Kill 'Em All: God's Prerogative

The Biblical World notes an interesting discussion over Israel's capture of Jericho.

The story is well-known for the part where Joshua and the Israelite circle Jericho, blowing trumpets until the city's walls come tumbling down. My kids used to have a Veggie Tales video that framed the story as one of "doing it God's way, not your own." The vegetable Israelites trusted God by obeying the bizarre orders of Joshua. They brought down veggie Jericho and immediately made their way to the Promised Land.

Not recounted in the kid vid, and hardly ever in polite company, is the actual Biblical story. For example, here's Joshua 6:20-21:

20. And the people shouted, and (the priests) blew with the trumpets; and it was when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, that the people shouted with a great shout, and the wall fell down in its place and the people went up into the city, every man opposite him, and they took the city.

21. And they completely destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.

This is, of course, an orgy of genocide and slaughter. It's indiscriminate--excepting the household of Rahab the harlot, whose aid of Israel is rewarded by their being spared. And it's all God-sanctioned: consider that what arouses God's anger is the later actions of one Achan, who does some looting in Jericho and sets back Israel's army. Achan pays for the crime with his life.

Now, some apologists bleat that Jericho had been warned beforehand. The city foolishly decided to oppose Israel; therefore, God was moral and Joshua was moral and Israel was moral to fuck up absolutely everyone and everything in Jericho.

Today, however, we can hardly accept such a feeble excuse. We know it's unfair to expect a city to surrender to an invading force. There's no way to reconcile the specific events recounted in the this chapter with an all-powerful, all-smart, human-loving deity. Surely such a God could have found a safer, saner method for achieving his divine purpose? For example, why not whip up a wall of sand--Exodus-style--on either side of Israel as they simply pass through Jericho unharmed?

But no, the God-apologists need to protect their idea of God by blaming the victims. Or, as John Piper does, the divine defenders just say genocide is fine...when God does it:

It's right for God to slaughter women and children anytime he pleases. God gives life and he takes life. Everybody who dies, dies because God wills that they die.

God is taking life every day. He will take 50,000 lives today. Life is in God's hand. God decides when your last heartbeat will be, and whether it ends through cancer or a bullet wound. God governs.

So God is God! He rules and governs everything. And everything he does is just and right and good. God owes us nothing.

"May I have another?"

Hallelujah, John! God can fucking kill anyone, anytime. He can stomp and maim until he's satisfied that He's killed enough. Heck, he can juggle the freakin' corpses and gargle their bones, and by definition it would be morally good and right.

And what's more, whatever the hell he decides to do to you, me, your little baby, your dear Aunt Sally, or whomever: we all should just thank him. He owes us nothing.

Piper's demented view is not far off from that of the odious Jewish convert, Jacob Stein. Stein believes that the Holocaust was essentially God's response to the Jewish Enlightenment in Europe.

It is true that I am implying that generally the victims of the Holocaust were sinners who were deserving of their fate however I believe that this is in fact obviously true and we will honor their deaths by learning from this.

In my opinion, the Holocaust is one of the strongest proofs of the truth of Judaism.

Stein has nothing to say about what the other millions of Nazi victims did to deserve their fate. Neither does he explain why American Jews, hardly known for orthodoxy, were spared. All he knows for sure is Haskalah-therefore-Holocaust. Bravo, Stein!

Piper and Stein agree that God uses human brutality to make his holy will known and to achieve his divine design in the world.

It's easy enough to dismiss abhorrent views such as those of Piper and Stein. Most of us, however, are unprepared to tolerate indiscriminate killing, genocide, and wanton violence. This is a good thing.

But come back to the Veggie Tales video I mentioned before. Remember what the decent little tomato and funny cucumber say: the right thing to do is what God tells you to do.

What they don't say is that God has sometimes told people to do some pretty awful and wrong things, if you believe there is a God to tell anybody anything.

Let me close with a modest proposal to leave vegetables for cooking and eating, leave God and the Bible in the fiction bin where they belong, leave moral decisions to rational minds, and leave genocide and slaughter altogether.

Book of Love

Family fun: We write our own book.

My middle child turned six years old this week. She's a very bright and sweet girl, self-assured and quiet. Like me, she's a homebody and an introvert. I have looked  closely at her this week. Her growing up fills me with more emotion than I think I can handle.

I get nearly as emotional concerning my two other children, but our relationships are different. The older girl is, by virtue of being first-born, the one whose growing up is most comfortable for me. As she grows, so do I: it's like we are on an adventure together. My boy, now four, is a wonder because of his autism. Although he's the baby of the family, I think of him as a little man and see his growth as just filling into what I know he will be.

Then there's the wife. She and I are getting older. We feel middle age coming on. Our lives are not monotonous or boring, but rather stable and muted. This is good. In her, I still see the girl who used to link arms with me when we walk, the girl who got a certain twinkle in her eye whenever she saw a baby. She's come a long way in managing her depression and setting herself up for a transition from stay-at-home mom to working woman. She's as beautiful as ever.

I've become all meh on religion. There's too much God and Jesus stuff in the house, but I have more important matters to think about than the biblical blah-blah. I know everyone in the family but me is a believer and a Christian, but I won't be surprised if the religiosity slowly tones down to nothing in the coming years. My presence in the house must pose questions everyone has either to ignore or face:

• Why isn't there any evidence in favor of God's existence?
• Why don't facts about the world/universe lend themselves to God as an explanation?
• Why is there no good evidence of miracles?
• Why is there no good evidence of the extraordinary events concerning Jesus, such as his birth, miracles, and resurrection?
• Why do the so-called proofs of God's existence and the apologies for Jewish and Christian doctrines fail to complete what ought to be clear slam-dunks?

Besides, all the "God loves you" and "Jesus wants you to bleh" stuff butts up against the reality of Christian doctrine: You are a sinner who better beg for forgiveness. The more polite expression of the doctrine is that humanity is fallen and needs grace to be reconciled, but my formulation is no less accurate and may be the truer representation of attitude.

In short, I have the luxury of being meh about religion. Eventually, everyone will have a WTF moment on this. If anyone cares to share the WTF with me, I'll be ready to listen.

The Plan Is Launched

Excellent!

This past weekend, I was elected to the Executive Board of my local parent-teacher organization. The group supports enrichment programs for students, runs events to encourage parental involvement, and keep lines of communication going between parents and teachers.

I am grateful for the chance to be a voice for quality educational programs and standards. As the parent of an autistic child, I will represent many more who want the system to reach out to their children too. Finally, the participation and networking will help me gain local notoriety as I work toward future involvement in the town's school committee and board of selectmen.

Magical Thinking: Sometimes You Just Gotta Believe

This past weekend, I chilled out on the couch with my kids. We watched a program re-telling "Jack and the Beanstalk." In this version, Jack receives the magic beans from a roadside vendor. The vendor advises that the beans only work if you believe in magic. The tale's hero, of course, believes in magic.

