These past weeks have been filled with concerns and worries. These concerns and worries don’t seem to touch our children at all. Yet they weigh heavily on my hearts and minds. Of course, this is how it should be. This is exactly what the Church means when it teaches that the innocence of children must be protected (most people see the term “innocence” in a purely sexual context — this is not the way the Church defines the term). Children are mentally, emotionally, and spiritually unable to handle the stress of the adult world in a Fallen world. By protecting them from this stress, we give them a chance to mature so that they are able to handle it by the time they are old enough to start taking on the responsibility.

Of course, as I watch their carefree play, I began to get a little jealous. Why can’t I be that carefree? Then it struck me that this is exactly the desire expressed in humanistic psychological philosophies. Philosophies such as Transactional Analysis Theory have made us believe that a healthy adults is able to recapture the carefreeness of childhood, and that being weighed down by adult concerns is a sign of psychological dysfunction. The more I thought about this the more ridiculous I felt about being jealous of my children. Humanistic psychology has proven to be untenable. It just doesn’t work. When adults try to be carefree in a Fallen world, we tend to become careless instead. When we try to reclaim our childhood we just end up hiding from reality.

Indeed, God’s design is for human beings to grow into what He has planned for us to become. Childhood is a preparation for adulthood — earthly life is a preparation for eternal life. All the while we are meant to grow in our capacity to love. So, what is in this desire to recapture our childhood that the gloomy adult world may be missing? What does God want to develop us into as adults that is reflected in the carefree play of childhood? Certainly God’s plan stands in opposition to the two extremes:

Humanism that would have us stick our heads in the sand and ignore evil, embracing a carefree childish attitude that ignores our responsibilities as adults

“Realism” that sees only the evils in the world and believes that all joy is nothing more than wishful thinking

The Christian is called to a balance. We must face the realities of this world, including the sinfulness and the evil that is was brought about by original sin. However, we face these evils knowing that good wins in the end. We faced them with joy, hope, and love. In that sense we can recapture some of the carefree joy of childhood. If we are not living in joy, hope, and love, we are missing out on what God has planned for our adulthood lives.

Joy is more than happiness. It is a deep-seated satisfaction that our lives have significance and meaning. The difference between the innocence of childhood and the joy of adulthood is that the innocence of childhood exists in oblivion to the evil around us, while the joy that occurs in adulthood often exists despite needing to face that evil.

Joy is the fruit of hope. Hope is trust in God. We trust that He will remain true to His promises to make all things right in the end — to bring about His Kingdom. We have hope in His power to bring good out of evil.

Love is the very life of God — the power to freely give ourselves as gifts to others for the sake of their good. When we love others, we are willing to face the evil that comes our way, and even to sacrifice good things that we may have coming to us for their sake. Love is strengthened by hope, and love is what makes our lives significant and meaningful, bringing us joy.

These are three of the elements that the innocence of childhood prepare us for and grow into. In the end, joy, hope and love are better than carefree innocence. If we are not living these three fruits of grace and maturity in our adult lives, we are missing out on what God has planned for us.

Like I said, it’s amazing what thoughts come to me as I mow the lawn.

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Some commentators have criticized Vermont and Ohio for not taking sexting (which is done especially by teenagers) seriously enough. Others have lauded them for saving young adults from a lifetime of stigma and legal problems due to youthful indiscretion. At the heart of this debate is the question, “How much should government legislate morality?”

I have to say that I agree with those who support removing sexting from the felony class of crimes. Sexting is not a sign of a sexual predator (though it can certainly be used for sexual harassment). It is a sign that young adults are not being taught to respect their body or their sexuality. This is the kind of respect that has to be taught in the home. While the government and law enforcement may need to back off from punishing texting, parents, teachers and our society need to step up.

The good thing about the various responses to sexting is that I have not yet heard anyone claim that it is a good thing, or that it is no big deal. Even Ellen Goodman, known for her lack of sexual wisdom, went no further than coming close to calling it good:

The vast majority of pictures are sent to romantic partners. A lot of what we are seeing is young people exploring trust and intimacy. But it’s often boyfriends — or ex-boyfriends — who hold the trump photos. And when that trust is broken and photos hit cyberspace, it’s girls who pay a social price in humiliation and ruined reputation.

