The Vastness Beneath You

In 1883, the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act was signed into law by President Chester Arthur. It effectively uprooted the nepotistic spoils system that once dominated American politics and replaced it with a system where positions in the federal government were awarded according to merit and competence. But the act also made it virtually impossible to fire or demote government employees for political reasons. In reality, the law has been transformed into a shield protecting dreadful federal employees—the reason they’re being pilloried can always be made political.

I mention this because the Pendleton Act has helped make disciplinary action within government a farce. Such absurdity reared its head recently when IRS commissioner Steven Miller was made the scapegoat for the agency’s malfeasance and asked to tender his resignation, even though it was under commissioner Shulman’s tenure that this breach of trust transpired.

Thankfully, this nonsense is pointed out by Salon’s Alex Seitz-Wald. He writes,

But Miller is a scapegoat in the most pure and classic sense. The acting commissioner was not running the IRS at the time employees improperly targeted Tea Party groups — that would be Bush-appointee Doug Shulman, who resigned as commissioner last year — and Miller’s name isn’t mentioned a single time in the Treasury Department inspector general’s report. Indeed, there is no evidence that Miller was in any way responsible, involved or even aware of the inappropriate targeting of conservative groups by underlings. He is falling on his sword for something he did not do.

But why Obama made this decision is easy to understand: The political pressure to fire someone — anyone — was deafening, and the president literally didn’t have other options.

Post-Nixon laws limit the White House’s influence over the IRS, leaving the agency withonly two political appointees out of more than 100,000 personnel: the commissioner and the chief counsel. The rest — including the two “rogue” employees in Cincinnati, the head of its tax-exempt division, and most of the remaining leadership in Washington — are protected by robust civil service laws that make it almost impossible to terminate them. Even Miller is a civil servant, which perhaps explains why Obama had to ask for his resignation and couldn’t just fire him.

In a nutshell, this illustrates why big government is such a drag. The civil service system was supposedly introduced to be the curative for the biased, incompetent spoils system, but that seems laughable coming from our contemporary vantage point. Biases, incompetence, malfeasance, and aloofness are still normative in government to varying degrees. As Obama’s former senior adviser David Axelrod recently put it to Joe Scarborough, “Part of being president is there’s so much beneath you that you can’t know because the government is so vast.” For once, I agree with Axelrod. The larger the government, the greater the President’s ignorance to what is going on beneath his feet. Think about that for a moment, liberals. It certainly holds true with the IRS scandal. Obama admitted that he didn’t know a thing about the Inspector General’s report until the media picked up the story.

But as Seitz-Wald so wonderfully illustrates, government can’t even discipline well, and this is a direct result of the Pendleton Act. Miller wasn’t directly responsible, but he had to be sacrificed to give the impression that justice was being served. But asking Miller to resign when the breach of trust was committed under his predecessor’s watch makes about as much sense as Obama asking Treasury Secretary Lew to resign from his newly-acquired post since the beleaguered IRS is under his purview. Heck, Obama might as well ask himself to resign, given his logic. We certainly could use some “new leadership” and “restored confidence” right about now.

Meanwhile, the rogue employees have received some sort of discipline, but no one knows what that means exactly. A slap on the wrist, perhaps? More absurd, still, is that the commissioner overseeing tax-exempt organizations during this period of malfeasance, Sarah Hall Ingram, has not only escaped disciplinary action, but also helped confirm conservatives’ worst nightmare in getting promoted to serve as the director of the IRS’s Affordable Care Act office. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for her unbiased enforcement of the healthcare law.

But the Pendleton Act, as disruptive and distortionary as it is, is merely a symptom of a larger problem that’s rooted in the wickedness of our political leadership and its absence of godly character. Contemporary justice is not reflective of God’s just nature but the capricious machinations of man. And it shows. In this case, those within the IRS who knew about the unethical practices within the tax agency lacked the courage or the moral integrity to speak up. Since secular man exists to give himself glory, rather than God, then self-preservation shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, speaking up would have likely gotten them prosecuted by the Attorney General.

Government often sacrificially fires the comparatively innocent only to give a pass to the undeniably guilty, if not promote them to more prestigious positions. In public education, the preservation of bad apples even has a name. It’s called the “dance of the lemons.” But as long as secular tenets such as moral relativism, consequentialism, and the perverse notion of humanity’s inherent goodness reign in the hearts of men, then we should expect more realpolitik, more arbitrary justice, more ambivalence toward malfeasance, and, of course, more duplicity in our elected officials.

In other words, as long as we Christians continue to think and say, “Who am I to judge another?” or “Why should I sully my hands with worldly politics?” then blood will remain on our hands for the moral turpitude of this nation. And judging by the pervasiveness of these prevailing modes of secular thought, I’d say that we Christians have our work cut out for us. This work begins with us getting over our fear of calling a sin a sin and getting over our reluctance to stand firmly upon God’s Word regardless of the Bible’s cultural sway. So often, we read of these kinds of scandals and then appeal to God to send us miracles, while we stubbornly remain holed up inside the castle keep, ignoring the maelstrom of unbelief raging outside. That’s not how God works. A requirement of the Great Commission is that we act. And until we start actively devoting our lives to God’s glory, both privately and publicly—and that means politically, too—then the Great Commission will remain uncommitted and the wretched world of scandal unchanged.

Another Apolitical Agency Gone Bad

In the past week the Obama administration has been reduced to a team of firemen fighting a five-alarm fire. In the meantime another scandal has quietly emerged to join the infernal blaze.

It appears that the IRS might have to share the stage with the EPA.

Supposedly the EPA has been quick to honor the Freedom of Information Act requests of liberal environmentalist groups, while being considerably more closed-fisted toward conservative groups.

Michael Bastasch of the Daily Caller writes,

The IRS may not be the only federal agency singling out conservative groups. Records suggest that the Environmental Protection Agency has made it easier for environmental groups to file Freedom of Information Act requests than conservative organizations.

According to EPA records obtained by the free market Competitive Enterprise Institute, since January 2012 the agency has granted fee waivers for 75 out of 82 Freedom of Information Act requests sent by major environmental groups, denying only seven of them — meaning green groups saw their fees waived 92 percent of the time.

At the same time, the EPA frequently denied fee waivers to conservative groups. EPA records show that the agency rejected or ignored 21 out of 26 fee waiver requests from such conservative groups as the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Institute for Energy Research, and Judicial Watch — an 81 percent rejection rate.

Fees vary based on how many documents are requested, what medium they are requested in and how much government research is involved[...]

However, environmental groups were much more successful in getting the agency to cooperate. The Natural Resources Defense Council made 20 fee waiver requests, had 19 granted, and one denied; EarthJustice made 19 requests, had 17 granted, and two denied; the Sierra Club made 15 requests, had four granted and four denied, and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility had all 17 of its requests granted.

The Waterkeeper Alliance had all three fee waiver requests granted, the Southern Environmental Law Center had both of its requests granted, the Center for Biological Diversity had all four of its requests granted and Greenpeace had both of its fee waiver requests granted.

