Raising Owen

So Kat and I are adopting a little boy. Owen Baxter is going to be born on June 8th and in the kind providence of God we will be there to take him home from the hospital. It is hard to describe how excited we both are about this whole process. I could recount dozens of "small" providences that have culminated in the arrival of our son but suffice to say that again and again, we are completely floored by the perfect timing and goodness of God.

As this is a relatively uncommon way to become a first time parent, I am thankful for the many lessons already learned and anxious for the future lessons that God will teach me through this unique experience. The desire for adoption has been on my heart since I was much younger. The last 3 weeks of pursuing Owen Baxter specifically, have given me much to think about. I wanted to write down a few thoughts about parenthood and raising kids (specifically sons). While I have not yet done any of these things, I do have some ideas and hopes that I would like to share...even if it is for my own benefit.

My students just turned in their process essays and one of the prompts was: "How to raise children." They initially questioned me as to how they were supposed to know how to raise kids since they have obviously never done so. In turn I asked them, "what good is it to know how to raise kids after you are done raising them?" They nodded, obviously in awe of my incisive Socratic question and the majority proceeded to write their essay on the process of raising children. I suppose that in order to do anything well, you have to have an idea of what you want as a result. Once you have that firmly (more or less) established, you work backwards in considering how in the heck you are going to get there. So here is my process essay (of sorts) on how to raise a son (as told by a zero-parenting-experience-28-year-old man.) Take it or leave it.

Rasing Owen

Three weeks ago my wife and I got a phone call. A friend, who has been a friend for the better part of a decade, had an opportunity for us. She had known that we were in the process of getting certified for foster/adoption care. She had been working as the director of a maternity home for a while when a woman had come to her desiring to give her baby up for adoption. She called us. This woman, whom we now know and love, was carrying Owen in her womb.

As the reality has sunken in over the past 3 weeks, becoming a father for the first time, raising a son, adopting a child, and many other thoughts like these began to bang around in my skull. I immediately did two things. First, I tore down all the drywall in Owen's future nursery in order to install some insulation before re-drywalling. This, you see, is my way of celebrating. My wife buys onesies. I destroy walls and rebuild them. (There has got to be a metaphor in their somewhere.) Second, I ordered some books on parenting. I finished the first book in two days. I was too impatient for the second book (as it just arrived in the mail today) so I borrowed it from a friend. Three days later I was ready for another. This has been my routine for the last two weeks or so. Not the drywall thing; the book thing. The drywall was a one time deal.

This obviously was not the first time I had ever thought of being a dad or adopting and raising a son, but it was a good time to focus my attentions more specifically on the topics at hand. As I read on the couch and meditated while mudding, priming and painting drywall, I began to develop a sort of "vision" for what I was going to shoot for in raising Owen.

I want him to be a man who honors his mother and father, serves his church, wonders at the world around him, gives thanks, loves mercy, acts justly, walks humbly, and most of all, cherishes his Savior. I want him to believe and teach his children, my grandchildren, to believe. I want him to know the Scriptures, to do them and to instruct others. I want him to be a good husband, a loving father, an honest and diligent employee and a respectable employer. I want him to love the faith of his spiritual forefathers and love his spiritual lineage. I want him to look you in the eye, shake your hand firmly, open doors for your daughter and stand up when your wife enters the room. I want him to experience the freedom of liberty in Christ and the blessed slavery to righteousness. I want him to work hard in his vocation and earn an honest living. I want his future father-in-law to unreservedly rejoice when he asks for his future wife's hand. I want him to see and trust the hand of God in everything. I want him to exercise a faithful dominion over the world. I want him to love music, books, surfing, stories and good food. I want him to love The Bread and The Cup. I want him to be a man whose word is trustworthy. I want him to refuse to make excuses. I want him to ask for forgiveness and give it as freely as he has received it from God. I want him to be courageous and to know when he must fight. I want him to be thoroughly and gloriously masculine. I want him to love learning and pursue wisdom and virtue. I want him to know and rejoice in the Lordship of Christ over all things. I want him to find his identity and self-worth in the fact that he is made in the image of God. I want him to be a man who laughs long and hard.

