Garrett's Public Mind

Blog Rock

2015-03-15T12:33:00.000-06:00

I used to have such interesting debates on the internet. Sure, they often became contentious and descended into personal attacks. But they were interesting.

Then I grew up.

Now I'm so stinkin' afraid of offending anyone I can't tell anyone what I believe or think without great anxiety.

No, it's worse than that. Not only can't I tell anyone what I believe or think, now even merely considering issues which are highly charged brings to my mind the faces and words of countless relatives, friends, and acquaintances who would think ill of me for misapprehending or dismissing a point about which they feel strongly.

Yet I have this blog, and every now and then I work up the gumption to write something on it. But who wants to read a blog where the person never says anything that could be disagreed with or thought ignorant? I don't, at least.

Talking with my wife this morning, I compared my predicament to reading a blog written by a rock. Nobody's ever offended by rocks. If you've ever heard a rock give a controversial opinion or state an unpopular idea, you're out of your mind. Rocks don't talk. But rocks don't blog either, and even if they did nobody would read their blogs.

Rock: Day #1 - still sitting here.

Rock: Day #2 - still sitting here.

Rock: Day #3 - still... sitting... right here.

Rock: Day #4 - someone stepped on me! I wobbled a bit, now I'm just sitting here again.

And so it would go. And no one would read that blog.

But what about family and friends and acquaintances? What about current and potential future employers who can Google your name? What about a possible future dictatorial, totalitarian, repressive regime? There are endless ways what you say on the internet could come back to haunt you.

Are any of those good reasons to not form, hold to, or communicate opinions, though?

The younger me would be disgusted at the thought, and often was when he encountered it. That Garrett railed against cowards and flatterers and wishy-washy people who he felt were spineless equivocators. Whatever happened to that guy?

Like I say - growing up happened. Or did it?

Read a guy like Matt Walsh. That guy has guts. He ponders, he forms opinions. He has convictions and opinions and (gasp) he communicates them!

That could be me. I used to be like Matt Walsh. And when I was, there was an indescribable confidence and self-respect in my possession which enabled me to tell you where I stood on issues and questions. There was a boldness and a firmness of resolve. My thoughts and beliefs mattered to me. My evaluations of things were quick and measured. And my faith informed all my contemplation and communication. But it wasn't enough for me to develop my own views on things. I wanted to influence you. I wanted to draw you into a consideration of deep and meaningful questions, to provoke you to live on purpose, understanding the matters at hand.

So again, what happened?

Well, for starters, a lot of my bold conversation ticked people off. Who did I think I was to have all these views on things? Only someone with delusions of grandeur would dare to grapple with big issues and do so with authority or confidence.

But that's just it. How would the great men of history have done anything worthwhile if they had resigned themselves to quiet, mindless, vacillating? Nothing great or significant would ever have happened in the history of mankind if all men were content with mediocrity and blandness of ideas.

So who cares if someone disagrees with or is offended by what you say? Fear of being ostracized isn't a good enough reason to swear off having, or stating, your views. And, quite honestly, people need to not be so easily offended.

The Search for a Church

2015-03-15T09:49:00.000-06:00

Next month marks one year since my family moved to Sidney, Montana. I suppose it's about time for us to find a home church here.

Don't misunderstand me, we've tried to find a church. As Christians, my wife and I know the Bible says "Do not neglect the assembling of yourselves together" (Hebrews 10:25). And besides just not wanting to disobey a command of the Scriptures, we sincerely do want to belong to a community of believers again.

Before we moved to Montana three years ago, we were very much involved in a seeker-friendly church in Hillsboro, Ohio. Lauren and I both enjoyed our small groups, and I helped out with multimedia, building slideshows for Sunday morning services and running them. When we moved to Glendive, we again got involved in a local church and built relationships, though not as much as back in Ohio due to living half hour away from our church as opposed to up the block.

Since moving to Sidney, we've visited three local churches, attending one of them for several weeks. We just haven't felt "comfortable" with any of our options.

And I cringe to use that word - "comfortable." Every time Lauren and I discuss the churches in Sidney, I pause before using that word. The Christian life isn't about comfort, is it? Yes and no. It is and it isn't.

If what makes you comfortable is wickedness and self-indulgence, then pursuing comfort is going to interfere with rather than facilitate the righteous life God has called you to in Christ Jesus. If, on the other hand, spiritual torpor and exalting human philosophy and opinion and tradition over God's Word makes you spiritually uncomfortable, it can be 'OK' to let your discomfort be important to you.

But what happens when you're in a town where you don't feel comfortable attending any of the local churches, but you also don't feel comfortable staying home?

There's the third option of expanding your search radius and attending a more distant church you feel comfortable with, and we certainly have done that before. Indeed, in Ohio we drove an hour each way for a while to attend our seeker-friendly church in Hillsboro, and in Glendive we had no choice but to drive since we were living in the countryside, a half an hour's drive from any church. But I don't feel particularly "comfortable" with commuting long distance to attend a church. The reason being simple - the longer the commute to a church, the harder it is to get involved in a meaningful way in the lives of your fellow believers, which seems, after all, like one of the major reasons to be part of a church in the first place.

If you drive a long way to attend a church you like, but you're not really able to get involved in the lives of the believers there, why are you going? To hear the preaching? There are podcasts galore for that. To check a box legalistically, marking off attendance for the sake of attendance? That seems worse than worthless.

Our three options are each unsuitable and "uncomfortable." So what do we do? That question has been plaguing me for the past year.

To further complicate matters, my schedule for work has me working every other Sunday. And with five young children, my wife isn't exactly keen on visiting churches without me. If our kiddos are feeling ornery and not particularly obedient on a Sunday where she attends and I'm not there, the potential for mayhem and embarrassment is very real. But attending every other week, or visiting new churches every other week - it definitely slows the process down.

American Sniper: Reflections on the American War on Terror

2015-01-18T15:42:00.001-07:00

Last night I had the privilege of watching the just released, highly acclaimed film American Sniper, an adaptation of an autobiography by the same title about Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, "the deadliest sniper in American military history." Sitting beside me were my brother, a United States Marine, and two brothers-in-law, one of them an Army veteran.

Carmike Cinemas, the theater in Minot, North Dakota was packed full. Were it not for empty seats in the front row, we might not have been able to find any seats.

Before seeing the film, the four of us visited a local shooting range and got some target practice in, taking advantage of some warmer weather and clear skies to exercise our 2nd Amendment rights.

But before hitting the range, we visited the shopping mall, wherein lies the theater, and stopped in at Scheels sporting goods store so I could pick up a warmer shirt for wearing outdoors for a few hours. While we were visiting Scheels, right next door to the theater, we were amazed at the long line of people at the ticket counter, stretching across the walkways and around the theater. Everyone and their brother was there to see American Sniper at 2 o'clock in the afternoon on a Saturday. An even longer line was there when we exited the 5:05 showing after watching the film.

Seeing so many people eager to watch this movie was an encouraging surprise to me, somehow. Sure, everything I had read and heard on the radio was positive, to say the least. But at 28 years old, I have seen how the USA transformed after the terrorist attacks of September 11, watched two brothers-in-law join the Army and my younger brother join the Marine Corps. Between the three of them, I've heard stories of deployments to both Afghanistan and Iraq. I have witnessed the surges of patriotism and of war weariness in this nation, and listened to the speeches of presidents, Bush and Obama, and the ceaseless nit-picking and exhortations of pundits and journalists and politicians, telling Americans at first to be proud of their national heritage and character and emboldening them to fight evil, and then later shaming Americans at home and abroad for having done just that, all but accusing the United States of being a worse evil than the murderers who have set their faces against every free citizen.

Watching the pendulum swing back from ardent support of to vehement opposition to fighting the terrorists in a meaningful way has been personally disheartening for me. No, the valiant and self-sacrificing efforts of our military personnel have not made me ashamed to be an American, but the weak-kneed voices calling for retreat from and appeasement of terrorists has brought me very close, causing me to wonder whether perhaps those voices have come to represent most closely what and who America is now.

Yes, I was pleasantly surprised and encouraged last night to see so many people lining up to watch American Sniper, a movie which gives a refreshing vignette of the American Global War on Terror, hoping as I do that the loud cowards boldly espousing their lack of bravery, all the while hiding behind claims that they speak for the majority, do not really speak for America.

After reading American Sniper several weeks ago, and now even moreso after seeing the film made from that book, I hope Chris Kyle represents what America has been, is, and will continue to be. I hope the people who not only lined up to buy tickets to see the movie about his life, but who also sat quietly through the credits rolling at the end of this film, then applauded before departing, represent who we really are as a people.

By God, I hope we are still a courageous people who hate evil and oppression and injustice, who will actively oppose wicked men with firm resolve, and who will celebrate and support those who stand in the gap between the innocent and those who would, if left unchecked, prey upon and enslave, if not outright butcher them. I hope we are a nation that promotes and celebrates and honors the sheep dog, and does not and will never submit to the wolf, or justify his actions, or seek to appease him while we tremble and think only of saving our own necks. If we are an America like that, I can be proud to be a citizen of a great nation. If that's what America is and will be, I am proud to be an American, because that's the kind of America I want to live in and be a part of. That's the sort of nation in which I can be proud to have my four sons grow into men.

American Sniper is a war story, no doubt. But hopefully this popularity it currently enjoys at its release is not derived from this society's bloodlust or love of violence. War is not just what happens on a distant battlefield, not just a series of violent actions, not merely a collection of statistics regarding persons killing, killed, and wounded. War deeply affects real people, and not only in physical ways. There are deep traumas which the mind and the soul suffers in partaking of, participating in, and witnessing war. Every warfighter has a mother and father, many have siblings and spouses and children, and all have friends and acquaintances. And war affects all these people, not only when their loved ones are killed and bodily maimed on the battlefield, but also in the inescapable absences from family, community, and society which their deployment to battlefields require.

"Please bring them home safely" is the sincere prayer of every loving friend and family member of a warfighter. But when our military servicemembers do come home in apparent good health, by God's grace, with all their limbs and five senses apparently intact, the wounds that cannot be seen still need mending. And hopefully, by God's grace, we have reserved a place for them in our hearts, in our homes, and in our communities. Hopefully we have not allowed what they left behind to fall into disrepair, abandoning the principles which they left to fight for and defend.

It is a great shame that many American veterans are homeless and jobless. And while we argued and debated back home, with hollow platitudes and vague allusions to what was the most practical strategy, while we went back and forth with one another about whether we should be fighting this or that war, or whether we were fighting our wars in the right way, these men and women were in harm's way, and many of them were harmed. While they dodged bullets and confronted evil men for us, we tended to our private lives and enjoyed the comforts which the Lord Almighty has blessed us with. But have we forgotten those who sacrificed to guard us from those who would rob and destroy us?

I hope American Sniper brings us back into sober remembrance of and appreciation for the hardships our military and its families undertook on our behalf. Regardless the motives of various politicians and talking heads, these men and women who served did so with us in mind, remembering and loving us from afar, and that is a great and noble thing worthy of our recognition and gratitude.

