Tonight our church started its annual Vacation Bible School. It's a long tradition in Christian churches, with many different faith traditions doing something similar. Catholic to Presbyterian, Lutheran to Pentecostal, Methodist to my own Southern Baptist, we all like to take a little time in the summer, when the kids are out of school, to educate and evangelize them.

My own memories of VBS go back to the church where I grew up, South Side United Methodist Church, in Huntington, West Virginia. The memory tastes like grape Kool-Aid, heavy on the sugar; it tastes like potato chips and sugar wafers. It sounds like the balls thrown back and forth in the good-old-days of dodge ball. It feels like the towel we brought to nap on when I went to VBS in first grade.

It was a lovely thing; a holy, tender thing. The layout of the church is still in my mind, though I am taller and older. I could probably find the very rooms where I first learned the ancient stories of my faith. I wonder, if I walked through them, if I wouldn't somehow fall back through time, if only briefly, and feel the safety of my childhood in that great red brick building. They're tearing it down, you know; some of my past will collapse in the rubble.

But VBS remains. The lessons planted in my heart grew and bloomed. I walk in the path I was taught. My children attend VBS the way I did, and the way my wife did as a child. Tonight, she taught kindergarten kids in a room decorated with 'island' colors, cardboard birds, beach balls and a giant, inflatable monkey. My oldest, Sam, who is 13, helped his mother herd the little ones back and forth to different crafts, snacks, lessons and to me, where I helped organize games in the gym. The men I was with all guided the children through obstacle courses and let them play volleyball. We gave them bamboo poles to carry in a kind of relay. We laughed as they spun around, dizzy, and fell down smiling.

And I realized what a precious time it is. You don't have to be a Christian to see the value of men and women giving their time to children. The many children who attend the church were there. But there were also children from local neighborhoods who road the church bus for lessons, snacks, or simple diversion from difficult lives and situations.

What all of them saw was a group of youth, women and men in bright green shirts, wearing flowers and captain's hats, acting silly, dancing and singing and smiling at them. What they saw was a group of people exhibiting interest in the children by offering them fun, insight, faith, hope and a framework for their lives.

I see the value of it. Oddly, I used to feel a little uncomfortable evangelizing children. Not anymore. I've seen the children of wrecked world-views. I've seen the children with empty eyes. I've seen the children of disease, abuse, drugs and alcohol. And I know that, without any doubt, the evil things of the world evangelize them with a passionate fervor.

Hopelessness, nihilism, cruelty, promiscuity, drugs, alcohol, violence, abuse, every negative thing in the world hides itself in flashy images on television, or in classrooms, in the lyrics of music or in the ideals of a political party. The children of the world are constantly, shamelessly evangelized to grow up too fast, to ignore their families as irrelevant, to seek the solace of name-brands, money and fame. They are preached the gospel of success along with the gospel of self-loathing. You don't have to agree with my faith to agree that we need to offer the children something more than all of that.

At Vacation Bible School, in a medium sized church in a little town in South Carolina, we're evangelizing. And I'm OK with it. I hope the children come away with their own memories, like mine. Memories of diet soda, pizza, trail-mix, silly hats, smiling faces, ridiculous games and a place where they were taught, by adults and young people, their inestimable worth in the eyes of the Creator.

Those are memories worth having. Just like my own recollections of grape Kool-Aid.

Edwin

I'm an emergency physician.  I have spent a huge portion of my life taking care of sick and injured people, and trying to help them through life crises like suicide attempts, psychotic breaks, homelessness, alcoholism and drug addiction.  As such, I'm always intrigued when politicians tell the country how interested they are in fixing health-care, caring for the sick and meeting the needs of the most down-trodden.  Because my partners and colleagues and I have been at it for a very long time, and remarkably, we never have any 'after-hours' numbers with which to contact caring politicians or policy-makers.  Heck, we never have any numbers to call during regular business hours.  I suspect that the heady business of fixing America's health-care crisis, and managing America's inefficient, unsafe, uncaring, rapacious physicians must require oodles and oodles of meetings, working lunches and happy hours, so that the bulk of caring for the sick is left to the aforementioned uncaring doctors like myself.  Oh well, it's a burden we'll just keep bearing until politicians and policy wonks swoop down and fix us good and proper.

