The Reader, the Bible & His Presence
The magic of literature’s influence can only come to realization in the life of the reader when the reader leaves the book behind. This may be true of literature, but it is not true of the Bible. The power of Scripture resides in an abiding presence, a presence which is neither imagined nor sentimental but a presence which is none other than He who is the subject of the biography. The Lord be with you. And, indeed, He is.
Recently, I have been reading Terry Eagleton’s book, How to Read Literature. Eagleton is as entertaining as he is insightful. He reminds us readers, for example, that Heathcliff does not exist outside of the pages Wuthering Heights or that if Ishmael is only a literary name, then he doesn’t have a real one, because Melville chose not to give it. Again, it’s not that we don’t know it. He does not have it!
But it’s another observation that caught my imagination. He cautions a reader not to confuse fiction with reality. Certainly this is something of a danger for the best of readers. There are women who long to recreate the culture of Pride and Prejudice within their home school coop while wistfully wishing such a thing could be extended even further. This is not to mention the men who sneak the “thee” and the “thou” into their prayers.
Into this context Eagleton reminds us of Prospero, the hero of Shakespeare’s, The Tempest, who comes forward at the end of the play to caution the audience of making a mistake. Listen to Prospero,
Now my charms all o’erthworn,
And what strength I have’s mind own,
Which is most faint. Now, ‘tis true,
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardoned the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell,
But release me from my hands
With the help of your good hands.
What is Prospero doing? He is asking the audience to applaud. Certainly that is what he means when he asks for release “with the help of your good hands.” But he is not simply asking for praise. Prospero is pleading with the audience not to confuse the play with reality. Why? If they fail to do so they will diminish the effect of the play on the real world. In other words, says Eagleton, the spell must be broken if the magic is to work.
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How to Delay the Age at Which Kids Get Smartphones
Regardless of where you are on your journey, it’s never too late to help them. No parent has ever looked back and wished their child spent more time in the virtual world. Your children need the gift of your leadership now so they can be leaders tomorrow. Stand up for them to help them stand out from the crowd.
The most effective solutions to significant problems are sometimes surprisingly simple and yet strongly resisted. Take, for instance, the case of handwashing in 1847—a doctor’s groundbreaking discovery that handwashing could effectively prevent the spread of germs was initially met with skepticism and rejected by prevailing cultural beliefs. In fact, handwashing remained controversial for four decades before finally gaining universal acceptance as a cornerstone of medical practice. Today, the adolescent screen crisis is our newest problem with a surprisingly simple and effective solution. That solution is to delay smartphones until the end of adolescence—period. Like handwashing, this solution sounds simple in concept and will one day seem like common sense, but right now, it is considered countercultural.
Many of us following the After Babel Substack can agree that smartphones and social media negatively impact adolescent mental health and classroom learning and that spending more in-person time with friends and family is a healthier choice. Moods and grades generally climb when teens trade their phone-based childhoods for free play in nature, physical activities, creative hobbies, and smartphone-free study time. Teens are likely to be more content and less anxious when days are spent on something other than digital media platforms that are designed to be addictive. Best of all, family relationships tend to become calmer and more enjoyable when screen conflicts aren’t present in the home. Kids and parents long for the stress-free days when they aren’t constantly arguing over screen time. It’s not that we aren’t motivated to fix the problem; we sense there is a solution but don’t know how to break free from our biases, fears, and habits and go against the cultural wave. We don’t know how to practically delay the age kids get smartphones.
In this post, I will share valuable insights from my experience working with thousands of families over the past decade, utilizing the educational programs at the nonprofit organization ScreenStrong. While Jon and Zach emphasize the crucial step of collective action, my focus will provide specific actions for families to implement the simple yet powerful solution to skip smartphones and social media through adolescence. Drawing from principles of child development, we can be empowered to confidently take a new approach to what seems to be an unsolvable problem. Let’s look at how we can create a smartphone-free childhood to give our teens the most advantages without losing the benefits of technology.
Tip 1: We seek knowledge.
The first step is to set emotions aside and learn the basic science around teen brain development, mental health, and addiction. The “why” reinforces the “will” to delay smartphones. When we embrace the fascinating potential as well as the limitations of the teen brain, we see clear evidence for why skipping addictive screens through adolescence is the best solution.
Data shows that access is the underlying risk factor for every addiction, so removing access will decrease risk. Since the pull of some screen activities is stronger than others, we must focus on screen platforms that use powerful, persuasive design elements—video games, social media, and pornography. We don’t need to worry as much about delaying digital technology platforms that are genuinely educational. We don’t have data supporting an epidemic of kids visiting counselors because they can’t stop using spreadsheets and typing essays.