In the words of our savior, "Greater love has no man than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." And that's what the best of them did. Politicians and the elite of our country may or may not have been so noble or self-sacrificing, may or may not have taken advantage of crises or mismanaged their responses to them, but the best of these military men and women set aside their private aspirations, hopes, and dreams for a time at least, knowing that they might never return to the lives they were putting on hold.

We see that in American Sniper, that some men and women were shot and blown to pieces, and that the rest had to watch it happen before going home to try and reconcile what they had experienced. We see those who survived lifting and carrying their fallen brothers from those who would butcher them, driving their comrades to those who would mend their wounds and give them rest.

May we as Americans be those who rescue, mend, and give rest to those who have been harmed, and may we never forget them or leave them behind. So help us God.

2014-12-19T00:43:00.000-07:00

As I drive around the North Dakota countryside, checking oil and gas wells, I enjoy listening to audiobooks on Audible.

In the past few weeks I've made it through a number of fascinating titles - Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.; American Sniper; Bill O'Reilly's titles, Killing Patton and Killing Kennedy; The Shadow Factory, a history of the NSA since the September 11 attacks; 1493, a fascinating followup to Charles C. Mann's engrossing 1491, dealing with what the world was like after the Americas were explored, colonized, and conquered by Europeans, and a handful of other historical and biographical works.

Currently I'm enjoying Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts, a 33 hour epic telling of one of the world's most famous figures, and I've been struck as I've listened to his story. Not only did Bonaparte take the world by storm, but he did so at a relatively young age. By age 30 he had installed himself as First Consul of the French Republic.

Alexander the Great, one of Napoleon's heroes, died at the age of 32, having conquered one of the largest empires the world has ever known.

By 30, John D. Rockefeller, Sr. was at the helm of Standard Oil, the largest corporation in America, founded with $1 million in capital.

It leaves me wondering. What have I accomplished at 28?

Re: Homeschoolers Need Not Apply

2014-06-29T11:51:00.000-06:00

I was reading something posted to Facebook this morning (Charisma Magazine Online Article - Fortune 500 Company: Homeschoolers Need Not Apply) regarding NiSource, an Indiana energy distribution company, having decided to commit to not hiring homeschoolers.

As I read the article, an interesting point was made with regards to Common Core in it which a high school friend of mine who is now a teacher herself commented on, explaining that she doesn't see the problem with Common Core, and that homeschoolers shouldn't have any trouble meeting the minimum standards which Common Core lays out. She also asked what home schooling standards are and provided a link to the Common Core website, I presume for the purpose of allowing me to familiarize myself with details about it which are not negative or critical. See below the response I wrote to her:

__________________________________________________

That's the thing. "Home schooling standards" aren't a universal, one-size-fits-all, across the board monolith that anyone can point to and make broad assumptions about. And I can see how that might be argued against by some as being a significant downside to home education, but as I and many others see it, the decentralized nature of home education is a great deal of the beauty and the strength of it.

I honestly am not intimately familiar with Common Core, but I have read articles and heard radio programs that gave specific examples of parents being arrested at parent-teacher conferences for asking questions, voicing their concerns, or for taking umbrage at specific homework or reading assignments, textbook lessons, how certain specifics of the standards were chosen, how their child's progress will be measured and tracked and what it will be used for, etc. When I see parents being arrested for questioning or disagreeing with Common Core, that right there tells me all I feel I need to know to be opposed to the thing.

Don't misunderstand me. I can imagine scenarios in which a parent threatening violence would be justifiably removed from a public event by law enforcement. But the numerous videos I've seen on the internet of parents being arrested at parent-teacher conferences related to Common Core didn't show any indication of those parents having been violent or threatening, unreasonable, etc. Those videos I've seen show parents being punished, humiliated, and intimidated for earnestly attempting to have a say about how their children are being educated. Parents across the country are being treated in a way that implies that it's their job to shut up and salute, and that any inconvenient assertion of their rights which might interfere with the roll-out of this Common Core scheme is not to be tolerated.

From what I've seen in those videos, we all need to be deeply concerned about how intrusive, controlling, domineering, and tyrannical our government has become and continues to become.

My children do not belong to the state. My sons and daughter are not merely being babysat by Lauren and I while we wait for them to mature into adulthood when they can quietly, submissively join in building the economy.

Children are primarily their parents' responsibility, not the government's, and I reject the notion that someone who has attended formal training and indoctrination in how to shepherd a class of dozens of children toward a State dictated end-goal is inherently superior to myself or my wife in their appreciation of my child's intellectual, emotional, spiritual, or physical needs. Forgive me, but I don't see why I should assume that they will inevitably do a superior job of teaching my children reading, math, science, history, etc.

Quite the contrary, I feel confident that the statistics in the U.S. support my assertion that homeschooling parents are either outperforming the professional teachers in the public schools in their ability to educate their students. That, or else the professional training and structure is a moot point.

Home educated students, on average, consistently and significantly outperform their public school peers in every academic measure, in study after study after study. I would even dare say that quite often the social intelligence of homeschoolers is also superior to that of their public school peers. Yes, public schoolers have a lot more practice interacting with their own age group, but homeschoolers are getting individual one-on-one attention for much more of the day than one child in a sea of public education could hope to, and the ability to carry on an adult conversation is a side-effect of this.

It is my sincerely held view that homeschoolers are receiving a superior education experience to their public school peers, not merely with regards to the academic subjects they study, but this "socialization" which we are told is the primary downside of home schooling is, as far as I'm concerned, actually another advantage which homeschoolers have more-so, relatively speaking, to the kids in public schools.

For instance, how often do you hear about homeschooled children shooting up their classmates and teachers? So when someone asks me what the problem with Common Core is, I feel confident in my skepticism.

The troubling thing about Common Core is not so much the specifics of the standards themselves, which, as I've already said, I'm not an expert on. Rather, the philosophical and ideological basis on which those standards were developed, and on which they have been and will be implemented - that's what I take issue with.

As is the case in almost every conceivable aspect of our lives as Americans today, the government increasingly gives us the fig leaf of saying that we own the details of our lives, that we are "free", while at the same time adding innumerable and repressive regulations which more profoundly and more convincingly and constantly demonstrate that they see themselves as more ultimately the owners of those details, since they presume the right to dictate, specify, and ultimately control them.

"The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world," as the famous William Ross Wallace poem tells us, and for the life of me I can't see why we should entrust the job of rocking our children's cradles to the State. Can you?

Unfortunately, our government is demonstrating daily that an ever-increasing, seemingly endless number and variety of measures and efforts designed to restrict, coerce, and manipulate us all today is not sufficient for them. They want to have complete and unfettered control tomorrow also, over what and how the next generation will think. By having dictated all of education, they will then have even more complete control of that coming generation than they have over this one, or were able to over the previous.

I find that to be a very troubling and unsuitable circumstance, one which I feel we must navigate with great care, and which we must not allow to be cemented into place.

That said, as far as Common Core does or does not currently relate to the hiring decisions which NiSource made with regards to homeschoolers (which I realize was what the article I linked to at the top of this post was discussing, having gotten somewhat, but not really, off-topic), I think it's worth me saying that we need to not be so limited in our evaluations of these things - Common Core, immigration policy, the right to privacy, religious liberty, etc. - that we only consider what is currently obvious and direct about what's being implemented or proposed.

To the contrary, we must, when evaluating these developments in society - in education, the economy, foreign affairs, civil liberties, religious liberty, etc. - weigh and consider the potential future implications for precedents carelessly set now, and how these implications might be combined in the future to produce awful and regrettable outcomes for us and our descendants.

I am concerned that, in these things, chains and shackles and prison bars have been and are being constructed which will entrap us and our families and our fellow citizens, which will limit our freedoms and our liberty, and which will increasingly make us more and more the slaves which we look back on history with condescension and are appalled by the condition of.

A single bar does not a prison make, but a prison isn't made in a day either. It takes time, is planned out and built piece by piece over time. Our government now, I am sincerely and wholeheartedly convinced, is willing to accept collateral damage in the pursuit of a Utopian vision for the future. And if that means destroying some things, some people getting hurt, or severely restricting those who might oppose them, they will regulate, manipulate, lie to, and in all ways oppose and castigate and vilify those who are not helping them to achieve their vision for a Utopian future.

I, for one, would rather maintain and advocate liberty and independence for myself and my family than accept these measures which are being imposed upon us in America.

For instance, I'd like to keep more of my tax money in my own pocket, to be spent as I see fit, instead of paying it to our government so it can be used to fund foreign armies in Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan.

...Or abortion clinics and public schools here in the U.S., where if our children are not murdered as infants, they are misled and neglected and set adrift intellectually and spiritually.

...Or an internal revenue service here which has been shown to officially punish American citizens who held political positions which were deemed inconvenient to the current administration's efforts and agenda.

...Or an NSA which is conducting a massive spying operation on American citizens, treating us all as if we are guilty until proven innocent, where it is more true than ever before that "anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law."

...Or the militarized police forces which aggressively conduct no-knock raids with the most trivial and tenuous of justification, injuring innocent men, women, and children, and causing Americans to feel that they are no longer really free in their own nation.

...Or lavish (and frequent) vacations taken by our President and his family to all corners of the globe.

Instead of paying for those things with my tax money, I'd rather spend the money I've earned as a free man would, making independent determinations according to his conscience, values, beliefs, and goals.

I'd rather spend my own money, for instance, on educational opportunities and resources which I feel and am convinced and have good reason to believe are actually and directly beneficial to my children and our family. By contrast, I'd rather not helplessly and dumbly and meekly give my money over to our government to make all these determinations for me and my children as to what is best for us.

Where is $500 of my money better spent? On taxes that pay administrative fees for implementing a top-down, one-size-fits-all, dictatorial approach to education like Common Core? Or in taking my family on a trip to Yellowstone National Park?

Where is $8 of my money better spent, on taxes that pay for the coffee and creamer for the teachers' lounge at the local public school, or on a subscription to Netflix where I can select educational titles for my children to watch which help supplement their coursework and enrich their understanding of the subject matter?

The problem with Common Core is not merely what it is, but more importantly what it isn't. What it isn't is my wife and I making decisions about how to educate our children, taking responsibility for the little people God gave us to parent and raise, and being good stewards of their hearts and minds, educating them to live happy, healthy, and holy lives in service to Him.

And beyond that, I have zero confidence in the American government to do the moral, godly, or honest thing with regards to things which only indirectly affect my family and I. So why in God's name would I entrust them directly with my children, to do what's best for them? Why would I place my children in their hands, or allow them to suggest that my role is only secondary and coincidental?

