On the Demise of the Jungle Gym

I've been thinking about the jungle gym lately. Not the bright, plastic, insurance-approved ones they erect over plots of recycled tires in modern playgrounds and backyards, but the old-school metal pipe sets that seemed to sprout from schoolyard asphalt in the 1950's and 60's. If you were born after 1990, you may never have seen one IRL. If you don't know what IRL stand for,  you've probably played on more than one. 

For the younger crowd I will concede that they were death traps. Literally. I couldn't find statistics, but since today's "safe" playgrounds manage to kill about 150 kids a year in the U.S., I'm guessing old fashioned jungle gyms took a life every day, on average, and injured hundreds of thousands. I, myself, suffered several injuries on jungle gyms that would probably result in an E.R. visit today. 

Everyone knew it, too. That was half the appeal. Climbing up those bars took real bravery. I remember the first time I made it all the way to the top. I was maybe six feet of the ground, but it felt like the top of the empire state building. 

To our imaginations, it could have been.  The jungle gym was a perfect blank slate. One day it was a castle, the next a mountain. It was the robbers hide out for cops and robbers and the wild west fort defended by cowboys. It was a rocket ship and a time machine. 

It was also a teacher. We learned to check the bar before grabbing hold with gusto. Gusto could burn or freeze or slip,  depending on the weather. We got ourselves in tight spaces that stretched our problem solving skills. We fell and it hurt. The vast majority of us walked away with a better grasp of gravity,  balance and resilience. 

We made friends on those hot, slippery bars. The jungle gym was not a fortress of solitude, but a place where secrets were shared and stories were told. Daring adventures were played out.

I worry that today's youth wouldn't know what to do with our old jungle gyms. Modern kids expect a lot more structure.  Modern playground structures leave a lot less to the imagination.  Modern parents expect everything to be really safe.

The jungle gyms of my childhood were none of those things. And I am much better for it.

Yes, we are Saved by Grace, but Not for Sin

There's a lot of misinformation going around in the name of Christ lately, not the least of which is the idea that you can become a Christian without changing the way you behave. I'm not saying we earn salvation. We can't. Scripture is very clear. "It is a gift of God, not of works." 

Too many people, sadly including clergy, think that faith is basically a "Get out of hell free" card you can carry in your pocket silently until you present it at the pearly gates. In reality, if that's the card you're carrying, it's not going to work. Faith is an action noun. What we believe affects our action. For those who don't understand this, I offer, in no particular order, why even though you are saved by grace, you should still sin less and help more.

The token sports metaphor
Imagine you play on a small local sports league and after years of being a Blue Devil you join the Saints. Does that automatically make you a perfect player? No. You will still have fouls and penalties and you'll miss chances to score. What you won't do it try to score for the other team. In fact, you will do your best to stop them from scoring.

When you change such a minor affiliation, your behavior changes. Your goal changes. Likewise, when we join the Church our focus changes. You don't keep playing like you're on the devil's team. Unless you really are.

What does it mean to believe
This may sound obvious, but I've met several people who thought believing in God was akin to believing in Bigfoot. Faith is more than conceding the existence of some vague unknown. We actually know a lot about God through the scripture. Believing in God is believing in a person. You have confidence not only that they exist, but that they can be trusted to behave in certain ways. When we say we believe in God, we mean that we believe in an omniscient, omnipresent, all-powerful, infinitely-just Creator who has kept amazing promises and offered up his own flesh and blood to balance the scales for our sins.

If you truly believe in that person and he's given you rules for living, can you possibly ignore them just because you aren't going to have to pay the eternal price for disobedience? Or are you going to try very hard to incorporate his wisdom into every aspect of your life? The ten commandments are the users manual for human life written by the guy who designed and built the whole system.

Relationships
Many of the same preachers who don't talk much about the rules talk a lot about your relationship with Jesus, ironically. I don't disagree that our relationship with our Lord is crucial, but it shouldn't make you feel better about sinning. It should make you feel worse. If Jesus is truly someone you love and respect, why would you want to embrace the things that caused him to suffer the betrayal of his friends, public mockery and a painful death?

