Reflections on a Field Trip to George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate
November 14, 2006
My children had several days off from school last week, so I decided to take my own advice and “make better use of the vast historical resources readily available to northern Virginia residents.” Late Wednesday morning, we hopped in the Bus (a.k.a. our minivan) and charted a course for Mount Vernon, the estate of our first president. My hope was that our exploration of George Washington’s ancestral home would provide a useful opportunity to teach my girls something of “the virtues of courage, honor, sacrifice and civic duty” (id.). Chilly, wet and muddy conditions aside, things still didn’t turn out quite as I had planned.
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Halloween III: Light in the Darkness
November 02, 2006
Last week, I explained why my family reversed course from 2005 and decided to celebrate Halloween ‘06, participating in Christ’s work to redeem even this holiday. Well, this year, Team Wilson enjoyed Halloween like never before.
The preparations began days in advance. While my ladies attended a birthday party last weekend, I spent several hours adorning our house with ropes of white lights. Later, Christine hemmed Savannah’s costume, and the girls delighted in placing labels on the treats that proclaimed, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” They also made a poster to hang by the door that proclaimed, “Jesus is the light of the world!”
And then the big night arrived. Before settling in for an evening of handing out treats, we led our girls on their victorious candy campaign around the block. Christine and I (dressed as Mary and Joseph) escorted our girls (dressed as an angel and one of the three wise men) and led our “donkey” (played by our 150-pound Newfoundland puppy Maximus). Even though Maximus didn’t wear a costume, I think he may have attracted the most attention from passersby. Wearing a Halloween costume -- which I haven’t done since elementary school -- turned out not to be as embarrassing as I remembered.
Back at home, we sat outside to enjoy the glorious fall weather and warmly greet guests disguised as werewolves, vampires, and Bill Gates (my bride’s personal favorite, and to some just as scary as the werewolves). Trick-or-treaters were delighted to receive full-sized candy bars instead of those mini-sized imposters. Along with their candy, guests received booklets describing the best treat of all -- Jesus Christ.
Perhaps most rewarding were the warm greetings we received from friends, neighbors and strangers alike in response to our brightly illuminated home. What a difference the white lights made in our little corner of the world.
Cars slowed to get a better look. A neighbor across the street yelled with a friendly wave, “Thank you! The lights look great!” One mother called out, “Your house is beautiful!” A dad said, “I’m sensing a positive vibe here.” A little girl exclaimed, “It’s like Christmas and Halloween all in one!” We heard reports of children telling their parents, “Look at that house with the lights! We have to go there!” One young boy knowingly said, “Oh! It’s all about Jesus,” when he saw the poster that our girls made.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m looking forward to Halloween 2007.
Teens Are Fickle: Should I Care?
November 01, 2006
According to the Washington Post, there is good reason to believe that the fantastically popular teen networking site MySpace is headed for obscurity. MySpace “functions like a cross between a diary, e-mail program and photo album where content can be shared with friends, whose pictures appear on a member’s profile.” Since inception two-and-a-half years ago, MySpace has attracted 124 million profiles, was acquired by News Corp. for $580 million, and entered into a $900 million deal with Google primarily allowing Google to advertise on the site.
Despite this striking success, the Post finds reason for pessimism. First, a reporter found area teens saying that “they’re over MySpace.”
“I think it’s definitely going down – a lot of my friends have deleted their MySpaces and are more into [MySpace rival] Facebook now,” said Birnbaum, a junior [at Falls Church High School] who spends more time on her Facebook profile, where she messages and shares photos with other students in her network.
From the other side of the classroom, E.J. Kim chimes in that in the past three months, she’s gone from slaving over her MySpace profile up to four hours a day – decorating it, posting notes and pictures to her friends’ pages – to deleting the whole thing.
“I’ve grown out of it,” Kim said. “I thought it was kind of pointless.”
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Halloween II: Taking a Less Safe Course
October 24, 2006
Today I offer further evidence that I and my family are just stumbling along in our own search for truth and meaning in faith and culture. A mere two weeks ago I attempted to explain why the Wilson Family does not celebrate Halloween. Now, I am going to try to explain why we have changed our minds, and how we intend to celebrate this year.