It may take some effort, but learning about kids’ brains and screens is necessary to stand strong under societal pressure. It is also essential to educate our children. Please don’t skip this step; staying on course and delaying smartphones without the necessary foundational knowledge is difficult.
Tip 2: We strengthen our parental role.
When we treat our teens like equals and try to be their best friends, we lose our ability to coach them. In fact, teens in this relationship structure often end up telling their parents what to do! Some take begging to a new level and create elaborate presentations to convince us they are mature enough for a smartphone. We often give in, despite our own better judgment. When we lose our ability to coach our kids, we easily fall into a trap where we begin parenting out of fear. We fear our children will be upset with us and also fear that our friends will judge us for being too strict. The fear of being labeled “overprotective” paralyzes us from protecting our teens at all. This defensive parenting approach, rooted in fear of external judgment, leads to unnecessary pain and ultimately to a dead end: disconnection from our teenagers as they shift their home base from family and attach to the virtual world instead.
Here is the key point: Social media was not created with the best interest of teenagers in mind. Instinctively, we know our kids shouldn’t invest time engaging with social media platforms because we, as adults, can see the dangers—the social comparison, constant judgments, and endless drama. Many of us are so thankful we didn’t have social media when we were their age because we know that having social media during our teen years would have been a nightmare filled with anxiety. We reminisce about everything we did as teenagers—including the negative things we thought or said about our friends and parents—and are exceedingly grateful that permanent highlight reels of our stupidity do not exist. (Suggestion: get your kids a journal to write their private thoughts in instead of giving them social media for them to broadcast those thoughts to the entire world.) If we think back for just a minute about our dopamine-craving brains from high school or the pain of rejection we suffered in middle school, we would stop reading this and retrieve our teen’s smartphone right now.
Embracing our role as a loving coach—instead of the role of best friend—allows us to protect our teens and, like a good coach, not overreact if they disagree with us or even say they don’t like us for not giving them a smartphone. Remember, this coaching role will be filled by someone, either you or their peers. Have the confidence to fill this role in your children’s lives and lead them well.
Your kids need you as a firm but loving life coach right now. Make the necessary decision to replace smartphones (and social media) with basic talk/text devices throughout adolescence.
Tip 3: We look past our biases.
We gain clarity when we look past our own biases and blind spots and stop believing that our kids are immune to the screen “infection.” They are not. No one is. One common blind spot is that parents often confuse intelligence with maturity. While our kids may be brilliant, they are not mature enough to handle the persuasive design elements of smartphones. Maturity is a slow process. Science shows that the development of neural pathways in the judgment center of the brain is not complete until around 25 years of age. Nothing you can do can speed up this physical process. Teens are not adults, and the journey of gaining experience, wisdom, and maturity is a gradual process that unfolds over time.
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Theology for Everyone Obadiah: A Glimpse of God’s Kingdom
At the beginning of the prophecy, Edom is high and lifted-up while foreigners enter Israel’s gates and carry off her wealth (v. 11). But a reversal is coming! Mount Zion shall gain ascendency and Mount Esau shall be stubble. The ascendency of Israel is described in terms of possession. They will possess Philistia, Edom, Phoenicia, Ephraim, Samaria, Gilead, and the Negev – in other words, every nation will belong to God’s people!
Obadiah is a neglected text in the Old Testament. It is a short text, weighing in at twenty-one verses. A lightweight for sure. However, this is probably not the reason for its neglect. No, neglect likely stems from its subject matter. It is a book about Edom. You heard me right, Edom, the posterity of Esau (Gen. 25:19ff). A quick consult of various commentaries reveals the same basic outline. This outline is from Leslie Allen’s commentary in the New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Allen, 142):
The Destruction of Edom (vv. 2-9)
The Wrongdoing of Edom (vv. 10-14)
Edom on the Day of Yahweh (vv. 15-21)
The point is clear, Obadiah has Edom on the mind. And if you’re like me, the posterity of Esau doesn’t really excite you. In fact, Allen describes Obadiah as “hardly a presentation of God’s whole counsel, even by OT standards” (Allen, 137). However, despite being about Edom, Obadiah teaches us, albeit briefly, about the kingdom of God.
The Kingdom of God is an Opposed Kingdom
According to Obadiah, Edom is representative of all the nations, which seems to find its parallel in Amos 9:12 where the “remnant of Edom” is synonymous with “all the nations.” When one thinks of Esau, the father of Edom, as the offspring that lives in rebellion against God, the imagery is fitting. This nation is full of pride toward self (v. 3) and animosity toward their brother Jacob (v. 10). The one nation of Edom describes them all.
This rivalry between Esau and Israel is heightened further by Obadiah’s descriptions of the two. The prophet speaks of Mount Zion (vv. 17, 21) and Mount Esau (vv. 8, 9, 21).
