The cost of deferring to others. . .

For a very long time now and evolving only slowly over that time the family began to defer more and more to others.  This is especially true of education as the family receded while the role of the state and its institutions of public education took over raising our children.  While there were times in history when this was an easier and symbiotic partnership, it has increasingly become a more challenging relationship.  

For the family side of things, it has not all been sunshine and roses.  The rise of the single parent family has presenting a significant challenge to the publish school teacher and classroom, enrolling children who now come without the requisite background and preparation the home once offered.  The growing dysfunction within nearly all the homes and the loss of a multi-generational context have left the school to try and parent and socialize as well as teach.  The loss of any real moral consensus in America has left the educational endeavor without a direction and without a clear foundation on which to build.  The pressure upon schools to serve as incubators of current societal and educational thinking has left less time for for more core educational pursuits and changed the way schools are evaluated.  The view of the school by the community from treasure to drag or financial burden has moved to the many new homes without children or grandchildren and introduced new stress points to the whole task.  The rise of vocational education in which success is viewed neither as knowledge nor the ability to think but readiness for the job market has also produced cracks in the once impenetrable wall of primary and secondary education.

For that matter, the educational industry in America has grown increasingly distant from those who have the children and those who tax dollars pay the freight.  The rift is more than mere competition but suspicion and distrust of those institutions once proudly among the most revered in America.  This has created resentment and antagonism between the teaching enterprise and those who are taught -- along with their family constituents.  The educational industry has always skewed more left of center everywhere but this is pronounced at the university level and in urban settings.  The rights of the child in the classroom are championed over and against the rights of parents, family, and home.  All of this is  happening amid a growing number of alternatives and choices in the marketplace of options -- including home schooling.  While religious schools are not yet dead, they are no longer as vibrant or secure as the home schooling option increases even though religion is hardly the sole or even more important reason for families to make this choice for their children.  Classical schools hold a promise that is attracting people from all economic classes and from every social background.  For that matter, home schooled kids have shown their stuff and proven to be exceptionally prepared and profoundly successful.  All of this raises the question of whether dollars thrown at the problem will solve anything and might the cheapest option (in real dollars) be better than the expensive one.

Another aspect of this deference of family to school reveals the struggle of the home to present to their children a cohesive worldview, solid moral values which can endure over a lifetime, religious foundation to keep the kids in the faith, and a perspective on the world which, though challenged in teen age years is usually found again as those kids marry and have their own children.  The Church has also been complicit in this.  Sunday school was an American invention for the sake of those children whose parents were not in the Church and yet it has become a population nearly exclusively for those whose parents do.  In the same way, catechetical instruction was done in the home and examination at the Church but now that is largely the domain of the professionals.  How is this working?  Sadly, even worse than the success of the public school over against the home based educational programs.  Yet in the Church we continue to be tempted to mirror in our own schools the modern trends and ideas of the public school and to promote diversity as a sacred truth to accompany the Gospel itself.  We in the Church have learned to be both suspicious and unsure about the value of religious instruction over all and especially that which is done in the congregation by a professional teacher of doctrine.  All of this has accompanied the increased statistics of those lost to the faith in early childhood or immediately post-confirmation.  We say we are not competing with the home and family but it sure sounds like we are saying that professionals know better than parents.  If that is not what we want to say, then it might be time to change our stock speech.  Maybe we need to help the family and home more than compete with them or push them out of the equation.  Home schooling may prove to be the way to do both and versions of home school with co-ops or other partnered endeavors with the Church may be even more important going forward than actual brick and mortar religious schools.

The point is this.  There is a cost to deferring to others what is the rightful domain of the family and the home.  It is high time we recognized this and admitted it.

Tradeoffs in time. . .

Oddly enough, those Lutherans pushing for more ceremony in the liturgy have been joined by those pushing for less in searching out the past to find examples to prove their points.  The problem is that those looking for more have the long view of history behind them and the solid words of confessional integrity to support them.  Those pushing for less have a skewed version of nostalgia on their side.  For my part, I lived through both.  I was a child growing up in the 1950s and 1960s when TLH was king and I was a pastor when WS 1969, ILCW, LBW, LW, HS 98, and LSB came along to coax Missouri into a more authentic liturgical identity on Sunday morning.  There were tradeoffs along the way and these are some of them as I see them.

Yes, until talk of a pan-Lutheran hymnal and service book became official, Lutherans looked very much alike on Sunday morning -- no matter their choice of left or right on the doctrinal spectrum.  They followed the same order with slight musical variation and there was little of the now vaunted diversity among Lutherans across the nation.  We simply opened the book and followed it.  For those who openly disdain the book and for the myriad of variations within it now, it can be tempting to long again for the days when we were all Lutheran people of the book (be it TLH or even SBH).  But there were also things not so rosy in that picture of our past.