No, when it comes to the public schools, I don't experience a surplus of confidence. It's obvious that something is profoundly and deeply broken there when I hear about school shootings, explicit and immoral sex-ed classes, fervent and aggressive secularization, suspensions over pop tarts being eaten into the shape of guns, bullying that drives children to commit suicide, godlessness, the advocacy and normalization of sexual immorality and abortion, scandals involving teachers having sex with their students, the teaching of Darwinian origins which tells children that we as a species originated from lower life forms over millions upon millions of years of death and dying and randomness, and that God may have been involved somehow if we want to believe that, but that the Bible is essentially a lie, unreliable and superstitious, inconvenient nonsense.

These things are rampant and, at least as it seems to me from my vantage point looking in from the outside, inherent to the philosophy and methodology under which the public education system is administrated. So, no, I don't trust our government to establish good and healthy and wise standards in Common Core which I would want to subject my children to. Look at what they've accomplished so far with the education system, and how can you be inspired to trust to their future efforts?

The proponents of Common Core and government dictated education systems may say that they have thus far not succeeded because they had not enough power and control before, but I am convinced that they had rather too much power and control, and that they should have less of both rather than more.

America's Response to Boys and Childhood Masculinity

2014-03-28T11:13:00.000-06:00

RE: Medicating Boyhood - Esquire

“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

― C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

My suspicion is that our public education system is increasingly being setup and oriented to focus on quantifying the development of children at younger ages, and to direct those children towards activities in which they can be measured, tested, and ranked relative to their peers - for instance, "teaching to the test." I think in such an environment of increasing pressure to conform to a standardized system, and to engage in things which can be converted neatly into a spreadsheet to submit to the authorities for review of one's performance as an educator or administrator of educators, there is a pivot or shift away from those activities which would engage young boys and allow them to feel they are free to assert themselves, explore, play, have adventures, and focus their energies in a positive direction.

That isn't even to speak of the mindset which has little boys being suspended for eating their Pop Tarts into the shape of a gun. As it seems to me, our culture has become so preoccupied with preventing another Columbine that much of the rambunctiousness and rowdiness of masculine childhood and adolescence is being quietly and subtly demonized in a misguided and disproportionate reaction to and attempt at prevention of school shootings.

Further, I think feminism has a part to play, insofar as there seems to be a conscious resistance to and attempt at reversing and counteracting societal norms with regards to gender which feminism sees as counterproductive towards egalitarian visions for the future. In short, little girls are getting encouragement to be assertive and reach their potential as leaders, and little boys are getting conscious feminizing out of a misguided attempt to make society more equal.

The problem with that being if little boys and little girls are hardwired differently, generally speaking, and if they are supposed to be permitted and encouraged to thrive along the lines of which they were created. It is my position that little boys have been endowed by their Creator with certain relative qualities which it's our job as parents and other authority figures to celebrate and guide, not suppress, amputate, reverse, or punish.

And it isn't just a waste of time, it's likely also a very great frustration to little boys, who then respond to these efforts to penalize and reverse their masculine nature by acting out and acting up.

Fathers not being present has very real and dramatic implications for the imparting of even reasonable instruction which isn't attempting a sort of gender-bending. The subconscious implication for a young boy who only ever receives instruction and guidance from a mother-figure is that she doesn't understand first-hand what it is he needs to prepare for: namely, manhood. She's a woman, so she could give this little boy guidance on what to expect if he were a girl, but the little boy knows he's not a girl, and if he's healthy he doesn't want to become a girl. Best case scenario, if the little boy is only receiving instruction from a mother-figure, with no father-figure consistently and reliably present, all that instruction is discounted in his mind because he's trying to leave himself an exit in case it turns out at some point that authentic masculinity is to be found along some other path than the one he's being told to follow.

Meanwhile, our society sees a little boy who's frustrated, distracted, defiant, and wayward; and if you throw in a lack of moral instruction and spiritual authority, a refusal of parents to administer corporal penalties (i.e. - spanking), or a confusion about when and how and why to administer corporal penalties, and a lack of will and commitment to consistently apply discipline, and not only a lack of support for this from society at large, but rather an ardent opposition, what's left for that boy except for psycho-pharmacology?

It is an epic tragedy, and the long-term consequences are going to be dire, I'm afraid.

I think another handicap to a boy receiving only mother-figure instruction is that it tends to, in my experience and observations, relative to preparing a boy to someday become a man, rely heavily on negative examples of masculinity which the boy should avoid growing up to resemble, and typically lacks sufficient positive examples of masculinity which the boy should pursue and emulate.

The high divorce rate in America, and the high percentage of children (including boys) who are born out of wedlock in the U.S. - it doesn't just have implications for whether a father-figure is consistently present in that boys life to instruct and guide him. It also means that there is likely a great and powerful stigma attached in the mind of the mother-figure to the male example who does have or would have had the greatest potential for impact on the development of that little boy, and this stigma is then passed on to the son. Those sons who grow up without fathers don't just grow up in a neutral rather than positive position; rather, they start behind the 8 ball, so to speak, when it comes to having an optimistic outlook on what to expect when they reach manhood.

The divorcee mother who resents and blames, openly or not, the boys' father who she's no longer married to due to a marital failure on one or both of their parts - this mother, intentionally or not, places a stigma on the first example of masculinity which that boy has to look up to and learn from.

The single mother who was first impregnated, then abandoned by a dead-beat will always condemn, either by what she says of or by her silence about, that man who should have stayed and provided for and protected that family, and so again in that case the little boy is taught subtly or explicitly that he can look forward to shame, disgrace, and resentment when he grows up. Absent any positive examples of mature manhood which might enter his life, this will be all he has to go on. Even with the arrival of positive examples later down the road, however, there will always be that tinge of self-doubt relative to the infamy of his father.

And none of that even factors in the situations where the mother-figure may come to resent those masculine traits which she observes in her son which she has, consciously or not, come to associate with the husband who she is divorced from, or the sexual partner who abandoned her when she became pregnant. God forbid the mother blame the son for the sins and shortcomings of the father, but I fear this oft times happens, and its effect is not a positive one on the behavior and attitude of the boys in our culture. Women, like all people, can sometimes be vengeful creatures; and absent the father to punish, sometimes the sons are instead.

We must proactively encourage, guide, and celebrate the boys in our culture, since how we raise them today will impact greatly the kind of men we'll have in our culture tomorrow.

Do we really want 1 in 7 men learning that their masculinity is something to tranquilize? Or what if the other 6 of 7 men look on from a distance at the 1/7th and feel compelled to either stifle themselves or risk being likewise medicated into submission?

What will the implications be for alcohol and drug use and dependency for generations to come if we set and maintain this precedent regarding ADHD medication now?

What we need are men and women, fathers and mothers, who take responsibility for teaching and guiding their children, and the taking of that responsibility should start with figuring out what it is we're preparing our children for. My advice? Prepare your boys for manhood and your girls for womanhood.

The end goal should not be to raise a boy to adulthood who has learned (through the assistance of drugs, or out of fear of being put on drugs) to sit quietly and do his work without making a lot of noise or requiring much attention. The end goal should not be to drug a child into submission so he'll do well on tests, or at least not interfere with the other children and their tests. The end goal should not be an androgynous re-imagining of society.

No, our goal should be to raise young boys who take responsibility for themselves and those around them, and who towards that end use their God-given gifts, talents, abilities, and opportunities. Mistaking blessings for curses will be a terrible detractor from rather than benefit to this goal.

Much of my opinion on this matter has been tested and subjected to having four little boys of my own, but I suppose the "proof in the pudding," as they say, may not be fully realized until my young boys have themselves reached adulthood.

In the meantime, I find it somewhat surprising that such mainstream venues as Esquire and The New York Times are pointing out a disturbing trend which would seem to imply that America has the wrong idea about boyhood.

It isn't just as simple as the breakdown of families, though this is part of it. I say this is a part but not the sum of the matter because fathers aren't just absent from the lives of American sons, but also of American daughters.

When we diagnose with ADHD and medicate so many more American sons than daughters, I think we should conclude that there is a problem with how we view masculinity and femininity, maleness and femaleness, in our culture; there is a problem with how our views on boys and girls, men and women inform and shape the way we relate to boyhood development. Clearly there is a trend in the wrong direction which seems to indicate the need for a revision. If it were just that the fathers were absent from the lives of their children, wouldn't we see an equal rise in ADHD diagnosis for girls as for boys?

Parents leaving the raising of their children to educators is a large part of the problem. This is in part because the educators and aren't in a sufficiently advantageous position to successfully perform these duties for society, and even moreso because parents are, to the contrary, ideally positioned to do so.

An article or book like this one from Esquire comes my way, or I hear someone conversing on the subject, and I feel the need to attempt to reverse the societal trend, "being the change I wish to see in the world" as Ghandi so famously advised, by speaking with confidence as a parent myself, and taking my responsibility as a parent seriously; by proving with my confident assertions that a parent can and should observe carefully the trends of society, attempt earnestly to make sense of them, and think soberly and carefully about the impact these trends have and will have on their children, and respond accordingly and appropriately.

The initial push-back will likely be that to do so requires calling into question what many parents and authority figures have chosen to do in America. But I ask you this: How else can we as parents effectively guide our children in a way which will prepare them to live as adults in the world, as it is now and as it is swiftly becoming, unless we observe openly and honestly the pitfalls as well as the prizes which are inherent to our society?

Those who refuse to learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them. And how will we know which choices in our society were mistakes unless we're willing to take an open and honest look at the results we're seeing in the present? It may be difficult, but the future of our sons (and daughters) is worth it.

PRISM and Me

2013-06-09T08:56:00.000-06:00

I keep thinking about this whole PRISM scandal coming out recently, especially because I'm a very opinionated person, and am quite active on the internet in sharing my opinions via Facebook, my blog, etc.

Two things: 1) I'm not surprised to learn about PRISM - actually, I'd be more surprised if there weren't a program like that in place; 2) How much more extensive are these covert operations than we know?

The thing about PRISM (our government mining personal, private online data from Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc.) is that it's most concerning in conjunction with the IRS scandal, given that we know conservative groups and individuals were especially targeted and given a hard time when seeking non-profit tax status, and all because they were active in disagreeing with some of the policies of our President, policies which they viewed as detrimental to the health and safety of our nation.

What I mean is, how troubling is it to think that under that same administration, individual American citizens might have their private correspondence, photos, posts, etc. looked through without their knowledge, or that they might even face hassles in real life for the opinions and beliefs they shared in their virtual life? Surely there is no such thing as privacy anymore; I do hope there is still such a thing as liberty.

Should Christians Watch or Read Game of Thrones?

2013-06-07T08:27:00.000-06:00

I can't speak to watching the HBO series, only to having read the first book through and having made it a few chapters into book two. The question of "should Christians watch Game of Thrones" has been part of what's prevented me from earnestly purchasing the series, or borrowing it from the library. Even though I find the plot rich and intriguing, the characters diverse and believable and engaging, and have very much been fascinated by the story so far as I've read it, I've read enough to know what to expect if I watch the series.