Eighteen-year-old Jessica Logan of Ohio committed suicide after her boyfriend put her naked photos out in public, but it was also girls who bullied and harassed her. The girl who trusted was socially ostracized more than the boy who violated that trust. Go figure.

Of course, she cannot resist finding within the issue a feminist cause. That aside, she almost assumes that what’s happening with sexting is part of a healthy process of “exploring trust and intimacy.” Of course, to “explore” trust and intimacy by sending naked pictures of yourself to your “lover” is like “exploring” a financial investment by selling your home and all of your belongings to make an initial investment to see how things go. Sex is the physical sign of a willingness to totally give yourself in trust and intimacy to another person. It should be the last step in the growth of a relationship after trust and intimacy have been explored through friendship and a lifelong commitment to raising a family together has been made.

However, to Ms. Goodman’s credit, she does actually admit that sexting is misguided – a bad idea.

We do not need to criminalize sexting. Instead, parents need to step up and ask themselves some serious questions:

1. Is my adolescent child mature enough to use new technology wisely?

I’ll give you a hint -for most high school students the answer is no, despite the fact that most high school students have cell phones with cameras, etc.

2. Does my adolescent child need a cell phone?

Again, just because all of her friends do doesn’t mean your daughter needs one too. The answer is probably no.

3. Does my child know how to honor his or her body and fertility?

Having “The Talk” is not enough — and students in high school do not learn how to respect the bodies and their fertility even in “sex ed.” Parents – this is your job and it takes commitment, time and knowledge!

4. Does my child focus on developing friendships first before starting to date?

Dating in high school is focused on two things – status and sex. Students who do not have a boyfriend or a girlfriend feel unwanted, like they are losers. Many times dating relationships become a selfish quest for how much two people can snatch from each other – emotionally, financially and/or sexually. Selfless love is best learned when a romantic relationship starts out as a friendship and slowly progresses toward romance, giving two people a chance to know each other and slowly grow in trust and intimacy.

Parents, if you need help teaching your children to respect their bodies and their fertility, and to grow in trust and intimacy the right way, check out the Parent’s Place website. This is a parenting resource put out by the Diocese of La Crosse Office of Family Life. I had the honor of working on this website as designer and secondary writer. It is a great resource for parents.

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However, as a teacher part of me dreaded this time of year. Students looking forward to summer vacation often wanted to begin their vocation a month early. Whining increased. Assignments arrived to my desk later. Bathroom breaks got longer. I felt a growing sense of frustration as my carefully crafted lessons fell onto deaf ears and daydreaming minds. I especially felt this sense of frustration as a teacher of seniors. I taught college level courses (Cooperative College Credit courses as well as Advanced Placement), and I saw my job as not only preparing these students for college but ushering them into a higher level of cognitive skill. I’m a bit of an idealist, so when seniors turn off and tune out, I find myself increasingly frustrated at their unwillingness to make the most of the time they have left in high school to grow in their ability to think and learn.

This frustration is nearly universal, and modern educational philosophy has begun listening to the whining of seniors as if it were the wisdom of the sages. Articles like USNews.com: More Calculus? Toss the Frisbee! appear periodically at this time of year expressing possible solutions to the problem of “senioritis.”

Other articles recommend giving in to senioritis by offering early graduation, work study programs (which are usually nothing more than time off of school to work part-time jobs, despite efforts to implement an actual curriculum), or “human interest” courses (read “blow-off class”).

The article from U.S. News & World Report brings up a great point, and the solutions it offers are actually pretty good: making the senior year a truly culminating education experience (senior papers or senior thesis presentations) and/or linking the senior year of high school to college by having colleges set standards for the senior year that must be met for college admission the following year.