Needless to say, it is a long list of expectations and I do know that it is all too easy to exasperate a young man with such an imposing list. I also happen to know that it is not unrealistic as I know many men who meet such a description. The big question is, of course, "How do we get there?" It all sounds well and good but where and how does the proverbial rubber meet the proverbial road? Thankfully, this list is much shorter. Unfortunately, it is simultaneously much more difficult.

I need to pray. I need to consistently love and discipline. I need to wrestle him. I need to make sure he gets dirty. I need to love my wife more. I need to teach my son to believe. I need to insist on dignity, honor and respect in all that he does. I need to educate him under the Lordship of Christ. I need to bring him to The Water and The Table. I need to love what I want my son to love and hate what I want him to hate. I need to tell stories. I need to laugh more. I need to repent. Often. I need to be the man I want my son to become.

Thank God for grace.

There is much more to be said about adoption but if you are still reading this post, you have stuck with me long enough for now.

Slumdog Millionaire

I went to see Slumdog Millionaire tonight.  It was fantastic in every way except the most important way.  It had believable characters, compelling style, fascinating settings, a coherent structure, balanced humor/romance/drama/suspense, a great plot with engaging rising action, conflict, climax and resolution (in other words it told a wonderfully Christian story) and then it ended by chalking the whole thing up to "destiny."

How an obviously intelligent writer could write such a wonderfully personal story with very personal characters and personal conflict and personal resolution only to end the whole thing with an impersonal force behind it all absolutely baffles me. How a story can be so Christian in so many glorious ways and then do a backflip off the wagon of coherence when it comes to the question of ultimate meaning is very frustrating.

I highly recommend the movie for the many aforementioned qualities but I ask that you simply remember that the reason why you will enjoy this movie is because it is retelling God's story very well in many ways.  Do your best not to be distracted by the hypocritical fatalist writer's lame attempts at a godless explanation after he just ripped off of God's story without so much as a footnote or "Work cited" reference.

Serpents and First Principles

I know, I know... Two posts in one month.  If I keep this up I might set myself up for disappointment.  But this is an easy post because it is actually an email that I sent to a former student yesterday. He attends UCSD and is in their literature program. It is a sort of Great Books type of deal and right now they are going through John Milton’s poem, Paradise Lost. He professor was challenging the class to prove that the Serpent in Genesis is actually Satan. My former student cited the texts in Revelation 12 and 20, along with John 8 and 2 Corinthians but the professor insisted that in order for it to be reliable it had to have come from Moses himself within the text of the book of Genesis. This whole email conversation was forwarded to me and this was my response:

It sounds like your professor's problem is that he is a hopeless Modernist. Is there are place in Genesis that says, "The Serpent is Satan?" No. But in all of literature (and God is the greatest Author of the greatest piece of Literature), when things like serpents keep popping up in terms of deceit, lying and being crushed under a foot, one time is a coincidence, two times may be intentional, but anything over 3 and the author is grabbing your shoulders and giving you a hearty shake.

Think of any excellent piece of film or literature and this exact technique is used all the time. In Orson Wells' classic movie Citizen Kane the sled "Rosebud" shows up in the beginning of the movie and then frequently reappears throughout the story and finally has its meaning revealed in the end. If the Orson Wells would have directly identified the meaning in the first five minutes, all dramatic tension would be lost and the critics would call it "hokey." I could give you a hundred more examples but what you will see continually is that the Bible is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't with all modern skeptics. If Moses had identified Satan as the Serpent in Genesis, they would have criticized the hokiness and the fact that he didn't makes them criticize the obscurity. Can't win for losin' man. It reminds me of when someone asked Bertrand Russell (famous Atheist) what would be his one question if he died and ended up standing before God. He responded, "I would ask him, 'Sir, why did you go through such pains to hide yourself?'"

On a side note: Let's do a quick thought experiment (a chicken or egg sort of thing) to reveal some of our presuppositions. Consider that there are two men arguing about literary devices in the Bible.... One might say that the Biblical authors are borrowing powerful literary devices (allusion, foreshadowing, etc.) to create what even the most hardened skeptics might call a beautiful piece of literature. The other man might say that the reason these literary devices are so powerful is rooted in the fact that they are God's literary devices as revealed in the Scripture. They are powerful for Shakespeare and Homer because God wove them into the fabric of humanity through His Story, the Story of Redemption and being woven in such a way that they speak to us at the deepest levels. You could have spotted the presuppositions as a freshman in high school so I am sure you see them now.

