Of Trains and TV

BB hasn't been allowed to watch TV today. I was a bit hesitant to hand out the no TV sentence because I was afraid it would be more punishment for me than for him. I've been pleasantly surprised at his reaction. He has talked about the TV, and has shown me videos that he wants to watch, but has (so far) accepted my denial. He has quite willingly played with his toys, read books, and played with Play-Dough.

One of the toys that he got out to play with today is his train set. We had high hopes for this train set when we bought it for him, but he has rarely played with it. Part of it was probably because of his age, but I wonder how much of it was because he was occupied by the TV? He doesn't watch a lot of TV, but between watching programs and anticipating a program coming on, a lot of his attention during the day is spent on TV. Looking back on today, I wonder if he has missed out because he's watched TV this past year.

He made this train track set-up today, without assistance. Would he have made this if he had watched TV? Granted, it did take him most of the day to complete, as he has taken several breaks to do other things. But it's still impressive for a 3-year-old!
Could the anti-TV crowd be right?

Why Wait? Get Married! Part 4

If you haven't read what started all of this, you can find the article here. In Part 2, I wrote about my personal experience with marrying young. In Part 3, I wrote about the financial aspect of young marriage.
If you interpret the Bible literally, as many evangelicals do, one of the primary purposes for marriage is to have children and to then raise them up in a Godly manner (Genesis 9:7; Deuteronomy 11:19; Psalm 127:4,5). Time and time again, the importance of a family is stressed in the Bible. Granted, having children to carry on the family line and to assist with the day to day was crucial in that time and culture. Yet it is also important today. After all, who better to have children than a married couple committed to following God?
More and more couples, though, are experiencing difficulties in having children. Undoubtedly, environmental factors are a big reason behind many cases of infertility. But how much of the problem is also to blame for later marriages followed by prolonging childbearing so the couple can "get to know" each other? God seems to have designed people to reproduce the best prior to their 30s. Shouldn't it stand to reason, then, that perhaps most people are meant to marry and have children at a younger age than they are currently doing?
Please don't misconstrue that I am saying infertility is some type of punishment for marrying later and waiting to have children. I know that not everyone meets their person at 20. However, I have observed many couples who have dated 5, 7 years even, then waited until 3 or 4 years before they started working on their family. Some of them have had no trouble conceiving, while others have. As someone who struggled to have a child, and is now struggling to have another child, I know how agonizing it can be each month to realize that your dream of a child isn't coming true.

Why Wait? Get Married! Part 3

This is Part 3 of a series. You can find Part 1 here, and Part 2 here.
There are, of course, problems with marrying young, just as there are problems with marrying late. When you marry young, money is often scarce. Couples who do marry young tend to never have the same level of financial security as couples who marry later on do. The difference is even wider if the couple goes on to have children immediately vs. waiting several years to have children. Statistics for divorce cite marrying young, having financial problems, and having children early on in the marriage as factors that raise the probability of divorce. Couples who marry young are also less likely to go on to higher education and to complete their degrees.
There isn't a set solution for this problem. I think that the question of higher education should be answered on a case-by-case basis. Some parents might be willing to assist their newlywed children. If the couple doesn't have a conviction against loans, most young marrieds are so poor that they qualify for all types of financial aid. ;) My parents were generous enough to pay my tuition my last year of college, while DH received financial assistance for all of his college.
Some couples may want to do as we did, taking turns working and going to school. This does make the odds of both people finishing college less likely, though, especially if the couple has children. The woman in particular is more likely to never receive her degree. However, if the couple intends for the woman to be a SAHM, then the issue of her obtaining her degree might not be a problem. While I believe in women going to college and receiving their education, I understand that not everyone desires that.
I know that some of you out there might read this and decide that I am advocating women staying home barefoot and pregnant. That is not the case. I believe that college and other forms of higher education benefit every aspect of life. Parents who have higher education can often enrich their own child's education. What I am advocating is purity in dating and marriage. The institute of marriage is crumbling at an alarming rate, even within the church. I believe that the shaky foundations laid while dating are the cause of many marriages failing.
If you're skeptical, consider this: there are estimates that up to 80% of Christians have sex before marriage. I believe one of the reasons for this can be that while the average age of puberty is 12 or 13, the average age for marriage is 25 or 27 (U.S. Census). That's 13 or so years dealing with a God-given desire. This doesn't mean that 12 and 13 year-olds are wanting to go out and have sex, but they are beginning to have that idea. The idea is only going to increase as the child grows up, which is how God designed it to be. Many young Christians are able to withstand the temptations, but many don't.
I have known several couples who dated, only to break up when the feelings became too intense. I commend these people for having the courage to stand up for their purity, even though it meant their heartbreak. But I wonder how things would have been different if they had felt the freedom to marry? What would have happened if they had the knowledge that they could go ahead and marry at 20, instead of waiting another 5 years?
Yes, I know that God will equip the believer with the strength to resist temptation if the believer seeks Him. And yes, I know that Jesus lived 30-some years without ever sinning. But is the emotional and physical distress worth it? Humans are, by their very nature, sinful creatures. Knowing that you can marry the person you love at 20 as opposed to 25 can be a huge relief to couples who are burdened with their God-given desires for each other, yet desiring to please God.
The time spent being single is a wonderful, God-appointed time to spend growing closer to Him before marriage and family distract. There is nothing wrong with waiting to marry. But there shouldn't be condemnation of couples who do marry young. Rather, the church should surround the couple and provide mentoring and discipleship, things that are missing on nearly every level in the modern church.