Or even be the friend who just never does what his friends ask? I bet you know that person. The one who shows up to the potluck with empty hands and a full wallet who doesn't use a coaster and puts his feet up on the furniture even though you've asked him a hundred times not to. The one who shows up when there's cake, but not when there's work to do. Is that the person you want to be to God?

Your witness
One of the most important things God asks from us is to share his Good News with others. To show his love and faithfulness to the world. Basically, we're supposed to walk around with a big God jersey everywhere we go.

So everything we do affects the impression others have of God. What should we want people to think of our religion and our God? That it makes for selfish, mean, dishonest,  lawless hooligans or that it makes for generous, kind, trustworthy, responsible neighbors? Even as society embraces godlessness, people still inherently know right and wrong for the most part.  They still recognize vice.

When we embrace that vice through our words or actions, we fail to reflect God's holiness.  We make Christianity look like more of the same junk they can get anywhere.  We become graffiti on the temple. 

The wages of sin is death

No, really. Death.

The Ten Commandments aren't random.  They aren't abstract or spiritual. They aren't things God decided to punish the harshest because He, personally, didn't care for them. 

They are all poisons with different speeds and methods of toxicity,  but they will all lead to death and misery. There isn't room here to follow each to that bitter end, but the paths are not hard to find. Even covetousness, that popular American pastime, is dangerous to the mind, soul and body.

Children put everything in their mouths until someone teaches them what is food and what is "icky. Spit that out." God has given us the ultimate "icky" list. When we keep ingesting it we hurt ourselves, our loved ones, and our neighbors.

God said so

A lot of Christians go through different stages in their relationship with scripture.  Personally,  I am at a stage of fascination with the complex correctness of God's word. I am reveling in the many ways He kept promises and revealed truths to us. When my friends who are at different stages say, "Because God said so," I tend to ask, "why?" Not because I doubt God,  but because I want to find out more aspects of His plan. I love to increase my understanding of God's word. I love to see how it holds up from different angles and how it speaks to people in different situations.

But, honestly, I know that, "God said so." really is a compete sentence. It's good enough. He saved us from sin, not for sin. The Bible tells us so. 

Thoughts and prayers.

I'm here to issue a challenge to my Christian friends. One of the talking points of the gun control crowd lately has been, "thoughts and prayers don't work." There is some truth to that. Sitting around thinking "don't shoot" won't do anything. Prayer, on the other hand, has power.

For the rest of Lent (at least) my family is going to pray for the kids at risk for school violence, in general and specifically. I'd like you and yours to join us.

Ask your child, if you send them to school, if they have a classmate who they think could be dangerous. Pray for that child by name. Pray that he will realize that his life matters. That he has more to contribute than death. Pray that the responsible people in his life will see his anger and intervene. Pray for your child to have the words or actions that move him away from violence. It could be one smile that changes his life. We don't know. But God does.

I don't usually ask for shares on my blog. I trust it will be where it needs to be. But prayer in numbers is powerful. Please pass this on.

What a difference a Dad makes

Our nation is mourning, once again, the pointless deaths of school children mowed down by a former classmate. There were actually two major attacks within a week, but the second involved a knife rather than a gun, so it got less press. People are scrambling for explanations, desperate for the law or message that will prevent this from happening again. Fingers are pointing at law enforcement, gun laws, the mental health system, the school system, entertainment, and video games. Each of them certainly holds some responsibility*.

The one factor that most of the discussion misses is casual sex. No, that's not a typo. The one thing all these shooters (and stabbers and bombers) seem to have in common is the absence of a father. I'm not saying that all single parent families lead to broken and dangerous teens, but it's a hard place to grow stable people. Kudos to the women who manage to do it!

It will offend people to hear, but if you want to create a child with a deep sense of worthlessness, deprive them of a father. No shortage of studies exist to show the increased risk an absent father gives a child for pretty much everything we hope our kids won't do - from criminal behavior to addiction, teen parenthood to suicide. I've seen with my own eyes too many times the difference even a poor-mediocre dad can make. I won't name names, but I'm guessing the people who read this will recognize themselves.

