Parenting & The Power of Faith

Frequent patrons of The Diner will know immediately that it doesn't take long to push the hot-buttons of poor parenting and the role of faith in our moment-by-moment existence. Well, today, the daily miracle that is The Dallas Morning News provided a little snippet regarding both, so you can imagine how happy this made me.

First, Rod Dreher's story on the op-ed page highlighted the struggle of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She's a woman born in Somilia who fled to pursue her freedom. The freedom to criticize her religion without punishment...and to escape the repression she felt in numerous ways as an Islamic woman. She highly values human rights and rose--through hard work--to a position in the Dutch parliament.

She had to move to America out of concern for her safety, as she was pretty vocal in her opinion that the Islamic faith causes women to suffer in a myriad of ways. She lived in fear of violent retaliation there...and quotes like this caused that reaction, "The Western mindset – that if we respect them, they're going to respect us; that if we indulge and appease and condone and so on, the problem will go away – is delusional," she told Reason magazine. "The problem is not going to go away. Confront it, or it's only going to get bigger."

But what struck me was this comment by Dreher: "Ms. Hirsi Ali, like another outspoken atheist feminist, the late Orianna Fallaci, should fear that decadent European secularism might not have the moral or spiritual resources to save itself in the face of confident Islam. You can't fight something with nothing."

Have at that last line, kids. "You can't fight something with nothing." And, if Francis Schaeffer was correct in that the United States is generally 30 years behind Europe regarding the spiritual trends in culture...well, it doesn't take long to figure out that those of us who proclaim Christ better be about the business of doing so in authentic and meaningful ways.

But not out of fear of an Islamic movement or violence...but out of an honest & thoughtful responsive reading The Sermon on the Mount.

Second, one of my fellow FloMo residents works for The News andJacquielynn Floyd's article hit on the "Millennials" have hit the workplace. You know, those kids born between 1980 & 1995? Well, the early results are in. Floyd says, "A colleague in our business department has been studying this phenomenon in a series that started Wednesday. In it, she cites a "generational expert" who echoes a popular line being offered by human resources gurus everywhere: Millennials seem selfish and irresponsible (a generalization that's surely insulting to them); and the answer is that we need to understand them better (a solution that's insulting to us).

It's a prerogative of age to play the sorrowful kids-are-going-to-hell violin concerto. What's different this time around is that we keep getting told that we have to put up with it.

The underlying foundation of the millennial generation is supposed to be their baby boomer parents (us), who turned them into self-centered praise gluttons by hovering and coddling and bolstering their self-esteem, by telling them "Good job, Caleb!" approximately every eight minutes for their first 20 years on the planet.

As a result, 60 Minutes gravely reported last fall, "Their priorities are simple: They come first."

And, like she says, it's easy to have one generation criticize another. But her point is two-fold: First, that the current culture of parenting...this doting helicoptering protect & fight for our children mindset is actually reaping unintended results. And secondly, that they're going to have to grow up because sometimes the world isn't going to let them wear flip-flops to work and come in when they want.

But my thought is this:

As followers of Christ, we have a responsibility to do the most loving thing for our children. And sometimes that most-loving thing often is the most difficult and inconvenient and uncomfortable and scariest thing we can do at that moment. But, we're grownups. It's what we signed on to do: Raise them in the way they should go...and stop making icons out of these people we have a quarter-century stewardship of.

Besides, God loves them more than we do. The issue is "Do we trust Him?"

Which, when you think about it, is the common thread of both articles...