My previous post implicitly assumed that Christians have just two options when it comes to Halloween: to celebrate or not to celebrate. Within that framework, I described why I was (and remain) uncomfortable with the “celebrate” choice. In short, we are to honor and glorify God in all that we do, and it is difficult to conceive of how that goal would be advanced by our participation in Halloween which, with its pagan origins and lingering influence, often celebrates or trivializes evil.
That analysis conveniently ignores another option: perhaps the most appropriate way to serve the Lord in this season is to engage the culture, to bring the Light of Christ to the darkness, to serve as His hands and feet, participating in His work of redeeming all of creation. I accuse myself of “conveniently” ignoring this possibility, because it is the most difficult path for me to take. Not since about third grade have I been a fan of Halloween. I don’t enjoy the attention that comes with wearing costumes. (What are you? Who are you? Why did you choose to dress up as that?) I personally wouldn’t miss it at all, if we all agreed to drop it from the calendar. Moreover, it’s rarely easy to stand up with Christ against the current of the culture. Being a fool for Christ takes courage, and enjoying being His fool takes practice.
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Practicing Discernment in Political Giving
October 18, 2006
Until recently, I haven’t paid much attention this year to electoral politics outside of Virginia. That changed when friends asked my wife and me to provide financial support to the Congressional election campaign of a non-Virginian Republican in the midst of a tight race. As a way of helping me think through this decision, allow me to explain why I find it to be a difficult one.
Not until the 1992 presidential campaign did I first consider the issue of abortion. As I recall, I was drawn to some candidate’s explanation that, while he is personally opposed to abortion, he would not seek to make his personal view the law of the land. As a budding libertarian raised in a churched environment, this private/public distinction appealed to me, and I made it my own.
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Halloween: Is it Just About Kids, Costumes and Candy?
October 10, 2006
Our daughters, ages 7 and 5, will not celebrate Halloween at the end of the month. That’s right: no dressing up in costumes, traipsing around in the dark with friends and collecting candy from the neighbors. Why? Because we love Jesus, and He doesn’t want us to have any fun.
Well, that’s only half true. Jesus did not come to stop our fun; He came that his followers “may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). We love Jesus and are deeply grateful for His sacrifice. Accordingly, we earnestly desire to follow Him, honoring and glorifying Him in thought, word and deed. We cannot see how celebrating Halloween would glorify God. To the contrary, we fear that celebrating Halloween, at worst, celebrates evil and, at best, trivializes it.
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The Contraception Debate
October 06, 2006
[Note: In the following post, I share some of my developing thoughts concerning contraception, in particular the use of birth control pills. I do so with some hesitation, for I realize that, as a wealthy, married, white male, many people will see my privileged position as negating my standing to join this public debate.]
Last week, I involved myself in an online discussion at ScienceBlogs.com concerning the “religious right’s” objections to contraception. Blogger Ed Brayton launched the discussion with a rather critical perspective on pro-life advocates’ increasingly visible efforts to curtail our society’s widespread use of contraception. Of most interest to me was the following claim by Brayton:
If you want to see an explosion in the number of abortions, all you have to do is ban contraception. Widespread availability of contraception absolutely reduces the number of abortions . . . .
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Do Your Children a Favor: Eat Dinner Together as a Family
September 26, 2006
Did your family eat dinner together yesterday? Since 2001, The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) has been celebrating Family Day on the fourth Monday in September. Family Day is a “national effort to promote family dinners as an effective way to reduce substance abuse among children and teens.”
CASA’s full-page ad in Sunday’s Washington Post says in part: Family dinners are more than just sharing a meal. Research by [CASA] consistently finds that the more often children eat dinner with their families, the less likely they are to smoke, drink or use drugs. . . .
The conversations that go hand-in-hand with dinner help parents learn more about their children’s lives and better understand the challenges they face.
I find the Family Day campaign especially encouraging for two reasons. First, the campaign and its underlying research acknowledge that families, in particular parents, play a vital role in the moral education and edification of our young. Why is that apparently obvious fact so important, you may wonder? Generally speaking, it runs directly counter to a key presupposition driving the cultural revolution of The Sixties, when young people were encouraged to throw off the oppressive traditions and morality of their parents (and other social institutions, including government, church, etc.). Youth was celebrated, and escaping the oppression of established institutions was held up as the way to recovering human integrity. Family Day is one small indication that we are realizing or remembering the inherent value of at least one of our social institutions.