But there is some striking evidence that it isn't only politicians, but the entire progressive movement, could really care less about the health and well-being of human beings.  And that lies in the reality of their typical platforms.  For instance, their insistence on fixing 'the system,' rather than the individuals.  Their willingness to sacrifice individual freedoms and choice for 'the good of the country.' And more particularly, their uncaring attitude about specific issues.  When DDT was banned, and untold millions of Third World persons died fo Malaria, the typical response was like the one I got from an ardent liberal:  'But if we hadn't done it, we'd have had less beautiful African animals!' 

Of course, a common mantra of the progressive left is that assisted suicide is a great thing!  Let's allow some old folks to go ahead and die!  It's good for the economy and good for the environment, right!  Wait and see how assisted becomes suggested becomes mandated if we develop a single payer system of health-care.  Then it will be our duty to die, right?  After all, it will be good for the country and good for the earth.

How about abortion, in which one million children are killed in the womb, or in the birth canal, every year?  The culture of life is really a culture of death.  Let's look at drugs.  For as long as I can remember, the left considered free, open drug use a societal good, while nasty fundamentalist, moralist nasties wanted to make the world a black and white drag.  I've seen drug abuse.  I've seen the pain and hopelessness in the eyes of men and women who wanted to die to escape their addiction, and the sorrow in their parents' faces.  It isn't cute or fun.  It's horrible.  What about HIV and other STD's?  As one liberal put it, when I said that 50% of African American teenage girls have an STD, 'well, isn't most of it just HPV?'  Yeah, the one that causes cancer deaths.  Liberals would rather cut off their own body parts than suggest that gay men have shortened lives due to diseases like HIV, or that promiscuous behavior results in HIV,  HPV, Herpes and other diseases leading to pain, infertility and death.  Death is OK, if your worldview is intact, it would seem.

The left has always been opposed to censorship, preferring the fantasy that pornography is a healthy choice of career that free-minded people engage in, unencumbered by the moral fabrications of religious oppression.  But it appears, more and more, that those who are engaged in the sex industry often are victims of what amounts to a lifetime of abuse and assault, often begun in childhood.  Do diseases and depression, drug abuse and suicide, infertility and dysfunction arise from that life?  You bet.  But does the progressive left care about that misery?  Not if it conflicts with 'freedom,' free love and their view of the world, they don't.

And what about energy?  If people can't drive to work to pay their bills, or engage in healthy lifestyle activity like health-care visits, so what?  At least the environment is safe.  And let's face it, in the end, the death of humanity is what most good liberals really want.  Well, except for them.  The death of annoying conservatives, brown people, drives of SUV's, religious nuts and anyone who opposes free love, free drugs, abortion and the gay agenda.  The death of those people would be good for earth, right? 

The left, far from caring about the health and safety of America or the world, could care less.  Their opposition to war is a joke; an enormous irony.  Their posturing about health reform, or even the environment, is nothing but that; posturing  Their worldview is a culture of acceptable death; of everyone else

Excuse me while I go back and try to save some more lives.  It's nasty, and it involves touching humans and learning to love them and even mourn them, but hey, somebody has to do it.  Maybe I'll catch a disease or be stabbed, and clean up the environment by dying in the process!

Edwin

I'm an emergency physician.  I have spent a huge portion of my life taking care of sick and injured people, and trying to help them through life crises like suicide attempts, psychotic breaks, homelessness, alcoholism and drug addiction.  As such, I'm always intrigued when politicians tell the country how interested they are in fixing health-care, caring for the sick and meeting the needs of the most down-trodden.  Because my partners and colleagues and I have been at it for a very long time, and remarkably, we never have any 'after-hours' numbers with which to contact caring politicians or policy-makers.  Heck, we never have any numbers to call during regular business hours.  I suspect that the heady business of fixing America's health-care crisis, and managing America's inefficient, unsafe, uncaring, rapacious physicians must require oodles and oodles of meetings, working lunches and happy hours, so that the bulk of caring for the sick is left to the aforementioned uncaring doctors like myself.  Oh well, it's a burden we'll just keep bearing until politicians and policy wonks swoop down and fix us good and proper.