 LCMS communing statistics first appear in 1930 and report an average communion of 2.10 times a year per member. At that time, most congregations offered Communion four to six times a year. In 1950, 1970 and 1990, LCMS members communed on average 3.22, 5.91 and 8.44 times per year. Through these decades, most congregations increased offering the full Divine Service to at least twice a month.  (From a LW Article in 2021)

For all the uniformity in rite and the general reverence which accompanied the execution of those rites, we were people of the Word but not so much of the Table.  When I grew up, it was common enough to be normal for Lutherans to go without the Sacrament in rite all but 4 Sundays a year and then either to depart the pew prior to the Eucharistic liturgy or to sit in the pew rather than commune.  For those who want to remember this period fondly, it is also worth remembering that we were ceremonially low, the black gown prevailed, sacramental piety was almost non-existent, nobody even talked about private confession, and the most uniform principle of liturgical ideal and practice was whatever was not Catholic.  Coincidentally, that also turned out to be non-catholic and against our own confession.  That is a fact conveniently forgotten.  Even in the hymn section of the book, the people were probably more comfortable with generic hymnody than either the Lutheran chorale or the offerings of the pre-Reformation variety.  It would be hard to even distinguish a Sunday in Lent from one in Easter except for the note in the bulletin or the hymn slide announcing the day on the hymnboard.  But there was uniformity and the person behind the rail and those on the other side did not treat worship as a casual or indifferent thing.

The lost opportunity of the liturgical movement was not the rites that could have been or should have been or should not have been.  No, the lost opportunity of the liturgical movement was the failure to marry a high sacramental practice, manifest uniformity of look and feel throughout the congregations, an appreciation for the ceremonies which could not be commanded to an existing reverence, a commitment to the hymnal, and high view of the Word.  That was the loss I lament.  Not a book or a setting of the Divine Service but the loss of how this might have been real renewal.  Sure, we did increase both the number of times the Sacrament is offered and how often folks commune.  That is good, right, and salutary.  But somehow we managed to do so while devaluing the shape of the rite and its words at the same time.  Sure, we have more pastors in albs and chasubles than I would have ever imagined half a decade ago but at the same time we seem to have lost the idea of what the ordained pastor is and does along with a confusion of what complementary role the laity play in this thing called worship.  Sure, we have more people now in the same book than when the liturgical experimentation began but we have turned from the book to the screen even where liturgy is still king.  Worst of all, we have somehow labeled all the stuff of worship from the rites and music of the absolution to the liturgy of the Word to the the liturgy of the Sacrament adiaphora.  Astonishingly, we have somehow said that Scripture is silent about what ought to happen in worship or how it might happen.  We somehow cannot even find it within ourselves to bind us to the confessional norm of every Lord's Day receiving the flesh and blood of Christ and then conveniently forgot to fight back when the government said liquor stores were essential but the gathering of Glod's people around His Word and Supper was not.  All of this confusion and tom foolery has left us very similar to where we were before the liturgical movement took hold -- arguing the basics again.  This time the basics are the ordo of the Divine Service, reverence, and the value of uniformity.  Really?

We traded one set of problems for another and in so doing admit that we remain more driven by minimums than by fullness, by settling for rather than striving for, and by utility over beauty.  If we had better learned the lessons of Covid, we might just have kept it all but put it on the screen rather than in person.  It is not simply our mess, Rome is suffering as well.  Canterbury also.  It is hard to find a real Calvinist anymore and it is hardly more of a memory the fundamentalism of the past against the evangelical gold standard of worship that seems to prevail where once the tent revival was king.  My point is that we cannot waste our time picking and choosing a moment in time which looks better to our sensibilities than another without failing again in the opportunity to hold to a high understanding of the Word and a similarly high understanding of the Sacrament.  We should never be bound by minimums except to rein in the erring but should all be working for the much more that belongs to our rich theological and liturgical history and heritage. 

 

The TV I watch. . .

There is not much on TV today that I watch.  A few old series from my childhood in reruns is typical fare for the occasional hour of viewing.  That would include, of course, Lawrence Welk on Saturday evenings.  I was forced to watch it with my parents growing up but somehow it has its own attraction and nostalgia.  But the only redeeming moments seem to come from the Brits.  After Welk comes Hyacinth Bucket (Bouquet, pronounce it correctly now!) and Dame Judi Dench in As Time Goes By.  But that is nothing compared to most Sundays.  Antiques Roadshow gives way to Call the Midwife and then it is Masterpiece Theatre.

On the air since 1971, Masterpiece PBS has kept us glued to our sets through many different series.  It is one of the last great venues in the vast desert of streaming which has been dedicated to preserving a deep character development, a visual extravaganza for the eye, and compelling story lines.  With all the awards, it is hard to single out our favs.  Endeavor is certainly one, Grantchester another, and then there is All Creatures Great and Small, simply one of the best ever!