The "you gotta believe" idea--what I call the magical thinking trope--appears a lot in kids' movies and shows. When a story uses magical thinking, the character who doesn't believe or who is skeptical always gets shown up by the power of belief. For instance, the heroine who knows in her heart there is a "diamond castle" that can be called into existence by singing a song--she will prevail. In another program, the skeptical character will eventually be forced to admit that there are powers beyond rational and scientific explanation.

I don't see the point of putting magical thinking out on TV like this. Maybe it has something to do with an ideal of childhood--a time when magic seemed real and wonder abounded. But I think the producers have it wrong. Look at most any Bugs Bunny cartoon, universally smarter and funnier than today's kiddie pablum. In these animated shorts, humor comes from the fun of being able to violate reality. In the classic Bugs joke, he defies the law of gravity, but then notes he never studied law.

Bugs cartoons play with magical thinking; they never take it seriously, and never promote it as a life value.

The magical thinking of today's kiddie media comes with an ugly downside, too. When you tell the little darlings that magic is real you also tell them monsters are real. They have to accept both. The world of fairies and demigods by necessity includes sorcery and demons. The world of Jesus is the world of Satan. The world of the faithful is the world of infidels. You open their hearts to both wonder and terror; you cannot shut out the scary.

In contrast, a world without magic is a world where power comes from the mind, the will, the body, the community, the resources, and the technology. Who manages these is best positioned to influence the world. There are no magic spells in this world, only knowledge and power. There are no hidden helpers, only one's friends and one's network. There are no gods to please, only a society to contribute to. There are no devils to resist, only bullies.

There is both wonder and terror in this world, too. There is scary. The difference is that we are part of it all. In the magical world, the dram of good an evil happens on some other plane, hidden from us except for the magic that brings it out.

There's no need for magical thinking. We can have fantasy movies without bolstering general superstition. We can dramatize positivity without advocating miracle-dependence. We can promote imagination and creativity without endorsing irrationality.

Reality may be scarier than fictional monsters, at least at times and for some people. But reality is certainly far better than magic.

Bone Stories

Dem bones.

My oldest daughter is nine years old. When she was a toddler, she became fascinated that people's bones could break. In fact, she was nervous about it and wanted to know how people broke bones and what it was like.

To answer her anxiety, I began telling what we have come to call "bone stories," bedtime tales about different bones I broke when I was younger. There are four stories, one for each bone I've broken. When I was seven, I broke my left arm, near my elbow. At 12, I broke my collarbone playing a neighborhood game called "bike tag." I broke a bone in my hand when I was 15. Finally, at age 20, I broke my nose.

I told my girl bone stories to make her laugh. I hoped she would realize it wasn't easy to break a bone. Something extreme and sudden had to happen, often something dumb. I wanted her to know that even though breaking a bone hurt, it wasn't totally unbearable. Other hurts are far worse.

I've been telling bone stories for maybe five years. At one point, the stories were a nightly bedtime ritual. I now have two daughters, and they both like me to tell the stories to them. Of course, the stories bore me now, so I occasionally jazz them up. I'll go into cartoonish detail about how fast I was running, or how many times I somersaulted in the air, or how many tackles I evaded. The stories get ever more outlandish. I like to watch the girls' faces in their bunk beds as I hop around or whirl my hands to describe the moments leading up to the fracture.

My son, who at four years old already has broken his arm, does not hear bone stories at night. Instead, he and I wrestle in his bedroom. Yet, the same principle is involved from wrestling to bone stories: I want the kids to remember the feeling of having fun with me, the feeling of being loved by me. The wrestling and bone stories are unique gifts. I'm the only one in the world who understands the way my boy likes to wrestle. I'm the only daddy with the special stories that involve their uncles and their grandparents.

I cherish the feeling of having unique gifts to pass along to my kids again and again. I'm not always in the mood to wrestle or to tell a bone story. I usually go on despite my mood because I understand the time for gift-giving is finite--that is, the kids will grow up soon enough and not want either to wrestle or to hear my stories--and I believe the offices of love make gift-giving my responsibility. In other words, these kinds of interactions with the kids are part of my obligation as a loving parent.

My wish is that these gifts, my gifts, will be appreciated in the lasting memories of my children. A poem like Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" expresses something like what I hope for:

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

I've taught the poem for many years, and I confess it's a personal favorite. Some students mistakenly interpret the poem to be about an abusive, alcoholic father. But the battered knuckle of the father is from his day-labor, as is the dirt-caked palm. There is some violence in the poem, falling pans and scraped ears, yet these are inadvertent. At the same time, I know a parent's love can be "violent"--by which I mean not aggressive or destructive but rather messy and unstable: we parents struggle to hold ourselves and our lives together while also caring for the children. Sometimes we can't hold on or we hold on too tightly.

The poem's final image, the sleepy boy who doesn't want to let go, tells everything: the boy holds his father against bedtime, against sleepiness, against growing up, against the inevitable loss of the father to death.

The poem's speaker remembers that he wanted to remain with his father, that he wanted his father to stay. I want my kids to remember that for me. And I want them to know that I would stay if I could.

Sunday Funnies: Five Favorite Comic Strips

When I was a kid, I always grabbed the Sunday comics page.

Ah, memories of youth! Few things were as pleasurable to me as waking up early Sunday morning to retrieve the newspaper and devour the comics. I read everything, but I had favorites.

Here are five of them:

1) Calvin and Hobbes. I started to read Calvin and Hobbes in 10th grade (1985-6), and was immediately taken with it. Calvin was the quintessential wise-ass kid. Hobbes was an equal, not a sidekick or gimmick. Together, their observations and adventures were a first everyday encounter with beauty for me. Creator Bill Watterson's Sunday layouts were gorgeously drawn. Even today I see some of those pictures in my mind. And of course, I still have some of the books in my home.

2) Doonesbury. I loved the political subject of Doonesbury, but what hit me--and many other readers too, I suspect--was that the strip really told the story of a group of friends. It was the story of their lives. Garry Trudeau showed that their lives, like our own, were deeply political.

3) Garfield. Don't give me crap about this one. Garfield was somewhat new when I was a kid. The Garfield I remember was a hilarious character--shrewd, grumpy, insistent, sometimes just mean. Jon, Garfield's owner, wasn't such a goofball. The strip began to suck for me when it became more of an ensemble piece, but it was grand once. It helped that I had a cat at home that seemed kind of like Garfield.

4) Bloom County. For a while, Bloom County was a big deal. It was like Doonesbury but edgier and more outrageous. For me, the strip was at its best when Opus and Steve Dallas were more like bit players and not the focus. Opus was always an engaging character, both naive and intrepid, but I liked Binkley, Binkley's Dad, Cutter John, Milo, and the other woodland creatures. That's when it was a strip about growing up in Reagan-era America--when it was OK to act as though pretty lies were true.

5) The Far Side. The Far Side was always a popular comic. It always seemed to capture the strangeness of modern life. The balance of image and caption was always flawless.