Bastasch goes on to say that the EPA could not be reached for comment—I wonder why. The EPA attributed conservatives’ streak of rejection to their failure to ”contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the government.” I’m sure. Significance is in the eye of the beholder, I guess. Either conservatives should seek some pointers from the maestros of significance—liberal environmentalists—or the EPA is just as biased as the IRS. I’m going with the latter assessment.

Just When You Thought the Tax Man Couldn’t Be More Loathed…

Things have gone from bad to worse this week for the Internal Revenue Service. Troubles began for the IRS when in March of 2012, then-Commissioner Douglas Shulman was called to testify before the House Ways and Means Committee as to whether the IRS had, in fact, been harassing various Tea Party groups during the most recent election cycle. Shulman confidently stated, “There’s absolutely no targeting. This is the kind of back and forth that happens to people…”

Now it turns out that Shulman was either ignorant of the truth or perjuring himself under oath. An IRS inspector general report has revealed that conservative non-profits were consistently targeted up to two years prior to Shulman’s testimony.

Jonathan Karl of ABC News reports,

The targeting of conservatives by the IRS started earlier and was more extensive than the IRS acknowledged last week, according to a draft IRS inspector general report obtained by ABC News.

As we reported on “Good Morning America” this morning, the IRS began targeting “Tea Party or similar organizations” in March 2010. That was when the Cincinnati-based IRS unit responsible for overseeing the applications for tax exempt status starting using the phrases “Tea Party,” “patriots” and “9/12″ to search for applications warranting greater scrutiny.

During this first phase, 10 Tea Party cases were identified. By April of 2010, 18 Tea Party organizations were targeted, including three that had already been approved for tax-exempt status.

By June 2011, the unit had flagged over 100 Tea Party-related applications and the criteria used to scrutinize organizations had grown considerably, flagging not just “Tea Party” or “Patriot” in group names, but also groups that were working on issues like “government debt,” “taxes” and even organizations making statements that “criticize how the country is being run.”

The report, done by the Inspector General for the IRS, also shows that senior IRS officials in Washington was aware of what was going on as early as August 4, 2011 when, according to the report, the IRS chief counsel held a meeting with the IRS’s Rulings and Agreements unit “so that everyone would have the latest information on the issue.”

The IRS initially blamed this imbroglio on low-level officials in Cincinnati. Of course, it would. Could you imagine the IRS ever being forthcoming about full-fledged corruption running the length of the entire chain of command? This practice has a name that dates back to the Kennedy administration: plausible deniability. But this scandal doesn’t just involve low-level officials nor is it just relegated to the IRS unit in Cincinnati. The higher-ups like Lois Lerner, who runs the IRS’s Exempt Organizations Division, knew all about this unethical procedure as far back as 2011, while this scandal has grown to include, most appropriately, the Washington D.C. unit, as well. But let’s just pretend that the top brass at the IRS really was ignorant of what their underlings were doing. Is that scenario any more comforting? It would prove that upper management is incompetent and aloof. It would also prove that the IRS doesn’t know how to hire decent employees.

Interestingly, none of the roughly 300 flagged organizations were found to be violating their 501(c)4 status, which meant that none were overly political in nature, and all were, more or less, faithful in promoting the general welfare of the community. But liberals disagree. They think the IRS has gone soft in their “social welfare” standard and allowed far too many of these organizations into the tax-exempt club. For them, the proliferation of 501(c)4s is an inglorious byproduct of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling that lifted campaign donation limits on corporations and unions. And it is true that the number of applications for these tax-exempt organizations has more than doubled since about 2010, while campaign expenditures of these organizations have risen from $92 million in 2010 to an immense $254 million in 2012. I understand the frustration of liberals here, but this is a byproduct of something deeper than Citizens United—it’s a byproduct of crony capitalism. As John Stossel wrote in the wake of liberal outrage over the Citizens United decision, ”There is a simple way to get corporate money out of politics: get the government out of our lives and economic affairs. If government has no favors to sell, no one will spend money trying to win them.” But the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein doesn’t see it that way. Instead Klein suggests that the distortionary government privilege machine should remain operative, while the IRS should work on flexing its muscle a little more brutally. In other words, the answer lies in more bullying, not less.

The problem wasn’t that the IRS was skeptical of tea party groups registering as 501(c)4s. It’s that it hasn’t been skeptical of Organizing for America, Crossroads GPS, Priorities USA and Heritage Action Fund registering as 501(c)4s. The IRS should be treating all these groups equally and appropriately — which would mean much more harshly. Instead, the IRS has permitted 501(c)4s to grow into something monstrous. And if they cower in the aftermath of this embarrassment, it might make matters even worse. [...] The danger is that this experience will simply make the IRS even more terrified of regulating 501(c)4s. Recall that none of the tea party groups scrutinized by the agency actually lost the 501(c)4 designation. Even at their most attentive, the IRS is treating these groups with kid gloves. Now they’re going to be tempted to leave them almost entirely alone.

Liberals are not only failing to address the underlying corporatist cause for the explosion of 501(c)4s, but also clamoring for more government muscle, despite having once been targeted during the 1960s in the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) and, more recently, harassed by Bush’s IRS. Sure, some liberals have called the IRS’s behavior “outrageous,” but, as we all know, talk is cheap in Washington and apologies are even cheaper. What’s more revealing is that after the perfunctory, generic denunciations of the IRS’s behavior, many liberal journalists and politicians have disproportionately effused about the real problem—the Citizens United ruling and its overtly political conservative beneficiaries. WaPo’s Ezra Klein, The Nation’s Ari Berman, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi come to mind here. Others, after having offered their token condemnation of the IRS, have spent ample time pontificating about the hypocrisy of conservatives in failing to denounce Bush’s IRS bullying—as if crying, “But Bush did it, too!” makes the current scandal any less repugnant. Salon’s David Sirota and Alex Seitz-Wald and Senator Harry Reid are guilty of playing this card.

In fact, because Bush used the IRS much the same way during his tenure—albeit to a far more limited degree—then isn’t that all the more reason to shrink government and decentralize? The cheers for more skull-cracking from the IRS suggests liberals still haven’t regained their senses from having their own skulls cracked some five to ten years ago. They may think that big government will do their bidding, but the truth of the matter is that the more power they give it, the less inclined it is to listen to us plebs.

The Will of Idiots

This will likely come as a shock to many, but the United States’ gun homicide rate has dropped 49 percent since 1993, according to the Pew Research Center.

Cohn et al. write,

Compared with 1993, the peak of U.S. gun homicides, the firearm homicide rate was 49% lower in 2010, and there were fewer deaths, even though the nation’s population grew. The victimization rate for other violent crimes with a firearm—assaults, robberies and sex crimes—was 75% lower in 2011 than in 1993. Violent non-fatal crime victimization overall (with or without a firearm) also is down markedly (72%) over two decades.[...]