Only 36 percent of seniors say they do six or more hours of homework a week. Only 1 in 3 seniors takes a science course, compared with two thirds of European students. (To be fair, more than half of American seniors spend at least three hours a day working, about three times the international average.) The result is that many of the 70 percent who now go on to college either have let their knowledge base decline senior year or never acquired the basic knowledge and study skills to succeed. At some universities, as many as two thirds of the freshmen must take remedial courses–and many never return for sophomore year.

No one blames the students. “I’d act the same way,” says Kirst, who sees slacking off as the natural response to the confusing cues sent by colleges and school officials. By admitting students on the basis of their junior-year grades, for example, colleges send the message that senior year doesn’t really count. The trend toward early admissions only exacerbates the urge to kick back.

However, even this article may be missing the point. The underlying assumption is that the main purpose of high school is to prepare students for college, which students need in order to get a successful job. This underlying educational philosophy has (in my opinion as an educator) eviscerated the power of schools to offer a true education. Traditional Catholic education philosophy tells us that the purpose of true education is to teach us how to think so that we can discover the truth.

Instead of following the way that students actually learn, modern educational philosophy turns it on its head. Elementary teachers who see memorization as restrictive attempt to gain students’ interest through activities and arts, when in fact elementary students are primed for memorization. Meanwhile, goaded by reports about how little graduating seniors “know” about history and science, high school teachers attempt to cram facts into their students’ heads, focusing on memorization rather than forming students’ growing ability to analyze and to think critically.

Is it any wonder that by senior year most students see education as irrelevant? High school students who start their freshman year complaining, “When will we ever use this stuff?” in the face of memorizing dates, names and events are by their senior year driven to distraction by even more requirements to memorize “useless facts.” In truth, they should have already learned these facts, and should by now be engaged in real thinking about their subjects.

Of course, anyone who knows adolescents and young adults realize that even changing educational philosophy and practice won’t get rid of senioritis. Fallen human nature pretty much guarantees that students will seek luxury and fun over the true good of learning how to think. However, even this struggle can be a good thing if it teaches the self-discipline of putting off what we think we want for the sake of a higher good. One thing is certain – giving in to senioritis is not what is good for our young adults. It does nothing more than keep them children when they should be embracing adulthood.

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Chuck Colson, a popular teacher on the importance of forming a Christian worldview and intellectual life, has often warned about the same phenomenon. “A World of Their Own,” a BreakPoint commentary, offered an excellent explanation of the isolated teen culture, which happens to precisely coincide with my own observations as a highschool teacher. After explaining one of the many school shooting tragedies that have happened in our country, Mr. Colson says,

If you’re wondering “Where were the adults?” it’s clear you don’t know how most American teenagers are growing up today. American teenagers operate in what has been called a “parallel culture” that operates free of adult interference.

As Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College, wrote in the New York Times, American high schools are the site of something unique in American society: “a gang in which individuals of the same age group define each other’s world.” This definition includes the imposition of standards that have no relationship to what’s needed for success in the real world.

Ironically, the claim by proponents of those who support “traditional” schooling is that children need to go to school in order to learn how to deal with social conflict and with the complexities of the social world. They fear that homeschooled children will grow up sheltered from the real world, and will therefore be unprepared for adulthood. What they fail to see is that the school culture is not a reflection of the real adult world. It is a unique culture that is often reminiscent of Lord of the Flies, devoid of adult rules and guidance. This culture produces such head-scratching cultural anomalies as “sexting” (sending nude photographs of yourself by cell phone), as well as increased risky behaviors involving alcohol, drugs ans sex. And the worst part of this teen culture is that adults are afraid of it. Or, at least adults think that they have no right to interfere in it. As Chuck Colson says,

So we’ve got American kids operating from an artificial set of rules unrelated to real life; they’re going to schools where adults don’t question those rules, watching media that validates those rules, and being wooed by advertisers who tell them how insightful they really are. Worst of all, their parents are complicit in the creation of the parallel culture.

Whether it’s because of a lack of time, or a desire not to “repress” their children, American parents have adopted a hands-off approach to parenting. Instead of direct supervision they get what’s called “guilt money” — money given in lieu of real parental involvement. The lack of supervision and the money reinforce the parallel culture. It’s created a creature I call the “autonomous teenager.”