I have some books of my favorite strips, but otherwise I don't think my children will ever engage comics in print. That's a little sad, isn't it?

Passover/Easter Reflections

The other Jesus and Mo.

The rites of spring are come and gone again.

My family held two seders this year, the first with only the nuclear Tanners and the second involving a fuller Tanner clan. In both cases, we conducted the seder briskly to skip all flummery and to keep the kids entertained.

My dad's seder talks about the Exodus a bit more than mine. He presents the liberation of the Hebrew slaves as a basis for believing all people should have political and religious freedom. I focus more on self-advocacy and self-determination.

For the Easter part of the weekend, my wife and I hosted a meal with her family. First, however, I went to my wife's church to see my son and older daughter sing in the holiday choir. The kids were very cute, but the Easter service was insufferable. The music was so douchey, with the basic message that Jesus is Superman.

The sermon was also dreadful. The pastor asserted again and again that Jesus REALLY DID die on the cross. Really, he did. He died.

And how do we know he really really died?

Because the details of the Gospel of Mark are not what we would expect if the story was made-up, says the pastor. Here's the passage we covered together:

1 - When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body.

2 - Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb

3 - and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?”

4 -  But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away.

5 - As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.

6 -  “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him.

7 - But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”

8 - Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

The pastor was trying to dispel the idea that Jesus perhaps fainted and didn't die. He was also arguing against the hypothesis that the corpse was moved.

I won't go into the specific points the pastor made, but I want to dwell for a moment on the idea that only Mark's accuracy is at issue here. In fact, we are dealing with reliability at many levels in the Marcian account, where a fuller reporting sequence is as follows:

The young man in the tomb
↓
[time]
↓
The three women
↓
[time]
↓
The first people they finally told
↓
[time]
↓
The people who heard the story from the first people
↓
[time (decades?)]
↓
The person or group who wrote down Mark into manuscript form

Add to this a muddied bed of Christian interpretation and re-interpretation, and you see my point: between whatever might actually have happened and us are layers of re-tellings, time, cultural and linguistic nuance, and beliefs based on a very different and more limited understanding of reality.

Therefore, whoever produced Mark was decades away and between two and five people-layers removed from the reported events. So, what is it that is REALLY, REALLY true in the story?

Clearly, we don't know what's true. Yet many of us remain comfortable with assigning high probability that of all life forms in the universe, this one human being reversed death.

Fortunately, my home was filled with turkey, vegetables, and milk chocolate to make everyone forget the amount to cognitive dissonance required to muddle through the Jewish and Christian rituals.

And so this is Pesach, and what have you done?

Arguing together. It's enough.

I look forward to holding a small Passover seder with my wife and children tonight. Tomorrow, we will all go to my parents' condo and have a larger seder with my brothers and their families.

I love the seder. I like that we always have to think about the order of events as well as how to execute them properly. Performing the seder is never rote. Indeed, I always appreciated this in synagogue, say at Shabbat: there was always checking and double-checking at the bimah to make sure sure the service was going off correctly, even f everyone there had done 1,000 Shabbat services apiece.

I love the food of the seder, but I enjoy the songs most of all. The kids always get a kick out of "Dayenu." I cannot decide whether I like "Adir Hu" or "Chad Gadya" better. Mostly, I love the sound of my Dad's voice, and the knowledge that my Mom is happy to hear us all.

That the Exodus story is fictional matters not so much. If it comes up, we can discuss it. The Passover table is meant for serious discussion. Many households prohibit politics and/or religion at the dinner table. But at the Passover table, no subject is off-limits and no argument can get too heated.

Let's have at it, then. However you give meaning to Pesach, even if you give no meaning, I wish that you make it happy and get happiness in return.

Why My Children Go to Church (and Why I Occasionally Go Too)

At the risk of hurting my Gnu Atheist creds, such that they are, I want to explain why my children go to Christian services every week, and why I sometimes do too.

I'm disclosing here because of a press release from Rice University with the headline, "Science and religion do mix." The release discusses a paper recently published by sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund. It reads:

They [Ecklund and co-authors] interviewed a scientifically selected sample of 275 participants, pulled from a survey of 2,198 tenured and tenure-track faculty in the natural and social sciences at 21 elite U.S. research universities. Only 15 percent of those surveyed view religion and science as always in conflict. Another 15 percent say the two are never in conflict, and 70 percent believe religion and science are only sometimes in conflict. Approximately half of the original survey population expressed some form of religious identity, whereas the other half did not.

“Much of the public believes that as science becomes more prominent, secularization increases and religion decreases,” Ecklund said. “Findings like these among elite scientists, who many individuals believe are most likely to be secular in their beliefs, definitely call into question ideas about the relationship between secularization and science.”

Many of those surveyed cited issues in the public realm (teaching of creationism versus evolution, stem cell research) as reasons for believing there is conflict between the two. The study showed that these individuals generally have a particular kind of religion in mind (and religious people and institutions) when they say that religion and science are in conflict.

Ecklund's paper and her previous research have already been treated by others, including Jerry Coyne, Eric MacDonald, P.Z. Myers, and Jason Rosenhouse. If you can stomach the sanctimoniousness, Uncommon Descent (Denyse O'Leary) has also noted Ecklund.

Now, I am not a scientist. But I am an atheist and I feel strongly that religious beliefs and rituals waste good human energy. That's why I stopped participating in and supporting my local Chabad Jewish center. One might therefore legitimately ask why on Earth I would agree to have my children go to church every week, and why I myself end up going to church stuff sometimes. So, if one should ask, these are my answers:

• My wife takes the kids to church. She wants to go to church, she wants the children to be Christian, and I support her.
• I go very infrequently, maybe two to four times a year. Usually, this is because one or more of the kids is singing or something like that. I would gladly go more often if my wife said that she wanted me to. I happen to like being with my wife. It's a love thing.
• When I go, I don't pray or worship. I just observe and listen. Whatever opinions I have about it all are expressed here.
• So far as I have gathered from asking questions and observing, most of what the kids learn at church is good stuff: be considerate, don't insult others, listen to Mommy and Daddy. The whole super-Jesus stuff is window dressing, as far as I can tell. It's another kind of Santa Claus belief, a metaphor for the stoic heroism that some think characterizes their lives.
• I have no worries at all about my kids, religion, and atheism. I really don't. I might worry more about them becoming Republicans.
• Do I want my kids to be atheists? No, I have no special desires about whether they decide to accept or reject religion. But I also have no special problem offering my opinion on religious beliefs and teachings. In the end, I trust that between what the kids learn from my wife's Christianity and from my own atheism, they'll find a religion or non-religion that makes them happy and supports their larger goals in life.
• The real "prize," as it were, is the kids pursuing the education and professions that excite them. The endgame is for them to find love, happiness, and well-being. If they think kneeling before a cross is part of this, then I won't squawk. I just happen to think that supplication before imaginary beings is unnecessary. On the other hand, I imagine that church may provide professional networking benefits for the kids--and for my wife and me.
• Do I think science and religion are in conflict? Yes, probably. I don't think they have a lot to say to each other, even though they would like to. But people negotiate conflicts all the time without being scarred.