Despite national attention to the issue of firearm violence, most Americans are unaware that gun crime is lower today than it was two decades ago. According to a new Pew Research Center survey, today 56% of Americans believe gun crime is higher than 20 years ago and only 12% think it is lower.[...]

Mass shootings are a matter of great public interest and concern. They also are a relatively small share of shootings overall. According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics review, homicides that claimed at least three lives accounted for less than 1% of all homicide deaths from 1980 to 2008. These homicides, most of which are shootings, increased as a share of all homicides from 0.5% in 1980 to 0.8% in 2008, according to the bureau’s data. A Congressional Research Service report, using a definition of four deaths or more, counted 547 deaths from mass shootings in the U.S. from 1983 to 2012.

I am well aware of this declining gun violence trend, but the degree of popular ignorance as to the true state of gun crime is a welcome—though shameful and alarming—addition. Stats like this usually result in my quietly casting aspersions on popular democracy. The will of the people is, usually, the will of idiots.

1 Samuel 8:4-9 reads,

Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah and said to him, “Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.” But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to judge us.” And Samuel prayed to the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. Now then, obey their voice; only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”

And what resulted from the “voice of the people”? Tyranny. Israel chose a man, Saul, after their own wicked hearts—a man who looked like a king—who then proceeded to fleece the people, appoint them to fight his wars, and tend to his fields against their wills. The people were warned what would come of their folly and they didn’t care—everyone else had a king and so Israel wanted a king, too.

Our behavior hasn’t changed much. We prefer to exalt our flawed sense of righteousness and be swept away by the intoxicating allure of the majority rather than honor God’s righteousness and take on His light yoke.

We imagine gun control is urgently needed because, surely, the world is growing more violent and dangerous. If only that were true! The fools who clamor for the king and his officers to keep them safe don’t need to dig into the data and find the truth as sovereign individuals—even though they are capable of such—when they have benevolent dictators to tell them what they need to believe, regardless of its truth. If they ever begrudgingly admit that government does manipulate the people, it is assumed to be done out of love for the common good. “As long as we have the king,” they reason, “we don’t need guns to keep ourselves safe. We have the police to stop criminals.” Rather, we have police to find the criminals after the crime has already been committed and a government that has an aptitude for weakening the definition of criminality, drawing us all nearer to its snare. And what if the government oversteps its bounds, as it has done since the dawn of civilization? Who do we then seek to redress our grievances?

“Preposterous!” they say. Senator Reid recently called that concern “imagined tyranny,” while President Obama reminded college graduates at Ohio State this past week that they are to “reject the voices” that even raise the specter of tyranny.

So, go on, America, fear your exaggerated bogeymen of gun violence, and run into your king’s arms for safety, begging for his protection no matter how dear the price. Listen to Reid and Obama and blithely deny history’s tyrannical refrain and keep voting accordingly. But when you awake in shackles and “cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves” (1 Sam. 8:18) don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Readin’, ‘Ritin’, and ‘Rithmetic

Public education, all things considered, has a venerable history—a history of mediocrity, that is. This is evident in the fact that despite a doubling of per pupil expenditures since 1970, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores for high school seniors have been flat. But a new angle of this mediocrity has been explored in a damning study by the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE). In this study, the NCEE asks the question “What does it mean to be college and work ready?” and they demonstrate that students who wind up at community colleges, who account for roughly 45 percent of the total college student population, are products of a horrendous educational system. In short, high school graduation standards are absurdly low. Students graduate with a dismal grasp of the English language, an inability think critically, and a shaky understanding of fundamental math concepts.

In terms of English literacy, the authors of the study had this to say:

While the reading complexity of first-year community college texts is between 11th and 12th grade levels, we found that community college instructors typically make limited use of the texts they assign and use many aids (e.g., PowerPoint presentations, videos, outlines, flashcards) to help students understand the key points of the sections of the text they are asked to read. It would appear that students’ inability to read texts of the level assigned does not inhibit their success in their programs. Is this because the material in the texts is irrelevant to later success in education and careers, or because the instructors offer workarounds, recognizing their students’ limited reading ability?

The study also analyzed the reading and writing requirements found in tests and examinations in initial credit bearing community college courses. In this case, we found that most assessments in community colleges come in the form of multiple-choice questions that demand very little in the way of complex reading skills and no writing.

Our analysis of the writing required to succeed in initial credit bearing courses in community college revealed that most introductory college classes demand very little writing; when writing is required, instructors tend to have very low expectations for grammatical accuracy, appropriate diction, clarity of expression, reasoning and the ability to present a logical argument or offer evidence in support of claims. 

And when it comes to mathematics literacy, the authors conclude,

In sum, a substantial part of the high school mathematics we teach is mathematics that most students do not need, some of what is needed in the first year of community college is not taught in our schools, and the mathematics that is most needed by our community college students is actually elementary and middle school mathematics that is not learned well enough by many to enable them to succeed in community college. A significant body of research on teacher knowledge, including the work of Liping Ma, Jim Stigler and Deborah Ball, makes it clear that one reason for this is because the instruction in arithmetic, ratio, proportion, expressions and simple equations that our teachers have received in school and in college falls far short of what it needs to be for them to have a sound conceptual grasp of the mathematics they are asked to teach.

What really struck me about this study is just how naked the emperor is. Public education apologists are constantly trying to impress upon the public how vital, enriching, and effective the American public education system is, but this study reveals that public education is, at best, an expensive bandaid. The public education system generally can’t transmute children from impoverished and broken backgrounds into genuine success stories without lowering the achievement bar substantially. The mettle of public education is tested in the education of the poor. How well does it educate those who don’t have eager, conscientious parents, an expansive home library at their disposal, or even a computer? Apparently, not very well.

The public education system generally can’t succeed without loving, engaged parents and especially can’t if both parent and child are without motivation. The elementary and secondary schools of the urban and rural poor, who are the most likely to attend community colleges, are fairly atrocious, full of incompetent teachers cheated by the very same system, and their efforts will generally be in vain as long as single-parent homes abound, academic success remains stigmatized, and the complacency that welfare engenders persist. It’s no wonder that the outcomes are generally so sour, assuming that this really is God’s world and we are His subjects. When man is, in fact, designed for marriage (Gen. 2:18), designed to work hard for His glory (Gen. 1:28, Prov. 31) and not loaf on disability checks, and designed to serve as the primary educator of his children (Deut. 6:7, Prov. 1:8-9), we shouldn’t be surprised by the persistent failure of public education among the poor when so few of God’s standards are upheld.

The moral of the story is that public schools will be nominally successful to the extent that a culture imitates godly character. Public schools that overwhelmingly serve affluent families are more likely to churn out graduates who can read, write, and do basic math, not so much because of the extraordinary schools, but because the child is more likely to have two motivated, employed parents and a thirst for learning himself. The irrelevance of public education is then obscured. However, we’ve seen that, time and again, schools that cater to the poor can’t do much good in such broken and apathetic lives. In such schools, the impotence of public education is laid bare. Taxpayers have been lied to and robbed for generations now—with poor students receiving only seven or eight years of education—and I use that term loosely—for the price of twelve.

