Every Matter (or at Least a Couple of Them) Under Heaven
First Second Drafts Podcast in Two Years; Letters from the Mail Bag; Fresh Linkage
Dear Friends,
Despite several themes converging from my reading with what’s going on in the news, I’ll save those for next month; after all, the last thing anybody wants before Tuesday’s election is one more heavy editorial. So, I’ll just encourage you to vote (we did by ballot box drop two weeks ago) and leave it at that.
Here’s a quick look at what’s in this month’s Second Drafts:
I’ve included the first Second Drafts podcast in two years and hope you’ll find time to listen. It was fun to get back in the podcast saddle and I plan to do more in the future.
I’ve thrown in some recent correspondence from readers (along with my responses), as it’s always good to hear from and feature subscriber feedback.
I’ve got a good round of Fresh Linkage for you in case you still want more to read.
So, a little different edition than usual, but still worthy of a scroll or two, I promise.
Ministry Update
You may remember from last month we were midway through an evangelism training at Exodus. Feedback has been positive and folks seem a little more confident to take their next step in sharing the Gospel. Below is my second sermon from the series, this one from 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 on being Christ’s ambassadors (for more, visit our Sermon Archive).
This Sunday, we begin a new series on life on life discipleship. We’re praying to see a continuance of interest and engagement from members of the congregation.
Upcoming Dates
Later today, Megan and I board a plane to make a quick weekend trip to Albuquerque to see Katie and Josiah—our first time being with them since their wedding in Colorado Springs in January. We’re eager to see them this weekend, as well as later this month for Thanksgiving, as all the girls and their respective menfolk are coming to Illinois. Here’s a look at November:
November
1-3: Trip to Albuquerque to see Katie and Josiah
9: Megan’s continuing Children’s Dyslexia Centers certification training |
Craig serves as judge for Pike County Speech Contest (Perry, IL) |
Exodus Church campfire and cookout at Irish Road Flower Farm (5-7:30 p.m.)
10: Craig preaches at Exodus Church (10 a.m.)
16: Megan’s Extraordinary Embroidery group
18: First Step Women’s Center annual training
27-December 3: All girls and their guys in Springfield for Thanksgiving (woot!)
It’s been a long and beautiful fall in central Illinois. We’re not ready for the snow to fly nor the rain to freeze (though we would take some rain of any other kind—it’s been dry), but we do love the leaves changing and reminding us that, indeed, “for everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). We hope you’re enjoying this one.
As always, thanks for reading Second Drafts,
Craig (for Megan)
PS: Happy Thanksgiving!
On the Podcast: Dr. Emily Sturm
It’s been two years to the month since Peaches and I last recorded a Second Drafts podcast, but it felt like old times interviewing Dr. Emily Sturm, surgical oncologist and an Assistant Professor of Surgery at SIU School of Medicine here in Springfield.
A friend and fellow member of Exodus Church, Emily sat down with Peaches and me to talk about sin’s impact on the world and her call as a doctor to heal in the midst of it. You’ll be inspired by her heart for God and people in this 61-minute interview.
Mail Bag: Hearing from, Responding to Readers
Periodically, a Second Drafts post finds its way back with a reader note. I always appreciate the interaction and do my best to include letters in full and with a response if possible. To share a thought (always printed anonymously), email me.
Crippled with Bad Therapy
Here’s a lengthy but heartfelt note from a reader in response to last month’s Peaches’ Pick review of Abigail Shrier’s book, Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up:
“On Bad Therapy, I was particularly intrigued that she [Shrirer] seemed to bring the issues to Gen X’s parenting more than generations before. How do you feel about that connection? As an observer of history, I see some trends among generations and don’t necessarily disagree, but I wonder how someone that is Gen X (but didn’t raise his kids in such a way) feels about that connection?
I also have first hand experience with bad therapy in my family. My nieces and nephews are on so many pills for self diagnosed issues and they are nearly intolerable as young adults. They, their friends, and significant others cannot function without one another while also barely speaking to each other; they cannot hold a job, doomsday is upon them daily because they have no worldview that holds to Truth, and they constantly are crying out with their anxieties and crippling mental disorders to be heard and seen because their lives are so much harder than mine or yours ever was.
They are also obsessed with whatever TikTok tells them. You cannot slap a cold hard truth in their face because they ‘saw it on TikTok.’ It’s so bad that my husband and I question how much we are to allow our own children experience their company so to not influence our family dynamic negatively. This is not entirely their fault; their parents have obviously allowed these neuroses and not guided appropriately as well.
One last thing, though I have a lot of talking points: trauma. Everyone is so influenced by their ‘trauma.’ I found this point so spot on. The sentiment applies that if everything is traumatic then nothing is. Death can be, but someone dying is not. Parents can cause trauma in the lives of their children but a spanking is not. A normal life experience is now deemed traumatic by many. And so on.