I don't feel the question is really about Game of Thrones. Rather, the question is about a more fundamental underlying issue: namely, how are Christians to interact with the sin and sinners around them? And another question, what does what we're interested in for media - books, movies, music, etc. - say about how godly we are, how pure we are, whether we love and follow Jesus, etc.?

It's too easy (and risky) to make a hard and fast rule across the board, to risk falling off into legalism and unlicensed judgment on the one side. Equally easy is falling off on the other side into relativism, amorality, emotionalism, minimizing, etc.

As I've studied the Bible and meditated on God's Word for all the years of my young adult life (not so many years, really), I've come to believe it matters more to God what our reasons will be for coming to the decision we do. In other words, God will care more about why we did or didn't watch Game of Thrones than he will whether we did.

Did I pick up Game of Thrones in pursuit of a vicarious sexual thrill? Did I publicly denounce Game of Thrones in pursuit of a reputation for piety? If both are wicked attitudes and mindsets, will God have any more approval for the one than the other?

I've read C.S. Lewis' Narnia series, as well as a handful of his other works, and enjoyed them thoroughly. I read through Tolkien's LOTR and The Hobbit and was and am a fan. What partly distressed me, or what kept me from completely embracing them, however, was the sense of artificiality, or perhaps of excessive moral sanitation. They’re excellent children's books, yes, and excellent books for an adult to read as well. Excellent stories, and obviously fantasy, but how real were the people? Were the outcomes too convenient, and would I develop unrealistic expectations in life from reading them?

It occurs to me that I feel this sense of artificiality because of having read the Bible since I was a young boy, and because I've read a good deal of human history, and neither the Bible nor history has led me to such a clean or cut and dry view of human events, or of the human heart.

I am concerned that some Christians who read the Bible just glaze over the portions which mention unimaginable violence and cruelty, or which tell (briefly, except in the case of Song of Songs) of sex, and which often mention sexual immorality.

The Bible is not crass in it's depiction of sex, even when Song of Songs covers sexuality at length (for an entire book!), but it does recognize that it exists!

My concern is that Game of Thrones goes unfortunately too far in it's depiction of sex acts; then again, perhaps it's difficult to fault a book for going into more detail about the sex acts in the story when every other bit of dialogue or action in the story is also covered with more detail; when minimizing sex in a novel or any other media, at what point as a writer do you risk inconsistency of narrative to become suddenly vague about one topic?

On the other hand, do we develop naive assumptions about what novels should be when we've digested LOTR and Narnia for years, books written primarily with children in mind which conspicuously avoid sexuality entirely (as I would want any children's book to do)?

I believe the Bible deals with sex more candidly than do either of those works, yet less explicitly than Game of Thrones. And, really, the sexual content in Game of Thrones is what concerns me most, due to its explicit nature.

Zooming out, however, I find the framework and portrayal of characters to be more realistic and true-to-life in Game of Thrones, and I hope we as Christians will not hoist childish, naive objections on anything just because we wish all stories could be told with talking and singing vegetables.

There has to be a distinction between "keeping ones self unspotted from the world" and a reckless pursuit of naiveté. Whether we watch or read Game of Thrones or any other thing, I hope we Christians are able to make that distinction in word, deed, thought and feeling.

We are devolving! Or are we?

2013-05-25T05:37:00.000-06:00

Researchers say Western IQs dropped 14 points over last century

We are devolving!

Half kidding aside, I'd be interested to know in more detail how they ensured consistency of methodology, and whether the statement "on average... those populations measured dropped by 1.23 points per decade" reflects only a comparison of data from the individual years 1889 relative to 2004, or whether it can be trusted to reflect all the years between.

For instance, I might have a big pot of oatmeal with blueberries in it. Suppose I plunge a spoon in at the far left side and come out with four blueberries, but only find three blueberries when I plunge the spoon in on the right. The bigger that bowl was, the more dubious would be my claim that a pattern could be predicted throughout that bowl based on the plunging of my spoon in just two places.

Further, I'd like to ask how they took their sample group, how they selected persons to participate in the testing. Did they advertise at the mall? Did they randomly call persons from the phonebook? Did they select college students in attendance? Whatever method they used, even if it might appear very similar in our general description to what the Victorians recorded themselves as having done, what effect would the changes within those institutions have on the kind of sample group a person might get from using them?

If, for instance, they made it geographical, perhaps particular to a certain neighborhood or town or county, is there a way to account for how changes in the economy of that area may have influenced migration in or out of the area by more educated or intelligent citizens? In America, you might have a stark contrast comparing I.Q.'s of persons in Detroit, MI or Silicon Valley, CA from 1950 and 2010, and for obvious reasons. As major industries HQ-ed in those places, or as their economies cratered, migrations of skilled workers would effect the average intelligence of the population.

Questions of methodology and how to assure reliable data aside for a moment, I should wonder at the assertion that, essentially, dumb women have lots of children. I find that offensive and dubious, as my wife and I would like to have a large family, and I wonder whether such a conclusion is easily grasped for to soothe a Western society which is preparing now for a population contraction due to such low average birth rates? In other words, is there a bias towards suggesting that intelligent women have fewer children?

Today is Tomorrow's Past

2013-04-28T02:39:00.000-06:00

What I consider to be the present as of this writing will someday be the distant past.

I've never been this age before. In twenty years, Lord willing I live that long, I can look back on the decisions I'm making now, and on the perspective I had on the world and my circumstances in it, and I'll have some context; I'll be able to name the mistakes and the successes.

That's why they say hindsight is 20/20, isn't it?

When I'm 46 rather than 26, I'll understand better what an impact my having taken Josiah porcupine hunting today had on how he thought of himself, or the world, or me, or porcupines.

I'll understand how choices I'm making now on how to manage money set my family up for either more economic uncertainty, or else more peace of mind.

It'll be clear to me how the relationships and disciplines I forged at work helped me to build this or that kind of career and skill set, and how that career opened up opportunities or limited them for me and mine.

There are some things I'm sure I'll regret not having figured out sooner: people-pleasing, humility, how to appropriately and respectfully give and receive rebukes, how to tend to details without losing sight of the thoughts and feelings of those around me.

I could go on.

I regret those things now; why wouldn't I still regret them in 20 years?

I've been thinking about what I'll leave to my sons some day. My example, what I've taught them, memories of time spent with me - beyond that, what's certain?

If I left them $1 million, would that be enough to hang a hat on? What about a huge property with thousands of acres? What about a profitable company? The wealth could be squandered, the property might be neglected, and any profitable company could be mismanaged or driven out of business by trickery or exceptional competition.

I consider myself a writer; perhaps I overestimate my ability to write well. But what if I left the boys a stack of books I'd written, or what if they were given a trunk full of my journals? Surely my writings could sit in obscurity, or be hidden away as amateurish or embarrassing, or they might be misunderstood or misinterpreted. In such cases, is there any lasting glory to my having written in the first place?

The fact is, despite my anxiety over potentially amounting to nothing in life, my self-worth and enduring legacy depend on more than just being able to generate a paycheck with a high dollar figure, or my ability to pass along significant property and wealth, or my ability to curry favor with the masses.

What if I become President of the United States some day? Would that mean my life was a success? Surely not, if taking a glance at others who've held that office is any indication. Often, there are nearly as many who hate the chief executive as there are those who admire him; and who but historians and professors can even name all the presidents who served in the 1800's, much less tell you the decisions each made and how impactful those decisions were on the world? So it will be in the 23rd century, I suppose, that there will be as little memory of who all occupied the oval office in the 21st as we have now for those who served in the 19th. That is, assuming our political system survives into the 23rd century - quite a big assumption, if you ask me, given the way things are going now.

Is there anything I could say, or build, or do which will certainly have lasting value?

It's impossible to say whether my great, great grandchildren will learn my name, or take any interest in what I've done. What's more, it's difficult to say whether they should.

"A good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children,

but the sinner's wealth is laid up for the righteous."

- Proverbs 13:22

That passage became a prominent one in my self-evaluation and planning a few years ago when I heard Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA talk about the biblical call for men to take responsibility for themselves, their families, their churches, their communities, etc. Between when I first heard mention of Proverbs 13:22 in that context and just yesterday, I think I've interpreted this passage to mean that if I'm a good man, I'll make sure my grandchildren have some sort of money or wealth set aside for them in my will.

That's probably still true, but just yesterday, as my thoughts wandered the way they typically do, another possible interpretation became apparent.

What if the inheritance a good man leaves to his grandchildren is the good example he set for them to follow, and the good upbringing he gave their parents, and the fruit of the good decisions he made which caused a chain-reaction of blessings for them as well?

For instance: what if the inheritance I leave to the children of Josiah David Mullet, Elihu James Mullet, Solomon Emmanuel Mullet, and Daniel Joseph Mullet (etc.) is that I read the Scriptures to their fathers before bed? Or what if the inheritance to my grandchildren is that my wife and I steadfastly committed to educating their fathers at home? What if, regardless of whether I go to my grave an elderly pauper, I'll leave a legacy behind which is worth immeasurably more than a plump bank account, a grand mansion, or a famous name?

It's too easy to allow myself to be tricked into thinking I'll be worth only so much as the money I accumulate and keep. And, by extension, since the money comes from work, I'll be worth only so much as the job I'm able to land and keep and advance in.

What's infinitely more significant than missing 10 hours worth of overtime in my paycheck two weeks from now is losing my temper when the boys make a mistake or are behaving in an undisciplined way; what's far more pressing is that I don't make up foolish, unjust, oppressive rules they couldn't hope to follow, or which they would follow to their detriment; what's way more important is not setting a bad example by my own attitude, habits, relationships, speech, choices, etc.

Lord help me.

There's Always a Bigger Fish

2013-04-23T09:25:00.000-06:00

I recently went over to the home of a cousin of mine for the afternoon to shoot some firearms, 10 guns in all between his, his dad's, our Grandpa Mullet's, a rifle from his other grandfather, and a shotgun of mine.

Guns, like many things, have limitations.

Take my Remington 870 Tactical, for instance. It has the shortest legal barrel at 18", a pistol grip, adjustable stock; I've added a tactical flashlight to it just in front of the pump; it looks beastly!

Take it out trapshooting, however, and you're going to find it woefully inadequate next to my uncle's 870 variant with the traditional stock and longer barrel. They're both 12 gauge, but one performs markedly better at shooting clay pigeons accurately.

And that's how they've been designed. My shotgun isn't so much for hunting birds as they fly through the air as it is for tactical operations. I bought my shotgun in case someone ever tries to break into our home in the middle of the night, or in case some wild animal is roaming around the yard and threatens our boys.

I've been following the gun control debate these past months, and the rhetoric has me thinking - about politics, about polarization, about the difference between urban, suburban and rural mindsets, about the balance between liberty and security, and about the relationship of citizens to their government.

Many provocative questions come to mind. For instance:

Are gun control opponents and 2nd amendment defenders paranoid or pragmatic about the possibility of a tyrannical government taking hold in America, and the need for citizens to be armed so as to discourage or deter such a government from blatant abuses?