If public educators really want to fix the problem, they should begin by admitting that the emperor has no clothes and that the system does not deserve plaudits for “educating America,” but is, in fact, far more feeble than they’d care to admit, and then they should seek to restore education to its rightful place, under the umbrage of God and His Word. It’s the two parents who, by God’s grace, are devoted to their family that are so vital to the child’s instruction and inspiration, not the State. The fact that 52 percent of all public school teachers currently possess advanced degrees and yet have such a poor track record in rural and urban school districts attests to where the real educational vitality lies: in the individual and the family. And until that norm can once again be upheld, public education expunged, and Christendom restored, then I expect more passing the buck, more treatment of the symptoms rather than the root cause, and, of course, more mediocrity, flash cards, and taxpayer robbery.

Generation Loserdom

This just in: Millennials, my generation, are dramatically more entitled, shiftless, and aimless than their parents’ generation. This is true whether we are black or white, rich or poor, male or female. This bit of unsurprising news comes from psychologists Jean Twenge and Tim Kasser’s new study on the rightfully maligned “Generation Me.”

Using data from the “Monitoring the Future” survey, which has recorded views of high school seniors stretching back to 1976, Twenge and Kasser found the following:

In a large, nationally representative sample of American 12th graders, materialism rose substantially from the mid-1970s through the late 1980s, peaking among members of Generation X. Although materialism then declined slightly, youth in the late 2000s (Millennials/GenMe) were still significantly more oriented toward materialistic values than were youth in the 1970s (Boomers). These trends were notable across multiple measures of materialistic values (including the desires for expensive possessions, money, and a high-paying job). Materialistic expectations (i.e., how much youth expected to own relative to their parents) increased steadily. The trends in materialism were not accompanied by a greater desire to work hard and earn money; in fact, work centrality declined steadily between the mid-1970s and mid-2000s.

Although some may suggest that weaknesses within younger individuals are responsible for increasing levels of youth materialism, these data instead show that certain features of the society created by adults may result in a more materialistic value orientation. As expected on the basis of past research and theorizing (Kasser et al., 2004, 2007), societal-level instability and materialistic role models were consistently associated with youths’ level of materialism. Specifically, youth raised during times of societal instability (e.g., unemployment) and disconnection (e.g., more unmarried parents) were especially likely to endorse materialistic values.

My generation is dramatically more materialistic and less inclined to work than the Boomer generation, regardless of race, socioeconomic status, or gender. As to why this might be, Twenge and Kasser suggest that, aside from economic instability and more unmarried parents, the growing prevalence of narcissism might also have something to do with it.

One possibility is that entitlement—the idea that one deserves things without working for them—may have increased. This is plausible, given that the related trait of narcissism has increased over the generations (Stinson et al., 2008; Twenge & Foster, 2010). Those high in narcissism have an inflated sense of self and value image and perception more than objective reality; they often believe that normal rules (such as becoming wealthy through hard work) do not apply to them (Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001).

So where does this vain, entitled, secular worldview terminate? In cataclysm or abandonment, I imagine. As it stands, the entire world is seemingly on the brink of economic and cultural collapse. The profusion of post-modernist moral relativism helped facilitate the rise of Lord Keynes with his profligate, consumer-driven economic doctrine and the crummy “touchy-feely” parenting approaches that have predominated for half a century now. Secular Baby Boomers have proven better cheerleaders and peers than authoritative parents and instructors, and, if this study is anything to go by, it shows. And while the sway of secularism may look impressive, especially in light of the near unanimous approval of Jason Collins’s homosexuality, the fruit it has borne is anything but. The Millennials are living proof to the contrary. They’ve been taught to desire the world and everything in it, but have been so coddled at home and misinformed at school that they wouldn’t even know how to go about doing that even if they wanted to. I should know, because I was coddled by a pair of Boomers—whom I dearly love—but it has been a rough climb to make up for lost time and poor choices.

In further pursuing its self-serving autonomy, Generation Me prides itself on not falling victim to the tradition and orthodoxy of past generations. It doesn’t want to get bogged down with spouses, children, or, according to this research, even a career, because authority is only there to be questioned, responsibility to be shirked, and life to be spent as if it were one great big frat party. But all parties come to an end, even good ones, and such Millennials will have nothing to show for it in the end except a massive hangover and a pile of garbage.

I say this because Millennials don’t seem to realize that, in the battle of worldviews, our approach is a recipe for decay and defeat, regardless of how fun the ride may be. Twenge and Kasser’s study is just another piece of evidence that all is not well inside the secular liberal camp. Both the Protestant work ethic and the desire to marry and procreate have been given the boot. The promotion of wider access to birth control and abortions is one of liberalism’s greatest pet projects. And if you then wed those to the growing popularity of going “child-free” for the sake of selfishness, feminism, environmental concerns, or an amalgam of all three, then the future of secular liberalism looks bleak. Like Japan bleak. It’s almost as if they are trying to extinguish their own kind.

So, Christians, don’t get discouraged. In fact, hold your head up. Jesus’s kingdom is growing, and His creation is being renewed day by day, while godless foolishness is either being abandoned or is barreling headlong toward its demise. This isn’t just Panglossian postmillennialism, either. I understand that things may not look so bright from our parochial vantage point, but climb a high hill so as to get a true lay of the land, and you’ll see just how riddled with blight secularism’s crops actually are in comparison to the crops of Christ. For example, the growth of Christianity in Iran has been “explosive,” according to the Christian persecution watchdog Open Doors USA. The same holds true in China. Even Brazil is steadily becoming a Protestant hotbed.

It’s this horizon that displays the evidence of a triumphant Great Commission and should compel us to don our spiritual armor with eagerness and make disciples both here and abroad. Therefore, until Christ returns, we should stand boldly in the faith, sharing it with others without reservation, supporting one another, tithing faithfully, living prudently, affirming the biblical definition of marriage, having plenty of lovely children, and bringing them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. This will take an abundance of patience, sacrifice, and diligence, but since young secular liberals seem averse to all three, then I think victory will be ours—and sooner than even we can imagine.

Obamacare With A Slice of Humble Pie

The crown jewel of Obamacare dysfunction has arrived, and it’s a doozie. Beginning in 2008, the state of Oregon added—by way of lottery—10,000 new Medicaid enrollees out of 90,000 possible applicants and spent the next two years following their health outcomes in what was to be a landmark study. The health criteria (hypertension, cholesterol, and glycated hemoglobin) of these enrollees were measured and compared to an uninsured, low-income control group. Using the lottery meant the enrollees were randomly assigned, which was ideal for enhancing the impact of the study.

The results? The Medicaid enrollees proved to be no healthier in the three dimensions than those within the uninsured control group. The Medicaid group was less likely to be depressed, likely because of the financial relief. In other words, what this means is that, all things considered, universal healthcare does not make people healthier. And given the quality of the study’s design, even liberals are having trouble denying the findings, which is great news, of course.

