Straight paths through crooked roads

Father's Day should mean a day for dad to remember to be a real dad.

Father can mean simply a biological mate but we always hope it means more than that.  My own dad once told me that he always thought that children just raised themselves.  His dad was a pastor and the feeling of that generation was that a church minister would sacrifice his own family for the benefit of his congregation.  So, my dad said that he, his brothers and his sister would cry as they would watch their dad drive right by their house on his way to visit the home of a member of his congregation. 

As my dad grew up in small town Indiana he saw the high regard others held for his father.  But his father did not have the day to day close relationship needed to bond closely enough with his children in order to earn the emotional right to discipline them.  As a result, most of his children rebelled against the religion of their father.  There were five of them:  one girl, the oldest whose name was Bernice, then the rest were all boys.  The oldest of these was Gerald.  These two became Christians in their own right.  The youngest three all rebelled against Christ.

As I raised my own family, I tried to raise them as Christians.  Only one has returned to walk the testimony of a Christian.  The others have chosen ways other than Christ.  As my children grew up, I travelled 50 to 100 nights a year as a salesman.  I do believe that had I been home every night by having another profession, I would have had a better chance to keep more of them close to Christ.

My own dad was a functioning alcoholic.  He would deny that but he could not go without drinking for any 24 hour period.  Sometimes he would be gone several nights without coming home, not because of business, but because of unfaithfulness to mom. 

How did I then become a Christian?  The prayers of my grandmother, her witnessing to me, the faith she helped instill in me when my mom and I lived in her home from time to time.  How did my one child come to walk with Christ after rebelling and going into deep sin?  Prayer and fasting for God to invade her life.  He did just that.

The bottom line is this.  To be a biological father is one thing.  To be a provider of food, shelter, clothing, education and even companionship is a much better thing.  To be a spiritual father takes prayer and care.  To be a spiritual father, a dad should take father's day as a day to remember both the obligations and rewards of being one.

She said that "standards can be dangerous".

A lawyer on a TV show said that "standards can be dangerous."  She was referring to professional standards for teachers and this was in reference to a teacher's striptease shown on the internet.  I believe that standards are powerful but used wisely are healthy.

You and I have often heard the concept that. "what I do on my own time is my own business and has nothing to do with my employment."  I dispute this, especially in the case of teaching.  That is because all achievement is based upon relationships.  Even if we do something by ourselves we have to agree that we learned things from others, had the help of others to get to the place where we can achieve something on our own. 

In the case of teaching, the essence of education is the learning relationship between the teacher and the student.  If a teacher exhibits any behaviors that would be a bad example for a student, that teacher should stand corrected.  If a teacher demonstrates the self destructive behavior of exhibiting their body for public consumption, then the teacher has reached a deplorable level of behavior that is intolerable.  The teacher has destroyed the right to the respect of the student.  Further, she has destroyed the trust of the parents who entrust their children into her care.  That respect is the basis of the learning relationship.

If someone were to insist that the teacher has the right to self expression, then they are wrong.  The reason for that is the fact that self expression can be limited to standing in front of a mirror.  When the image is transported to the view of others, then others are impacted by that expression.  It is on the receiving end of that image where the trust is broken with parents and with students. 

Here is some student at home looking at images put up by various people on an internet site.  He sees an image that looks familiar.  "Wow, look at my teacher, Ms. Vavavoom!"  He calls his friends to tell them about this.  Finally, some boy is viewing Ms. Vavavoom whem mom walks into the room.

Mom and Dad have every right to be upset by Ms. Vavavoom putting up an internet message that reaches her son or anyone who is a potential student.  For that matter, Ms. Vavavoom has no right to create images that would attract a married man's attention away from his wife, or to tempt an unmarried man who needs to be developing healthy relationships with real women, not fantasies with images.

Yes, standards can be dangerous if they are dangerous standards.  If the lawyer had her way, the standard would be that you cannot stop a teacher from displaying his or her sexual attributes on the internet.  Would the lawyer also say that the teacher should not be dismissed from teaching if she were to engage in sex with a teenage student when she was off campus and after working hours?  It would seem so.