If such a tyranny were to take hold, would it occur suddenly and conspicuously, or by degrees and quietly to where the majority of Americans would fail to recognize the tyranny until it was firmly established?

If such a tyranny were to take hold, would there even be any point in resisting, and is the 2nd amendment proposed as a safeguard against tyranny a moot point when our police forces and military are already so heavily armed, and are in fact the most advanced and powerful in the world?

Even if evenly matched, would there be a moral or ethical basis, support or framework for fighting against the official government of one's country, as the colonies fought against the British during the Revolutionary War, or as some argue the Confederacy fought against the Union in the Civil War?

Such questions are dangerous, perhaps, but they're too obvious to be ignored.

The issue of the moment now is gun control. On the one side, the President and many prominent liberals contend that America is unsafe with certain guns, or so many guns, or certain people getting guns. In order to protect us from ourselves and one another, they must erect barriers to purchasing weapons, at least certain weapons, at least for certain persons deemed dangerous.

Am I to object if the criminal, the bad man, is prevented from acquiring a weapon prior to breaking into my home? Surely if he's disarmed before disturbing our domestic tranquility this is for the best, and hopefully I'll not ever have to fire my own weapon at such a man! That is my preference. But will gun control legislation achieve such a goal, or will it simply penalize me, with time or money or some other inconvenience, for acquiring a weapon? And if penalizing, will it prevent in so far as it discourages?

And if the President and other liberals have considered that criminals are not stopped by gun control laws, that only law-abiding citizens obey laws about guns or any other thing, and if these liberals proceed with gun control legislation anyhow, it's not difficult to see how gun control opponents can quickly object on the grounds that a tyrannical government must first disarm it's citizens in order to minimize their ability to resist tyranny.

But there again, what is tyranny? If I disagree with a law, is that enough to make that law tyrannical, or is the government which enforces that law therefor oppressing me? Surely not, since then every man in a prison could contend that he is not at fault for having stolen his neighbor's stereo, or raping that woman, or beating that man to death at the bar; no, his government must be the one at fault for having made laws which he deemed tyrannical and overly-restrictive. But that can't be! Such would be anarchy and ridiculous.

The intelligent, thoughtful proponent of liberty will contend that this is not what is meant by tyranny, however. Tyranny is taking a freedom away from me which my exercising would not have harmed any other person. But who will decide what is harmful to other persons?

Is my selling you a 16 oz. soda which might contribute to your becoming obese or contracting diabetes, considering that obesity and diabetes are clearly harmful, different only by degrees from my shooting or stabbing you? I've never heard anyone dispute that the government should make and enforce laws against unlawful, unprovoked shootings and stabbings; but many are offended by NYC Mayor Bloomberg attempting to outlaw large sodas.

Is Bloomberg a tyrant, however benevolent, or are those who object merely ignorant peasants who don't know what's best for them, who object like an inmate who's been convicted of larceny, rape, assault or murder, that the government is at fault for making a law they don't want to obey?

Is Obama a tyrant, or are those who object simply rebellious and insubordinate subjects who need to be reminded of their place?

I get to thinking, even if we were ruled by tyrants, what responsibility have we as Christians? We must speak the truth in love, boldly and clearly and courageously. But what would we have said in the days of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln?

"Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God."

Romans 13:1

Was King George a tyrant, or were the colonists traitors who offended godliness and order by opposing him as they did? Was the Confederacy a legitimate motion to affirm the liberty of those States which seceded, or was Lincoln a hero for boldly opposing a wicked and racist society which had chosen to take up arms against it's government rather than submit to reform?

I don't know. If you've read this far, perhaps you were hoping I'd make some lofty, impassioned argument one way or the other. Perhaps you're undecided and you wanted me to help you make up your mind. Perhaps you're firmly in one camp or the other and you were hoping to hear me affirm your presuppositions about the topic. I can't do that, though - not sincerely, anyhow.

The fact is that I have misgivings about universally defending liberty against restriction; there are freedoms which I and others clearly benefit from forgoing, even if only when we restrict ourselves willingly by conscience and good judgment.

I am deeply inclined in my heart and mind and soul to oppose tyranny with forceful, firm arguments, and to look with disdain on threats of violent opposition to government, which I see as disorderly and wicked, and such a disdain could only be parted with in very extreme and dramatic and obvious circumstances. I consider myself open-minded when it comes to laws and legislation, except where my conscience dictates that this or that matter is firmly in the black or white, and then I vote with my conscience.

Meanwhile I look on politics as being eternally adversarial, but also increasingly polarized and polarizing in this country. I continue to wonder, without some moderating or unifying event, issue or character, whether we will find America embroiled in another civil war in my time. And if there were a civil war, what would I do? Again, I realize this is dangerous to suppose publicly, but what is more dangerous is for the trend to continue in our nation until two opposing sides have no ability to both save face and compromise.

What concerns me more than the possibility of raising eyebrows is the notion that our political system, that our civil institutions, cannot find resolutions for the tough questions with all sides conducting themselves with integrity and mutual respect.

Just like a gun is designed with certain purposes and limitations, so too are arguments and proposals. My cousin and I spending the afternoon cheerfully taking turns shooting at targets to see who's the better shot, and to test out how each firearm performs - this is dramatically different from he and I taking turns firing at one another to do each other harm. One scenario will see us concluding the day, each with more experience and a smile on our face; the other will end tragically, with tears and bloodshed.

So goes the nation.

"Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it."

Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)

"Kids Belong to Whole Communities"

2013-04-13T07:34:00.000-06:00

"We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we've always had kind of a private notion of children. Your kid is yours, and totally your responsibility. We haven't had a very collective notion of 'These are our children.' So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities. Once it's everybody's responsibility and not just the household's, then we start making better investments."

- Melissa Harris-Perry, MSNBC

More Thoughts on Melissa Harris-Perry's Ad

2013-04-10T19:48:00.000-06:00

I realize that there are single parent situations where that one parent is working two or more jobs, and there are families in which both parents work. What am I going to say in their cases, that the children should be ignored by everyone and fall through the cracks? No.

On the other hand, what if you have children in a family like mine? I work, my wife stays home with the boys and cares for and educates them. Do my wife and I need to "break through this notion of children belonging to their parents"?

Suppose we adopt a notion that my children belong to the community. Can the community take a vote and decide that my children will attend the public schools along with the majority, and could such a vote be used to overrule the decision my wife and I have made to teach our children at home? If my children aren't really mine, but belong rather to the collective, then the answer is yes. The collective must have the say if they have the primary responsibility.

Children need more than just time with their families. Children need their parents taking responsibility for them, more rather than less, in the time they're spending. They need parents instructing them, providing for them, protecting them, guiding them, being examples for them. That's way better than parents just sending their children off to public schools wherein they're lost in a sea of peer pressure, bad influences, chaotic standards and relativism.

One of the problems with parents ceding responsibility for children to the community, which the wording of Melissa Harris-Perry's public service announcement is clearly advocating, is that you have parents opting out. This already happens, sure, whether the MSNBC host is encouraging more of it or not. But we can't just spot the trend and say, "Let's just go with the flow and tell all the parents to opt out, since a lot of them already are."

Is this egalitarianism in disguise? Do we feel so sorry for children growing up in homes with only one parent that we, not wanting them to feel inferior somehow to children growing up in homes with two parents, will just find a way to bring those children with two parents down?

Such would be philosophically consistent with liberal views on wealth distribution, where Margaret Thatcher once pointed out, "He would rather the poor were poorer, so long as the rich were less rich."

If we focus more on reducing the gap than on doing what's best for all children, we might very well advocate for this dichotomous view wherein the community always raises children better than their parents. But think of the implications.

I keep thinking of the psychological phenomenon known as diffusion of responsibility. It's the same effect which causes a large crowd of onlookers to do nothing while a man is shoved onto the tracks of a subway; the collective inaction allows each person to tell themselves that it's not their problem, that someone else will get to it. We cannot as a culture do that en-masse with our children. It will have disastrous results, not unlike what happens to the victim of that subway train.

Diffusion of Parental Responsibility: A Response to Melissa Harris-Perry

2013-04-09T07:56:00.001-06:00

I recently posted to my Facebook this meme that's been circulating which includes the quote from Melissa Harris-Perry alongside her picture, then two quotes below from Adolf Hitler, alongside his picture. In the interest of being fair, I'm posting the video from which those quotes from the MSNBC host were taken.

I'll add that what she's saying sounds nice. Who can legitimately argue against society taking responsibility for the children?

Children need to be taken care of!

But here's my question: just because some other men abandon their children and create a vacuum which needs to be filled by other family members, teachers, other persons in the community, does that mean I need to "break through" this notion of my sons being mine? And if so, for what? So the community can raise my children also?

The cure for what ails American education and child-rearing is not diffusion of responsibility throughout the community, where everyone (and no one) takes responsibility for the raising of children; the cure is mothers and fathers stepping up and taking responsibility for teaching, protecting, and providing for the children they've brought into this world.

Listening to Melissa Harris-Perry, you would think this is the problem rather than the answer.

I'm not for abandoning orphans, or neglecting children whose parents are not instructing them. But does our entire nation have to turn into an orphanage in order to fix the problem?

"Investing in public education" would mean, for my family, taxing my income more in order to pay for someone else's child to be educated. But what if I need to keep that money for myself so I can educate my own children?

My wife and I will educate our children at home, and spare them an inept and detrimental public education system. So we need money for curriculum, school supplies, field trips, education apps on the iPad, etc. When Melissa Harris-Perry takes $500 out of my pocket to pay for society's efforts to educate American children, that means I have $500 less to spend on educating my own.

And let's just make this clear: I would spend that $500 far better than she or some bureaucrat would. And at least my wife and I aren't subtracting from that $500 to pay our personal salary, or to pay for metal detectors, or any number of other things which the public schools have to "invest" in.

What's being advocated here, I'm afraid, is further encroachment by our government on our personal liberties. You have to sell taking control over everyone else's children in a soft and compassionate way, but what happens when there's resistance to the idea?

In Germany, you have your children taken away, you're slapped with a fine, you're sent to jail. And according to the Justice Department, in America, the government that plants a flag on your children and tells you to get lost is in the right, and you as a parent are in the wrong if you don't salute and get marching.

We need to think critically of the implications here.

The Romeike Family - German Homeschoolers in America

2013-04-06T08:29:00.000-06:00

I signed the HSLDA petition this morning asking that the Romeike family, German homeschoolers who've sought political asylum in America, be allowed to stay in the U.S.

Home education in America has been legal for a while. I remember hearing about a challenge in recent years in California which involved a judge denying that parents have a constitutional right to educate their children at home (Criminalizing Home Schoolers, TIME, 3-7-08), and I know some states are more lenient while others are more intrusive when it comes to laws governing home education. It is at least legal here, though.