Second, the Family Day campaign presupposes that truth – rather than simply being subjective, personal and relative – can be objective, universal and absolute. We hear a lot these days that there is no truth of this latter kind – only self-interest, prejudice and power dressed up as such. Yet, here is a truth claim: children are less likely to smoke, drink or use drugs, the more often they eat dinner with their families. CASA goes farther than that, trying to persuade parents to Tell your child the truth—that drugs, alcohol and tobacco may make them feel good for a while (by activating brain chemicals). Unfortunately, that feeling is brief and no one can know the true potency or lifetime effects of these substances.
Next year, I would like to see CASA provide parents with advice on how to answer the sophisticated, postmodern teen who responds to this truth claim by arguing, “That may be true for you (or some other kids), but not for me.”
What’s So “Human” About Rights Based on Mere Pragmatism?
September 21, 2006
This week, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation released its 2006 Corporate Equality Index, “a tool to rate American businesses on how they are treating gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees, consumers and investors.” Corporate America’s increasing sensitivity to GLBT diversity concerns, of course, makes some people happy and others not so happy.
For me the report summons memories of graduate business school, in particular my corporate strategy professor and his approach to diversity issues. As he put it, there is one defensible reason for a corporate executive to foster diversity and discourage discrimination: to maximize profitability, you need to sell your products to an increasingly diverse population; without a diverse workforce, you cannot hope to understand and surmount the cultural barriers to making those sales.
My professor’s message was not unique. It fit neatly within the university’s and the business school’s shared worldview. As compared to his peers, he was just a bit more plain-spoken, less diplomatic in his delivery. In fact, this pragmatic approach to diversity and discrimination has a strong presence in the Human Rights Campaign report. The clearest example can be found in the highlighted quote on page 9 of the report. When asked why Hewlett-Packard Co. supports GLBT inclusiveness at the workplace, John Hassell, director for government affairs, said, “One word: competitiveness. It’s not just a nice-to-do thing. It’s a requirement to be successful in the private sector.” I suspect that this pragmatic approach has been the driving force behind Corporate America’s embrace of diversity. What will happen if – no, not if but when – circumstances change? What will happen when businesses are able to institutionalize the information needed to surpass cultural barriers to sales? Will executives remain sensitive to diversity concerns? Not likely. Not if they remain pragmatic. The GLBT lobby should be careful what they celebrate.
The “Gay Marriage” Debate: Valuable Reminders from a Libertarian
September 16, 2006
Thanks to friends at BreakPoint for pointing me to a thoughtful discussion of the gay marriage debate penned by libertarian blogger Jane Galt. Like Galt, I often hear the following type of exchange between social conservatives, on one side, and progressives, on the other.
The social conservative says:
[M]arriage is an ancient institution, which has been carefully selected for throughout human history. It is a bedrock of our society; if it is destroyed, we will all be much worse off. (See what happened to the inner cities between 1960 and 1990 if you do not believe this.) For some reason, marriage always and everywhere, in every culture we know about, is between a man and a woman; this seems to be an important feature of the institution. We should not go mucking around and changing this extremely important institution, because if we make a bad change, the institution will fall apart.
To which, the social progressive replies:
Why on earth would it make any difference to me whether gay people are getting married? Why would that change my behavior as a heterosexual? . . .
I will get married even if marriage is expanded to include gay people; I cannot imagine anyone up and deciding not to get married because gay people are getting married; therefore, the whole idea is ridiculous and bigoted.
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Seeking “Healthy” Children: Nearing Gattaca?
September 14, 2006
You remember the movie
Gattaca, starring Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman, right?
In the not-too-distant future, Vincent (Hawke) is born the old-fashioned way, free of genetic engineering.
With his genes left to “chance,” Vincent is now saddled with not just bad eyesight but a serious heart condition that shrinks his life expectancy to 30 years.
In Gattaca, where genetic composition is determinative, a profile like Vincent’s destines a person to permanent membership in the socioeconomic underclass.
Determined not to subject their second child to a similar fate, Marie and Antonio, Vincent’s parents, decide to conceive him in what has become the “natural” way – i.e., genetically fine-tuned.
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Why Care About Plan B?
