I Am Convinced (Mostly)

How are we raising our children today? What are the goals and values we have for our children? Is it secular? Is it media driven? Is it based on old time religion? How about for my child, what are my goals and values for her?

There is a sense that I have that we are losing "the old ways", that we are willing to chalk them up to inferior attempts at life. In some ways perhaps they are inferior. Modern society needs modernity to navigate it, but I really can't think of a specific way that our ways now are better than their ways then. But I do see ways that the old ways are better, seeing as they were built on centuries of communal living. Our ways now are suited to the emergent qualities of life today, mostly due to technological advancement and the effects of capitalism.

What I am seeing as a result of modernity is passivity. We no longer know how to do life, because life is evolving, emerging, changing all of the time. And I'm not talking about the life that one has to himself and how he lives in that life within a given context, but I'm talking about reality. Reality is changing at such a rapid pace today. We don't know what to do. So we react, we respond as new demands are placed on us.

But that is no way to live. So, I return to my initial questions, with this tweak: How do we establish goals and values for our children given the ever changing world we live in?

Basically, we've got to get a hold of something and stick with it for the long haul. So many have come to know this, but today we may think we find ourselves at a place of surpassing knowledge. We know so much. There is too much knowledge to believe in one thing, surely the answer is in all of it. But we don't have the capacity to assimilate all of it. I think that was Nietzsche's lament: the nature of things is that we had to be stupid, we had to follow a chosen course to fully develop our abilities. Peterson would take Nietzsche's "long obedience" ethic, but celebrate it rather than lament it.

And isn't that right? Shouldn't the natural order of things, including God's supernatural place in it, be celebrated as opposed to lamented? So, to raise our children our best bet is to get a hold of something "old-timey" and long standing, and follow it's course through to the end.

Lord Jesus, I realize the ridiculousness with which I would be viewed by others for my pursuits of You in the morning, but I pray that am following Your path for me. That my daughter will follow in her turn too, a calling, a choosing, and a growing into forever.

In Jesus Name,

Amen

Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil - "Long Obedience" quote
Piper's "Each One Should Be Fully Convinced" Analysis
Also read Ch1 of Peterson's Long Obedience. His use of Nietzsche's Long Obedience lay therein

Romans 14:1-9
Romans 8:38-39
Malachi 4:4-6

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