorneys disagree what will happen in this situation. Once the daycare center opens the church believes the sex offenders must leave, but the apartment owner says sex offenders already living there will be grandfathered in. TampaBays 10.com (emphasis mine)

I know nobody wants sex offenders living next door. That is why Megan’s Law has been so popular. But it also has caused some problems. I know some people are very concerned about the perpetrators rights to privacy after they have completed their sentence, and for some crimes that is an appropriate concern. Even for some people labeled as sex offenders. The recidivism rate for sex offenders is actually lower than for other criminals, but is that indicative that incarceration is working to reduce the problem? Some estimate that the average person convicted of molestation has actually had over 100 victims before conviction. How long will it take to catch him the second time, especially since victims are most frequently the children of friends and relatives?

Still, where are they to live? And when they finally find someplace, it is hardly just to drive them out because the community has decided it would prefer a daycare. If this church wants to expand its ministry opportunities, perhaps it should look into ways to counsel convicted sex offenders rather than offer daycare services to working parents.

preschool, daycare, Megan’s law

On June 6, 2007, the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion and Belief held a meeting of religious leaders at the House of Lords in the UK. The purpose was to look at the challenges presented to various faiths in the implementation of Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states,

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Suraj Sehgal, the director of Hindu Council UK had some interesting remarks.

The right to freedom to change religion and to freely practice it both in teaching and observance has been grossly abused by aggressive proselytisation through fraud, force and deception. Article 18 should be amended to ban such conversions and the government should legislate against. it. The predatory religions seek the destruction of others faiths and cultures, others way of life, by sending missionaries whose religious freedom is enshrined in their mission to convert other God loving people into their own religious clubs, thereby seeking the destruction of other religions. Everyone has the right to convert through their own heart’s persuasion but MISSIONARY CONVERSION activity is a form of violence on the society it converts as it seeks to destroy their original way of life. History bears witness to it; when will the UN protect religions like the Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs? (emphasis in original) Hindu Council UK

These thoughts are not new. In 1997, psychologist Nicholas Humphrey compared religious education of children to female circumcision and, among other things, cited the pervasive disbelief in evolution as evidence.

We do live–even in our advanced, democratic, Western nations–in an environment of spiritual oppression, where many little children–our neighbours’ children if not actually ours–are daily exposed to the attempts of adults to annex their minds. The Edge

And he goes on to argue that in order to protect the children from the violence of wrong beliefs about evolution, the existence of God, astrology, etc., we should do away with the idea of parental rights all together. Instead, we should look at the relationship as one of privilege, to be revoked by society in the event of wrong teaching.

Because sharing religious belief is a violent act.

I think I prefer the age of relativism to what appears to be looming on the horizon.

religion, proselytizing, UN, human rights

There are a number of research studies out at the moment highlighting the psychological benefits of religion in the lives of the religious. While often depicted as “the root of all evil,” religion actually produces a greater sense of well-being and better general health. Australian researchers have just published a series of studies on the subject in a special issue of The Medical Journal of Australia. In an interview, epidemiologist Richard Eckersley effectively summarizes the importance of religion not only to the individual, but to society:

A lot of people have a pretty hostile view of religion, essentially seeing it as a source of misguided notions about life and a source of problems and conflict. But religion as perhaps the most common cultural expression of the spiritual – not the only expression – does provide many of the things that are conducive to well-being – and these include social support or social networks, a coherent belief system, a sense of purpose, a clear moral code. Religions tend to package these things in a way that makes them accessible to people and that historically I think has been its social role and value.

Religion is an expression of who we are and what we hold dear. Our founders understood this as they sought to institute a system which prevented the abuses a state religion had caused in England. Religion is not so easy to uproot, and when confronted directly can cause conflict. Take the example of Germany. The stated reason that homeschooling cannot be tolerated is that it produces parallel societies which are an enemy of a pluralistic society. So the state goes on the offense, aggressively pursuing homeschoolers and strengthening legislation against it, thereby forcing the development of the parallel societies it so fears. This is a direct result of the enlightenment, which I’ll get into later, Dr. Michael Donnelly of HSLDA had some very insightful comments in his speech to at the colloquium held in Germany. Actually, I encourage to read the whole thing. While he is speaking directly to this issue in Germany, the same problem is at the heart of the socialization question and is something we as homeschoolers need a better answer for.