Why Wait? Get Married! Part 2

This article, which I shared in Part 1, brings up something that I have been thinking about for the past year or so. When DH and I married, we were 20 and 21. Far too young, according to many people. And I will admit that we didn't have a proper relationship prior to our marriage. Sex was a deciding factor for us getting married before we were finished with college. We knew that we shouldn't continue dating given the way our relationship was going.
I am not saying that sex should be the sole reason a couple gets married. I certainly don't think that a couple should marry at the first tinge of attraction. But what are we doing by encouraging couples to wait for marriage (as is commanded by God in the Bible) while at the same time insisting that they complete college and perhaps even work a few years before getting married?
On issues like this, the pros and cons of each choice make it hard to know what's really right. Other than what the Bible says, I don't have a way to know what is the best choice for any situation.
What I do know is what I have done. The first few years were difficult, I admit. DH worked full-time the first year of our marriage, taking a break from college so that I could finish my last year of college. Then I worked the next three years while he finished with his college.
We would have had an easier time financially if we had waited to get married until after graduation. Things would have been even "better" if we had both then worked full-time for a few years before having BB. As it was, DH graduated college early May 2006, I finished my last year teaching late that May, and BB was born that July. We have never had a time where we have had two incomes.
Yet the financial aspect is not the only thing to consider. After all, Christians are to trust God to provide for all of our needs. There is nothing like being a broke newlywed to teach the importance of faith. Had we not married when we did, I doubt we would have still been together post-college. It is my belief that marriage was the way to redeem our relationship. Yes, God does forgive all sin. We certainly could have confessed to God our wrongs and been forgiven - which we did.
However, for us to then break up and marry other people would have created a new problem. When a couple sleeps together and then break ups because they had sex, they are not freed from that person just because they broke up. Once you have sex with a person, you're one flesh, according to the Bible. In a way, it can be argued that sleeping together, breaking up and marrying another person is very similar to divorcing and then remarrying, an act that many churches believe to be unbiblical*.
I want to be clear and say that I don't feel like I had to marry DH. I wanted to marry him, and I'm glad that I did. I believe that God used our poor choices, just as He can use anyone's choice for His purpose. He is, after all, God. He has a best plan for our lives, but that doesn't mean that our mistakes catch Him off guard or leave Him wondering what to do next. I believe He knows what He would like us to do, and He knows what we will do. God didn't plan for us to have premarital sex, but He knew that we would. He allowed the subsequent guilt and remorse to cause us to move up our plans to marry, as we decided it was better to marry early than to leave the situation open to more sinning. For us, marrying earlier was the best option.
*I am obviously not talking about marrying your rapist or anything like that. My argument is solely for couples who have both willingly engaged in premarital sex.