So, I disagree with the headline: science and religion don't mix, in my opinion. Atheism and religion don't mix, either. But they can co-exist, and they can even fall in love with each other. And they can stay in love together--ooh, time for some Al Green.

Immoral Atheists

Theists think that atheism is all about partying on.

Before leaving my home early this morning for work, I met my wife at the front door and remarked how beautiful our two daughters were. The two girls, 8 and 5 years old, were sitting together on the sofa watching TV. A few minutes earlier, I had come upon my three-year-old son playing nicely by himself. He invited me to join him, but unfortunately I had to decline (although I would have liked to play for a few minutes).

This house of mine is full of love...and goodness.

And so I get annoyed when self-proclaimed arbiters of morality deign to point out the moral difference between theists and atheists:

It’s not so much that atheists are immoral, but that immoral people are often atheists. That is, the guy who kicks cats anyway, and fears divine retribution, may resolve his problem by deciding that there is no God and therefore no divine retribution.

Then he goes back to kicking cats in peace. Other atheists don’t like him but what can they do?

Assertion 1: Immoral people are often atheists.
Response: The writer refers to no specific immoral people here, but do we need to go any farther than the definitely-theist Anders Breivik to wonder whether we have any real data to suggest that immoral people--however defined--are more likely to be atheist than theist? Would knowing whether prison inmates are by and large theist or atheist be useful in addressing the question? It bears mentioning that to a theist of the Abrahamic sort, sin and immorality were not brought into the world by atheists. Theists may therefore wish to exercise a bit more humility and shame.

Hypothetical 1: That is, the guy who kicks cats anyway, and fears divine retribution, may resolve his problem by deciding that there is no God and therefore no divine retribution.
Response: The logic is awry. If the guy kicks cats "anyway," he would seem not to care about "deciding that there is no God." Besides, wouldn't such a person prefer to decide that God exists to allow for confession of sins, acting sincerely contrite, and then going back to the cat-kicking? The writer also seems to think that people "decide" that God doesn't exist in order to overcome fear of divine retribution. This reasoning seems akin to deciding that one's mother and father don't exist in order to overcome fear of disappointing them: mom and dad either exist or they don't, regardless of one's decision. God's existence, on the other hand, is not only unsupported but possibly unsupportable.

Rhetorical flourish 1: Then he goes back to kicking cats in peace. Other atheists don’t like him but what can they do?
Response: What can they do? They can call the police. They can alert PETA and the SPCA. They can confront him in person or write him a nasty letter. They can mobilize to keep neighborhood cats away from the person. Seems to me atheists have plenty of useful options. The writer displays a profound lack of imagination.

*  *  *  *  *

The writer above obviously means to argue that atheism does not stipulate a principle from which one could condemn the actions of a cat-kicker. This argument is correct and completely banal. People construct their principles from several sources: parents, teachers, friends, books, political philosophy, and so on. Being an atheist does not at all prevent one from condemning the cat-kicker. 

Equally important is the realization that being a theist does not at all permit one to condemn the cat-kicker. The theist's source of morality is exactly the same as the atheist's: parents, teachers, friends, books, political philosophy, and so on.

What's more, in the real world, where moral choices are expressed in and through activity, cultural institutions are designed to guide ethical behavior. We have laws. We have penal codes. We have informal enforcement: as a kid, did you ever have someone's mother scowl at you for acting too wild? In the real world, immoral behavior can have any number of retributive consequences.

Ans that's why I started this with the lovely picture of my family. I don't fear divine retribution, but I do wish for my family to view me favorably. I do want to be seen as good and fair in their eyes. I do want them to be kind, courteous, brave, and humble. 

Those who think atheists are immoral or that immoral people are atheists completely ignore that atheists have actual families and loved ones. They forget that atheists live and work in the real world, subject to the same basic rules of conduct. 

Depression

This past weekend, I felt confident I would run a full 10K (6.2 miles) in a decent time. I had trained to finish. The last four weeks or so saw me doing long runs at or about 10K. During this time I also ran intervals and lifted weights. So, I saw myself as basically in shape, just a bit heavy.

Well, I stank up the race. I ran a decent two miles in the sun and humidity before becoming totally fatigued. I wound up walking most of the middle part of the course. I ran the last mile or so at a good clip and finished strong, but otherwise I'm totally bummed at my performance. Was I not really ready to run the race? Was the heat and humidity too much for me? Had I not tapered in the final week like I should have?

My thinking is that I should have focused more on hydration in the final 1-2 weeks of training. I should have been less strenuous in my lifting routine. Finally, I should have refrained from running intervals on the Friday before the race. So yeah, I'm bummed. But I can make peace with a failure and move on. In fact, I'm looking forward to redeeming myself in another race.

I share this reflection because it highlights the difference between me and the depressives I live with, my wife and eight-year-old daughter. It's taken me a long time to figure out what depression is (and is not) but I think I now have a decent handle on it. Basically, depression is an inability to function as one would be able to otherwise. It's rooted in being overwhelmed and over-stressed. It's marked by a lingering sense that there's nothing that can be done about a certain set of circumstances. It's not just feeling personally helpless but feeling oppressed by conditions such that no one can make them better.

An example, an evaluation of my eight-year-old revealed that she feels depressed about her three-year-old brother's autism. She knows that when he gets upset, the whole house is affected. It gets stressful and loud, and it's hard to smile. This situation affects my daughter profoundly. It's not just mood but ability to focus and to engage life as it happens. Often, she feels that the situation will not get better, that there's nothing she or any of us can really do to fix things.

A few depression quotes:

"Depression is the inability to construct a future."
-- Rollo May

"If depression is creeping up and must be faced, learn something about the nature of the beast: You may escape without a mauling."
-- Dr. R. W. Shepherd

"A lot of people don't realize that depression is an illness. I don't wish it on anyone, but if they would know how it feels, I swear they would think twice before they just shrug it."
-- Jonathan Davis

"That's the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it's impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key."
-- Elizabeth Wurtzel

I cannot speak first-hand about the experiences and thinking that my wife and daughter go through when they are depressed. I have a hard time relating to what I think is going on with them because even when I feel "helpless," I often can make peace with the situation and find another outlet for balancing myself. I have only rarely felt as though I wasn't able to lock in on an activity to get my swagger back.

Making peace is what I want for my wife and daughter. I am optimistic that with the help of therapy, both of them will find ways to make peace with depression. I don't think the depression will ever fully go away for either of them. It's part of the hard-wiring of their brains, brought out by particular stresses in our lives. Yet all of us can learn to live with it, if not embrace it. We can learn to recognize it and not be overwhelmed by it.

On the Mountain Trails

My wife, our three kids, and I went to New Hampshire this past weekend for my extended family's annual get-together. I love the White Mountains area and would live there the rest of my life if circumstances ever permitted. There's no break, however, from my son's autism, and I came out of the weekend with one new observation on the way others see my son.