I know a family with three girls, two of whom share a dad who went to jail for child abuse. He isn't anyone's dream dad. Anyone, except their older sister, who doesn't know who her dad is. During her childhood, several candidates were eliminated by DNA testing, and we had more than one conversation that involved the question, "Why doesn't he want to be my dad?" The underlying question, of course, is, "What's wrong with me? Why aren't I good enough for him to love?" Every time it broke my heart. She was a beautiful, smart child. No matter how many times I told her it had nothing to do with her and how lucky any of these guys would be to have the DNA match, all she heard was, "Nobody wants you."

Girls respond to this by clinging to the first guy who seems to love them. It can be devastating and usually creates a cycle of fatherlessness that can last for generations. I'm sure that boys feel the same loss, but they express it differently. They have the pain, but it usually comes out as anger, especially as they grow older and make more testosterone. One of the most important jobs of fathers is to teach their sons what to do with anger. Because they really understand what it's like, they do a better job than a woman ever can. Again, kudos to the women who manage to teach their sons how to direct their energy towards positive things. You're in an uphill battle.

Dads teach their sons that sometimes the best thing to do with anger is to mow the lawn or run basketball drills or punch a bag instead of a person. They teach them when it's okay to use anger to fight someone who's trying to hurt their loved ones and when you have to redirect it into sports or work. They show them that the same impulses that horrify mom can actually make him a potentially good match and provider.

I think almost all families today give outside messages too much power over their children. Movies, music, video games, schools and social media tend to have two messages for boys. First, they tend to judge them by female standards that tell them they are basically depraved and gross. They lag behind in modern education that is run by and caters to female minds. Society tells boys they are barbaric. Then video game and movies show them scenes of great violence. Superhero or supervillian, men leave behind trails of destruction. They win or lose by how hard they can hit.

To some extent, it's true. Men, left to their own devices are a dangerous force. They become street gangs and marauders and mass shooters. Fortunately for us, when women live in cooperation with men, they become soldiers and police and firemen who defend us with their very lives. They become fathers who work two jobs to keep the kids fed and clothed. Too many boys without fathers only get the first half of this point.

So we create these young men who feel horribly unloved (no matter how much Mom loves them) and who don't know what to do with this pain except to strike out. We send them off to school where the message that they are inadequate is repeated. They have a hard time making friends because they are quick to anger. They take their violent impulses to the WII or the XBox where they are rewarded for taking part in fantasy brutality. They get points for killing everything that moves. Sometimes with guns. Sometimes with swords or daggers. It's not hard to see how sometimes that creates someone who kills.

So, what does that have to do with casual sex? Sadly, that's how too many of these kids are made. We pretend that pregnancy is a rare side-effect of sex, which exists to amuse us, when, in fact, the opposite is true. Yes, people who follow all the rules and have kids after being married for some time also sometimes divorce and/or abandon their spouse. Sometimes you flip a coin and it lands on its head ten times in a row. The fact is that the divorce rate for couples who have only had sex with each other is less than 5%. The intention to not stick around forever sort of defines casual sex.

Unfortunately, desired or not, sex makes babies. No birth control is 100%. To quote Jurassic Park, life finds a way. Abortion is no answer. Killing thousands or millions of innocents to save dozens is no solution. We expect people to consider the consequences of their other appetites. It's not secret that Twinkies aren't good for you. Likewise, sex creates new people. It's also supposed to create families to nurture them. No culture has ever perfected premarital abstinence, but the closer we get, the fewer Nick Cruz's we create. That's a goal worth changing our lifestyles for.

* The second amendment has prevented more deaths than it could ever cause. We can't measure that easily, despite the number of good guys with guns who stop violent crime in progress. The most important violence it prevents is the violence that governments who have disarmed their people tend to perpetuate against their own populations. If you add up every mass murder (more than 4 deaths) in the last century, it isn't 1% of what a Mao or a Stalin can do.

One way or the other

I'm trying to picture this gender spectrum everyone keeps talking about. Not the middle. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting someone reveling in androgyny these days. Modern clothing trends seem to focus on daring people to guess what genitals someone has, while simultaneously making them of no interest to men or women.

It's the ends that I'm curious about. Who or what, exactly, is the paragon of womanhood at the edge of this rainbow? What defines her masculine counterpart?  Where do you fall on this scale of 1-10, 1 being Cinderella and 10 being the Brawny paper towel man? How far can you be from this ideal and still call yourself that gender?

