Our kids don’t know we’re different

We are doing something this summer that we haven’t done before — sending our kids to a bunch of camps. Now, these are “day camps”, where they spend a few hours off doing something, then come home before dinner. However, for us it’s new.

Zoe is 13, and at “zoo camp” this week. This is a great experience for her, but it means she leaves the house at 7:30 and comes back around 4:30. Then at 6, she and her siblings head off to soccer camp for two hours.

We’ve only been doing this for two days (Monday and Tuesday), when Tommy said something that made me stop and think. He’s 11, and was talking with Zoe about the day. He said, “You leave early in the morning, get home just in time for dinner, then leave again. I hardly ever see you.” My wife Brenda overheard him, and said, “That’s what normal families do.”

See, we homeschool, so he’s used to being around all of the family all of the day. Having an older sister whom he doesn’t see all day is different, it’s weird. It’s not normal.

When we first started homeschooling, one of our goals was to have our kids be best friends with each other. We each had friends who were great companions during our school years, but whom we never see anymore. However, we do see our brothers and sisters, so our thought was to strengthen and deepen those relationships; we know those will last throughout their lifetimes.

So it struck me, as Brenda was talking with Tommy, that Tommy didn’t know what “normal” families do. He didn’t know that normal families don’t spend a lot of time with each other, don’t see each other throughout the day, and often begin to drift apart as the kids reach their teen years. At least, that’s what happened in Brenda and my families. We still have good relationships with our siblings, but they’re not as strong as they were…or as they could be.

My oldest, Samantha, makes sure this doesn’t happen. She told me a little while ago that even though she’s attending the local college, she thought about moving out of the house. She opted not to, though, and her main reason was this: her littlest sister, Nellie, was only four years old. If Samantha moved out, she reasoned, then she wouldn’t end up being a sister to Nellie, but more like an aunt. She would come over to visit, and maybe stay for dinner, but she wouldn’t spend quantity time with Nellie, she wouldn’t see her in passing…she wouldn’t live with Nellie. So Sam chose to live at home, if only to form a lasting bond with a pre-schooler sixteen years her junior.

That’s our family. That’s different. But our kids don’t know it.

What’s your family like?

Demolish things

I mentor some guys via email (sounds weird, I know). One of them, a young man named, Nate, wrote this to me recently:

I have been doing great. I have noticed my thought patterns lately and I feel like those strongholds are really breaking down. I pray that the devil will never be able to build his strongholds in my mind again. I love the feeling of freedom that I have when I am able to demolish impure thought patterns.

Go out today and demolish something.

Bart’s trouble

I’ve been reading a little bit of Bart Ehrman’s work, and a little bit about him. I’ve tried to boil down his arguments against the validity, historicity, and relevance of the New Testament. I think they can be summed up in these statements, found mostly in his book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, but he repeats these same arguments through most of his book:

  • The NT gospels were written too long after the events they describe, and therefore are susceptible to the frailties of human memory and distortion.
  • The gospels are tainted with post-Easter doctrine, which could not have been considered before the death of Jesus.
  • The gospels record supernatural activity, which is unverifiable and therefore not historical.
  • The NT manuscripts contain so many variants, and this undermines its credibility.

I’ve only read (and read about) a small number of his books, so perhaps he has more arguments than these. Still, I can start by examining his arguments — not by trying to disprove them, but by trying to figure out just what kind of religious documents would actually meet his criteria.

This post will only address his first point: The NT gospels were written too long after the events they describe.

Bart’s point here is that since the gospels were written anywhere from 30 to 60 years after the time of Jesus, they are undoubtedly the product of oral tradition which changed over time, rather than the accurate recollection of eyewitnesses.

Bart uses the analogy of the party game of “telephone”. In this game, one participant whispers a phrase into the ear of another. The second participant whispers into the ear of a third, and so on throughout the room. The last person repeats the phrase as he or she heard it, and everyone laughs at how the phrase has changed.

Bart says that the stories about Jesus were changed over time, just as the phrase in this game. However, there are so many problems with this analogy! In the game, the phrase is whispered, one time only. It’s not repeated clearly, and there is no room to ask questions. And the phrase is supposed to change — the game wouldn’t be any fun if the phrase was repeated perfectly from beginning to end! And besides, there is one person who knows the truth — the person who started the phrase. Part of the game involves going back to this person and comparing the “truth” with the “distortion”.

The stories of Jesus were not at all like this. I’m sure that some people changed the stories to suit particular needs, but — just as in the game — there is someone (or often, multiple someones) who knew the truth. And Bart apparently assumes that the person writing the gospels (Matthew, Mark, etc) is at the end of the telephone line, not at the beginning. Also, he assumes that the people telling the story — or writing it down — are not interested in reporting what actually happened.

So what are we left with? What should we find in a two thousand year old document, in order for Bart to stamp it as historically accurate?

Well, I guess it should be signed, as in: “I, Matthew, wrote this down.” This probably wouldn’t cut it for Bart. We all know that some of the letters attributed to Paul in the NT are not accepted as being authored by him. So even as Bart bemoans the anonymity of the gospel authors, I doubt he would accept as authentic any self-attribution in them.

Bart has also said that a record of an event should have been written within a very short time of the actual event, so that the eyewitnesses would be able to accurately remember. Just how short a time are we talking about? We know that the testimony of courtroom witnesses can be unreliable just a few weeks or months after the incidents they are describing, and the testimony is often colored by the biases of those witnesses. Bart complains that 30 years is too long a time. What about three years? Three months? Even if the document claimed to be on-the-spot reporting, would Bart accept it as historically accurate?

My point is this: Bart (and others) choose not to accept the historical reliability of the NT gospels. They set up criteria which the documents are guaranteed to fail, and then proclaim the inevitable conclusion as the only one which could be reached.

A Little Seasoning

Last night we had a group of young people over for dinner and conversation. It had been such a long time since that happened, and I realized how much I had missed it.

The folks reminded Brenda and me of how we were back then. They are really wanting to pursue God, to discover what Jesus wants them to do, and to get some help from some older, more experienced people — that’s where we come in!

There were times over the years where we had the chance to learn a little bit from older couples, but I don’t remember anyone who was intentional about inviting us to really become a part of their lives. That’s something we’d like to fix with this current crop of young people.

I’m feeling this strange mix of competence and inadequacy. Some days, I am convinced I have something to offer. Other days, I am equally convinced that I’ve missed my chance and my time has gone. Still, we’re plugging away and are cautiously optimistic!

Next week we’ll be meeting with a group of college kids — yikes!

Church and church

On Sunday morning, Brenda told four-year-old Nellie that we’re going to church today. Nellie asked, “Is that Reeve’s place, or the place where they turn the lights off?”

Now, I thought that was funny. Reeve is the one-year-old son of the leaders of our small group, and we meet at the leaders’ house — Reeve’s house! The place “where they turn the lights off” is the building where we have our Sunday meetings, and yes, the vibe involves very dim lighting.

I like it, though, that she thinks of each of these meetings as “church”. To her, church isn’t a building you go to, it’s a group of people you meet with. That’s pretty good ecclesiology; the four-year-old can teach this forty-six-year-old a thing or two.