People who aren't familiar with autistic children don't seem to grasp why such kids act up like they sometimes will. They think the kids just need the right instructions given in the proper way. To them, the kids seem quirky, or stubborn, or selfish, or immature, or undisciplined. In short, to them the "problem" is nurture, not nature.

I don't mean to harsh on these people. I think that maybe they sense that our son is different, and it makes them uncomfortable. From his appearance alone, my son looks as though he should behave as any other child. The location of his discrepancy simply isn't apparent. They must think that there's got to be some way to snap my son out of his autism.

I suppose I, too, hope for a magic technique that will help my son calm his body when life forces him out of his comfort zone. I wish I had the correct words and demeanor to keep my son's behavior in balance all the time. I get frustrated when I can't get him to listen to me. But there is no magic, and my wife and I (and our daughters) do the best we can.

Luckily, our families and our friends support us and are as understanding as possible. We also have many great resources that help us to learn about autism and about better and poorer strategies for dealing with an autistic child.

Unfortunately, my wife and I are on a bit of an island with our son. The nuances and pressures of our daily lives are largely invisible to outsiders, even to our families. What is more, our son is on an island of his own, detached from us. This is really the hardest thought, because we don't want him to be alone. We want to reach him and have him able to reach us.

I refuse to be saddened or discouraged by anything about my son's autism, however. As much energy as it takes to care for him, he is also sweet, loving, and independent. We're encouraged that he makes progress at pre-school. And he loves the mountain trails, just like me.

Beautiful Boy

Darling, darling, darling.

My 3-year-old son is sweet, lovable, and autistic. He can be hard to relate to and difficult to raise--more so for my wife, who is home with him while I'm away at the office--but he is a light in my life. More than anything, I want him to grow up safe and happy. There are moments when I wonder if it will be possible.

Veteran journalist Robert MacNeill delivers a heartbreaking report on his autistic grandson. The piece shows very well that autism affects not only children but entire families. Even in "mild" cases such as my son's, autism can be devastating. And I am only beginning to realize this.

Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.

Perhaps the most devastating realization of all is that "it will never get easier." My son and our family will always have to cope with and manage his autism.

Ah, but it really is all right. We'll not only deal but flourish. We'll just have to be patient, as Lennon sings.

Yet, I must make one more confession. Much of my son's behavior I see in myself. Perhaps I am only indulging in natural self-centeredness, the kind where we blithely assume that others see and feel things as we do. Yet I have always been a person of routine, sometimes rigid routine. I have never been one for socializing or easy with eye contact. Much of my life is internal--indeed, I blog partly to express this internal life! I am fascinated with transformations and little things much as my son enjoys watching his toy cars roll.

My son is making progress. He goes to a special pre-school and seems to enjoy it. He is surrounded by experts and family who love him. We are all learning to care for him and for ourselves. And we are all hopeful about a future that we know will have many rough patches but also a curious charm and intrigue that we would be hard pressed to trade.

Autistic Son, Artistic Daughter

Spring 2003: Enjoying the time with my oldest girl.

I had a strange and wonderful weekend. It began on Friday afternoon, when I learned from my wife that the doctors at Children's Hospital in Boston had diagnosed our son as autistic.

I'm still reeling from this pronouncement because I hadn't expected it. My wife and I knew our son had some language delays and rigid behaviors. We understood that he was certainly on that autism spectrum. But we never thought he would be diagnosed as actual autistic. His intellectual, social, and behavioral patterns have always seemed just slightly away from where we thought they should be. And, thanks to Early Intervention, he has made great progress in the past year. So, we were surprised.

My son is now three years old. His birthday is today. I got to spend lots of one-on-one time with him yesterday, and I watched him play at his auntie's house this evening. He's a very sweet kid. He's funny and happy and adventurous. I worry about not parenting him right, about not pushing when I should or pushing too much when I should back off. But I believe in him, and I think he'll be able to continue his growth this year. And while I would never wish for anyone to be autistic, I am glad that my son is who he is. Autistic or not, it doesn't change how I feel about him. I know we all have a long and difficult road in front of us. I completely embrace the opportunity to travel it with my son, my wife, and our family.

My oldest girl turned eight on Saturday, that is, yesterday. She's a lot like my son: intense, energetic, occasionally acting inappropriately in social settings. She's become a big reader. She reads in bed every night. My wife and I worry that she perhaps has some autism spectrum disorder that's been overlooked. My son's condition is a bit more obvious and stereotypical, but perhaps in girls the signs present differently because of different social pressures and biological tendencies.

Although I won't be surprised if my daughter is confirmed to be along the autism spectrum more than most average people, I suspect that the truth is my daughter already wants more out of her life than we can give her at home. She wants attention, she wants to sing and dance, she wants to direct and lead. She has plans and schemes, and her family can't really help her realize them. She is essentially an artist struggling to find her medium and make her style. At some point in her journey, she'll have to leave her family behind.

I have an autistic son and an artistic daughter. It's a wonder, all right. It's a wonder. Hence, the title of this post.

My Shalom Bayis: A Birthday Wish

In Judaism, Shalom Bayis signifies an ideal in family life encompassing the spousal relationship and general tranquility in the home. In practical terms, the ideal is realized both through kind words and avoidance of harsh speech: more of the first, less of the second.

What I want most of all for my birthday--I am 41 years old today--is Shalom Bayis. This is my pet ideal for 2011. I want to to make more shalom, "peace," in my home and in my sphere of influence, my neighborhood, my work, my blogosphere, and so on. My birthday wish, therefore, is to practice and teach the peaceful arts better than I have before.

Unfortunately, Shalom Bayis also endorses a patriarchal ideal in traditional Judaism. The husband is always and only head of the home. The wife, although essential and esteemed, is always secondary. Husband and wife are partners and obligated to each other, but their roles and public positioning are distinct and never coequal.

For this reason, I hereby co-opt Shalom Bayis for my own sensibilities and will implement it in my own way. Neither Judaism nor Yiddishkeit stands above me (or below me) as an authority on Shalom Bayis. I say thank you very much for the concept, and I will now employ it as I see fit.

And, yes, this is a peaceful stance. I am genuinely grateful for the concept of Shalom Bayis. It focuses my mind on what a peaceful home might really be, on what makes peace, and on what I consider home. But Shalom Bayis is my responsibility and my work. It doesn't belong to Judaism or to Jews. It belongs to me, and so I have lots of work to do and little time to worry about how others define their world.

Fortunately, I already have much peace in my life and in my home especially. My lesson of the past year, however, is the realization that I can create peace. I can make more than I have done before.

• I can use the language of action to show my love and gratitude for my family.
• I can use my words wisely by speaking when I should and remaining silent when speech is unnecessary.
• I can work harder and longer.
• I can eat less and I can eat healthier.
• I can exercise more frequently.
• I can walk mindfully and purposefully.
• I can cook meals for the family.
• I can visit friends and family.
• I can laugh more and remember happiness.
• I can become slower to anger.
• I can reduce spending.
• I can read and write more, and with greater diversity.
• I can share new experiences.