Now that our presuppositions are revealed lets do a little poking and prodding. I hope you have already asked the question, "Which presupposition have a coherent foundation?" In other words, which make sense all the way back to First Principles. If the first man in our thought experiment were to be challenged with a simple question, "Why are these literary devices so powerful?" He could not give a coherent answer all the way back to First Principles. At some point he would have to say, "They just ARE!" (Ah, the glory of self-authentication) You see, the Modernist will forever be unable to answer why-questions at the deepest levels. Of course, they will condemn us as reductionistic and mystical for answering ultimate why-questions with "God" but I say, "Let them eat cake." Everyone has First Principles so it is not whether but which. Which will be your First Principles, your Uncaused Causes? The Modernist must say Reason and thereby has made Reason his god. The Christian says God and recognizes God for who he is. We can doubt all claims of authenticity but to be consistent we would have to ultimately doubt our doubts. Of course we don't do that (or those who do end up committing suicide) or at least we don't live that way. God is ultimately the only legitimate self-authenticator because He is the only one who has the authority to do so.

Back to the issue of the text of Genesis.

We can always talk about the so-called problem of, "a text of later provenance co-opting an earlier text for its purposes" if we are talking about different authors but the problem is that the Bible is written by a Meta-Author: God. This particular post-modern criticism falls short if God wrote the whole Bible. In fact, in spite of the numerous different authors from a variety of backgrounds, we manage to have a perfectly cohesive piece of literature, full of all the things that you would expect in a piece of literature.

In the end, your professor is looking at it all wrong. He is looking at the Bible as if it is a compilation of many texts when if fact it is much more than that. It is One Text from Genesis to Revelation. It is telling One Story. It just happens to have been recorded over the course of 1500 years by 40 different authors. Fun stuff.

I also think that the serpent in Genesis 3 was a dragon. Maybe that'll help. On second thought, maybe not.

And of course to the (paraphrased) question, "Why do we need to say the serpent was Satan? Is salvation at stake?" My answer: For some it is.

What I mean is that some say it is not Satan so that they don't have to believe, and some say it isn't Satan so they can believe. Those in the first category are the ungodly, and are damned. Those in the second category are mistaken Christians.

This is a fundamental worldview question that I am glad you are wrestling with. Questions like, " Do I really have to believe ___________________ to be a Christian?" can be both good and bad things depending on your commitment to your First Principles. Hopefully those have been properly vetted so that you are actually working with something. Nothing is more frustrating and pointless than arguing about issues without having cognitive awareness of your own presuppositions.

Hope this helps.

Hervey

P.S. and don't be intimidated by the Greek talk as if it is going to reveal some "special knowledge." Gnosticism failed in the 5th Century.

Floods and Insulation

This is a long post.  Technically it is two posts that happen to be closely related.  I decided to post them together because they are both funny and I would forget at least one of them by the time my monthly post rolls around in December.  I even make some applicational points at the end if you care.  You can read them at two different times if you feel like drawing out your reading experience or if you are lazy and require a bookmark for a greeting card...

I have too much experience with two things: Floods and Insulation.

My mom says it is the Hervey curse to have houses flood.  My parent's house flooded when the washer valve got stuck open when it was filling.  The washer must have said to itself, "Ya know...I am much more capable of cleansing goodness than I can prove on a measly load of handtowels.  I think I will try my hand at hardwood kitchen floors."

My brother Mike had his condo flood but I don't remember how it happened. I know it required all new floors.  Hardwood again I believe.

I had a house flood the weekend before Thanksgiving last year when a pipe broke from cold weather.  Apparently the pipe said to itself, "You know what would be awesome?  A hockey rink."  One more hardwood floor replaced.

