Twofer!

by HuMJah on July 28, 2010

Yup! It’s another Twofer! This time, it’s a twofer because this is both a musical musing and a piece on parenting, so it fits into Instant Tribe.  Enjoy! :)

Keith and JosiahI think I’ve written about Keith Green’s Song For Josiah before, but today it seems particularly fitting; today is the 28th anniversary of Keith and Josiah’s death in a plane crash (Keith’s daughter Bethany was also lost, as was another family of 6, and the pilot of the plane). Keith was just 28 years old, but he’d already had two careers that made him famous in his short life. He had been a child star, only to grow out of favor. Then, as adolescence made the rejection he was already feeling even keener (because don’t all kids feel rejected and alienated to some extent?), he conveyed his musical talents into a second career, eventually developing a relationship with Jesus and God and becoming an unapologetic Christian and music minister.

I was 18 when I discovered Keith’s music, some 14 years ago. As another blogger posted today, it’s not that Keith sings about Jesus that makes his music so infectious; it is the love, the passion, the relationship that is so clearly evident in his music and in the life he was leading that makes it so powerful. It spoke to places in me that I didn’t even know were broken, providing me with a healing so effective that it prepared me for what came next and then the next step and the next, and so on. Keith’s music, because it was built on a living relationship, because it was built on loving and being loved by a God who is Love, served to connect me to the God of Love I needed so deeply.

As a result, there are things in his music that have radically shaped the way I feel about my faith. Am I saying that I built my faith whole cloth from Keith’s music? Absolutely not. But because of the way that his music spoke to me when I was at such an impressionable age, he had a huge impact on me, and even on the way I think about what it means to be a parent. That’s where this particular song comes into play.

I’ve heard a speech that is often attributed to Paul Harvey, though whether he is actually the author or origin, I could not say. In this piece, the author says that instead of wishing that his children will have everything they want, he wishes they will have enough, and goes on to explain this. He hopes they will have enough joy to understand the power of joy, to be happy and satisfied with life, but not so much that they become complacent and dissatisfied, expecting that everything will be handed to them on a silver platter because it’s always been so. He hopes they’ll have enough sorrow to appreciate the joy when it comes, but not so much that it comes to dominate their existence. He hopes they have enough money to not have to worry about it, but enough want that they never forget what it means to be in need, to lose touch with those who are not as fortunate as they are. He continues like this for a while, but I think you get the idea.

I love this idea. You see, by giving in to our children, it’s easy to make them soft. Now, while it’s important that our children be allowed their innocence and childhood, it’s also vital to remember that childhood is also the time that teaches and trains them for the life that comes after. If we coddle our children, we fail to equip them to face the challenges that life inevitably brings to us all. If our daughter never learns that goldfish die, how is she supposed to cope when she is faced with the loss of a family member or friend? If our son never learns that knives are sharp, or that falling down hurts, what’s going to happen when he tries to parachute off the roof of the house with his sheet, or dive into the pool from the corner of the garage?

It breaks our hearts to watch our children suffer. Let’s face it; only someone who was mentally ill would look at someone in pain and have no empathy, no sympathy. It’s right to want to protect our children, and we should. Our children need us to guide them through life, to allow them to explore this world and the dangers that it offers at appropriate ages with appropriate supervision. You don’t let infants play with matches or stoves, but your 6 year old can help you put on a pot of water for tea or her favorite snack with your supervision, and your 12 year old should be able to navigate a kitchen largely unaided (though you’ll probably still need to stay put to supervise if he’s doing anything but his few favorite staples, or she’s trying a new recipe, and it’ll take both of you to clean up afterward).

Keith acknowledges this dichotomy in his Song For Josiah: the need to protect to his son, but the need to let him have only enough so that he has the strength necessary for the life ahead (even though neither of them got to live it). He’s particularly addressing the spiritual battles that he fears lie ahead for his son, but these concerns poured out from the heart of a father for his son are beautiful and universal if you allow them to be (and I’ll be honest, I see both levels, both the concern for my child’s spiritual health and the other, more quotidian concerns).

And actually, let’s look at that concern for Josiah’s spiritual life. These days, it’s popular to say that we should let our children determine their own spiritual direction for their lives. That we shouldn’t attempt to force our own religion on our children; they’re too young and impressionable to be coerced by our religious beliefs. It’s not right, says pop culture, to warp a child’s mind, with your own limited notions of the divine, if a divine even exists.

Except, that’s a load of relativistic hogwash, isn’t it? I mean, think about it: we’re expected to teach our children right from wrong, correct? We teach them to share, to be honest and not to lie, not to take things that do not belong to them, we teach them acceptable social behavior and even where it’s acceptable to put their body waste and where it isn’t. We define behavioral norms of right and wrong, of good behavior and bad behavior, rewarding right choices and discipling wrong choices in an attempt to shape our children in to the sorts of people who will easily and successfully navigate civil society in the future.