Ray Fisman of Slate writes,

In 2008, the state of Oregon initiated an ambitious health care policy that allowed researchers to shed light on the effects of guaranteeing Medicaid coverage for low-income adults. The results have been closely followed in large part because insurance for the poor is a major component of the Affordable Care Act—aka Obamacare—that will soon be rolled out across the country.

A study published on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that—at least as far as health outcomes are concerned—the Oregon Medicaid experiment hasn’t lived up to the hopes of many universal care advocates. Two years after getting randomly assigned to Medicaid coverage, recipients fared no better than a control group of uninsured, low-income Oregonians in tests for hypertension, cholesterol, and diabetes treatment—all medical conditions that can be managed with proper care. The Medicaid recipients did report much lower rates of depression and—perhaps relatedly—were much less likely to be on shaky financial footing than those in the control group. But the Oregon study’s findings indicate that the claim that universal health care on its own will make Americans healthier, at least in these particular dimensions, may be wishful thinking[...]

Now that the clinical results have started to come in, it’s time for liberal media types like myself to eat some humble pie. Today’s New England Journal article presents a set of findings showing that Medicaid had no effect on a set of conditions where you would expect proper health management to make a difference. There are effective treatment protocols for hypertension, cholesterol, and diabetes, yet insurance status had no effect on blood pressure, cholesterol levels, or glycated hemoglobin (a measure of diabetic blood sugar control).

What’s even more remarkable is that while roughly 10,000 were enrolled in Medicaid, there were 35,169 Oregonians who were actually picked in the lottery. That means that only 30 percent even bothered to complete the enrollment process. Seventy percent couldn’t even be bothered with the paperwork.

Therefore, not only does universal healthcare fail to provide the purported health benefits, but universal healthcare proponents labor under the assumption that easier access to healthcare will result in burgeoning enrollment. Apparently that’s not true at all. As Greg Sandlin appropriately remarked, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t force it to drink.” Unless the poor are forced to drink, so to speak, then there isn’t even a hope of an Obamacare success.

With that said, I commend Fisman for eating his piece of the humble pie. Now, if we could just get Sebelius and Obama to eat the rest.

Joining in the Revelry

Jason Collins has officially become the first active roster professional athlete to come out as gay. The 12-year NBA veteran currently playing for the Washington Wizards has captivated the hearts of many, including the Obamas, the Clintons, and athletic royalty like Kobe Bryant. 

This makes me wonder—what are the macho men going to do with this news? You know, macho men—the guys who fondly remember their coaches’ colorful abuse, laced with all sorts of sexist and homophobic verbiage, guys who affix so much significance to their own athletic glory days and their pet sports teams—how are they going to transition to a sports world that has been politicized and feminized and made gay-friendly? Moreover, how will Christian sports fans handle this new, gay-friendly sports frontier?

The New Gay-Friendly Sporting Landscape

Even before Collins came out of the closet, nearly all professional sports organizations mirrored the broader culture and crept deeper into sinful territory. Collins has only helped hasten the degradation, it seems.

For example, the National Hockey League has apparently been preparing for its first gay player for years.

Steve Keating of Reuters writes,

The National Hockey League (NHL) has been preparing for years for the first gay player to come out in public and that groundwork may be about to pay off after the NBA’s Jason Collins opened the door to a new era.[...]

The deputy commissioner of the NHL, composed of U.S. and Canadian teams, said he was not personally aware of any gay players in the league but made it clear the NHL is treating any coming out as a high priority.

“Certainly this is something that is very important to the National Hockey League, it has been and I think our partnership with ‘You Can Play’ is demonstrative of that,” Bill Daly told a Toronto radio station on Monday. “I applaud (Collins) and my guess is you are going to see more of that going forward.”

The NHL says it is committed to becoming not only North America’s but the world’s most inclusive professional sports league.

The National Football League is just as eager to appease the culture, especially after it came to light earlier this year that several college recruits were asked about their sexual orientation by NFL recruiters. In an effort to stamp that fire out, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell released the league’s new “workplace conduct statement” this past week. In it, Goodell states the following: “The NFL has a long history of valuing diversity and inclusion. Discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation is not consistent with our values and is unacceptable in the National Football League.” According to Baltimore Ravens’ linebacker Brendan Ayanbadejo, there are four NFL players considering coming out to the public jointly.

Even mixed martial arts executives and fighters have succumbed to this pressure. Talented UFC heavyweight Matt Mitrione recently made waves when he launched a tirade against the transgender fighter Fallon Fox in a recent interview on The MMA Hour. When asked why Mitrione kept referring to Fox as a “he” and not a “she,” here’s what Mitrione said:

Because she’s not a he. He’s a he. He’s chromosomally a man. He had a gender change, not a sex change. He’s still a man. He was a man for 31 years. Thirty-one years. That’s a couple years younger than I am. He’s a man. Six years of taking performance de-hancing drugs, you think is going to change all that? That’s ridiculous. That is a lying, sick, sociopathic, disgusting freak. And I mean that. Because you lied on your license to beat up women. That’s disgusting. You should be embarrassed yourself. And the fact that Florida licensed him because California licensed him or whoever the hell did it, it’s an embarrassment to us as fighters, as a sport, and we all should protest that. The woman that’s fighting him, props to you. I hope you beat his ass, and I hope he gets blackballed and never fights again, because that’s disgusting and I’m appalled by that.

Granted, Mitrione made some repugnant remarks, but I think some of his points are still valid. There absolutely are limitations to hormonal therapy, and that leaves Fox with an innate advantage over her female competitors. But it mattered little if Mitrione had a point. The ax came down on Mitrione from UFC President Dana White. He was fined an undisclosed amount and suspended for 16 days. He has since apologized—sincerely, I’m sure—and, because the UFC is a partner with the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), Mitrione will be forced—per GLAAD’s wishes—to “work toward repairing his relationship with the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.”

And, not to be outdone, Major League Baseball is also celebrating Jason’s decision and awaiting its own gay players to rally around. Los Angeles Dodgers manager and legendary first baseman Don Mattingly has compared Collins to Jackie Robinson for his courage in breaking the homosexuality barrier, while the Boston Red Sox have invited Collins to throw the first pitch any time he likes.

What Will They Do?

So, again, I ask: what will the manly men do? I imagine some of the secular ones will mutiny out of deference to tradition, but there is no power in clinging to the olden days. Their grip will eventually fail, one way or another, only to leave a younger generation that has no respect for tradition. This is partly because families have spent so little time molding godly character and modeling it in practice. How many homes are like the one depicted in the YouTube video with the father screaming profanity at the television in front of his toddler? Likewise, how many athletic families scream at umpires or subject their children to such shameful displays of behavior? How many athletic parents live vicariously through their children’s athletic accomplishments and care more about their children’s trophies than fostering a loving relationship with their children? Let’s face it—for many young athletes, Kobe and Lebron have proven better role models than their own fathers and mothers. Therefore, I imagine a great many secular fans will be “good team players” and toe the line right out of the gate. As long as Ayanbadejo, Giambi, Kobe, and LeBron see no problem with homosexuality or other sexual aberrations, and these sports fans’ parents never taught them otherwise, then they don’t see a problem, either.