I am currently building a master bedroom/bathroom addition onto my house in Somis.  One phase of this building project has required me to peel back some of my existing roof to tie in the new roof.   I just finished framing on Thursday so needless to say I do not have anything resembling a proper roof.   The problem came when it rained yesterday.  I had put some plastic down over the bare plywood but the wind said to itself, "Oooooo! Check it out! Its a parachute!"  Thankfully no hardwood floors this time, just a 4 x 10 foot section of drywall.

The best part about this little leak in my plastic parachute was that it soaked all the insulation in the existing attic.  Needless to say when I saw my ceiling drywall bulging in the most non-aesthetically-pleasing way, I panicked.  I ran around to the other side of the exposed wall in my addition, got on my ladder and began pulling the sopping wet insulation out of a small crack.  Ten minutes later I was itching from my fingertips to my armpit.  Then I went to bed.  Good times.

Laying in bed last night with no small amount of itching going on reminded me of another experience I had with insulation.  I was about 11 years old and there was a bunch of construction going on in my neighborhood.  This gave my brothers, my neighbors and myself an abundant source of scrap wood and nails.  This abundance was naturally (notice I did not say "safely") fashioned into scores of ramps.  One day I will have to do a post on the plethora of ramps that I have had built in my lifetime.  Suffice to say for now that The X Games would be green with envy at the sheer volume of ramps constructed by a hoard of 10-13 year old boys who would all go on to fail Geometry.

One ramp, however, is important to this story.  My next door neighbor Gus, along with myself and my older brother George built our most wicked-awesome (spoken with a think Bostonian accent) ramp to date.  It was about 2 feet wide, 4 feet long from and made from 3/4 inch plywood set on about 24 inches worth of 2 x 4s nailed together.  We had learned our lesson about 6 ramps earlier that it was important to support the middle of the ramp (another story for another time.  I will say it involved me mangling my bike and tearing my pants from the crotch down to my knee.) so we did so with more 2 x 4s.  All in all it was an amazing ramp.  So amazing that I think we even spray-painted it with a skull and crossbones, an arrow and our initials.  So amazing that we were all scared to try it at first.  And this is where the insulation comes in.

While scouring a job site for the materials for our ramp we noticed a giant pile of what looked like that loose fill cotton that you stuff pillows with.  It was pink and looked heavenly.  As we stood fidgeting nervously in a semi-circle around our new ramp engaging in an unspoken game of chicken over who is going to jump off the ramp in rollerblades first, Gus came up with a great idea...

"Dude, we should go get all that cotton and make a big pile after the ramp so when we jump off we can have a soft landing."

George and I looked at each other and immediately decided that Gus was a genius.

With the giant pile of "cotton" in place I decided that I would be the first test subject.  We placed the ramp and our pile at the bottom of the hill in order to get sufficient speed.  It was a cakewalk.  You could jump as far and as high as you wanted and it was like landing in a giant ball of cotton candy.  George, Gus and I spent the next couple of hours fearlessly enjoying our new ramp.

After dinner that night I felt itchy.  Actually, it was so itchy it hurt.  My mom (who was a libertarian when it came to our complaints over physical discomfort) decided to investigate after hearing George and I complain for the better part of 2 hours.  We lifted our shirts and both of our backs, stomachs, arms, hands, necks and everything else was bright red.  The investigation was a short one.  We told her about the ramp and our pile of cotton.  I think she laughed.  She made us take long warm baths to open our pores so the little fiberglass insulation fibers would work their way out.  I think I itched for a week.

I love the way my mom dealt with this kind of stuff when I was a kid.  She never panicked.  She never freaked out when we came home bloody or injured.  We were free to be boys and we all have the scars and bad knees to prove it.  That is the way I want to be as a dad.  Boys need to jump off of ramps into piles of insulation and itch for a week.  Boys need to wrestle and build tree forts.   Boys need to eat dirt just to see what it tastes like. Boys need to throw rocks.   Boys need to play three flies up and butts up.  Boys need to skin their knees and get their baby teeth knocked out (only girls teeth should fall out.)  Boys need to play football in the street until the game ends in road rash and a bloody nose.  They need to do all these stupid and dangerous things so that they will not end up as passive, fearful, cowardly melvin milktoast men.  They need to be taught how to harness their manhood for the glory of God.  They need to be taught how to break conventions but keep commandments.  They need to be taught that being daring is not a sin and the fact that "something might go wrong" is rarely a good reason to do nothing.