August 24, 2006
Earlier today, the FDA approved an application to allow women 18 and over to purchase, without a prescription, the emergency contraceptive Plan B. As described by an AP report,
“[Plan B] pills are a concentrated dose of the same drug found in many regular birth-control pills. When a woman takes the pills within 72 hours of unprotected sex, she can lower the risk of pregnancy by up to 89 percent. If she already is pregnant, the pills have no effect.”
Let me get this straight. Plan B is nothing more than a high dose of a commonly-used birth control pill. And if a woman is already pregnant, taking Plan B will have no effect. Why has the religious right been fussing about this? Where is the moral crisis?
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“Where does God stand on abortion?”
August 15, 2006
Yesterday, “The Nation’s Newspaper,” USA Today, ran an opinion piece, Where does God stand on abortion?, by Episcopal priest and author Tom Ehrich. Despite his choice of title, Ehrich spends precious few words analyzing or discussing where God stands on abortion. In the few words he devotes to God’s perspective, Ehrich declares that there are only a “few biblical passages that come even close to being relevant” to the issue of abortion, and then suggests that those few passages are open to competing interpretations of equal validity. In short, “neither side [of the debate] can make an absolute [Biblical] case for or against abortion.”
With the Bible swept aside, Ehrich is left to contend that the “decision [of where God stands on abortion] ultimately comes down to . . . individuals.” And what have individuals decided? “[E]ach denomination – even those most publicly aligned with opposition to abortion, such as Roman Catholic and Southern Baptist – has a sizable minority that takes a different position.” In other words, we humans – even the religious ones – are confused and in disagreement. Amid the confusion, we should seek to position ourselves, according to Ehrich, in the “common-sense middle” rather than either “extreme.”
To recap the argument:
- the Bible contains almost nothing relevant to the question of abortion;
- the few arguably relevant Biblical passages are indeterminate;
- therefore, it is up to the individual to decide where God stands on abortion; and
- people with common sense stay near the middle, avoiding the extreme positions.
My favorite step is the twist in the argument between #2 and #3. What ought we do when God’s position is difficult to discern? Father Ehrich suggests that each of us arrogate the power to decide what God’s position is. As nice as it would be to have that kind of power, I respectfully decline.
Internet Gambling: Why, if at all, should we care?
July 30, 2006
“If an adult in this country, with his or her own money, wants to engage in an activity that harms no one, how dare we prohibit it . . . .”
So argued Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) earlier this month as the House of Representatives was set to approve the Internet Gambling Prohibition and Enforcement Act. If passed by the Senate, an outcome that may be in jeopardy, the Act would prohibit most forms of internet gambling and make it illegal for credit card companies and banks to transmit payments to online gambling companies.
I suspect that a majority of Americans not only would agree with Mr. Frank in principle, they might concur that the government ought not seek to ban internet gambling. According to a recent poll apparently commissioned by the Poker Players Alliance, 67% of American adults believe that the federal government should not “be managing Americans gambling behaviors on the Internet.” So, why is it that more than three out of four of Mr. Frank’s colleagues disagreed, as the House of Representatives passed the Act by a vote of 317-93?
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A Pretense of Knowledge
July 24, 2006
Economist Walter Williams argues that Congress, when it comes to economic matters, not infrequently acts under a pretense of knowledge and beyond its intellectual capabilities. (See Pretense of Knowledge, Washington Times, July 23, 2006.) His lead example of such folly is Social Security law, which indiscriminately forces workers to set aside for retirement with no inquiry into whether any given worker might otherwise devote those funds to more productive uses.
I am sympathetic to Williams’ perspective. In fact, not long ago, I would have enthusiastically embraced it. I suppose it is this past enthusiasm that makes me uncomfortable today.
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The Hours: a Belated Review
January 31, 2006
“I chose life.”
In this critically-acclaimed film filled with darkness and misery, no line disturbed me more. Decades after abandoning her family, Laura Brown (Julianne Moore), sums up her defense: “I chose life.” If she had not run away from her husband, her two small children − from her life − Brown reasons, she would have taken her own life. Equally disturbing is the apparent reaction of Clarissa Vaughn (Meryl Streep), the recipient of Brown’s unsolicited confession. Vaughn, haunted by the fear that her own life has been meaningless, seems to draw comfort, some sense of peace from Brown’s view of life: any life lived − no matter how it is lived − is satisfactory, meaningful, and a victory over death.
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