Cultural religiousity

This morning during Sunday school our teacher spoke about the church of Smyrna that was being persecuted viciously. Our teacher noted that if the church was American they would still have endured persecution because they chose to obey God rather than to be integrated in the culture. We were rebuked for being too much like our culture and so avoiding persecutuion. I must admit that I disagree with his assesment of why American Christians are not generally persecuted. Practicing Muslims stick out more and suffer less persecution here in the USA than do the most timid Christians in most of the world. Americans are sensitive to those who stick out so that skin colors and religious practices that do not fit with cultural expectations are noted and made to feel uncomfortable outside their cultural context. American Christians who strictly adhere to certain dictates that they find in Scripture will miss out on certain opportunities such as Sunday sports and social gatherings that involve alcohol, but they cannot begin to call this persecution. Those who are vocal about things such as sexual perversions and abortion will find themselves further shunned, and perhaps targetted for mistreatment, but this I not the result of general obedience to Scripture but the living out of a personal sense of calling.

While I don't think the lack of persecution is reason for American Christians to feel like failures the fact that American Christians do follow the lead of culture in what parts of Scripture they obey should be cause for concern. The fact that Christians do not treat their Sunday as a Sabbath, do not keep women from speaking in the assembly, and no longer advocate slavery is not the result of persecution, but responses to a sense of cultural inconvenience. Doctrine in Scripture has not changed in the last two thousand years, but how we apply it often the outcome of cultural pressures. This fact makes me wonder how much I really appear to be a true Christian in comparison to men like Peter, Paul, and Stephen. I find myself constantly re-examining why I do what I do and believe what I believe.

ants go marching

Since my wife and I both graduated from high school home-schooled (in different schools of course!) I am often asked by friends if we think about home-schooling our three children. My answer is that we do home-school, but our children also attend conventional school. My point is that while we do not home-school our children in the typical sense we still have the belief that we are responsible for their education. This means that we use many of the techniques our parent's used to cram as much education into one day as we can. Yesterday was a case in point.

My son and I were at the pool when I noticed a thick line of ants going into the trash can poolside. I tossed some garbage into the can and put the top back on realizing that it hadn't been closed correctly some time before allowing the ants to find a way into the can and find some food that had been left inside. I adjusted the lid and it fell tightly into place cutting off the access point for the ants and even forcing some ants to scramble away down the side of the can in a defensive maneuver. As I stepped back away from the garbage can I noticed the column of ants continued along the path of the ants who had been going into the can even though the lid was too tight to get in. I figured the column would simply continue around the lid until the group would fall onto the original column. Out of curiosity I watched the ants, but instead of bumbling along the ants gathered in groups around the area where the path led into the road block caused by the closed lid. Antennae touched antennae after antennae until one by one ants started to follow the invisible trail back down. As the ants traveled down away from the closed lid they touched antennae with the up-going ants and it didn't seem like anything happened. The up-going ants continued moving the same direction until after meeting with the fifth or sixth down-going ant they abruptly would turn around and follow the trail downward. Within a minute almost the whole column had completely reversed course with a few stragglers still meandering about.

At this point I called my son over and showed him what was going on. We watched as the column slowly turned around as ant after ant met with the turned around ants and finally changed course. Returning to the apartment we discussed how people tend to follow the crowd and how even if we don't seem to change one person's mind about something our voice added to the group of voices may be enough to eventually make a change one person at a time. Arriving at the apartment my son and I told our story of the ants and after dinner found us all gathered around the computer screen watching Youtube as an "ant researcher" showed his study process of using one ant to leave a scent trail for other ants to follow to some food that was left out. I remember my father using events like this to create teaching moments to both teach his children about science and the importance of standing by our deeply held beliefs in the face of pressure. I hope that tomorrow morning I can teach my kids about the scientific method and carry out a simple experiment to see if we can "validate" the researcher's method of proving ant's communication by scent trails.

The answer is no my kids don't exclusively home school, but I hope that my kids will be able to say that they were certainly educated at home.