But there is some striking evidence that it isn't only politicians, but the entire progressive movement, could really care less about the health and well-being of human beings.  And that lies in the reality of their typical platforms.  For instance, their insistence on fixing 'the system,' rather than the individuals.  Their willingness to sacrifice individual freedoms and choice for 'the good of the country.' And more particularly, their uncaring attitude about specific issues.  When DDT was banned, and untold millions of Third World persons died fo Malaria, the typical response was like the one I got from an ardent liberal:  'But if we hadn't done it, we'd have had less beautiful African animals!' 

Of course, a common mantra of the progressive left is that assisted suicide is a great thing!  Let's allow some old folks to go ahead and die!  It's good for the economy and good for the environment, right!  Wait and see how assisted becomes suggested becomes mandated if we develop a single payer system of health-care.  Then it will be our duty to die, right?  After all, it will be good for the country and good for the earth.

How about abortion, in which one million children are killed in the womb, or in the birth canal, every year?  The culture of life is really a culture of death.  Let's look at drugs.  For as long as I can remember, the left considered free, open drug use a societal good, while nasty fundamentalist, moralist nasties wanted to make the world a black and white drag.  I've seen drug abuse.  I've seen the pain and hopelessness in the eyes of men and women who wanted to die to escape their addiction, and the sorrow in their parents' faces.  It isn't cute or fun.  It's horrible.  What about HIV and other STD's?  As one liberal put it, when I said that 50% of African American teenage girls have an STD, 'well, isn't most of it just HPV?'  Yeah, the one that causes cancer deaths.  Liberals would rather cut off their own body parts than suggest that gay men have shortened lives due to diseases like HIV, or that promiscuous behavior results in HIV,  HPV, Herpes and other diseases leading to pain, infertility and death.  Death is OK, if your worldview is intact, it would seem.

The left has always been opposed to censorship, preferring the fantasy that pornography is a healthy choice of career that free-minded people engage in, unencumbered by the moral fabrications of religious oppression.  But it appears, more and more, that those who are engaged in the sex industry often are victims of what amounts to a lifetime of abuse and assault, often begun in childhood.  Do diseases and depression, drug abuse and suicide, infertility and dysfunction arise from that life?  You bet.  But does the progressive left care about that misery?  Not if it conflicts with 'freedom,' free love and their view of the world, they don't.

And what about energy?  If people can't drive to work to pay their bills, or engage in healthy lifestyle activity like health-care visits, so what?  At least the environment is safe.  And let's face it, in the end, the death of humanity is what most good liberals really want.  Well, except for them.  The death of annoying conservatives, brown people, drives of SUV's, religious nuts and anyone who opposes free love, free drugs, abortion and the gay agenda.  The death of those people would be good for earth, right? 

The left, far from caring about the health and safety of America or the world, could care less.  Their opposition to war is a joke; an enormous irony.  Their posturing about health reform, or even the environment, is nothing but that; posturing  Their worldview is a culture of acceptable death; of everyone else

Excuse me while I go back and try to save some more lives.  It's nasty, and it involves touching humans and learning to love them and even mourn them, but hey, somebody has to do it.  Maybe I'll catch a disease or be stabbed, and clean up the environment by dying in the process!

Edwin

Today I was teaching sunday school, where the topic was 'how can a good God send people to hell?'  As I was preparing for the lesson, I realized that one of the great objections modern men and women have to the Christian faith is that Christianity is about punishment and guilt, and as such, isn't any fun and is obviously droll and untrue.  Real people don't need to be punished, because they know they haven't done anything wrong.  Or so the logic goes.

As I considered all this, I realized that hell is entirely reasonable because everyone wants to be punished.  It's true!  In fact, punishment is a basic tenet of modern liberal thought.  We must be punished, the rationalization goes, because we have to much, use to much, own too much, judge too much, hate too much, eat too much, use resources too much, are too free, talk too much about taboo topics, etc.  The list goes on and on of the things for which we should be punished.  How are we punished?  Taxes, laws, programs, political correctness, intellectual and social banishment for speaking truths that violate proper thought, in some cases physical assault, and of course the over-arching punishment that can never be taken away, constant guilt. 

