New Year’s Resolutions for parents? First on the list should be to spend more time with your children than you ever have. I’ve been writing a parenting column for my local newspaper for more than ten years now, and basically, I write each and every week the same thing: that parents should spend lots and lots of time with their kids. I’ve just repackaged it and tried to say it a different way each week. But the message is always the same. There is simply no substitute for this. Kids spell love “T-I-M-E”. Maybe I’ll say that one week, then the next week I’ll write that kids need unstructured time with you. Then I’ll encourage you to take walks together or go on trips.I’ll remind you to look your children in the eye and put down the paper or the computer. I’ll encourage you to eat together as a family several times per week and the benefits of that.
Spending time with our kids earns us the right to pass down our values to them. It allows us to show them what is most important to us. That’s really my message in a nutshell. And that’s my New Year’s Resolution this year and every year. Happy 2008 to you and your family from me and mine.
3 comments:
I have come to realize that the Christian view and the worldly, or secular, view on this are, once again, polar opposites.
The world says spend time with the children because soon they'll be gone. Christianity says spend time with them because they are eternal!
The world says "you only go around once, go for the gusto!". Christianity says, "this is not all there is. Go for what is right!"
The world says go visit Grandpa because he is about to croak. Christianity says go visit.
The secularist says go visit Grandpa because we love him. The Christian says go visit Grandpa because I will be rewarded by a god if I do.
Christians believe their lives are eternal, yet mourn even more loudly than the atheist. You mourn as if deep down you really know you will never see those loved ones again, which is true no matter how much you wish it wasn't so. Life and death are what they are and no magical thinking is going to change it. The secular accepts the facts of life and death with dignity and without childish wishing for something that cannot be.
The secularist says go visit Grandpa because we love him. The Christian says go visit Grandpa because I will be rewarded by a god if I do.
KH> You would honestly try to deny Christ's teaching on the priority of love? You would try to minimize the Scripture's teaching on love or that God is love? Despite what individual Christians may do, the standard for Christians is found in the Scriptures.
Any reward is a byproduct of the higher good. If you don't like rewards, don't go visit Grandpa! That can be very rewarding!
Further, on Secularism (Naturalism/Materialism) there is no real "love". There is only a chemical reaction reducible to molecules in motion giving off the illusion of "love".
Christians believe their lives are eternal, yet mourn even more loudly than the atheist. You mourn as if deep down you really know you will never see those loved ones again, which is true no matter how much you wish it wasn't so.
KH> How dare you generalize and stereotype Christians like that! Despite what some Christians do, the Scriptures tell us to mourn, but "not to mourn as the pagans do - without hope".
Life and death are what they are and no magical thinking is going to change it. The secular accepts the facts of life and death with dignity and without childish wishing for something that cannot be.
KH> You are confused about "magic". That there is a transcendent cause of the universe is not "magical thinking". But on your analogy, Christian Theism says there is at least a rabbit in the hat or up the magician's sleeve! On Secularism, the rabbit (universe) came into existence from absolutely nothing uncaused!
Human dignity? On your view, the same blind processes that accidentally coughed up a barnyard of pigs or a swarm of mosquitoes coughed up me and you! How dignified is that?
Magical thinking cannot change the fact and finality of death. But Jesus' historical resurrection did!
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