Why Wait? Get Married! Part 1

This article on Fox News' website today happens to deal with a subject I have long thought about. Rather than write a mile-long post (which, let's face it, you wouldn't read), I'm going to divide my take on this over the next few posts. I'd love to get some feedback on these posts, so feel free to chime in. I'll give my opinion on issues raised in the comments as the last post in this series. For starters, here's the link to the article:

Can't Wait for Sex? Just Get Married, Some Say - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News - FOXNews.com

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Perspective

A year ago, I painted this shirt at a friend's birthday party. It was a whimsical shirt, nothing more. Now when I wear this shirt, I'm making a political statement. Interesting how things change.

Hooray for Amazon?

According to the story in the link provided below, Amazon has withdrawn a game for sale that allows (actually, commands) players to virtually rape women and then force women to have an abortion. They pulled the game after receiving complaints from customers regarding the game's availability. Well, hooray for Amazon! They listen to their customers. It is sick and disgusting that such a game exists. I think it is bad enough that some Japanese company decided to make such a game (which was reportedly only for sales within Japan), but that Amazon deemed it okay to sell under any circumstance is reprehensible. Who cares if an "ethics watchdog body" passed the game as okay? Where, exactly, did this ethics group come from? Ted Bundy's fanclub?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/4611161/Rapelay-virtual-rape-game-banned-by-Amazon.html

Is the church Anti-Children?

A conversation overheard recently between two ladies at my church:

"How's it going?"
"Great! My youngest one is in high school!"
"Oh, you must be so excited!"
"I am! I'm almost done! One more left to get out of the house!"

Now, I don't know the ladies. I don't know what the one lady has gone through with her kids. But I do know that more and more, kids are seeming to be an inconvenience at church.
When I was growing up, there was a nursery provided for children from birth until three. After that, children were expected to be in "big church" with their parents. Several of the churches I attended had a small thing upfront for the kids before the big sermon. The minister or another staff member would tell a brief Bible story and expound on the moral during the course of a few minutes. Children were then expected to go back and sit with our parents and pay attention, or at least be quiet.
Let's fast-forward. My church, the same church I overheard the conversation, has a program for kids from birth through eighth grade. Children are never in "big church" until they are in ninth grade. I'm not talking about the kids are there for everything but the sermon and then they leave - I'm talking about the kids aren't there for one song, one prayer, nothing. From the moment they get out of Sunday School, they are up on another floor having their own version of church. This version is supposedly designed to better maintain their interest and to make the Bible appealing and relevant. My son is only 2, but the day is coming when he will be expected to go with the others his own age to that service. DH and I am going to say no.
I believe this current model of a children's program has been a long time coming, and is a reflection of what is going on in the church at large. Many other churches have the same type of program. When I complained to someone at my church about the children not being in the service, I was told that the program was started because adults were complaining about children being in the service. I guess we Baptists take everything literal except for Matthew 19:14.
When my family and I joined our current church 11 years ago, the church still had the mini-sermon up front with the pastor before the big sermon. Then we went to the children's church format that pulls the kids out after the music, before the sermon. Then the adults deemed the transition between big church and children's church too disruptive, and someone made the decision to have children's church last all service long. Around this same time a NEW! EXCITING! program was begun for middle-schoolers, and off went the kids too big for children's church.
What are we teaching kids by having special programs for them until they are grown? I believe that we are teaching them that church is something that you must tolerate when you are grown, much like working full-time or paying taxes. By making a point to amuse and entertain them, we aren't doing them any favors. Sure, they might like going to church better because of the fun program, but what attitude are we teaching them to have? Unless the church is planning on completely scrapping the standard format of a church service (which some are, but that's another post), the kids will graduate through all of the programs, sit through a service for the first time, and they will not come back. Not everything about the faith is supposed to be fun. There has to be some sense of discipline instilled while children are growing up. Life is not all fast-paced messages sprinkled with colored lights and a strong bass beat.
I have no problem with teenagers and young adults having fun in a religious setting. I know that a church service can seem to last for hours. I am making the argument that there is a time and a place for such things, and Sunday morning should be different than Wednesday night or Sunday night. Children need to grow up exposed on a regular basis to a variety of ways to express their faith. Please note that I am also not criticizing measures that are being taken to draw in non-believers. My post is written for believers who are already members of a church.
I heard a fact a few weeks ago that young people are largely not coming back to the church as they grow older. Apparently, the trend used to be that while church-raised youth slack off during the college years, they typically return to the church once they had kids of their own. Now it appears that my generation is not coming back. I know some will make the argument that my age group is not coming back because the church is not relevant to us. That the church doesn't speak to us, it doesn't minister to us where we are in life, in the world that we live in. Technology serves to connect my generation like no other generation before. We are more likely to have close friendships than we are to have a close family. So the reasoning goes that we therefore need a different type of church.
I know there is no one clear-cut reason for why those in their 20s aren't returning to church. But I think that I know at least one of the reasons: the attitudes of those older. Go back and re-read the conversation at the beginning of this post. If this lady feels free enough to say this in church, you can bet that she says this to her kids. There is an attitude that has seeped into the church from the mainstream world that conveys children are a cross to bear. The church seems to have bought into the lie that children are an unpleasant fact of life that one must endure. There are a lot of factors behind this sentiment, and to try to go into it would be a whole other post that I am not equipped to write. I just know that the sentiment didn't originate in the church; it has permeated the church because we try so hard to fit in. Even to the point of tossing our own kids out of the church service. We say it's for them, but how much is it really for us? How much is it so that we don't have to train them how to behave, so we don't have to get the dirty looks from those around us when our kid is less than perfect?
Kids pick up on adult attitudes, even if nothing is said aloud. When we make excuses for them to be somewhere else during one of the most important things of the week, we are teaching them that we have better things to do. We are teaching them that we can't wait until they're older. Then once they do get older, we wonder why they don't come back to where they spent their childhood not being welcomed.