One of my biggest issues with gender theory is that it gives too much credence to the stereotype. For there to be a gender spectrum, there must be some ideal to anchor the ends. It devalues the spectrum of real womanhood by drawing lines where a woman isn't a woman because she doesn't look or dress or act or think a certain way.

Our foremothers invested a lot of time and suffering into creating a world where being a woman doesn't have to mean the same thing to each one of us. Where a woman can be an basketball star or an astronaut or an auto mechanic or the top-rated Magic The Gathering player in the world (I have no idea if that ever actually happened - but it could). Our daughters are should not be asked to define themselves relative to an arbitrary, undefined ideal. You're not less of a girl if you like science and trucks and video games or more of a girl if you like dolls and fashion and dancing. Female is a huge umbrella covering almost every pursuit under the sun. It's something you are that does define you, but not narrowly.

Yes, that definition includes the chubby person with the spiky hair and nose ring wearing a men's button down shirt tucked into black jeans who's still upset than Bernie Sanders lost the primary. It includes the crunchy mom who runs the PTA and the single mom who puts Twinkees in her kid's lunch. It includes the nursing home resident who has lost all her outer femininity, but who still likes to have her hair done once a week. It includes the tom boy, playing in the dirt.

Likewise, not all men can swing an axe. Or want to. They are more than soldiers and laborers. The poet is not less of a man than the welder. The cop is not more of a man than the stay-at-home-dad. You don't have to reach a certain height to claim your man card. And you can't turn it in by growing your bangs too long, putting on eyeliner and wearing skinny jeans or a skirt.

Adolescents have always struggled with their identity. It's kind of what that period of life is for. Now we've created a whole new and absurd conundrum for them. I think it's time that we offer them a bit of concrete wisdom. You don't have to earn your gender. It's not a spectrum. It's one thing or the other thing. It will mean different things to you throughout your life. But it won't change. 

Quit fat shaming. Quit fat accepting. Try minding your own business.

I called a man an ass today. He's a famous conservative media personality with a blog and a webcast and I usually agree with almost everything he says. But today, I called him an ass. And I meant it.

He was taking on a government initiative designed to combat fat shaming. And on some level, I agree that the government shouldn't do it. No where in the constitution is the federal government empowered to guide our girth. Like so many pies it has its thumb in, fat is none of Washington D.C.'s business.

Unfortunately, he took it one step further and started attacking fat people. Maybe he thinks calling people fat, fat, fatty is funny. He certainly imagines their blood sugar numbers and cholesterol are a national crisis. He's disgusted by the idea that any of us might ever feel... *gasp* sexy.

Just like the people out there insisting that fat is great and we should embrace it, he's wrong. Yes, overeating and under-exercising are character flaws. Faced with the question - "should I lose weight?" - you should be honest. You should try to teach your kids portion control and an active lifestyle.

You should also teach your kids to respect other people and not reduce them to their waistline. When you see a fat woman ladling soup for the homeless, you should focus more on her kindness than on her dress size.

My impulse here is to explain the complexity of weight issues. To point out the million hard choices you have to make to turn your eating and exercise habits from bad to good. To list the health issues that can turn a very healthy person into fat, fat fatty.

The real issue, though, isn't what we think of obesity. It's what we think of our fellow man. Is a person only worthy of kindness if they are healthy? Would you walk up to a person with a brain injury and tell him how stupid he was to be riding in the car with the guy who drove them into a light pole and them laugh about how he's even stupider now? Would you tell someone with a burn scar how they deserved to be ugly because they fell asleep with a candle burning? Those things might be true, but they are mean and no one benefits from them being said.

Rest assured, for every person who decides they can't stand to be called names anymore and takes up diet and exercise, there are hundreds who go home and comfort themselves with food so they can make it through the day. Most people who succeed at losing weight and keeping it off do it not to avoid an insult, but because they finally felt strong enough and confident enough and supported enough to keep going. Feeling worthless and hated doesn't inspire you to do things that will prolong your life.

Weight, like so many things, is a subject best limited to conversations between close friends, family and medical professionals. When it comes to strangers, even if they are public figures, you'd be doing to world a favor if you just listened to Thumper's mother. If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all.