The immediate result of the teen culture is alienated young adults who see themselves as alien to the adult world, who are incapable of relating to their parents, and who don’t have the first clue how to interact with the civilized world. Most young adults don’t even greet you when you enter their place of employment, and sometimes don’t even serve you with any sense of politeness or interest.

The long-term results of the teen culture are going to be even more serious. We already see people from my generation, currently in their thirties, who have never grown up. This trend is going to get even worse if it doesn’t turn around. We are losing sight of the purpose of culture and society, creating societies that alienate and isolate us rather than bringing us together in true social interaction. Raising a generation unable to socially interact within an adult world, incapable of true conversation (vs. the empty, shallow communication they are almost constantly engaged in), disinterested in intellectual discourse, independent rather than interdependent and ignorant of politeness and civility, is only going to damage it more.

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Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things (Phil 4:8).

Scripture is filled with warnings about guarding your senses in order to guard your mind and heart against evil. While Christians are often criticized for being “isolationist” and “protectionist,” I know in my own life that the areas that I failed to protect myself have become my largest areas of struggle for holiness as an adult.

It is true that a true attitude of isolationism and protectionism does exist within some Christian circles, and that this is not a healthy and true understanding of Scripture. Creation and culture are good things that are sometimes influenced by evil. To create a separate “Christian culture” that parallels but does not intersect human culture is not what Christ wants for us. Yes, he tells us not to be transformed by the culture, but to let our minds be transformed by the Holy Spirit, but he calls us to then go into the world and transform it.

Furthermore, natural law tells us that human culture is a necessary part of human life. To isolate ourselves from culture not only robs us of the chance to bring the Gospel into the world, it robs us of true human life.

We need to find the balance that allows us to find what is True, Good and Beautiful within human life while we interact with culture, but also to avoid what is false, evil and depraved. We need to make the good things in culture even better by revealing the supernatural as well as the natural source of their goodness. We also need to try to heal areas of our culture that have been given over to evil and depravity.

On the other hand, we cannot give ourselves to the culture to be transformed by it (as has sadly happened to many in the Catholic Church and in many Protestant communities as well). Listening to music or watching movies that glorify in using people as objects of gratification, or enacting violence against others, or in other evil acts only draws us into the lure of sin. Christians begin to wonder if they are really missing out on something (“You certainly will not die. No, God knows that when you eat of this fruit you will be like gods who know good and evil.”).

It is always interesting to me when secularists claim that certain ideas that are found in Sacred Scripture or Sacred Tradition are just “religious opinions,” only to have science “discover” the same ideas eventually. Science plays catch-up with revealed Truth all the time. To me, that’s one of the greatest proofs of the truth of our faith.

We really should not be surprised that immersing ourselves in the message that evil is good would eventually turn our minds and hearts toward evil.

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What caught my attention wasn’t the tired debate about literature, but the underlying worldview of the entire indoctrination debate that is shared by both sides. As we abandon intellectual skills of reasoning and critical thinking as a culture in favor of more practical educational outcomes of fact memorization and job skills, our culture has simplified, polarized and politicized every aspect of social life.

Marxist principles have been dripping steadily into the minds of American youth for more than a century. This isn’t altogether surprising. After all, most parents want their children to be far left in their early years — to share toys, to eschew the torture of siblings, to leave a clean environment behind them, to refrain from causing the extinction of the dog, to rise above coveting and hoarding, and to view the blandishments of corporate America through a lens of harsh skepticism. But fewer parents wish for their children to carry all these virtues into adulthood. It is one thing to convince your child that no individual owns the sandbox and that it is better for all children that it is so. It is another to hope that when he grows up he will donate the family home to a workers’ collective.

Simple virtues such as sharing, respect, taking care of your surroundings, etc. have somehow become Marxist principles that are the sole possession of the Left. Teaching your child to share the sandbox will lead to that child embracing Socialism or Communism and fighting for the universal ownership of all goods.