Homeschool Article

Restoring the Years has a link on her blog to this article. I think both sides of the home school argument will find this article interesting.

Superstitions

My mom's family is from the Appalachian coal mines of Kentucky. If you've seen the movie, “Coal Miner's Daughter,” you've seen where my mom spent her early childhood. Her family has since moved to the Cincinnati, Ohio area, but the ancestral folklore continues to be passed down. Since today is Friday the 13^th, I thought it would be interesting to share some of the more common sayings with my readers. Thankfully, no one in my family still believes any of this!

1. Hold your breath when you pass by a graveyard or you'll be the next to die.
2. If you put shoes on the table, you'll bring death in the family.
3. When someone dies, the immediate family must stay awake all night and be in the same room with the departed.
4. Wean a child from the bottle when his foot starts to take shape and you won't have any trouble.
5. Knock on wood 3 times whenever anyone speaks of anything bad happening.
6. Always plant when the moon is waxing; plants that are planted when the moon is waning, die.
7. The seventh daughter of a seventh daughter has second sight.
8. Wash your face every day with a lemon to rid yourself of freckles.
9. Stop all of the clocks in the house when a family member dies.
10. Grass won't grow on an evil person's grave.
11. If you sweep under a maiden's feet, she will never marry.
12. A cricket in a house brings good luck.
13. Never let a cat near a baby because the cat will suck the baby's breath.

Agree or Disagree?

While reading another blog, I came across this quote:
"Tell me what the world is saying today, and I'll tell you what the church will be saying seven years from now." - Francis Shaeffer
What do YOU think about this quote? What evidence do you have to support your opinion?

Does China Have it Right?

I was surprised a while back when I heard that China limits what movies are shown in its country, not only due to their governmental beliefs, but also due to morality. In China, movies are not rated like movies are over here. Either the movie is acceptable for everyone of every age to see, or the government simply doesn't allow the movie to be shown at all. To be sure, there are probably movies that make it over there that I wouldn't think children should see. But the policy that China has of not allowing anybody to see something that they don't deem appropriate for children to see is interesting. How different would our culture be if we had this policy? Does China actually have it right about something?