The Danger of Athletic Idol Worship

But Christians have an imperative to maintain a higher moral standard than LeBron James, as talented as he is. Really, I’m writing this more as a wake-up call to Christian athletes and sports enthusiasts than anything else. We should not be lured away from God by the sinful approbations of our beloved sports icons and misplaced team loyalty. It’s time to call a spade a spade, though, and admit that our enjoyment of sports is no mere source of relaxation, but a defining element of our lives and one that ultimately threatens to displace God from His throne. In other words, our athletic zealotry is nothing more than idol worship.

In many ways, the lives of Christian sports enthusiasts are identical to those of our secular counterparts. However, instead of wholeheartedly bowing before our athletic altars, we divert just some of our allegiance to Christ. We sports idolators are the kind of folks who may or may not struggle to devote an hour or two to our Lord on Sunday, but, when given the chance, could spend every other waking moment devoted to sports—surfing ESPN’s website for the latest sporting news, frittering away our time glued to the idiot box, or shuttling our children about in a cyclone of practices and games that swirls unabated until they reach college. Too many guys are prone to wistfully recounting their own athletic glory days as if their best work is behind them, instead of anticipating that “eternal weight of glory” that is “beyond all comparison” (2 Cor. 4:17) and serving to advance God’s kingdom right here and now. Many of us find that our moods and life satisfaction are contingent on the success of our pet teams. Not only are we guilty of idolatry, but we have willingly enslaved ourselves to the golden calf itself.

What’s sadder still is that many of us rope our children into sports leagues for the same reasons as secular parents: to see our children learn responsibility and discipline. But if we haven’t taught our children these lessons before little league begins, then this is a sign that we haven’t done our job. Others of us do it so that our children can have a fun outlet, but we don’t have to spend such ridiculous amounts of time, energy, and money to facilitate “fun-time,” nor should we. Children are infantilized enough. Childhood does not need to be extended beyond its rightful realm, nor should it be incumbent on parents to furiously scramble to keep their children entertained. Life is not about hopping from one petty amusement to another; rather it is about glorifying God to the fullest. 

I say all of this because I suspect it will be all too easy for some Christians, and Christian men in particular, to become complacent toward Jason Collins’s sexual sin because of sports idolatry. So much mental real estate is reserved for athletic pursuits that the flame of holiness is left to dwindle to a faint flicker and our spiritual armor, once robust, is now thin and susceptible to the darts of the evil one.

If you can relate to any of this, then I suggest you repent and pray for the strength to spend your free time and your income in ways that better serve the Kingdom of God than tirelessly living a vicarious life through your children’s athletic triumphs and stuffing the coffers of wanton professional athletes. Once that is done, I suggest you guard your heart and watch your step because a growing number of your heroes will try to coax you into believing that Jason Collins is a hero. He’s not. He’s nothing more than an unrepentant sinner basking in his frailty, beckoning you to come and join in the revelry. Don’t.

Unconscious Believers

Atheists are in a terribly awkward bind, according to a new study conducted by Finnish psychologists. Despite their professed unbelief, atheists—by means of skin conductance tests—have been found to worry when they call upon God to harm their loved ones.

Tom Jacobs of Pacific Standard writes,

The heads and hearts of atheists may not be on precisely the same page. That’s the implication of recently published research from Finland, which finds avowed non-believers become emotionally aroused when daring God to do terrible things.

“The results imply that atheists’ attitudes toward God are ambivalent, in that their explicit beliefs conflict with their affective response,” concludes a research team led by University of Helsinki psychologist Marjaana Lindeman. Its study is published in the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion.

Lindeman and her colleagues describe two small-scale experiments. The first featured 17 Finns, recruited online, who expressed high levels of belief, or disbelief, in God. They read out loud a series of statements while skin conductance data was collected via electrodes placed on two of their fingers.

Some of the statements were direct dares to a deity (“I dare God to make my parents drown”). Others were similarly disturbing, but did not reference God (“It’s OK to kick a puppy in the face”). Still others were bland and neutral (“I hope it’s not raining today”).

The arousal levels of the believers and non-believers followed precisely the same pattern: Higher for both the God dares and otherwise unpleasant statements, and lower for the neutral ones.

Compared to the atheists, the believers reported feeling more uncomfortable reciting the God dares. But skin conductance data revealed the underlying emotional reactions of the two groups were essentially the same. This suggests that taunting God made the atheists more upset than they were letting on (even to themselves).

Of course, perhaps it wasn’t the presence of God, but rather the subject matter of the statements (such as the death of their parents) that caused the atheists’ emotional arousal. The second experiment was designed to test that hypothesis. It featured 19 Finnish atheists, who participated in an expanded version of the first experiment. It included 10 additional statements—variations on the God dares which excluded any mention of supernatural forces. For example, in addition to “I dare God to turn all my friends against me,” they read out loud the statement: “I wish all of my friends would turn against me.”

The results: The atheists showed greater emotional arousal when reading the God-related statements than while reading the otherwise nearly identical sentences that omitted the almighty. To the researchers, this indicates that “even atheists have difficulty daring God to harm themselves and their loved ones.”

Does this mean that atheists are preparing to concede defeat, admit that they have lied to themselves, and beg God for forgiveness? Hardly. The researchers have offered a few possible explanations as to why atheists might panic when invoking God’s name, but only one is plausible.

The first explanation offered by the researchers is that “atheists’ explicit beliefs may differ from the implicit reactions that exist outside of conscious awareness.” In other words, their physiological responses betray their words. This isn’t a palatable explanation if you want to feel secure in your atheism. Atheists believe their rational faculties have successfully extirpated the “superstitious” roots of theism in their lives, but not only has their reason failed to do what they think it has, but it also appears powerless to weaken God’s imprint. This is the underlying reason.

Another option that the researchers think is “equally plausible” is that atheists “may have found using the word God stressful because others, possibly their friends and family, do take God seriously.” But this isn’t much better than the first possibility. Given their atheistic presuppositions, atheists shouldn’t be panicking as to what a mythological god doesn’t have the power to do. This suggests that somewhere beneath the facade, atheists do, in fact, believe that God is real and capable of doing harm. Never mind the fact that this is Finland that we’re talking about here. How many devout theists, and Christians in particular, do these atheists actually know in order to warrant such a fantastic explanation?

Another explanation for the extraordinary emotional response is that atheists find God extremely aversive to their sensibilities. This will surely be the preferred explanation among atheists. It’s not fear, but disgust. However, even if it is disgust and anger that’s these experiments measured, then that means that atheists sound less like the coolly rational conquerors of superstition and more like closed-minded curmudgeons. That’s a pyrrhic victory if there ever was one. You survive but not without losing a pound or two of flesh in the process and looking a bit like a monster.