I think about this in light of the worldview issue I spoke on above; there is no worldview for these cases. This is where I think that had the author been a Christian, she could have hit a home run—a lot of these issues can be curtailed by an understanding of the Gospel with a Christian worldview. I’m not saying one doesn’t have depression or experience trauma if they really believe. I am just saying the hope we have in Christ is something that believers can rely on to aid in their sufferings and keep them from being crippled with Bad Therapy.
I hope that made sense because I do believe that depression and anxiety is real, but I also know a believer has a different outlook than a nonbeliever in regards to those disorders. Maybe some of the parental misdirection and overwhelming need to diagnose/medicate wouldn’t be so prevalent had those subjects known the hope that we have in Christ.”
My Thoughts
In response to the Gen X questions, my thesis is that what matters in shaping people more than cultural generation delineations are the family lines that bisect them.
We know from Scripture that individual family lines tend to be the conduits by which both blessing and sin pass, and while it’s not that these lines go unaffected by the cultural moments they occupy in history, I would argue that, generally speaking, one’s family line ultimately wields more influence (for good or ill) in children’s lives.
An example: my Gen X peers and I grew up during a cultural epoch when every McDonald’s (and other place of business) had metallic disposable ash trays, since casual smoking was far more prevalent than it is now. Yet despite the ubiquity of ashtrays and easy access to cigarette vending machines, I never smoked because I didn’t come from a family line of people who did.
Now, reverse the scenario. Culturally, we presently live in a time when smoking in public venues and having unfettered access to cigarette vending machines is illegal and much more prohibited than when I was a little kid in the 1970s. As a result (and despite efforts of the cigarette companies), smoking has decreased. However, kids with family members who smoke are X times more likely to do so than kids with no family members who smoke. Why? Because even with the cultural shift, by and large, one’s family line still holds greater influence than the broader culture does.
If I didn’t believe family lines are ultimately able to shape and shepherd faith across the generations they bisect, I would have little hope for my daughters (and now my granddaughter) growing up to become and persevere as God-fearing people. However, by God’s covenant design, individual family lines—while not unaffected—can trump the impact of culture’s generational moments.
Thus, while you rightly want to be graceful and loving toward your extended family and their beliefs and behaviors antithetical (whether by omission or commission) to the Christian faith, you are right to guard your particular family accordingly. Don’t give up on the promises of God to work through your family (particular and extended), but don’t pretend either it won’t require something of you and your husband to do so.
The New Socialism: Not the Same as the Old Socialism?
Here’s a letter with its own recommended reading link in response to the Acton Institute article I included in the Fresh Linkage section of September’s newsletter:
“I read the ‘Socialism is Not Neighborliness’ piece, and I found it had a common thread to most anti-socialism pieces I read—that the only kind of socialism is the kind like what is found in the dreariness of Russia. I would say that what I and others tend to argue for is really more accurately called Democratic Socialism, of which I’m sure you’ve heard. This is a pretty good article that sums up the differences, and while it goes back to the 2020 campaign, it’s still accurate.
I wouldn’t call myself 100% anti-capitalist (although my wife would probably call herself that), but I do tend to believe things like there should be no such things as billionaires. If you get to $999 million, you should get a trophy that says, ‘Congrats, you win capitalism,’ and everything you get above that goes to help greater humanity. If you ask my wife, she would probably say something more like $10 million, her argument being, what element of life can you not get if you’re limited to $10 million? A 4th house? A 2nd private jet?
And of course, there are a lot of elements of our society that are socialism that people don’t think about. I remember a time a few years back that Ted Cruz was asking for federal assistance after some disaster in Texas, and someone posted a picture of Cruz by a ‘Socialism Sucks’ sign saying, ‘This you, bro?’ I’ve had discussions with people who were advocating for America being a true Christian nation, and I said, so should we do things like tax billionaires more so that we have more money to feed and house the poor like Jesus said? And then it becomes, well, not THAT kind of nation. But I keep trying.”
My Thoughts
Full disclosure: I have never believed capitalism to be a perfect economic system, but I will never believe socialism (in any dispensation) can be a healthy replacement for it. The problem is unbridled determination—by the market or by the government—and I don’t solely trust either to look out for the ultimate good of a nation and its people.
The challenge, of course, with the market is people are (among many other things) inherently greedy; in a phrase, we want what we want, and that isproblematic. But let’s not throw out the baby with the fourth house and second private jet. As Doug Serven and I asked in TwentySomeone (pardon the 20+ year self-attribution):
“Is it wrong to own stuff? Is it wrong to want things? The answer to that is a resounding NO. It’s not wrong to own or want stuff. God created the earth and gave everything in it to us to take care of. A desire to have things ourselves is part of who we are. One of the most dehumanizing things to do to people, in fact, is to take everything away so that they have nothing. We need things to take care of. It’s part of what makes us human (see Deuteronomy 8).