Modern man is overwhelmingly guilty...or rather, feels that he is.  Modern man is guilty about all of the things I listed above.  Modern man feels guilty for his very existence.  And so, punishment is in order.  Populations have to be limited.  Food has to be distributed fairly.  Incomes have to be confiscated. Children have to be aborted.  Children have to be given over to dark gods of sexuality and drugs because 'they'll do it anyway, everyone does!'  Modern man offers sacrifices of his joy, his money, his family, his ethics, his freedom and his very humanity on the altar of unrelenting guilt, which can never be atoned except by more work, more giving, more guilt, more surrender of every freedom of heart, soul, mind and body.

Hell?  Well it is punishment, though a punishment for which God provided a pardon in Christ.  But if modern mankind thinks that hell, or punishment itself, is a uniquely Christian invention, then modern mankind is dead wrong. 

Mankind has always wanted to be punished.  They just refuse to accept the deliverance from guilt that is available from our Father.

Dr. Deacon

In an ever green world, one wonders about the sincerity of modern Americans.  Just this morning I saw a news clip about a black bear being removed from a tree in a Connecticut neighborhood.  He stopped in, took a nap, then the next thing he knew there was a tranquilizer dart in his bear-butt and he was falling onto a net, only to be hoisted off into a distant forest.

So, let me ask, since we are struggling to snatch the earth back from anthropogenic disaster into a more harmonious state with nature, or Gaia, or some other nebulous state of primordial bliss, why do we have to remove bears from trees in suburbia?  Let me get this straight:  humans are bad, humans don't belong, humans are wrecking the world (and for all we know the known universe).  But humans are willing to exercise their fiat to take innocent, sleeping bears out of their neighborhoods? 

Fossil fuels, bad.  Nuclear power, bad.  Urban sprawl, bad.  Meat, bad.  Fishing, bad.  Hunting, bad.  Cars, bad.  Mankind, bad.  Bears, bad?  I don't get it.  If we really want a return to nature, wouldn't a few large predators, on the order of 300 pounds, be good for mankind?  Wouldn't it help global warming, or prevent the next ice-age, or reduce human consumption of natural resources if bears, wolves, mountain lions and other critters just snatched up a few people now and then?  How do we draw the line?  Humanity as a whole is a disease, but our individual safety is far more important than a poor, weary bear getting a good nap in a nice neighborhood?

Or, could it be, that even the most ardent environmental suburbanites consider themselves, after all, the top of the biological ladder?  Interesting.  Danger and the risk of death have a way of making us see the world more clearly.  I wonder how many deaths will have to occur, how terrible a famine will have to descend, for mankind to stop the global warming madness that is enveloping us.  Probably as many as it takes to reach suburbia and the nicer areas of large cities.

I wonder. 

And I hope that old bear got back to sleep in the woods, and woke up with odd, hung-over dreams of houses, trees, dogs, little girls and bowls of porridge.

Edwin

             We’re home-schooling, two years into our family experiment.  I can honestly say that everyone here loves it; my wife, our four children and I.  The dogs and cats even seem pleased, since they have more kid time than before.  Of course, we’re still working out the kinks.  There’s the danger of second and third breakfast, always potentially available with a kitchen that never closes.  And there’s the distraction of the X-Box, which lurks nearby and whispers to the children in electronic voices too high frequency for adults to hear. 

 We’re all learning more than we imagined.  We’re exploring new ideas like logic, new activities like bagpipe, new interests like science and art.  It’s been cool so far.  I’m glad we’re doing it, however long the ‘Leap Academy’ experiment lasts.

            However, we aren’t alone.  And I don’t mean because of other home-schoolers.  You see, on many levels, we all educate our children at home. 

            We educate them, obviously, when we read to them or try to help them with letters, numbers, projects or reports.  We educate them when we encourage their academic interests, like chemistry, and help them through their academic struggles, like fractions.  This is the obvious education that parents contribute to, whether their children are in public school or private school, or are taught in pajamas on the dining room table every morning.