Aren’t we, in shaping their definition of right and wrong, of good and bad, of acceptable behavior and unacceptable behavior, aren’t we shaping children’s minds? Even the structures we put in place, even the code of ethics and morals we teach them, whether we call them that or not, have an origin from somewhere… there’s an absolute that described them at some point, and more often than not, that origin is religious in nature. So by teaching our children acceptable social behavior, we are shaping their religious life, developing the beginnings of their spiritual life, even accidentally. And if we refuse to teach them these behaviors, then we are left with rebellious, anti-social, poorly socialized children who are ill-equipped for life and who struggle with every aspect of life; their education is at risk, and their risk of incarceration is increased.

So we do, actually, shape their religious ideas, even when we aren’t meaning to. It’s just that some of us are very intentional about it, that some don’t apologize for pointing to their own faith as the source for their beliefs of what is right and wrong. Is this always a good thing? No. There are suicide bombers who are raising children to be suicide bombers. There are children being raised to be racist and hate-mongers. It’s a tragedy. But neither is being intentional in shaping my child’s faith always bad; it was the exposure to church that I got growing up that gave me the strength I needed to hang on and keep going and that shaped me into the woman I am today. My great-grandmother’s faithfulness was a very active and intentional influence on the woman I am, even from the time I was tiny.

We have Keith here, then, pledging to Josiah, his beloved son, that this life will be difficult. He’s promising that the faith that Keith has chosen and plans to raise Josiah in will be very difficult… but that the final reward will be worth all the trouble. He’s telling his son that he’s been there; he understands the struggles his son will face… and as a result, he will do the best job he can to be a good father and a good confidant, too, to understand his son when he needs that most. And he promises to let his son grow and develop into the man he needs to be, even if that takes him away from his parents.

That’s the kind of parent I want to be. I want to find that line that must be walked, the one that gives my children enough… enough freedom to let them discover the wonders of this world, and enough limits to protect them from harm, but enough danger to shape and discover the diamonds they are deep within. I want them to come to know and love the God I do, the one who gave up the glory and immortality of eternity and heaven to woo them into a relationship with Him, who took up His power and rolled a stone away to walk out of tomb. I want to walk the balance between holding my children close enough that they never doubt for an instant that I love them heart, mind, and soul… and yet enough to let them go when the time comes. I want to be godly mother to my children, so that once they’ve grown and become adults, we can be more than mother and child, we can be siblings in the family of Christ. It won’t be easy, and there will be days when I’d rather duct-tape them to the wall than to patiently deal with them (but I won’t. I promise. No taping the children with anything other than a video camera). But being a parent is an honor and a privilege, and I’ve been aching for that opportunity for years. Oh, my Beloved Child, I will show you such wonders in this life, if you will listen, and I promise I will listen too. And I love you. I have never met you, and still, I love you with every beat of my heart. I can’t wait to meet you.

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Stop The Stoning Of Sakineh In Iran

Image courtesy of Randy Elrod, 2010

If you follow my twitter feed, every once and a while, you’ll see comments from me raging against the Iranian government. If you know me in person, you may have noticed that I’ve always got green on (or you may be one of the ones that’s heard why I’ve always got green on). Or maybe you’ve seen my avatar, currently tinted green. You may wonder what it’s all about, why my twitter location is set to Tehran, why I keep going on about a place that the news has long since forgotten about, why I do something so small and unimportant as wear green in the larger scope of things.

Let’s face it; I’m a housewife in the middle of the United States. I’m largely unimportant in the grand scheme of things. I mean, sure I’m important to the people who love me and care about me, but outside of them, I have very little influence. I’m just another voice in the six plus billion people on this earth, right? What does one voice matter?

Except, Beloved, I believe that every voice is precious. Yes, even the ones I can’t stand are precious… they are a son or daughter to someone; none of us exist in a vacuum. In fact, it’s my belief that every voice is precious that drives my passion for the people of Iran and against the government there. If I consider every life invaluable, a treasure of inestimable worth, then the casual destruction and oppression of those lives is going to be highly offensive to me. That’s exactly what’s happening in Iran right now, and that’s why I’ve been speaking against the government.

I wear green to remind myself to think about the men and women in Iran who don’t have the basic freedoms that we take for granted in the United States. I keep my icon green to remind myself that people where given the illusion of freedom of choice and then brutally denied that freedom. And I protest publicly the inhumane treatment and the continual loss of freedoms in Iran as a way to keep attention on the lives of these people, so that they are not ignored and silenced by a despot who seeks to dehumanize them and control every aspect of their lives.