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How One Christian School Addressed Critical Theory
Written by Bradley G. Green |
Monday, November 28, 2022
More than twenty years ago, my wife and I helped found Augustine School, a classical Christian school in Jackson, Tennessee. Every Christian institution, if it is to remain faithful, must understand the times (1 Chron. 12:32) and articulate the gospel as perplexing ethical challenges emerge. The following statement is one model for how a Christian school can do this. In March, I helped our board of trustees draft “The Augustine School Statement on Social Theory” to help us navigate some of the harmful ideologies and social theories of our day. We adopted the statement as part of our school standards, and affirmation of the statement is a condition of employment and board membership. –Bradley G. Green
The Augustine School Statement on Social Theory
Christians of every generation must attempt to understand the faith they profess, to understand the entailments of that faith, and to apply that faith in ever-changing times. There is both an irenic aspect to Christianity (Christianity seeks to live at peace with others) and a polemical aspect to Christianity (Christianity has always seen the need to draw boundaries when necessary). This statement is meant to be a theologically sound, biblically faithful, and culturally engaged statement which attempts to address a plethora of interrelated challenges of our own day.
Article I
WE AFFIRM that all persons are created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26ff.), and descend from a historical Adam, and thus there is a fundamental unity across the human race.
WE DENY that any racial or ethnic category can nullify or negate this fundamental unity of all persons as created in the image of God, since all persons descend from a historical Adam. We further deny that one’s racial or ethnic make-up is at the heart of one’s identity, especially in comparison to: (1) being created in the image of God (in the case of each person), and (2) being united to Christ by faith alone apart from works (as applicable to believers in Christ). For those who are in Christ, the most pressing and central aspect of one’s identity is to be found in being “in Christ,” not in one’s race or ethnicity (Romans 12:5; 1 Corinthians 1:30; 15:22; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 2:16; Galatians 3:26; 5:6; Ephesians 1:3; 2:6; 3:6).
Article II
WE AFFIRM that all persons who follow Adam (excepting the Lord Jesus) have indeed fallen in Adam, their representative head, and enter into the world guilty, corrupt, and with a proclivity to sin.
WE DENY that any group of persons is more or less virtuous, more or less special, or more or less worthy on the basis of the categories of race or ethnicity, or on the basis of tribe, language, people group, or nation.
Article III
WE AFFIRM that after the fall of Adam there was a great animus, hostility, or antithesis established between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman (Gen. 3:15). This antithesis runs through the rest of history. Christ is the true “serpent crusher” who defeated the serpent by his death and resurrection, conquering evil and sin definitively, with the full revelation of his victory still to come at the last day.
WE DENY any worldview, philosophy, or ideology that places the fundamental antithesis somewhere else, such as the tendency in our own day to place an antithesis between “oppressor” and “oppressed,” or between different races.
Article IV
WE AFFIRM that the eschatological or final state of God’s people consists of persons from every tribe, language, people, and nation (Revelation 5:9; 7:9).
WE DENY that the differences of tribe, language, people, and nation constitute differences which deny a common humanity, and we deny that persons who come to Christ are inferior or superior to another based on differences of tribe, language, people, and nation.
Article V
WE AFFIRM that our Lord Jesus Christ was born into, and lived his entire earthly life in, a society in which animosity between groups (e.g., Jews and Samaritans, men and women) was a reality, with consequent inequalities between groups in various contexts of life. As a Jewish man living in a society that was shaped primarily by the influence of Jewish men, Jesus experienced what many today would call privileges of his social standing.
WE DENY, along with the universal testimony of Christian orthodoxy, that personal sin or guilt can be rightly attributed to our Lord Jesus Christ, and this would include any personal sin or guilt that is supposedly attached to the inheritance of social privilege. Consequently, we deny that guilt should be imputed solely on the basis of social privilege to any person, for such an imputation implicates our Lord in sin and consequently unravels the whole fabric of the gospel.
Article VI
WE AFFIRM that all persons who are in Christ, and who have expressed faith in Christ, are part of the world-wide body of persons rightly called Christians, and that such persons have a common Father (God the Father), are united to the same Son (God the Son), and are being sanctified by the same Holy Spirit (God the Holy Spirit).
WE DENY that differences of tribe, language, people, and nation are more important or significant than (1) the common humanity all persons share, and (2) the common spiritual relationship that all Christians share by being united to Christ by faith alone.
Article VII
WE AFFIRM that all persons who have come into the world (excepting the Lord Jesus Christ) come into the world guilty, corrupted, and with a proclivity toward sin.
WE DENY that any sin, including the sin of racism (defined as actual animus toward someone solely on the basis of that person’s race), can be attributed to a person simply because of that person’s racial or ethnic identity. We further deny that the sin of racism is by definition or in fact unique to one, or more than one, race, or that any given race is incapable of committing the sin of racism.
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