            But we also educate them in life.  See, we teach our children with every word we say.  With every kind word, we teach them worth and gentility.  With every string of profanity we teach them to sound angry, and that it’s acceptable to lose control of our tempers. 

            Each time we take them to church, each night that we pray with them, or read to them from the Bible, we teach them their inestimable value in God’s eyes.  We also demonstrate to them that we parents recognize a higher authority than our own (higher even than the television!).  And when we teach them to look to prayer or scripture, we show them where find comfort, hope, answers, and wisdom for their entire lives.

            On the other hand, when parents cope with life’s stresses by drinking until they’re drunk, or using illegal drugs, they have also shown their children where to look for comfort, hope, answers and wisdom.  Unfortunately, it’s all false and destructive.  Still, it’s a lesson.

            When we show our young that we value knowledge, we encourage them learn for a lifetime.  When we show them we value mercy and charity, we make them the people society needs so desperately.  When we let them laugh we remind them that life is a delight.  And when we kiss them, or kiss our husbands or wives, we teach in loud words that affection should be freely and frequently given so that everyone knows they are loved.

            However, on the darker side of home education, every bruised or beaten spouse, every suffering, wounded child, is a home-school lesson on the efficient power of violence, and the black-hole, life draining power of cruelty, disdain, lies and neglect. 

            This universal home-schooling is not the unique domain of fathers or mothers.  Men teach their sons honor, purpose and commitment as they care for and love their children and wives.  Men teach their sons courage and responsibility by working for the good of the family.  Men teach them the appropriate uses of anger when they stand up for their beliefs or their families against tyranny large and small.

 Women teach their daughters the powers of diligence, devotion, nurturing, compassion, temperance and beauty.  Mothers have the power to teach their daughters that they can do anything they feel called to do.  And mothers can teach their daughters to be partners, not playthings, of men.  In fact, each parent has a thousand lessons to give to every child.

Sometimes the lessons are more practical.  ‘Don’t drive angry.  Don’t speed.  Watch for oncoming traffic.’  This lesson has bitten me on the backside as my sons now police my speedometer like junior highway patrolmen.  Occasionally, the lessons are of grave importance.  Like when my daughter quietly expresses to me that she is afraid of a particular stranger in a crowd.  ‘That’s OK, baby.  If you feel afraid of someone, listen to your heart.’

From cooking to cleaning, yard-work to pet care, it’s all part of the effort to mold adults from the clay of childhood.  But the lessons of the heart are the ones that will drive their happiness or misery in this life. 

Like it or not, mothers and fathers, we’re all home-school parents.  We became teachers when we first held our students in our hands.  And our lessons will echo through our families long after we’re gone.

Edwin

www.edwinleap.com

           

A liberal friend sent me a link to a new idea from MoveOn.org.  George Soros suggests that Scott McClellan donate his book royalties to the care of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.  He was, they say, part of the decision to lie to America and enter us into an unnecessary and costly war.

Surprised that she would forward this piece of claptrap to me, I contemplated my response.  One doesn't want to sound harsh or sarcastic to friends, so I held back out of respect for the fine person my friend is.  So, on the sage advice of apologist and physician John Patrick, given in a lecture I heard him deliver, I decided to frame my response in a question.

If Scott McClellan gives his money to the care of veterans, then will Al Gore give his money, from all his diatribes about climate change, to the victims of starvation due to diminished food production?  Will he give his royalties to families in America and Europe out of jobs due to environmental over-regulation that threatens to crush Western industrial capacity?  Will he offer funerals to the children in poor nations, who die when no food is available, but carbon credits are finally ensconced as the salvation of mankind?

And when socialized health-care impoverishes us, and leads to interminable waits for necessary procedures, leaves us to far fewer physicians, and burdens us with further taxes (added to the weight of our carbon credits), will Michael Moore donate his royalties to improving American medicine?  Or at least to expediting American funerals and flights to Cuba for what he apparently considers the world's best medical attention?

Will Planned Parenthood be giving money back to the families of blacks, who were unwitting victims of the genocidal abortion campaign first set in motion by Margaret Sanger all those years ago?   Will  Marxist professors give back tuition money to parents of children led astray into economic ruin by ideology that runs in stark contrast to all reality?