I am convinced that the reason why so many boys/men are effeminate poofters these days is that their moms never let them get injured and their dads never insisted on it.  They spent their childhood in too much padding.  Too much Madden, not enough football.  Too much Tofu, not enough Pb and J.  Too much talking, not enough grunting.  And that is tragic.  It also explains a lot about our culture at large.  Sometimes you gotta run before you can walk and sometime you gotta grunt before you can talk.

The Early Bird Gets Beat Up

This month I am being preemptive in my posting.  It is only the 7th and my monthly post is here.  Another story or two.

I saved my brother's life once.  I am a good brother.  We came home from the lake one Sunday afternoon and my mom said we could jump in the pool because it was really hot inside our house, we already had our bathing suits on and we needed a shower anyway.  My older brother George and I ran through the house into the back yard and jumped into the pool.  By the time my chubby younger brother Steve got to the back yard George and I were already getting out of the pool so we could jump in again.  Steve ran and jumped in.

He forgot that he didn't know how to swim.

We had been wearing life jackets all day at the lake and I guess he didn't realize he wasn't still wearing one.   I immediately jumped in from the other side of the pool and swam with all my might toward him.  I remember opening my eyes underwater and faintly seeing him on the other side of the pool.  Thinking about it now makes me think of that old Nirvana album cover of the baby in the swimming pool.  He was frozen with fear floating there.  He was in the shallow end of the pool and but couldn't touch.

When I got to him I promptly put my hand under his butt and pushed him up and towards the steps.  He coughed a bit but was fine.  And thus I saved him.

I suppose that makes up for all the times I almost killed or maimed him, my other brothers, family members or neighbors.  Like the time I hit George right above the eye with a hockey stick.  One inch lower and he would have been wearing a pirate patch over his left eye.

Or the time George and I pushed my youngest brother Mike down a hill in a wagon as the "test driver" for our "race car." Three barrel rolls and not even a scratch.  We did put him in full hockey gear before doing it.

Or the time I let my cousin Matt ride down the same hill on my bike.  I neglected to mention that the brakes didn't work.  It was only a broken arm... big deal.

Or the time I made Steve bite through his lip on a trampoline.  You know how you can make someone's knees collapse if you time your jump just right?  Well I did.  My parents were on vacation and we were staying a some friends' house.  That was the only time my mom ever forgot to leave a release for medical care.

Or the time I almost lit Mike on fire when my friend Ben and I were making a flame thrower with a Bic lighter and a can of WD40.  How was I suppose to know he was going to walk through the garage door right at that moment?

Or the time that I almost lit my neighbor on fire when George and I tried to make homemade dynamite with PVC, gasoline and duct tape.

Or the time I performed a DDT (ala Jake "The Snake" Roberts, WWF) on Steve while wrestling on my neighbor's front lawn.

I could go on and on.  I was one of four brothers who lived on a street with 17 boys and 1 girl.  Nuf said.

I Used to be Retired

Seeing as how I am on pace to post one blog a month and September is almost over I figured I ought to post something...My students are writing Narrative Essays and it has gotten me into story mode so I think I will tell a story:

When I was 15 years old I bought a hat at Kmart.  It wasn't just any old cap though.  It was a wide-brimmed straw type of thing with a brown band around the base of it.  There was a plastic gold kangaroo shaped pin that held the band together on the overlap.  It was $3.99 and I couldn't resist.  I wore it to school frequently and when people would ask me about it I would tell them, "I'm retired."

One day I was in a Salvation Army shop and found an old Members Only jacket.  It was a grayish blue to varying degrees all over.  It probably used to be blue blue but it had come to a point where it looked like someone had left it outside a couple of times and the sun had faded the parts that were exposed quicker than the other parts.  Or maybe someone's dog had slept on it.  My dog Velzy can wreck a towel faster than I can run.  

It kind of smelled like it had been in the trunk of an old El Dorado for a couple of years before finding its way to an old dresser that didn't have liner sheets in the bottom of the drawer.  Perhaps during a fateful spring cleaning it was discovered in its stronghold at the bottom of the drawer underneath an old train set.  I like to think that its owner pulled it out of the drawer and smiled at the many memories in that old jacket before stuffing it in a garbage bag to take to the Salvation Army.  