The last possible explanation offered is that because most atheists once believed in God, vestiges of their theistic belief remain intact. This final possible explanation is like the first and second explanations and is, likewise, unhelpful to the atheistic cause. If this is truly what is responsible for the heightened emotional response, then it implies that atheism lacks power. It can’t adequately scrub anyone clean of past theistic belief. This isn’t surprising from a biblical standpoint. No amount of atheistic mantras mocking the validity of God and the veracity of the Bible can extinguish the truth that God has written upon atheists’ hearts (Romans 2:15). The dimness of the truth varies, but it’s there. More challenging still is that such atheists might not even be atheists at all, but in temporary spiritual doldrums. King David, though loved by God, was often overwrought with feelings of abandonment and doubt (Psalm 22:1-3). If the Bible is true, then surely some who would label themselves as atheists are just in a spiritual lull, and maybe even a protracted one.

Now, before I wrap this up, I need to point out a couple of flaws with this study. The sample size is minuscule, for one thing. One experiment used seventeen participants, while another just nineteen. Another problem, though, is that the researchers didn’t think to have the participants invoke other gods for the sake of comparison. I do wonder if invoking Allah would have also roused the emotions of atheists or if they would only fear the god that is most relevant to their culture. Or maybe the God of the Bible, Yahweh, would be the only one to stir up such a response. I wish I could say. It’s this latter flaw that particularly rankled some snarky atheists in the comment section of this article. One commenter was pretty confident that invoking the absurdly fantastic Dracula and Bigfoot would work as well as invoking God, but let’s hope atheists aren’t so easily and uniformly riled up by fictional characters and Native American legends. Look out behind you, it’s Quetzalcoatl!

We can hypothesize all day long, but, ultimately, it’s not all that important. Fearing a god, whether it’s a god or the God of the Bible is still consistent with the scriptural fact that all are built for worship and faith in something greater than themselves. What blinds natural man from understanding the truth about God is sin and, because of this unrighteousness, man makes idols out of almost anything. For some, Allah takes the place of Yahweh, for others Mother Earth does. Others, still, put their faith in reified abstractions like the Free Market, Humanity, or Science.

Paul speaks of man’s unavoidable inclination to deify in Romans 1:18-23.

He writes,

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

So, is this study proof of what Christians have been suggesting for millennia now—namely, that man has a tendency to deny the truth of God’s existence? Not quite, but the results that atheists are torn are consistent with Scripture. The fact of the matter is that atheists have exalted their rationality and lorded it over Christians only to be shown by this study that their intellect is largely blind to what they know deep down—that this is God’s world.

Time Out Gets Spanked

Child discipline is a subject often discussed by parents, but rarely is it ever done right, in my opinion. Apparently, I’m not alone. Coinciding with the past half-century’s moral decay is the decline of godly disciplinary methods (e.g., spanking) and the rise of the seemingly inscrutable “time out.” Well, in a sign that things are likely to get worse before they get better, it turns out that the tables have now turned against spanking’s gentler cousin. Are you listening, T. Berry Brazelton?

According to Melinda Wenner Moyer of Slate, time out is rarely effective at reforming behavior, is often misused, and might, therefore, be harming children.

Moyer writes,

So there I was last week, perusing a preschool parent handbook, when I stumbled across a curious anti-timeout policy. “Time-out is not an effective form of discipline,” the packet explained. “This focuses on the negative and alienates the child.”

I felt an immediate pang of guilt. I’ve given my almost-2-year-old a handful of timeouts—defined as a brief time away from rewarding stimuli like toys, parents, and friends—for hitting the dog, throwing rocks, and standing on chairs. A few Google searches later, I learned that proponents of attachment parenting advise against timeouts because the interventions give kids “the feeling of being rejected by their parents.” This backlash isn’t even that new—Child magazine published (and Parents magazine republished) an article in 2003 called “Why Time-Out Is Out.”

Have my attempts to raise a good little boy scarred him for life? Or are these anti-punishment policies way overprotective and perhaps even harmful?

Some psychologists do believe that if you practice good “positive discipline” techniques, by stating facts rather than demands, using distraction to steer kids away from danger, and working out solutions as a family, you shouldn’t need timeouts, or at least not very often. And timeouts can be ineffective, psychologically damaging, and make behavioral problems worse. But that’s not because they are inherently dangerous; it’s because so many parents and teachers misunderstand how they should be done. Indeed, plenty of research suggests that timeouts are safe and useful when parents employ them properly and in the right situations[...]

Timeouts don’t work very well, then, if you haven’t created a richly positive environment for your child. In other words, “it’s the effort parents put into time-in that determines whether or not timeout works,” Christophersen says, so when parents and teachers categorically state that timeouts don’t work with their kids, it can be a warning sign of more serious problems in the home or school environment. If you rarely praise, hug, or interact positively with little Sammy, then acting up may be the only way he can get your attention, and for a kid, negative attention (such as when parents get mad) is better than no attention.

In addition, timeouts generally only work in positive contexts because the timeout needs to serve as a deterrent, something that takes away fun[...]

This raises another point, which is that parents always need to be aware of what’s developmentally appropriate for their children. Your 18-month-old doesn’t deserve a timeout for not knowing how to share; sharing is a learned skill, and she probably hasn’t mastered it yet. Likewise, few 3-year-olds can entertain themselves quietly for 30 minutes during church sermons or while mom talks on the phone. (Although if mom keeps giving him brief reinforcements during the conversation—shoulder squeezes, winks, reassuring words—she might occasionally get away with it.) And if your 28-month-old isn’t cleaning up her room when you ask her to, it could be that she doesn’t know where to begin, so maybe it would help if you broke your instructions down into more manageable bits. Always ask yourself whether your child’s behavior is truly defiant or just a consequence of the fact that she doesn’t have the skills you think she has.

So what’s the proper way to initiate a timeout if your child has thrown her high chair across the room again? Calmly and simply. “We recommend stating the behavior clearly in terms of what the violation was: ‘Now you’re going to have to timeout because you engaged in this behavior,’ rather than saying, ‘You’re being bad’ or ‘That’s awful’,” Lutzker says. “It’s not supposed to be evaluative; it’s supposed to be factual.” Plus, when parents go into explanatory or pejorative diatribes, they are doing precisely the opposite of withholding attention. (Christophersen advises parents to keep explanations even shorter: “no hitting,” say, or “time out hitting.” Then, shut up.)

That brings us to another mistake parents commonly make with timeouts: They don’t really give timeouts, Christophersen says. Instead, they keep fretting over their kids, which can turn the timeout from a deterrent into a positive reinforcement. If your daughter cries during a timeout, don’t attend to her; she is understandably upset, but she will learn over time to self-soothe. If she laughs and pretends to be having a blast, don’t yell at her to be quiet. Just leave her be. And don’t require her to apologize or fess up at the end of the timeout, either.

