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.