A little bit of history so that you understand why green, and why I protest this government:
In 1978, the Iranian people went through a revolution that overthrow the monarchy of the Shah of Iran and replaced it with the Islamic Republic led by the Ayatollah Khomeini. Under his leadership, the nation became more of a theocracy, or a country that was governed not by a political power but by a religious one (in Iran’s case, Islam and their faith in Allah). Under Khomeini, in 1988, the government executed political prisoners in Iran. Estimates of how many people were killed vary widely from as low as 1400 to as high as 30000.

When Khomeini passed away in 1989, Khamenei was made the new Supreme Leader by the dying Khomeini. (In the past, I’ve mistakenly thought that Khomeini and Khamenei were different spellings of the same name. This is not the case; these are two different men.) The dying Ayatollah, whose position had been strengthened early on by the taking of US Embassy personnel, also changed the constitution before dying. During the 1990s, the president of Iran was a relatively reform-minded body, and the people enjoyed freedom while the government focused on building its own economy, infrastructure, and undoing the damage of the wars in the past. But as the late 90s ended and the 2000s dawned, the clergy began to tighten control over the country, and changes in the presidency eventually led to the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005. There were already anti-government protests in 2003, before Ahmedinejad was elected, but after his election, the people protested against Human Rights violations as well.

But what brought things to international attention in a new way was the June election in 2009. There was a reformist who ran against Ahmedinejad, a man named Mousavi. His party was marked by the green color on the Iranian flag, so those who supported him wore green on their clothing, carried green flags, or were otherwise marked by green. As the election results came back, the official Ahmedinejad counts were reported as granting Ahmedinejad “a landslide victory”. Mousavi and his supporters (and even those who hadn’t actively supported him, but now wondered at the results) questioned the outcome. There was a recount of 10% of the ballots, and the Supreme Leader declared that attempting to overthrow the elected government was immoral and that the election was closed, despite the fact that some areas reported voter turnouts greater than 100% (aside from other questionable outcomes).

But it didn’t end at a disputed election. Both peaceful protests and riots were declared illegal, and the pro-Ahmedinejad paramilitary Basij group instigated violence against students and Mousavi supporters. Within a week, the Basij had murdered a woman on camera, and when this footage was shared over the internet (because it was the only way communicate the real events coming out of Iran without the censorship of the government interfering). It continued to escalate. By June 22nd, riot police were using live ammunition fired into the air and tear gas to break up crowds. By July first, over 1000 people had been arrested, and at least 20 people had been killed in the violence. Basij troops were marking homes during the day and going back after dark to attack reformist supporters, raping the women, kidnapping and killing the men. Protests have continued, and Mousavi’s nephew was assassinated in December 2009.

More, the oppression of the people in Iran has continued. The people are more and more limited in their freedoms; not only has their right to determine their own government been interrupted, but more reports emerge as time passes. The government in Iran has legislated which hair styles are acceptable. Why does a government get to dictate hairstyles?

More, in 2006, a woman named Sakineh was arrested and charged with adultery. In a theocracy, this is a serious charge, and her sentence is stoning. This sentence has not been carried out yet, but there is no evidence that suggests that the government won’t take carry it out quietly later. She has confessed to her crime, but her confession came after she was tortured, and she has since recanted that confession.

Ladies and gentleman, how can we, as citizens of humanity, share this planet with the people of Iran, and not be concerned about what is happening to them? How can we not care about the way they’re being oppressed by their own government? These men and women live in fear of their own government arresting them, falsely charging them with crimes, beating a confession out of them, and then stoning them to death for this crime. They are being told how they may wear their own hair! It has been said that evil prospers when good men do nothing… if this government isn’t evil, then what can we call evil? If this level of oppression isn’t evil, then what is? Or do you deny evil exists? Still… how can we allow our fellow citizens to be so oppressed?

I wear green for the party that opposed Ahmedinejad. I wear green for the people who were murdered for daring to speak out against the government that oppressed them. I wear green for the woman murdered on camera, Neda. I wear green for Sakineh who is facing being stoned for a crime she was tortured into confessing to. I wear green because although we have different faiths, I believe with all my heart that the God who formed the world and died on the cross and loves me, loves them just as much. I wear green, Beloved, because we are no different when it really matters. I wear green to remember these men and women whose lives matter every bit as much as mine do.

We’re all just one voice in the vast cacophony of billions. But where one voice can be silenced, many have far more power. Many voices united can have a much larger effect than any one of us can. So I invite you to join me. Join the chorus of people on the internet that are raising their voices against the oppression of the men and women in Iran. Speak out against the stoning of Sakineh. Maybe we can save her life. Maybe we can make a tangible difference for change.

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