Peace is one more lesson in a life that certainly does get better and better.

Permissive Versus Demanding Parenting

Amy Tan, whose story "Two Kinds" fictionalizes Chinese parenting and children who experience it.

Amy Chua, a professor at Yale Law School, writes in the Wall Street Journal that high demands and an emphasis on academic achievement produce happy and successful children in the long run. Chinese parenting, she says, exemplifies this demanding model, which is contrasted with the more nurturing and permissive Western style of parenting:

What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up. But if done properly, the Chinese strategy produces a virtuous circle. Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America. Once a child starts to excel at something—whether it's math, piano, pitching or ballet—he or she gets praise, admiration and satisfaction. This builds confidence and makes the once not-fun activity fun. This in turn makes it easier for the parent to get the child to work even more.

At the level of parent-child interaction, the contrast in Chinese and Western parenting styles is remarkable:

The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable—even legally actionable—to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, "Hey fatty—lose some weight." By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, talking in terms of "health" and never ever mentioning the f-word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self-image. (I also once heard a Western father toast his adult daughter by calling her "beautiful and incredibly competent." She later told me that made her feel like garbage.) Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As. Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best. Chinese parents can say, "You're lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you." By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they're not disappointed about how their kids turned out.

Chua advises Western style parents to assume their children are strong and behave accordingly, rather than worrying about the self-esteem of the kids:

Western parents worry a lot about their children's self-esteem. But as a parent, one of the worst things you can do for your child's self-esteem is to let them give up. On the flip side, there's nothing better for building confidence than learning you can do something you thought you couldn't.

She also says that "Chinese parents believe that their kids owe them everything. The reason for this is a little unclear, but it's probably a combination of Confucian filial piety and the fact that the parents have sacrificed and done so much for their children." Finally, she observes that

Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children's own desires and preferences. That's why Chinese daughters can't have boyfriends in high school and why Chinese kids can't go to sleepaway camp. It's also why no Chinese kid would ever dare say to their mother, "I got a part in the school play! I'm Villager Number Six. I'll have to stay after school for rehearsal every day from 3:00 to 7:00, and I'll also need a ride on weekends." God help any Chinese kid who tried that one.

Chua sums up the difference as one of values:

Western parents try to respect their children's individuality, encouraging them to pursue their true passions, supporting their choices, and providing positive reinforcement and a nurturing environment. By contrast, the Chinese believe that the best way to protect their children is by preparing them for the future, letting them see what they're capable of, and arming them with skills, work habits and inner confidence that no one can ever take away.

Chua does not hide that she feels Western parenting is kinder but ultimately allows children to fail as adults. Western parenting leaves children vulnerable and bereft in a brutal world.

Of course, not everyone agrees that Chinese style parenting is as successful and superior as Chua claims. At The Last Psychiatrist, the writer criticizes Chua confusing awesome for crazy:

You/she'll say that the Chinese discipline is what makes the kids successful, but that's silly.  Given that her husband is a Jewish American equivalent to her Chinese Americanness, why isn't their daughters' successes the result of Jewish fathering? Chua would say that she's the one who made her practice, but she's at work all day just like he is, right? I get that she yells more, ok, mission accomplished, but as a technical matter she's not there all the time, the kids have to be self-motivated, and that self-motivation came not just from the mother, but from growing up in with those parents. Unless she's arguing that the father is pretty much irrelevant? Oh, that is what she's arguing. Sigh.

What Chua believes has made her kids succeed isn't just that she makes them work hard, but that she is allowed to yell at them.

And the money quote:

That's why it's in the WSJ. The Journal has no place for, "How a Fender Strat Changed My Life." It wants piano and violin, it wants Chua's college-resume worldview. Sometimes it has no choice but to confront a Mark Zuckerberg but they quickly reframe the story into the corporate narrative. "The Google boys were on to something, but to make it profitable they had to bring in Eric Schmidt..." The WSJ is operating well within the establishment, right wing, artists-are-gay and corporations-are-not context. It wants kids who will conform, who will plug into the machine (albeit at the higher levels), it wants the kind of kids who want the approval of the kinds of people who read the WSJ.

Amy Chua thinks she wrote an essay and published it. Wrong. The WSJ wanted this kind of an article and they chose one from the thousands available.  They chose hers-- a woman's-- because if this same article had been written by a man it would have been immediately revealed as an angry, abusive, patriarchal example of capitalism.

Which is where this comes full circle. Amy Chua thinks she's raising her kids the Chinese way, but she is really raising them to be what the WSJ considers China to be: a pool of highly skilled labor that someone else will profit from. On second thought, that is the Chinese way.

I'm mixed on the Chua article. In the abstract, her philosophy makes a lot of sense and I wonder if my parenting shouldn't take a more Chinese approach. On the other hand, the specific parenting and spousal behavior she describes is rather abhorrent to me. I'd be pretty pissed if my wife mimicked me sarcastically.

Ultimately, the article and the strong reactions to it touch upon many issues of modern parenting. But with parenting, as with most everything, there's no help but self-help.

My Goal's Beyond

John Milton, we all know, wrote Paradise Lost "to justify the ways of God to men." My goals in Textuality are slightly more modest than Milton's but exponentially more important: I write to explain my ideas and opinions to my children. I write to my wife, my brothers, my parents, my friends, and to anyone else who may be interested.

How many of us know what our mothers and fathers truly feel and think? How many get the chance to see the world through their eyes and approach ideas the way they do?

My goal for this blog is to make this knowledge and sight available to my loved ones, should they ever want to explore. I want them to know what I think and why. I want them to understand what I think, even if they do not agree with the thoughts. I want them to know that I think. I want them to realize that I am most comfortable writing and considering ideas.

I started Textuality in 2005, following the painful but necessary abandonment (temporary, it now seems) of my dissertation and my aspirations for doctorate in English. At that time, my aims for the blog were to to continue working, informally, in textuality:

This blog has been initiated and inaugurated to serve as a forum on textuality. Specifically, it is intended to support the analysis and understanding of current events, issues, and debates from the standpoint of textuality.

As I understand textuality, it is the quality possessed by a tangible thing of being a text. To proceed further, a text is a tangible thing – such as a piece of paper, a book, a Web page or Internet site, an onstage or onscreen performance, a painting, a sculpture, a building, a location in nature, and so on – that is understood to be or to be comprised of one or more signs. Signs may contain one or more signifying elements, but their referents are conceived of as statements of thought intended to be communicated.

I had hoped to build a site that would become the foremost authority on textuality. In practice, however, I used the blog as a diary. The personal and rather whiny nature of the blog during these early days was one reason (there were others) I took the pseudonym "Larry Tanner," a nickname someone gave me in college. Recently I have flirted with the idea of "coming out" and using my real name, but I already have other blogs under my real name. "Larry Tanner" has become like a separate identity, and I enjoy playing this role. So for now, the pseudonym stays.