Christian parents must not shy away from holding teachers to wholesome standards.  If there is a problem, get documentation, get photos, get printouts, get help from others, then get busy.    

Teacher's get away with the darndest things.

Some one on TV was talking about how one teacher was demonstrating moves that cheerleaders do.  The teacher led off with a move by gyrating her hips in a circular motion with a starting postion where she had her back to you and her buttocks were jutting out toward you.  It just didn't seem right, somehow, that a teacher would point her buttocks toward her students and then begin a grinding motion.  Matter of fact, that is what that movement used to be called in burlesque theaters by the strippers, "the grind."  Now, we can watch our teen age daughters or students grinding in front of the football team and fellow students and it has become alright.  But what about that teacher?  I know, she was the school coach for the cheer leading squad. But, was that OK or not to do in front of her class of students assigned to her care?

I don't think so.  Why not?  Students in high school have a difficult enough situation to deal with without teachers making things even more difficult.  Students at that age have passed the point of puberty, that is, their bodies are mature enought to procreate children.  However, their minds and emotions are not mature enough to be expected to handle that responsibility.  So, they are pressed to wait until they are at least out of high school to begin a family, or even to just engage in sex.  But here is a teacher, who is supposed to be an example to her students, giving a sexually suggestive movement in front of gonad driven boys and impressionable girls.  This is not wisdom.

Matter of fact, the person on TV brought up another case where a teacher had used a camera in the privacy of her home to record some sexually explicit movements.  It was like kareoke sex. Someone in the community had the gall to suggest that a teacher putting such images on the internet was a bad thing.  The TV person said that this had nothing to do with the subject she taught at school; that parents send their students to learn subjects like reading and math; that her appearance on the internet was freedom of speech and her own private business, and it had nothing to do with the job she did at school.

It had everything to do with her job at school because being a teacher is all about relationships with students.  Whatever she teaches depends upon her making good learning relationships with students.  That includes such things as trust.  By making herself a little porn star on the internet, she offers her body as a tool for men who are in relationships committed to other women to be drawn away to her images instead.  That creates a breach of trust.  Not a trustworthy thing to do.  Perhaps even a dad of one of the children might see her and say, "Wow, get a load of my daughter's teacher."  Not a good concept.

There is a whole list of reasons why there is a connection between what teachers do on campus and what they do off campus at any time of the day.  Relationships with students is a key element in any of those reasons.

Teachers are getting away with the darndest things, aren't they?

Harry Potter: does it really help children's religious understanding?

     In a recent opinion article in the Fresno Bee, local writers addressed the fears of Christian parents about the spiritual aspects of Harry Potter.  Their bottom line statement was that Christian parents should not cause their children to fear popular culture, but rather to use Harry Potter materials to understand their place in a complex world.  The basis of their conclustion was that, after all the magical aspects and spiritual implications, Harry Potter's character had similarities to the Christ of scripture.

     The bottom line of this post is that Christian parents do need to take care in guiding their children.  The Harry Potter materials are full of food for spiritual thought and offer some satisfaction for spiritual hunger with the fascinating stories and illustions.  They capitalize on real human spiritual drive but then feed the reader and viewer with dangerous half truth.  They give the satisfaction of spiritual thirst with what we might call spiritual junk food. 

     For a child to understand their place in the world does not call for reading Harry Potter or going to Harry Potter movies.  Every human's place in the world can only be understood by first having a personal relationship to Jesus Christ.  It is good to remember the scripture Romans 12:1 and 2.  "....present your bodies a living sacrifice to God....be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."  Our relationship to the world is best understoond from God's view, not the view of a fascinating half truth.

     The authors point to Christian related stories like C. S. Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe."  However, that literature leads to an understanding of Christ Himself.  Harry Potter leads to fascination with a spiritual half truth leading away from an understanding of Christ. 

     The fear Christians may have is not the fear of the Harry Potter materials, but is rather the parental concern to lead their children in a wholesome truth rather than to let them be mislead away from truth by an interesting fantasy.