According to the website for the National Center for Education Statistics, homeschoolers in 2007 numbered about 1.5 million in the U.S., or about 3% of American students (NCES).

I was educated at home from the second half of 1st grade up until my senior year of high school. My wife and I began homeschooling the eldest of our four sons just this year, as he entered kindergarten, and we are committed to educating him and his brothers all the way through til graduation of high school.

What reasons have we for bucking the trend of public education? Many.

First off, these are our children; God gave us the responsibility for training and caring for them. We're not merely a breeding pair, my wife and I. We are their father and mother. Someday we will stand before Almighty God and give an account for how we taught, trained, protected and provided for these children. We take this seriously.

The public education system is bloated, bureaucratic, inefficient, chaotic, relativistic, amoral, godless, and incapable. It's a monstrosity that should be reformed or abolished. Sadly, however, there doesn't seem to be real accountability. Diffusion of responsibility is at least partly to blame.

It seems to me as though children who attend public schools are educated despite, not because of, the system. I want my children to be able to read proficiently, do advanced math, learn the lessons of history, acquire a fundamental grasp of the sciences - I'm not confident that the American public education system has a good record in this regard sufficient to warrant my confidence that sending my children to them would present a high chance of meaningful education happening. It feels as though I'd be rolling the dice.

Public schools are physically unsafe. Children bring guns to school and shoot up their classmates. When in the world would I have to worry about that with homeschooling?

Teachers have sex with students, students are taught to embrace as legitimate and praiseworthy sexual immorality, and are not taught to abstain from sex outside of marriage, but instead are given condoms and a moral vacuum in which to experiment with one another, get pregnant, contract STDs, and reap emotional and spiritual mayhem, all in the name of moral relativism and expressing themselves. So long as there's a morning after pill or abortion-on-demand to keep them from ruining their lives, we'll look the other way.

Back to the actual education part of the equation, the students in public schools are so distracted by pressures from their peer group to conform to various changing standards of coolness in fashion, music taste, attitude, interest, etc. that they don't focus on their subjects.

Public schools hold children in an artificial, unhelpful and unnecessary environment that requires either the advanced students to be held back in order to prop up average test scores for the students who are not progressing, or else the students who are not progressing are dragged along mindlessly in order to keep up with the advanced children, or else both simultaneously in order to reach the biggest possible group of students in the center! What is accomplished is neglect of many and, at best, a commitment to mediocrity for the majority. Meanwhile teachers are burnt out, students are disillusioned, and a great failure is being tolerated and propped up.

Public education is forbidden from including any godly, biblical or moral content in the instruction. What is produced then, putting aside any private attempts by parents or churches, is a godless, amoral education which explains all things in a naturalistic, utilitarian way, and scrubs a young person's convictions away implicitly (sometimes also explicitly) by the example set, discouraging them from having, exercising, or especially sharing convictions. That is to say that children are trained to be godless.

What is taught instead of a Biblical, Judeo-Christian worldview is a theory and philosophy of origins which is contradictory and hostile to the Biblical account, implying that either there is no God at all, or else the god we should worship is that absent watchmaker the Deists believed in. This Deist's god is not the type who would've sent Jesus to atone for your sins, not the type who would have intervened in human affairs to perform signs and wonders, or to give revelations of truth or his will - quite the contrary. If and when the existence of the supernatural is not denied, it is so insidiously and persistently implied to be ridiculous, backwards, ignorant, intolerant and harmful that I cannot conclude that the system, insofar as it is religious, is anything but anti-Christ.

How then am I to proceed as a Christian man with children?

If I see it as my duty and obligation to protect these children, but I see the public education system as harmful in many ways;
If I see it as my duty to instruct these children and ensure they're prepared with a knowledge and understanding of the world and their place in it which will help them to make wise, informed decisions in their adult life, but I see the public education system as severely deficient in this regard;
If I see it as my duty to weave into daily instruction an understanding of God's Word and ways, a personal discipline and sense of right and wrong which will help my sons know how to be honorable, upright men, and how to respond to vile and wicked men in the world, and if I feel that the public education system is operating with complete negligence in this regard where it is not operating counter-productive to these ends;

How can I send my children to be educated by the public schools?

Consider this court document in the Romeike case, which I read this morning, and place yourself in my shoes. I find myself wondering about parents having their children taken away by a government, as the German government will do once this family is returned to their country.

How can this be seen as something other than persecution, especially where this German family sees their responsibility as many American homeschooling families do - namely, to educate their children themselves rather than entrusting the task to a godless, ineffective system? That is, how can we dismiss the claim of persecution unless we either minimize the legitimacy of their convictions or else downplay the pain which would be caused them by being forced to comply to a law which is contrary to their convictions?

Which is also to question how a decision can be made in favor of the German government's rights over those of this family's, and how can such be tolerated in America regarding the Romeike family without the same reasoning being used someday against American homeschooling families?

Forgive my naivete, but I was under the impression from reading history that many persons from around the world came to America to escape government overreach in their home countries, especially with regards to religious conviction.

How much more pain could you cause a parent than to take their children away from them? The court document I linked to above explains that the German government would not be enforcing their compulsory school attendance law out of a desire to hurt the Romeike parents, but is that entirely the point?

Suppose some government made up a law against breathing air. Then you could argue that the government choking the breaker of such a law to death wasn't so much about trying to hurt them, only about enforcing the law. Since when is the government the wronged party in this, when you break a ridiculous, overreaching law? Once the law is in place, can the government deny that it is in the wrong for choking the lawbreaker by explaining that the lawbreaker is really the one in the wrong for breathing air and breaking the law?

What is being asserted here is that the government reserves all rights unto itself which are not explicitly given to the people; but that is not a limited government, but rather a limited individual and an unlimited government. It will then be said that you do not have a right to do anything which has not been explicitly permitted for you to do.

Tell me truly, is there a more true definition of oppression?

Montana, and Other Wide Open Spaces

2013-04-03T12:48:00.002-06:00

1,400 miles and nearly 15 years separated my having left Glendive, Montana and my having returned.

I was born at the Glendive Medical Center in November of 1986. My dad was a farmer in the Bloomfield area. I enjoy vivid memories of exploring those 1,600 acres of grassland and crops, especially the winding creek that ran through our property. While dad and mom worked during planting and harvest seasons, my brother and I tromped up and down that creek looking for frogs and fish, occasionally ran into snakes, and just generally enjoyed the fresh air and wide open spaces.

Now my wife and I rent a small farmhouse, north-west of Glendive by 10-15 miles, and I get to enjoy seeing our sons roaming outside. Their squeals and ruckus play as sweet percussion and accompaniment to the winds that blow undeterred over mostly treeless plains.

My parents moved with my little brother and I to Ohio when I was about 10, and I don't think it ever felt like a suitable replacement to the wide-open freedom of Big Sky Country. You can't really look in any direction in Ohio without seeing some sign of human development - power lines, houses, businesses, roads, cars, etc. It's just too busy, too noisy, too crowded.

I feel like I can breathe out here. "Elbow room," is what they used to call it.

Will I ever forget the second broker I assisted at TQL, a woman named Shannon, who told me matter-of-factly that my having four kids was ecologically and socially irresponsible? "The planet can't support this many people," was something akin to what she told me.

I know people who'd be offended by that, but I just laughed. I think she was offended that I laughed. We didn't get along the best after that.

I was undeterred. My wife and I are expecting our fifth child in September now (unless we're having twins, which do run in the family on both sides).

It's hard when you grew up in a state as sparsely populated as Montana to take people seriously when they say the planet is overcrowded. Montana, one of the larger states in the union, just recently hit a population of 1 million persons, and a quarter of those live in or around the city of Billings, in the center of the state.

I think those wide open spaces I grew up with influenced me in another way, helping to instill in me a distrust of authority and resistance to excessively controlling measures. You get so used to being your own boss when there aren't other people around.

Add to that how easy it is to get into a mindset of bucking the trend when you're homeschooled, and you've got a recipe for wanting to govern yourself and speak your mind.

Robots

2013-04-02T08:18:00.000-06:00

Easter Sunday, on my way back to the office after running my route, I caught a story on the SiriusXM BBC World Service channel. In the spotlight was the present and future of economics.

Unfortunately, I do not recall the name of the two men being interviewed, either because I wasn't paying attention, or else I tuned in part-way through the program.

In any case, what did capture my attention was talk of production and job growth coming uncoupled for the first time in our history. Usually they go together - when an economy's productivity goes up, so also does job growth. Now we see productivity rising, but we're not seeing job growth.

Why is that? Because of the effects of technology. For instance, robots being used in factories where people have traditionally performed a task.

Which has me wondering: Will I someday be replaced by a robot?

It's an intriguing thought.

Enduring Legacy

2013-03-27T21:01:00.000-06:00

I have four sons - Josiah David, Elihu James, Solomon Emmanuel, Daniel Joseph. My wife's pregnant with our fifth child right now, due in September. We don't know yet whether we'll be having another son or our first daughter. We're very excited to find out, either way.

What sort of world will my sons become men in? They're quite young now - ages 5, 4, 3, and almost 2. But what sort of nation will this be 20 years from now? How about 30, 40, or 50 years from now?

Sometimes I wonder which choices I'm making now will influence my children for the rest of their lives, perhaps my grandchildren and great grandchildren as well. What sort of example am I setting? What am I telling them about life, about their responsibilities and what to expect, about how to make good decisions and do what's right?

Immigration Anniversary

2013-03-10T10:14:00.000-06:00

A year ago next Saturday I was just arriving in Montana to look for work.

Much has changed.

Thursday I switched out of the truck I'd been running in as a contract pumper, which I had gotten brand new and had only put about 25,000 miles on, and I switched into another new truck as an employee of one of the world's largest energy companies.

They pay for all the fuel, insurance, and maintenance.

I have a company cell phone and laptop for business purposes, as well as a company credit card for travel and procurement expenses.

They give me great training, including computer-based courses I can take from home, not only helping me to be more productive in the present, but also preparing me for a very profitable future at their company, or anywhere else in the oil and gas industry for that matter; and they pay me for my time!

What's more, I enjoy my work! There's enough variety to avoid boredom - it isn't constant physical labor, nor constant talking, nor is it constant sitting at a desk or in a driver's seat.

I don't feel dehumanized, as if I'm just an extension of a piece of machinery, as I did at that factory I worked in for 9 months. I don't feel as though I'm being pressured to lie and defraud, as I did at another workplace of mine in Ohio.

We're on our way out of debt, with all our credit cards paid off, and also one of our auto loans. My wife is now back in Ohio for her first visit since moving out here with the boys back in June, in part to drive that car we've just paid off to my dad so I can sell it to him as part of a repayment for years of relying on his generosity to stay afloat.

We aren't wealthy (by American standards, anyhow), but when I compare my income now to the best of jobs back in Ohio, when I worked harder than this and yet couldn't pull us above the poverty line, I'm so relieved to be earning a decent wage that allows us to buy the necessities without worry.