The best way to make sure our children are not indoctrinated is to teach them to reason things out and to think critically. For example, thinking through the virtues listed above would help us to realize that virtue is always about balance. Sharing is a good thing as it engenders generosity and thoughtfulness of others, drawing us out of ourselves and making us aware the needs of others. However, the extreme abolition of all private property does not have these benefits. In fact, removing private property removes the option of generosity by forcing what should be freely chosen. Sharing is a balance between selfishness and extreme ideology. In fact, all virtue is a balance between extremes. Reasoning can help us see that. Politicizing cannot.

I am increasingly concerned with the division of our culture between Left and Right. If you are a conservative, you cannot care about the environment or promote generosity in immigration policy. If you are a liberal, you better promote universal health care and you can never admit to the benefits of the free market system. We are becoming indoctrinated – not by children’s books, but by our inability to think things through in a critical and reasonable way and by our tendency to accept ideas as all or nothing propositions.

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And that is essentially what lukewarmness means: it is not using, not receiving, the life and power of God; it is in the latter stages a positive resistance to the offered power, a positive refusal to listen to the voice of the Spirit. We have no further interest in the life and the power and the voice; we are bored. So at the end we find we are in hell — and it is this that makes the eternity of hell, and the fact of hell at all, an obvious inevitability, given free will: we have turned ourselves into people of this sort, and people of this sort are precisely people who cannot turn again because they made it impossible, and being unable to turn again they cannot live with God, they are eternally, irredeemably, enclosed in their shelf of boredom.

In Matthew 23:31, Jesus says, “Therefore, I tell you, people will be forgiven for every sin and blasphemy, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.” Many people have speculated on what might constitute “blasphemy against the Spirit.” Theologians seem to agree for the most part that Jesus is not referring to a specific action or denouncement, but of a persistent state of the heart that closes oneself to grace. Fr. Vann’s description of lukewarmness rings like a true understanding of the unforgivable sin.

The choice made by angels (spiritual beings) to follow God or to reject Him is a perfect choice that changes the heart once and for all. Human beings are not as close to perfection (being unchanging) as angels so our choices form our hearts slowly over time. Eventually, however, our hearts become just as unchangeable as the hearts of angels. When we are in the presence of the Beatific Vision in heaven, we will not desire to choose anything but God’s love. When we close ourselves off to that love completely, we become unable to receive the grace that God offers us to change our hearts. Hell truly is our choice – chosen over and over again through time until we become a place where God is absent.

I love Fr. Vann’s description of lukewarmness and of hell as boredom (I also love the description of Hell as ultimate loneliness). A red flag should probably fly up when we realize how many Catholics seem bored with their faith – not just with the music at Mass or with their pastor’s homilies, but with living the life of faith altogether. More importantly, we should carefully guard our own hearts. There are times when my faith still feels like an obligation that I complete to hedge my bets against eternity. At these times I have to admit that I find my life of faith boring. When I realize that I am bored only because I have been closing myself off to grace, I return to a living relationship with God and rediscover the adventure that He is inviting me to live.

The antidote to lukewarmness – to boredom with faith and life – is the virtue of fortitude. Fortitude is the courage to live life to the full – the way God intended it to be lived. This means first and foremost to live life in faith, in a living relationship with the three Persons of the Holy Trinity. It also means cooperating with grace in order to quest for the greatest good that life has to offer. For me, that means striving to love my wife and my children as selflessly as I can. This is a great adventure, both in the sense of the challenge and in the sense of reward. It also means seeking to serve God with the gifts He has given me. This means teaching and writing. I have always found both teaching and writing a great adventure. When I have the fortitude to live as God plans for me to live, I find life to be an exciting adventure. When I lack in fortitude (and its child virtues patience and perseverance) I find life frustrating and boring.

God wants us to lead lives of goodness and adventure. Whether or not we do depends very much on our response.

Divine Pity by Rev. Gerald Vann.
Father Vann uses the beatitudes as a springboard for a discussion on living the Divine Life as fully as possible.  He identifies the subtle ways that Christians fail to fully live out the beatitudes, the virtues and the life of love. The social implications of the Beatitudes (the subtitle of the book) comes in with Father Vann’s persistent theme that we do not exercise the Christian life in a vacuum, but within a family. 

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