No doubt that it had been on the rack for quite some time when I found it.  The musty Salvation Army smell was in a tooth and nail fight with the dank wood smell of the dresser drawer.  I reluctantly washed it because my mom made me but it still (much to her chagrin and my delight) retained a great deal of smell.  After setting my kangaroo laden retirement hat upon my pate I donned my glorious new prize.  It completed the look perfectly.

Mr. Dunne, my history teacher, asked me why I wore my hat and Members Only jacket.  He told me he used to wear one in college.  I told him that I was retired.  He nodded sagely.  Janet, who sat next to me in Mr. Dunne's class requested that her seat be moved because my jacket stunk and I wouldn't take it off.  Everyone's got a threshold.

Coach Webb asked me if I planned on coming out of retirement to attend spring football practice.  I asked him if I could wear my hat during warm ups.  He said he was worried about me but that wouldn't stop him from killing me if I wore the hat to practice.  I didn't.

Mrs. Berry, my neighbor, told me that being retired is boring.  I told her that working for 50 years sounds more boring than waking up at 10, putting on a hat and drinking iced tea while sitting in a hammock.  She told me that I was romanticizing retirement and that it also entailed worrying about having a fixed income, going to frequent doctor visits and talking about politics.  I told her that I already had the hat and jacket.  She told me that sticking feathers up your butt doesn't make you a chicken.  I nodded sagely.

Greg bought the same hat a couple of weeks later and started telling people that he was retired too.  I gave my hat and jacket to Goodwill.  Retirement was much more fun alone.

Shame and the Catechesis of Wine

Seeing as how I didn't even last a week at the  task of being an "occasional" blogger I have come into this here courtroom with a look of contrition (possibly even shame) on my face.  The judge asks me, "What have you been up to that has kept you from blogging?"  I really don't have a good excuse but I nervously open up my briefcase and I eyeball a paper I wrote for my Christian Worldview class at New Saint Andrews.  I look upon the title with what is probably too much pride, "A Comparison and Contrast of Antithetical Worldviews: The Drinking Habits of Secularists and Christians."  It crosses my mind to pull this paper from my briefcase and slap it down with a satisfying thud in front of the judge.  As if the sheer sound of said "thud" would explain everything.  Knowing this will probably be a futile gesture I sigh, flip through the paper, tear out a sheet, close my briefcase, bring my little sheet to the judge and say, "Here's what I got."

The Catechesis of Wine
“In meditating on Christ’s miracle of creating wine, Augustine lamented that we accept the normal creation of wine as any less miraculous, for even as water ‘turned into wine by the doing of the Lord, so in like manner also is what the clouds pour forth changed into wine by the same Lord. It has lost its marvellousness by its constant recurrence.’” (Wilson and Jones, p.83) If a man who had never had any clue as to how wine was made were to sit and think about what he would expect if someone were to leave a vat of crushed grapes out in the open air for about two weeks, his first answer would most definitely not be, “Wine.” More likely his first word would be, “Yuck.” Or its equivalent. A man would no more expect wine from two week old, unpreserved crushed grapes than a man would expect a chicken to pop out of an egg if he weren’t so used to seeing it or hearing about it.

Of course the naturalist will swoop in and tell us that there is this natural process by which the natural sugar in grapes naturally transforms into natural alcohol.  It is called fermentation. This naturalist would likely be smug and say something like, “There, I have dispelled the mystery of grapes transforming into wine. Now we can put away all this silly superstitious talk of some Ultimate Being doing it.” To which a stout man ought to respond, “Sir, all respect, but you did nothing of the sort. All you did was describe what happens. You didn’t explain anything.” The naturalist may heave a great sigh and launch into a detailed explanation of the chemical processes involved in fermentation. After thirty minutes, the same stout man should restate, “Again, all respect but all you did still was describe what happened, just in fancier terms.” The naturalist in desperation may scream, “Don’t you see that it MUST happen! Natural Law demands it!” To which are stout man ought to chuckle, take a sip of his wine and ask, “Why?”