The series All Creatures Great and Small is not a modern story but a modern remake of the first adaptation running 1978–1990.  The stories themselves are nearly a hundred years old.  They trace the life of a rural veterinarian working in the Yorkshire Dales during the 1930s and 1940s. The story is drawn from the memoirs of real-life veterinarian James Alfred Wight, writing under the pen name James Herriot.  Each episode unfolds another chapter in his James’s professional and personal journey, through ordinary days and wartime, blending humor, warmth, and a decidedly optimistic view of life as they care for animals large and small within a very close-knit and scenic community.  Now in its sixth season (at least in the United States) it is the best kind of television: genuinely family-friendly, quietly instructive, solidly moral, sometimes starkly real, uniformly hopeful, and rich in kind of life lessons we all need to learn.  Set in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales, in the market town of Grassington, we have a positive but not overly sentimental view of life.  The musical scores are an important part of each episode.  Even the visual lead in for each episode is just right. 

It seems that everything else on TV either parrots the prevailing social causes or insists upon showing us the most gritty and dark side of life.  Nothing against the actors, but there is only so many brutal crime dramas I can take and only so many stories of murder, child abuse, drugs, etc., before it is overwhelmingly depressing.  This was once the exception while most TV told a hopeful story, with clear good guys and bad guys, resolution to end each episode, and the assurance of a solid family to make their way through it all.  Now it is hard to find a normal family on TV or to find one in which the current sexual desires or gender identities do not feature larger than life.  Think back to Andy Griffith.  Nobody got wounded or died or got away with murder or robbery.  They all seemed to get along even when tempers got hot or blame was being shoveled around.  Don't forget the lazy Sunday afternoons on the front porch, snoozing or humming along with the guitar a favorite folk song or hymn, after a sumptuous lunch of fried chicken, waiting for the homemade ice cream to be ready.  Okay, maybe it is out of date but does that mean the values, the family structures, and the neighborliness we see there are also out of date?  I hope not.  I hope that one day we will return to a hopeful view of things in TV series with visual appeal, good writing, and solidly rooted hopes and ideals.  I might actually turn on the TV more often. 

Truth is always stranger than fiction. . .

 Lord knows no one would want Jesus on Wooden Cross if it comes from a smoker's house.

Best interests of children. . .

"I think parents generally confuse the interests of their family with the interests of their children. I think part of our goal as parents, but also as a society, is trying to make sure that children aren’t the hostages of their parents, as much as we rely on parents to raise them."

While catching up on some reading and encountered a discussion of voting which included a rather radical proposal to weight the votes of young people over and against middle age and older people (me).  It was a stupid exchange that flowed normally and naturally out of a culture which values youth over age and experience.  Hidden in this discussion, however, was a statement made to justify shifting the burden away from some for the sake of youth -- a statement which actually had a lot more to do with the value and purpose of the family itself.  That is the statement above.

"Parents generally confuse the interests of their family with the interest of their children..."  That is a very reasoned statement probably from someone who has no children and it comes at a time in which I have heard the complaint that old people like me have too much money and too much political power.  While that is probably the premise of this statement above, it is about much more than money and political power.  It is an argument for the individual over and against family, neighborhood, and community.  It is the cause of self-interest over and against the interests of others -- even those of our nearest kin.  It is the purposeful devaluation of the family as an institution and of the parental role as guardian and advocate for the child.  As if this were not enough, the author of the paragraph also suggested that a college graduate age 24 with neither marriage nor children to boast probably has a better idea of what is in the best interest of the child.  That says it all.

"...to make sure children aren't the hostages of their parents..."  There is again the profound animus against the parent and the family.  Because marriage and family are not a democracy in which the votes of the children count as much as the parents, the right course of democracy is to pit the family and the child against each other.  Wow.  That is the state of things.  Of course, we all know that there are bad families and problem children.  Neither of those is typical.  In fact, the normal state of things is just the opposite.  Parents who sacrifice and give their children at a cost to themselves and families who juggle the needs and wants of their children in order to give them all more rather than less.  Neither the child nor young adulthood has much comprehension of either the sacrifices or the juggling of interests that goes on routinely in the home.  Children are not hostages of their parents but run the increasing risk of becoming hostages to an educational, social, and values system that presumes to know better than mom or dad or Scripture or God.

Most of us learn what family and parenting are from our families and our parents.  We are not instructed by books or "professionals" but by the common experience of growing up in a home where mom and dad love us and do what is best for us and we learn to trust that they know what they are doing.  Do they screw up?  Sure, I have made a ton of mistakes raising my children and I expect most of us would be happy to admit the same.  But few of those mistakes have anything to do with holding our kids hostage to our interests and most of them had to do with acquiescing to theirs when my instinct told me to say "no".  

God designed the family and we did not invent it.  He endowed the family with influence far beyond what happened within the home.  Indeed, He made Himself known to us as our heavenly Father and thus gave the dignity of fatherhood and motherhood a higher place than mere biology or ancestry.  Because of sin we surely fail to live up to the promise of His gift but it would be a sad betrayal of that gift and trust to cede the decisions for the children to those outside the family.  Yes, in extreme circumstance the family proves to be unworthy of that trust and sins against the responsibility as well as the child.  But what is being spoken of here is nothing less than institutionalizing the state or others within the state and giving to them the responsibility that belongs to the family alone.  Surely the sad state of affairs today and the increasing rarity of children among us ought to suggest that culture, society, and trendy thinking are even less reliable than plain, old-fashioned sinful moms and dads.