Commentator J.A. Thompson writes, ‘Clearly it was God’s intention that His people should enjoy His good gifts. It is no part of biblical faith to espouse a view of life that bans enjoyment and pleasure. It is, indeed, a misunderstanding of the facts of the case, that those who live according to God’s laws are unhappy people.’
So, we are set free to own things. To take care of them and use them to make our lives and the lives around us better. But these things are not to define us. We should use them, appreciate them, and offer them up to the Lord.”
With regard to socialism, the distinction between any “old” or so-called “democratic” versions seems irrelevant; what matters is the huge degree of waste and corruption in both, for when money and resources are said to belong to everyone, everyone assumes the right to the benefits without assuming the responsibility for what it takes to provide them. Strangely (or not), those who manage to stay on top of the heap and in charge of the funds end up looking and acting like full-blown capitalists after all.
Quick story: when I began seminary back in 2005, our family of six lived the first year-and-a-half in a small 3-bedroom apartment on campus. Because we had owned a home previous to our move, we had to get rid of some stuff, but we kept our Little Tikes plastic playhouse similar to (but not quite as sturdy as) the one below.
Because our girls still enjoyed playing in it, we thought other kids whose families lived on campus might as well. So, after getting permission from the seminary’s facility director, the girls and I lugged the playhouse up from our apartment’s small walkout patio to the gated central playground in the middle of student housing. I found a good spot for it among the other, more permanent elements, and enjoyed a semi-self-righteous moment of how generous we were in donating it for public use.
Sadly, over the course of the next week (singular), the playhouse got misused and destroyed. Instead of small children playing inside the house as intended, bigger kids thought it was more fun to climb and jump on the top, eventually bending and collapsing the roof and breaking off the door and window frames to catch themselves on the way down. The walls came unhinged and the whole thing fell apart.
The problem was this: because the playhouse now belonged to everyone (as we intended in its donation), it also belonged to no one. Sure, I would encourage kids to use the playhouse properly when I was on the playground with our girls, but no other parents seemed to feel the same sense of responsibility (and I couldn’t be playground patrol 24/7). A week later, I dragged the playhouse to the dumpster and that was that.
Another example: when we lived in Oklahoma City, there was a small city pool in our neighborhood that was free of charge to residents. Our girls enjoyed swimming there during our first record-setting summer of 60+ straight days of 100+ temperatures. Unfortunately, though the pool was free, the city didn’t have enough budget to hire the requisite number of lifeguards to staff it across the whole summer; thus, in mid-July, when the temperatures were at their highest, the city closed it down and there it sat—surrounded by an eight-foot tall chainlink fence and still full of water—for the rest of the summer. Yes, it had been free, but free didn’t matter now that it was closed.
As is often typical of more progressive politics as well as pulpits, there is usually an attempt to equate socialism with Christianity, but they are not the same. Socialism says, “What’s yours is mine,” requiring government to ensure compliance; Christianity says, “What’s mine is yours,” appealing to the Christian to submit to the Spirit. John Wesley summed it up well with his three-sentence charge to generous living:
“Gain as much as you can. Save as much as you can. Give as much as you can.”
Biblically, the formula only works when all three actions are in full effect: that is, if you haven’t gained anything, you can’t save or give; if you gain and give but don’t save, you run the risk of becoming a liability to others and needing bailed out yourself; and if you only gain and save but don’t give, you’re just being greedy.
All that said, contentment—not capitalism or socialism—is the key to figuring out our finances, private or public. While the market and the government can help (and I would argue there is a need for the best aspects of both—maybe a topic for a future newsletter?), it’s a mistake to consider either as the single silver bullet for what ails us.
Fresh Linkage
Here are some Peaches-suggested articles, posted without commentary but very much worth a read:
“The Joy of Missing Out: Lessons from a Church-Wide Digital Detox” (After Babel)
“Overcoming Political Polarization: Reformed and Anglican Confessional Wisdom for Christians” (Anthony Bradley)
“The Endarkenment” (City Journal)
“The Sad End of Letters” (The Spectator)
“The Hard Truth: Americans Don’t Trust the News Media” (Washington Post)
Until next month…
Craig and Megan Dunham live in Springfield, IL, where Craig serves as Ministry Coordinator at Exodus Church while pursuing ordination in the Presbyterian Church in America. Megan teaches 2nd grade at Springfield Christian School and is an occasional newsletter contributor.
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