Now I'm saving for our first home, hopeful we'll be able to either buy one outright, or else purchase some land and have a modular brought in. My company wants me to move to Sidney to be closer to my route and the office, exciting in part because it tells me they want to rely on me more, and/or they're concerned for my safety with the amount of driving I do now.

In any case, housing is still the biggest hurdle. There's a scarcity of rental options, and what is available is very highly priced and has been spoken for by the time you call. Homes for sale are more plentiful, but we're still trying to climb out of the financial hole after years of scraping by. I'm hoping to save up for a down payment within 6-9 months time and have us moved before next February.

In conclusion, the point isn't to brag, but rather to excitedly explain what's possible. I've grown so tired and depressed of the economic and political doom and gloom I hear in the news. Sometimes I wonder if anything truly good can or does happen in this world. Surely I'm not the only one who feels that way. To some extent, I like telling my story because it reminds me of hope.

Elsewise, I like the thought that my encouraging story will give hope to someone else; if they have hope they will persevere.

Reliability and Reputation

2013-01-11T03:40:00.000-07:00

I worry a lot - too much, in fact.

...about what people think...

...about whether I'll conquer the world some day...

...about whether I'm brilliant or original in any way...

...about how my sons will turn out...

Why do I worry? Do I think that somehow the only way to motivate myself to excel or succeed, perhaps even survive in life, is to make myself afraid?

I am imperfect. Am I trying to prove otherwise? What am I so afraid of in being imperfect, rejection?

The terrible thing is that all this insecurity might actually end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy, more thwarting than ensuring my success. If I'm always nervous and distracted by the thought of failure, I'll not have sufficient focus left for succeeding.

But then maybe I should probe deeper into how I define success. What am I striving for? What would it take for me to consider myself successful?

I don't know when it started exactly, but I have a suspicion. I started working for a prominent logistics company in Cincinnati, Ohio and was being told I too could work really hard and make a six-figure income. It wasn't long before I adopted that dream as my own, and I worry that since then I've held it up in my thoughts as a sort of idolatrous mirage. When did my life become all about making money? It can't be!

But wait. Am I saying that making money is bad? No. But putting it at the center of your self-concept is, and so is seeing your whole life revolve around the attainment of that goal.

The same goes for people-pleasing.

Why have I gotten so wrapped up in trying to impress everyone anyhow? Maybe as a means to the end of someday making a lot of money, I'm not sure. Or do I want to make a lot of money to impress people because that's really my highest goal?

I used to enjoy writing and singing and taking pictures and being funny and thinking grand philosophical, theological, political opinionated thoughts, and voicing them, and debating with people. Not so many years ago, I used to really enjoy those things. I can't seem to do any of them anymore, or even consider doing them, without first asking myself what people will think.

Do I even enjoy my children anymore? I know I do sometimes, but how often am I just simply missing out on relishing the privilege I have to be their father right now? Too often, and all because I've become preoccupied with worrying about whether people approve of the age at which I started having these sons, or whether they approve of how close in age my sons are to one another, or whether they agree that we should have this many, or whether they think my children are well-behaved.

It's insane.

"The fear of man is a snare,

But he who trusts in Yahweh is safe."

So what gives, Garrett? Why are you afraid of people? Why don't you trust God anymore?

I think that's what it comes down to.

Well, for one, the stakes have never been higher for me. I didn't want to fail as a father when I only had one son, but now I have four!

We recently moved over 1,400 miles for the employment and career opportunities which are uniquely available in abundance here in eastern Montana and western North Dakota, due to the Bakken oil and gas formation. Sometimes I feel like the eyes of everyone who knows me or has heard of me are on me and that my rise or fall will be subject to an audience of hundreds.

So what if it is, though? Yes, that possibility plucks my heart strings on two notes - that of people pleasing and also of wealth chasing. But maybe I don't need to care so much. Maybe I can choose to care less.

My cousin posited the statistic about funerals to me that, on average, only five people will cry at your funeral. In other words, only five people are going to care enough that you died some day to even shed a tear. So if the vast majority of people I meet are going to care that little about my life when it ends, why should I burden myself too much with what they think of me while I'm alive?

Maybe I won't end up a phenomenal success right where I'm at now. Maybe I'll never conquer the world. Maybe this is as good as it ever gets. So what? I don't think that's true, but so what if it is? I shouldn't stop enjoying the life God has given me right now and be miserable just because it's not quite what I expected.

If I'm patient and work hard and try to do a good, thorough job, remain honest and decent and faithful with what's been entrusted to me so far, I will make progress and move forward, whether slowly or quickly.

"God willing, we will live and do this or that."

Career and Purpose

2012-10-26T22:17:00.000-06:00

I'm coming up on six months at my current job as an MSO - Multi-Skilled Operator, a.k.a. "pumper" for a major oil and gas company in the Bakken. I'm still wearing a green hard hat, what I've been told is a pretty common signifier industry-wide that you're a new guy, and that everyone else needs to look out for you and not assume you know how to do your job. Once I've hit six months they'll give me a white hard hat. I think that'll make me feel more established, more secure.

I've recently been switched into a new pickup, and I mean brand new. The odometer read 400-some miles when I jumped in; I add more than that in two days of running my eastern Montana route. The new pickup helps me feel more secure too, I'm not going to lie. Plus there's no getting over the satisfaction of jumping in each morning and enjoying that "new car smell". It's really a treat.

The pay is very good, at least for me. I'm making more money per year than either my dad or my wife's, more money than any of my brother-in-laws, probably more than most of my friends, and certainly more than I've ever made. Our bills are being paid each month, even when that includes more expensive grocery trips, $750 a month for rent, and catching up on bills we'd fallen behind on before we left Ohio.

And that's just the thing. My future still feels so insecure. The life of poverty is still so close in memory as to make me feel that it would be very easy to get back there, or to feel as though we've not yet left that life. And with every uncertainty at work, any mistake I make or opportunity that I worry I've missed, fear and anxiety grip my heart.

My young, impatient, probably foolish heart fluctuates between fear that I won't progress in my career and wealth-building quick enough, and dread that complete ruin lurks around every corner and could pounce on me at any moment.

I have so many dreams, so many hopes and aspirations.

For instance, I want to travel around the world with my family - to live in foreign countries and have my sons visit foreign museums, learn other languages and cultures, get an education they couldn't from only reading books. When they graduate high school, I want to take each one of my boys individually on a long trip (somewhere between a week and a month) to a foreign country of their choice.

I want to buy each of my sons their own small starter home as a wedding present, in case they want to marry young.

I want to design and build my own home, some uber-clever subterranean high efficiency home, and I want to run a bison ranch.

Not to mention I'd like to be able to write more seriously; I've always told myself that'll have to wait until I become independently successful since writers, as I understand, either do very well or starve.

But all of this takes money, and my net worth is something like -$80,000.

Living in the moment is difficult lately. When I do catch myself enjoying where I am, who I'm with, what I'm doing - I worry that my inattention to the future is going to put my wishlist in jeopardy. On the other hand, I worry that my lack of attention to the present, and, what's worse, my anxiety over the future, is going to serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy ensuring failure.

I read histories and biographies, I read the news and informative magazines - Wired, National Geographic, Smithsonian, and the like. My hope is that arming myself with useful information, committing to work hard, be honest and compassionate, and taking it one day at a time, I'll find myself where I should be, enjoying the life God intended for me to have.

The simple fact is that control isn't meant to be entirely ours as humans. We're not supposed to hold all the cards. If we did, how boring would that get?

Life isn't all about getting what we want because life isn't all about us.

Maybe I will lose my job tomorrow. What then? The world will keep spinning. But maybe I'll get a promotion, or a pay raise It won't mean my life is any more worth living, or that I'm suddenly a better person, any more worthy in the eyes of God.

Perhaps underneath perverted human ambitions is a misguided certainty that we're supposed to be living to bring glory to God, that we show his greatness when we are great. But how tragic to, as Jesus phrased it, "gain the whole world and forfeit your soul."

More than any of those other items I mentioned, I want to come to the end of my days in this body with a calm peace, knowing I am right with my maker, that I did justice, loved mercy and walked humbly with my God.

Into the Void

2012-09-19T09:51:00.000-06:00

There's something lonely about blogging, I think. It feels like I'm talking to myself.

Then again, I write as someone who's only dipped his toe into blogging from time to time. Perhaps something in my soul tells me I'm stranded on a desert island and need to send a message in a bottle.

But maybe there's more to blogging than I've considered. Maybe my perspective has been overly self absorbed.

What if there is good to be done in sharing ideas? What if I have questions, observations, doubts, assertions, etc. that someone out there could benefit from considering?

We live in a jaded, cynical, spin-filled world. It can be hard to see past that mountain of scoffing internal objections.

I recently finished listening to The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson (good read, by the way!). In it, Johnson talks about how the cholera epidemics in London in the mid 19th century required a dual perspective that was difficult to balance.

A microscopic understanding was needed to see an adversary, the Vibrio cholerae bacteria, that was smaller than the naked eye can perceive. A glass of water might look clean in a cursory glance, but a more intimate examination would reveal the tiny killer of thousands.

But a macro understanding of the waste management and water supply system was also needed, perhaps more urgently, in order to convince a skeptical public and scientific community that had come to believe firmly that cholera and other illness was spread by noxious smells in the air, what was known as the Miasma Theory. Without a larger perspective of how the current infrastructure of London was actually poisoning it's people, the status quo was going to keep leading to epidemics as bad or worse than those current and previous, since London was already the largest city in the world, in history, at the time, and was sitll growing.

So what does that have to do with my blogging or not? Well, here's what I'm wondering: What if the problems of our world are not just inevitable? What if fatalism has it wrong? What if there is some good that an individual can do, and what is needed is thoughtful, considerate persons willing to take an honest look at the situation and brainstorm in an open way for solutions.

Sure, such can be done privately, and I suppose it must be done at least privately, at least at first. But what good is it if considerations are only private when the fix is needed on a large scale, not just in my life?

Sure, it's great to see Vibrio cholerae in a microscope, but the benefit is limited if you can't zoom out and recognize how problems of infrastructure are spreading the little bug.

Just so, it's fine for me to examine problems on my own, mind my own business and tend to my private life using what conclusions I've drawn from my private ponderings. I'm not just living a private life, however. So even if I do mind my own business, what's going on in the greater outside world will eventually affect me.

Doesn't that mean that, to some extent, what goes on in the outside world is my business also? Don't I have some responsibility to engage with the problems of my day?

On Writing and Writing On

2012-04-06T08:03:00.001-06:00

I love writing.

It used to be you could always find me with my nose in a book, magazine, perhaps even the occasional newspaper. I used to love reading too. I still like it, but...

Now I love writing.

Hopefully it doesn’t make me vain and conceited that I enjoy writing my own words better than reading what’s already been written. It certainly makes a little harder the task of going back over what I’ve already written, at least. No, I don’t even enjoy reading what I’ve written as much as I enjoy writing it. But maybe with regards the writing of other people I am a little arrogant in that I enjoy speaking more than I enjoy taking the time to listen. Yes, I worry that such is the case.