Early on in the life of the blog, I seemed to lose interest. In 2006, I posted only one entry, and it was a personal disclosure:

It's almost been one year since I last posted here. Let's see: one child, two marathons, and some marital beauty and ugliness later, now I'm posting again.

I don't know why, exactly, I would even think of coming back. I'm struggling with something. I'm just not satisfied. I'm losing confidence and feel like I'm running out of time.

Hmm ... isn't this kind of what I said last year too?

The post above sounds rather bleak and self-chastising. I do that much less now, for whatever reasons. I remember some of the days of 2006. Our family was strapped for cash, stressed with the new baby, dissatisfied with my workplace, bewildered by my wife's depression, and dealing with my dislike of the wife's new church. We had issues, then, but we also had lots of happiness and love, too. In any case, I suppose my attention was best directed elsewhere than the blog.

Although I posted intermittently in 2007, the great change for Textuality came in 2008. Precipitating the change was my accepting a ghostwriting gig. As I began the gig and the writing involved, I did not foresee any shifts in my personal views but I did sense trouble between my author friend/employer and myself:

In the writing, I am finding a lot of passion and struggle in myself. It's good, I'm learning a lot and swaying between almost complete atheism and firm religious belief. It's interesting. There are just so many great perspectives available online. I am glad that I am able to be swayed. I am not an easy sway, but my openness is partly what makes it all work. Now, it could be that my author is not happy with what I have drafted. If that's the case, then we surely will not be able to work together.

Partly as a result of this gig, I took sides in the larger cultural squabbles concerning atheism and religion. I posted a big admission in November of 2008:

Do I believe in G-d? The answer is no, but it’s not an unequivocal no. It is a no of belief: I do not feel sure enough to have the scales tipped toward faith. I have little confidence that I ever will...and I am OK with this.

The character of my posts changed slowly. Throughout 2008 and into 2009, I was writing reactive stuff: I'd read an article or another blog post and then respond. I don't think I struck upon a clearer identity for Textuality until October 2009, with one post on Bob Dylan and another on the debates of atheists and religious believers.

With these essays, I brought out (at last) my full voice. I sought to make my points personal, original, unambiguous, and unfiltered. I tried to quote liberally and in context. I wanted to work through quotes slowly, patiently, and in detail. I aimed to have posts work as part of a larger, ongoing conversation between myself and the world.

In July of this year, I thought I'd exhausted my thoughts on atheism and religion. I intended to post mostly on Walt Whitman to find other topics of interest. I said then:

I have interests in addition to Atheism that deserve fuller and more sustained expression by me. I want to explore other aspects of this wonderful world, such as the poetry of its people, the conflicts of its nations and civilizations, and the endeavors of its animal inhabitants.

This statement remains true, even if I have not done as much about it (so far) as I might like. Indeed, recently I've been quite focused on topics in and around atheism and religion. Yet I've been generally pleased about the posts on the Kuzari Principle and on ultimate meaning.

One day, I hope to gather maybe 25-50 posts, organize them, and self -publish a book of the best and most enduring posts in Textuality.This book will be for the kids, mainly, not for sale or money. My focus today is on addressing topics that interest me but that also allow me to express ideas and opinions I haven't said before.

I have much, much more to write in this blog--about atheism, religion, family, aging, poetry, jokes, work, politics, and more. I anticipate the days and years ahead. Perhaps a post already written or yet to come will serve as pre-text for one or more face-to-face discussions with my children and/or with my wife.

This is a core element of my thinking: anything I write should have an application in real life. My blog life as "Larry Tanner" is a reflection and premonition of the life where I am interacting with actual human beings in real space-time. I would never want a blog that was all and only "in" the blogosphere.

I expect that if I keep up with Textuality, it will continue to morph. After all, I am still growing as an intellect and as a person, and I have much to explain and share. I cannot say whether the future will be good or bad. I hope it's more of the good, but who knows? The writing is part of what I can do. Textuality is part of my pro-activity.

The Autumn of Our Content

Harvest: Picking apples and pumpkins.

WARNING: This will be a personal post.

I love Autumn in New England, especially with my family. We all recently spent a fantastic morning in our backyard. Our neighbors' kids were over, and we all (the wife and I, too) played at catching wind-blown leaves before they landed on the lawn. The morning sunshine, the colors of trees and grass and sky, the laughter of children at play with one another, the unbridled joy of living without worry for anything but this moment: at one point, I counseled myself to remember the day and what it was like to be present then and there.

Fall is often taken as a season of decline, and understandably so. Autumn's eternal place is between the free fullness of Summer and the powerful austerity of Winter. John Keats takes it upon himself to console sad Autumn:

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
        Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
    While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
        And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
    Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
        Among the river sallows, borne aloft
            Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
    And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
        Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
        The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
           And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Keats' Autumn is a downtrodden sibling, the one who never quite measures up to the other. Keats turns the lamentations of the Fall--presumably, for the dying of the year and so then for our own dying--into a sweet and self-possessed song. The poem redeems Autumn as a melange of sounds.

But what redeems my Autumn song, which emerges from the depths of happiness? Keats approaches Autumn one-on-one, the solitary man and the somber season. Yet my Fall season is more populated. Keats heard sounds; I hear those and also a human chorus.

I recall sitting on the grass recently with my two-year-old son. We watched the chickadees, robins and blue jays dart to the bird feeder for seed. I remember another Fall, back in 2005. I was recovering from Sarcoidosis. My oldest daughter and I walked together down to the lake. We held hands, and I became choked up inside at how glad I was that we had this time. I have a picture in my mind of my younger daughter, in pink hat and pink coat, chasing after her sister through the leaves. Later, I took an actual picture of her smiling face, one cheek reddened and the other with a fading painting that she had received on the town common. These moments are all a happy song that I cannot save.

Cherished moments float in and then fly away: optima dies...prima fugit. They'll never be back, so enjoy them and be immersed in them while it's possible. Today, I struggle to lift my oldest girl up above my shoulders, and one day I'll no longer be able to wrestle my boy. Soon, my younger daughter will outgrow her lisp and get her f's and th's straightened out. The children mature, and I am aware that I am aging. How many more Fall seasons will I get? How many Autumn days will I have with my kids?

Robert Frost faces this kind of question in his usual way, dramatizing a very human dilemma in terms of work:

Gathering Leaves

Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.

I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.

But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.

I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?

Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.

Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who's to say where
The harvest shall stop?

None of us knows the final fruits of our labors, Frost says. Our big-man work and big-man tools count for less than we think. All our efforts, a shed full of leaves, and "next to nothing" for weight or color. Yet, "a crop is a crop," suggesting the results of our efforts may indeed have value, even if we cannot recognize it at the moment.

I wonder what my children and I will reap from these happy Fall days. It's a nearly constant thought. I want them to remember. I want them to draw comfort, strength, and compassion from what we've done and the memories of what has passed. I want them to enjoy their own spouses and children.

