I found this piece by Stanley Hauerwas to cause me much reflection this week.
How can we bring up our children to be moral?
Start with baseball and also teach them to read. Don't teach kids a bunch of rules. Help them submit their lives to something that they find to be a wonderful activity that transforms them. Activities such as baseball and reading are where the virtues are inculcated with a seriousness that is hard to match in other areas of our lives.
In both of these activities there is involvement...participation...discipline. It is not as though there are a number of propositions upon which we agree and therefore we are baseball players or readers. Instead, there is the day in and day out practice...putting to life some basic "skills of the game." I'm not the best writer or reader...but I find the more I read and the more I write...I can, at least, make my way through a bit of written communication and can enjoy someone who really writes well. In the process of putting to life the elements of a life we would define as moral, we introduce the opportunity for transformation that cannot come from simply saying I agree with a way to live. Each of must learn to persist...to carry on...to follow through...and then, do it again and again with the knowledge that even the best readers and baseball players strike out! We could say that the best way to bring our children up to be moral is to bring them into the life of a community. In that way, they will not be able to be hypothetical about morality. It will be a part of community interaction...life together. Sometimes when I hear about more and more people (specifically Christian families) who pull their children from schools so that they can be taught at home, I wonder about how one learns the skills of being with and living with others. How do we teach fairness, justice, mercy, forgiveness if we don't let our kids practice...practice...practice.
Connection: The laboratory of morality is the day we are entering. Live boldly.
O Lord you call us into community and you bless us with a vision for life that respects the life of all your children and looks after the welfare of all. Walk with us as we learn the ways of life within your blessed reign. Amen
No comments:
Post a Comment