Will atheist professors be refunding tuition to families broken by their children's loss of faith and drift into drugs and promiscuity, when their time-honored beliefs were set to the torch in the classrooms of America?

Will Hillary Clinton be offering campaign money back to families who donated to her ego-nmaniacal campaign during a time of financial duress?

I could go on.  But if we're giving back royalties or other money based on problems associated with our ideology, then the American Left has some pretty big checks to write. 

Edwin

www.edwinleap.com

            Do humans belong here, on earth?  Take a minute and ask yourself.  In an age of environmental concerns, in which we are attempting to address the way we use natural resources like food,  water and energy, in an election cycle when global warming is on the minds of many, do we humans have any place on this planet?  I’ll tell you what I think in a minute.

            If you pay much attention to debates on the environment, or watch television shows about all the ‘impending catastrophes,’ you might get the sense that we humans don’t really have a stake in the game.  There are even books and television specials about how nice earth will be after we’re gone.  As if the planet will say ‘whew,’ and wipe its brow in relief.

            Some people seem positively giddy at the idea, oddly intrigued and thrilled that we might boil like shrimp in the pot of rising sea levels, be frozen by a new ice age or obliterated by a crashing meteorite.    

            Many wax nostalgic for the days when great beasts roamed the earth without so many annoying, pesky hominids leaving carbon footprints everywhere.  They think wistfully of the times when plants weren’t poisoned by mankind’s toxic chemicals, animals not slaughtered, and all Darwin’s creatures lived in the selfless, peaceful pursuit of positive mutations leading to changing bodies and new species.  Well, not peaceful or selfless, but at least there were less people.

            The constant question seems, ‘what have humans done?’  Pollute the world, butcher each other, pock-mark the land with the infectious rash of houses and businesses.  We are, it seems a parasite on dear mother earth.  The world and its beauties, the earth and its resources are too good for the likes of us.

            Tragically, young people are embracing this lesson.  Children are coming to the conclusion that they don’t belong.  Children are being taught, by extreme environmentalists, the implicit lesson that humans are the problem and their place is…nowhere.  Not in homes that take up green spaces, and for goodness sake, not in the green spaces themselves!

            So do we belong?  What do we tell the little ones, now that they are growing up?  Do we tell them to spare the earth their misery and stop reproducing?  Do we tell them to stop eating and polluting the earth with farming?  Do we tell them to leave the seas and forests in peace?  Do we tell them, as we would like to tell other parasites, to die and leave their host alone? 

            I’ll tell you what I think.  I think that however you slice it, however you spin it, however you may hate it, humans do belong on the earth.  See, it doesn’t matter if you are what some so derisively call ‘a religionist’ (believer to the rest of us), or if you are an ardent Darwinist, you can’t ignore the very real fact that we’re here.

            To those of us who believe God created the world, well, we figure if He put us here, then that’s good enough reason to stay and enjoy the place.  But to those who are Darwinists, well let’s all give ourselves a pat on the back as one of the most successful organisms in the universe (as far as we know).  Our genetic ancestors clawed, scraped, survived, reproduced, thought and dreamed their way to the top of a pretty perilous and difficult pinnacle of life.  Ergo, we belong because we earned it.

            Now, here’s the thing.  Neither viewpoint gives us license to destroy the gift we have.  If we believe God put us here, we have to believe he expects us to treat the place nicely.  And if we believe we rose through the ranks to take possession of it, we ought to be careful to preserve it so that we can keep evolving. 

            But the fact remains that we belong, and our presence is good for the earth.  Alone among the species, we are concerned for other species.  Alone among the species, we have both the power to destroy our environment and the will to heal and renew it.

             The unspoken truth is that our minds and efforts constitute enormous natural resources that may one day accomplish more than we can imagine, for ourselves and for the earth; and possibly beyond both.

            So let’s never, ever, leave our children with the sense that they don’t belong.  Because any way you spin it, they did inherit the earth.  And they don’t deserve any guilt for that.

Have a great day,

Edwin