For me, well, I want to remember it all. I don't want to forget the features of youth in my children. I want constant access to the feelings of being a father of young children. Mostly, however, I want my kids to know that because of them--that through them--their father knew joy in his life.

Joy commands the hardy mainspring
Of the universe eterne.
Joy, oh joy the wheel is driving
Which the worlds’ great clock doth turn.
Flowers from the buds she coaxes,
Suns from out the hyaline,
Spheres she rotates through expanses,
Which the seer can’t divine.

My Christian Wife

The real deal.

My wife is the most special and wonderful person. She is a Christian of deep belief. She enjoys being part of an evangelical church. She likes the people of the church, the community, and the many opportunities for participation.

She and I are very different in some respects, but together we work. We met in 1995 and have been building a life together ever since.

I figure some might be curious about the relationship of a hard-line Atheist and a fervent Christian, so I put together a self-interview. That is, I wrote some questions and answered them myself below. If folks like the subject and format, perhaps I'll ask the wife if she would be willing to answer questions from y'all.


1. Let's start with an obvious question: How is it that two people of such different--perhaps even opposing--beliefs get together and build an apparently happy marriage?
My wife and I actually share many beliefs in common. Our values are fundamentally similar, and our differences are often complementary rather than contradictory. Clearly, religion and religious belief are places of difference, but in most every other place we stand united.

I think people make more of religious difference than there needs to be. My wife and I are different people, and we always have been. We have different jobs and different backgrounds. We don't always vote for the same people. We like different foods. Our tastes in music and art can be way off.

As far as I can tell, religion is just another difference. It's something that each of us has and keeps in the household, but it doesn't really define our home. It doesn't dominate our relationship at all. Rather, our lives together are dominated by just living. We try to be together in the morning. I leave for work, and then I come home at night and we try to be together with the kids until their bedtime routine starts.

Maybe if we had both been Catholic or Jewish when we started dating, things would be different today. But since we started out with difference, I think that religion quickly and necessarily became bracketed as a personal thing and not a universal thing.

When we first met, my wife was a practicing Catholic and I identified as Jewish. I don't remember the state of her belief then, or my own. When we moved in together in 1997, she took a spot teaching Sunday school at the local church, and I eventually got involved with my local Hillel house. I even taught the kindergartners in Hebrew school!

If we ever saw our religious differences as a problem, we didn't see it as a big problem or as a relationship problem. We wanted to be together; that was always the important point. We didn't even need to say it. From the beginning of our relationship, being together was implicitly understood and not being together never entered our minds.


2. You both went through changes in religious thinking, right?
Very much. In the 2001-2003 timeframe, my wife started to move away from the Catholic church. We were back in the Boston area by then, and the child sex abuse scandal had started to hit. The response of the Church to these horrific acts perpetrated by priests and then knowingly covered up at the highest levels of the institution--well, it was too much to take. The Church's position on homosexuality was probably also an issue for my wife. Our oldest daughter was confirmed Catholic--that was in 2003--but I don't think my wife went to church very much in those days.

It wasn't until 2006 that my wife found a Christian religious community that she liked. This community called itself non-denominational. She found many people there who were about her age and also having children. The religious message was personal and positive. The services were energetic and carefully crafted. I think my wife felt that this community had a lot of people who could understand some of her questions and problems in a way that I never could have.

I won't go over my changes here, since they are pretty well documented in this blog.


3. Surely, you and your wife must have strong disagreements about religion.
No doubt. We don't talk about it very much. In church and in her church activities, she has her space to express what she believes; in this blog, I have mine. We rarely talk face-to-face about these disagreements because I am not able to convey the sense that I take Christian belief very seriously. Now, I take it seriously to some extent. After all, my wife is sincere about her Christianity, and she seeks to bring our kids to services most every Sunday. Plus, I know that lots of people call themselves Christian, and I am familiar with much of the history and background of both early and established Christianity.

But I have limits to the deference I am willing to give ideas that have been demonstrated faulty. I cannot fake credulity for the story of a virgin-born-of-a-virgin who was impregnated by a ghost and who birthed a miracle-working human sacrifice destined to open the world's ultimate can of whoop-ass. I know the arguments around the story. I am aware of the paucity of genuine facts regarding the story's main character. I am familiar with the details of the story and their history, and I feel as though I've spent more than enough intellectual and emotional energy to give the story it's due. I have little interest in revisiting this particular story when there are, to my mind, more exciting and controversial questions to consider.

For my part, I have no desire to make Atheist arguments or to force Dawkins and Hitchens on my wife. What's the point? She's an intelligent human being and I've got my work cut out for me just defining the contours of my own thinking. We both have our own "spiritual" questions that we're pursuing, and it's enough that we support each other in our respective pursuits.

At the end of the day, our religious differences and our different rationalizations for our beliefs have very little to do with the practicalities of our love and our household. Maybe, after the kids have grown up and we're retired, we'll spend our days debating the lack of evidence for gods and the ridiculousness of all religious beliefs. I suspect we'll rather spend our days having more fun together, but who knows?


4. How do your differences in religion and Atheism apply to the way you raise your children?
In terms of how we raise the kids, I don't think there are any issues. I don't openly scoff at Christianity or Judaism in front of my children. I also don't push Darwin's Origin of Species or Dawkins's The God Delusion on them. The fact is that I don't need to do this. The reality of my Atheism will become apparent to my children when they are old enough to see it. They'll notice I don't go with them to church and that some of the books in my library make cases for Atheism.

Parenting is a practical art. It's hard to get kids to believe or to know things in the exact way you want. They develop beliefs and knowledge through their own doing and their own experiences. Neither my wife nor I is interested in controlling our children's intellectual environment to the extent that they can only have these-or-those thoughts or only come to such-and-such conclusions about the world. So, we both parent in the day; that is, we try to handle each day as it comes and enjoy it as best we can.

Honestly, I don't think personal religious or atheistic beliefs have much impact on what we parents need to do as parents. We need to be with our kids. We need to play with them, teach them, help them, encourage them, and show them we enjoy all that. To me, in marriage and in parenting, togetherness is the name of the game. It's all about being in the same place at the same time.

It's not about using the children as my personal social experiment. It's not about making the children live out my dreams and my ideas. It's not about coercing the children to think and act like me. It is about enabling and empowering them to grow according to their own reasoning and desires.

We parents are an extension of our children, not the other way around. We are their conscience until it becomes their responsibility to tell themselves what's right and necessary. We are their butlers until they are fully able to get the items they need and can clean up after themselves. We are their cheerleaders until they learn how to develop their own confidence and motivation. We are their counselors until they are able to take the lead in making the tough decisions that affect them.

My wife and I share this fundamental outlook in most ways, if not in every single way. We agree on the major things and differ in some of the details. We want the same seeds and are comfortable with however the flowers develop. This is why it has worked so far for us, and why I have no reason to be anything less than very optimistic about the future.