Nevertheless, I do love writing.

I first began learning to write well when I began to endeavor past what was required in school, beyond what was required to pass my classes.

My interest was piqued as I took to internet forums in junior high, debating with men much older and more educated than I. Not wanting to show my youth, or let on that I hadn’t known the definitions of all their terms before pulling up Dictionary.com or Wikipedia, I worked hard at the beginning to sharpen my skills in spelling, grammar, punctuation, and vocabulary. I soaked up like a sponge new words and new ways of expressing simple, common ideas. You might say I was eager to employee le mot juste, or “just the right word” as the French say, in every conversation.

And yes, that is to say that I first began to care about writing because I didn’t want to look foolish to debate opponents or on-lookers. Moreover, I wanted to win and prove myself the wiser and more able arguer. In hindsight it seems to have been rather proud of me to have been that way, maybe a little misguided, but those reasons seemed good enough at the time. And maybe they were sufficient to get me to where I am now.

But it wasn’t all debate either. I also spent a lot of time reading science fiction before college, and I think that helped a great deal. Among my favorites were Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert, and various authors of Star Wars fiction. I swear my brother and I must have checked out and read every Star Wars book at our local public library. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy also became an instant favorite when I read it in high school, after I saw Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) in my freshman year.

My grandmother was always sending subscriptions for my little brother and I – National Geographic, Smithsonian, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Discover, Reader’s Digest. So we were always reading articles about what the latest and greatest discoveries and developments around the world were. Our bedroom and library walls were covered with maps pulled from National Geographic, and posters bought at the many zoos and museums my parents took us to. Daily we were reminded of how big the world outside was and could be.

In more recent years, as I made long work commutes, or when I held a data entry job for a year and a half that had me bound to a chair 6-8 hours a day, I listened to audio books. One title after another, I enjoyed histories and biographies, books on philosophy, politics, economics, culture, and how to manage myself well. As my hands and eyes focused on driving and typing where I was, my innermost being visited other times and places and imagined what else there is to know and do in this life.

My imagination is good now, or at least better than it would have been without these influences. I’m used to reading and greatly admiring authors who employ vivid imagery and weave a grand story out of the ideas their creative minds conjure, and also those who, basic facts in hand, use their personal perspective and opinions to speculate and highlight important persons and events from the past, present, and anticipated future.

Some part of me has always thought of writers as being on an elevated plane, myself in awe of their ability to convey excitement and enthusiasm about what’s going on outside my home, outside my town, outside my country, and even outside my time or this galaxy.

I watched Star Trek growing up, for instance – a lot of Star Trek. In fact, a main form of punishing me when I was a kid was threatening to take away my Next Generation privileges. Though I know we can’t yet (if we ever will be able to) beam people and objects across distant points like Mr. Scotty did, there’s something about what a good writer does that seems much similar to those transporters in Gene Roddenberry’s stories.

A good writer takes your heart, mind and soul to another place, though your body remains seated on your couch or lying in your bed. Reading a good writer allows you to see through someone else’s eyes and think their thoughts, even if only for a moment, to consider what you may have not known you didn’t know.

Good writers make life seem so much bigger, though objects and places distant suddenly feel much closer. Through reading a skillful author I realize and remember that those objects and places I may have once heard about do still exist, or may exist, and that it is possible to see them, since indeed the author has seen them, or he spoke with someone who saw them, or he at least hopes and wishes to see them. Sometimes just hoping to see them is enough too.

Good writers have contagious perspectives, I’ve found; by reading them I at least have hope that perhaps I will someday see what they have seen. You want to see what they see, be where they’ve been. And in some sense, if they’re able to write well, you get your wish, and you keep reading them to continue seeing through their eyes.

So perhaps it’s not all vanity after all that leads me to enjoy writing more than reading. Perhaps I enjoy writing because I feel that by writing well, or at least getting closer to writing well as I continue to practice the art, I become a better person.

A confession: I always imagined those authors I read to be better persons than I. So in writing I feel that I am growing and maturing, and hopefully giving others an opportunity to grow and mature. Perhaps through my craft they will see lands that, though close and familiar to me, have always seemed distant, even non-existent to them. Perhaps even if I am not ever a great writer I will trick someone else into thinking at least temporarily that I am, or that they may become one.

So I suppose I’ll go on in my love for writing. And hopefully others will love to read what I’ve written. And they’ll continue to write, and I’ll read what they’ve written.

Raising Myself First

2012-04-06T08:01:00.003-06:00

Some people think we’re crazy. My wife and I, married five and a half years, have had four little boys in that time. The eldest will be turning 5 this summer; the youngest will be 1 year old next month. Oh, and I’m only 25, with another birthday myself not until the beginning of November.

As I say, some people think we’re crazy.

But that’s the thing of it. We’ve not just gone through pregnancies, births, feeding, diapering and transporting those four boys around. Yes, of course, we’ve gone through all those normal parts. But we’ve not just sat idly by as our boys have come into this world and grown. We’ve grown, had to grow, right alongside them.

As a father of four little boys, I hope earnestly my example will put them in good stead when they reach manhood, and also between now and then. Unfortunately, being human, I encounter facets of my personality from time to time which, as I’m honest with myself, it becomes apparent must be adjusted, removed, replaced or grown if I am to make good on my intention to lead my sons by good example.

Case in point: my wife and I recently were chatting about a decision I made some months or years ago, or a number of decisions I’ve made in life, in which I wonder now whether a wiser course of action was available as an alternative to what I chose. At the time, when I made these decisions, as I weighed my options, it seemed I could only go one way, that there was only one course which was wise and good and honest, and that the other options were cowardly compromises. Still I wrangled with self-doubt, wondering in hindsight if I could have avoided some discomfort going another way, or thinking longer on the matter, or asking for advice from someone wise.

What a gift my Lauren is to me, though.

She stopped me, as she often does when I get to talking that way, and asked me directly: “If one of our sons were in a similar situation, what would you have wanted them to do?”

And that settled the matter. As I thought about it for a moment, I answered: “Well, I suppose I would want them to do as I did.”

“There you have it,” she said.

But as I continue on as a father, I learn more and more that I need to be making sure I know well the lessons I need to teach these young man-cubs before I venture to instruct. So a great deal of maturation has come for me, and probably more opportunities for growing personally than I’ve noticed or taken advantage of fully, by way of the blessing of these boys God has given me a chance to be a father to.

Had you asked me years ago, I might have thought I would be the one doing all the teaching. Instead, I find that I have learned a great deal more than I knew I didn’t know.

That’s the thing of it. Fatherhood, at least for imperfect men like me, takes a great deal of humility to do well. That’s not to say either that I am humble or doing fatherhood well. Rather, I at least know that in order to do it well I must be humble, and the more humble I am the better I do it. I know I must be able to look at myself honestly, to see my faults and shortcomings without turning away or denying them, and to be willing to apologize, to ask questions, to learn, to grow, to stand corrected. Won’t that be what I’m asking my children to do, after all? I can’t teach what I don’t know.

I want strong, courageous, honest, humble, gentle, considerate sons. So I must choose to be strong, and to do what I know I must despite fears and opposition; I must choose to tell the truth, even when it’s inconvenient to do so; I must be humble, not arrogant; though choosing strength, I must use my strength in a way which guards others instead of either purposefully or accidentally hurting them; and I must consider my ways, the circumstances and those around me, and be respectful, polite and wise in my conduct.

Those little eyes are always watching, those ears always listening.

So again, people think we’re crazy. But I think we’re getting wiser as we go! Yes, these children try our patience. But also, yes, they are helping my wife and I to become more patient people, and I am growing as those children grow, trying earnestly to stay ahead of them in terms of maturity, to know what’s ahead that they need to learn about, what they need to become in order to live in peace and prosperity. And I learn in them that it’s okay to not have all the answers, to not have arrived yet in perfect maturity, so long as there is still hope to continue learning and growing.

And there is.

Coming Back West

2012-04-06T07:59:00.002-06:00

Glendive, MT is my hometown. Born here November 5^th, 1986 at the Glendive Medical Center to Byron and Alice Mullet, I remember cold winters as a kid, the feeling of a fresh wind blowing on my face, looking out over grassy plains and hills in the summertime, seeing pheasant and antelope and coyotes roaming about freely, and my brother and I fishing with grasshoppers as bait in the creek that ran through our farmland out near Bloomfield.

Eastern Montana has a sort of rugged beauty about it. When dry, the land reminds me of an elderly person who’s lived a full life, with laugh lines, wrinkles around the eyes from squinting in the sun, wrinkles in the forehead from cares and concerns, gnarled hands and arms that worked their whole life long.

Now I’ve been home for just over two weeks, returning from the little town of Hillsboro in Ohio, the place where at least my body has resided some fifteen years now. But though I’ve spent more than half my life in Ohio, moving there with my parents and my younger brother when I was about 10, I’ve never really felt that Ohio became my home. My heart and some portion of my mind has continued to reside in Montana, my homeland, and I’ve continually thought about and wistfully longed for this rugged beauty again, those grassy plains and hills, this fresh wind in my face.

When you tell someone out east that you’re from Montana, their eyes go wide. That’s been my experience, anyhow. The typical first question after they learn you’re from Big Sky country is, “So what’re you doing here?!” From looking at pictures or watching nature documentaries (typically their only experience of Montana), they just can’t understand why anyone would trade this pristine landscape for the drabness of life in Ohio, or most other similar places.

When I came rolling into town again from North Dakota on March 17^th of this year, passing through Medora and Makoshika just as the sun was setting on the horizon, sky painted crimson, orange and yellow over layered, striated, rocky hills and buttes and boulders – I’d have had a hard time answering for why anyone would leave this rugged beautiful wilderness.

Now I’m also one of those who’s come from elsewhere to find a job, though my being a native helps perhaps alleviate some of the stigma of being an out-of-towner. I have a wife and four little boys back in Ohio that I need to work for now. It’s difficult to find a good job these days, at least in our neck of the woods. But I haven’t just come back to find work. I’ve also come home, and there’s a real sense of accomplishment in having made it back here, to this land of open spaces I have fondly remembered for most my life.

I somehow feel as though I am everyone here. My father and grandfather and great grandfather were farmers in this area. I was born here. But I, like so many others, am also migrating into this part of the country looking for opportunity, for work. I’m here looking for a job that will not just pay my bills (though that’s a good start), but perhaps help me to also pay off debts I’ve incurred, and build up savings, and maybe carve out a little piece of the Earth for myself and mine, maybe even a piece of Earth here in the wide open spaces of Montana.

God help me, it’s good to be home. So far, so good. There’s just something about having come back here. What is it I’ve heard in my spirit? “Go west, young man.” So did I and my ancestors, and so did you or yours. And because we have come west, we share in the privilege of breathing in this Big Sky.