Another common misconception is that you have to physically isolate a child during a timeout. The important thing is not where your child is but that he doesn’t get to interact with anything interesting, including you. This means that you can initiate timeouts in strollers, cars, chairs, even on the changing table—the key is to withhold attention and eye contact for a certain period of time or as long as the bad behavior persists.

So, what can we learn from this article?

Time Out Is Absurd No Matter How It’s Implemented

First of all, time out is limited even in the best of circumstances. It is only effective when the child is removed from something more fun. If they misbehave out of boredom—and, as a parent, that’s a big slice of the misbehavior pie—then you are out of luck, I suppose. And, if the child is one of those kids that tends to “have a blast” in time out, then what? However, Moyer thinks this is impossible. No child can possibly enjoy two or three minutes in a chair without eye contact or toys, and yet I’ve witnessed things to the contrary. How odd.

Secondly, the ideal disciplinary approach that’s laid out by proponents of attachment parenting is exhausting and contrived—dishonest, even. Successful parents have to hover around their children, distracting and redirecting them like rodeo clowns and then, when that fails, conferring with them—using only facts, of course—so as to reach some mutually congenial solution. The latter feels less like parenting and more like treating with political rivals and with all the solemnity and sterility of parliamentary procedure. Children aren’t equal with parents, though. Experience tells us this, as does the Bible (1 Cor. 13:11, Eph. 6:1-3, Exod. 20:12, Col. 3:20). Children reason as children, while parents hopefully reason as adults. Children are often comically naive as to how anything works or should work, while parents are usually less so. Children can’t adequately take care of themselves, while parents generally can.

Thirdly, the avoidance of moral terminology, like “wrong” and “bad,” in preference for “just the facts” is a silly impossibility. I say that because it’s impossible to punish without some recognition that a standard has not been maintained. This desire for a non-judgmental environment becomes particularly absurd when one considers fighting among siblings. For example, if your son pushes your daughter and the daughter starts wailing, is her wailing not an indication to the son that he’s done something “wrong?” What’s more is that proponents of this disciplinary method can’t even describe their methods without violating their own lofty standards. John Lutzker, director of the Center for Healthy Development at Georgia State University, advises parents to state “clearly in terms of what the violation was,” but violation connotes failure and wrongdoing. Finally, let’s say for the sake of argument that parents do manage to raise their children in this disapproval-free bubble. What happens when the children leave home and experience the unadulterated criticism and disapproval of a much harsher real world? That will be one heck of a steep learning curve.

But if Moyer’s paradigm is so silly and ineffective, then what should take its place?

The Effective and Biblical Disciplinary Approach

Bible-based, Christian parenting. Yes, that even includes spanking. Now, I know that to modern researchers, spanking is just another name for a crazed beating from a belligerent parent, but I couldn’t disagree more with the misperception of this maligned disciplinary tool. Frankly, the most well-mannered and sweetest kids I know—some of whom are those dreaded teenagers, no less—have been spanked plenty by their loving, God-fearing parents. To be fair, it is certainly true that many parents who spank do so out of anger and without explanation or instruction, and one should find that approach to be repugnant, but one mustn’t pretend that because some butcher God’s standard, God’s standard is unworkable, corrupt, and dangerous.

What is to be done is that parents are to first see themselves as worthy of honor because they serve as God’s agents—caring for, instructing, and protecting the children that have been entrusted to them. Genesis 18:19 provides the foundation for this noble calling. God tells Abraham what He has in store for him and his offspring and how He will bless Abraham for his covenantal  faithfulness, “For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.” Fathers are responsible for continually edifying their families, for teaching both their wives (Eph. 5:25-27) and children (Deut. 6:7) about God’s righteousness and justice. Children are commanded to honor and obey their parents, so that they may have a long life and experience His favor (Exod. 20:12). When children fail to obey the rules that have been set before them, they are to be struck in love because loving parents do just that (Prov. 13:24). We are called, out of loyalty to God and His righteousness, to drive the folly from the child’s heart (Prov. 22:15). And when spanking is done correctly, it serves as a means of grace (Prov. 20:30). What is often missed by secular researchers and counselors is that biblical discipline is not simply punitive, but restorative. We are to spank not out of wounded pride or anger, but with a hope of bringing the child back to the path of righteousness and wisdom.

I guess, given my defense of spanking, it won’t come as a surprise to learn that I don’t just talk the talk, but with the Lord’s help I walk the walk, as well. I do spank my son and have consistently done so since he has been old enough to willfully disobey. And, thanks be to God, my discipline has been made effectual. My son is polite, obedient, and joyful, but he wasn’t always like that. I can assuredly say that he wasn’t “born good,” though some suggest as much. My wife and I began spanking him when he developed a habit for screaming and hitting us every time the specter of bedtime was raised. Ironically, it took spanking (and prayer) to stop him from hitting us, and within a matter of weeks he stopped entirely, and we haven’t looked back since. Now, my instruction might not always be wise or my discipline reasonable, but, even then, my son will still learn prudence by heeding my reproof (Prov. 15:5, Prov. 29:15). In Moyer’s world, two-year-olds should not generally be capable of picking up after themselves, let alone sit still in church for half an hour. However, my son has been capable of sitting through my church’s hour-and-a-half service every Sunday for months now and cleans up when told—although not perfectly, of course (he is just two, after all). The fact that most children “can’t” do this tells me more about the efficacy of modern parenting and the ignorance of researchers than it does about the capabilities of the child.

How I Do Things

So if my wife and I don’t just beat the stuffing out of our son, what exactly do we do? We begin by telling him his fault and why he needs to be punished, then we vigorously spank him, and finally we wrap it up with prayer, apologies, and some restorative hugs and kisses. Then, all is forgotten by both of us and we get back to being pals. I don’t scream and shout, I don’t lose my cool, and I don’t humiliate him by dredging up past sins. Neither does he mope around afterwards. Now, how many researchers have considered that model when they consider spanking? Not too many, I’d bet.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Moyer’s article tells us many things. The grand theme, though, is that not even time outs are sacred anymore because they are poorly utilized and, therefore, psychologically damaging. But her suggestion is to wander further from the godly standard and head deeper into the thickets of wickedness. To her, children are to remain equal with parents and should never experience their parents’ displeasure. But both the Bible (Eph. 6:1-3, Exod. 20:12, Col. 3:20) and human experience tells us that children aren’t equal to parents—not even close. For parents to ignore the various differences between children and parents is to engage in fanciful child’s play themselves. But not only that, bringing children into parity with parents is also theologically bankrupt and dangerous: it leads children to be ignorant of their sinfulness and puffed up with self-conceit. Eventually, this kind of inanity will have to implode. It may take a few more generations of godly, homeschooled children to overwhelm the countervailing horde of narcissistic, irreverent whiners, but I have hope that, in light of the fruit borne from biblical Christian discipline, eventually all these silly, unbiblical parenting whims will look impotent, disingenuous, and hollow to all.