While parallel societies may indeed be the enemy of a democratic state, dogmatic and coerced uniformity is the enemy of a pluralistic society

…In Germany what we see in Education is not pluralism but rather support of a state controlled system of education–the purpose which is not to promote pluralism but rather to standardize and integrate children into society. Forcing all children to attend state sponsored schools is a sure way to stamp out pluralism. In the State schools a uniform curriculum provided by uniformly organized teachers in uniformly organized and established schools creates a uniform social structure within society. This is a tautological argument. It speaks for itself.

Indeed, one can argue that by forcibly curtailing educational choice in Germany, the German government is sowing the seeds of parallel societies and future conflict between these societies within Germany.

Ideas can be changed in society through conversation, debate and the free exchange of ideas. They cannot, however, be forced externally. That is, of course, true whether you seek to eradicate religion or uphold it. Our beliefs and expression thereof are deeply personal and and inextricable from who we are. External force serves only to divide and isolate groups within society, forcing them into “parallel” societies and increasing the tensions between groups.

Jennifer has an interesting entry from yesterday about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor, writer, dissident and martyr who was ultimately executed for his crimes against the Nazi regime. She shares an interesting excerpt from a documentary about his life:

The church has three possible ways it can act against the state. First, it can ask the state if its actions are legitimate. Second, it can aid the victims of the state action. The church has the unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering society even if they do not belong to the Christian society. The third possibility is not just [to] bandage the victims under the wheel, but to jam a spoke in the wheel itself.

The relationship between the individual and the state and particularly between the Christian and the state has always interested me. For the most part, it seems that Christianity teaches that the individual is to go out of his way to be obedient and subservient to those in authority. But even in the well-known passages pointing to Christian humility found in the Sermon on the Mount, there are some hints at resistance to Roman rule.

But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. –Matthew 5:39

This verse used to bother me. It seemed to me that Jesus was setting up all kinds of boundary problems in His followers. Accept persecution in His name, yes, but just outright abuse for no good reason? It also seems to violate the resistance Jesus himself offered to religious authorities.

Then I heard a discussion on Jewish customs of the time and found it to be quite interesting. In the culture of the time, it was acceptable to back hand someone on the cheek with your right hand…done from someone of higher rank to someone of lesser rank. Cultural taboos made it impossible to strike with the left hand and only equals were struck with the palm of the hand.

By turning your cheek, you were subtly telling the aggressor that you were an equal.

There are interesting examples from European history which illustrate just how powerful simple acts of respectful insubordination can be.

Perhaps this was not as dramatic as what Bonhoeffer planned in response to Nazi Germany. But there were other options to resist Hitler. Imagine if all who called themselves Christians responded as the tiny Protestant village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon who hid 5,000 Jews from authorities? What if all of Europe had responded as Denmark who managed to move almost its entire Jewish population out of the country with only two days warning that Germany was taking them to a concentration camp? Less than 500 of Denmark’s 7,500 Jews were captured, and the Danish government continued to work with Germany on their behalf. Care packages were sent and the Danish Red Cross arrived to inspect their condition at Theresienstadt. Eichmann did not dare move them to a death camp. Very few died. If I remember correctly, Denmark was also the only country which arranged to pick up the Jews as soon as Germany was defeated.

Denmark was also different and special in another way. Almost everywhere else in Europe, returning Jews found their homes had been broken into, and everything of value stolen. When the Danish Jews returned, they discovered that their homes, pets, gardens and personal belongings were cared for by their neighbors.

Had the Christian Church responded universally with such resistance, Nazi Germany never would have existed and violent measures would not have been necessary.

Photo: Danish fishermen saving Jews

Related Tags: Germany, Bonhoeffer, Christianity, passive resistance