Help! Decisions!

Our 20-year old daughter Ruthiey came home with a big decision to make.  She had asked for time off of work for an extended hike on the North Shore in Minnesota.  But she had already taken a month off, and her managers said that if she took off additional time, she would need to put in her resignation.

She has worked there for a couple of years and feels ready to move on.  But she does not have alternatives in place.  We talked about her need for routine and what other options were available, but I was pleased to hear my husband say, “We are not going to make this decision for you.”

We want our kids to make good decisions, so we’re tempted to make them for them.  But is that helpful in the long run? James Van Fleet, in The 22 Biggest Mistakes Managers Make, says “…you will never be able to develop a complete sense of responsibility in a person until you force him to make his own decisions.” (Of course we are not talking about very young children.  They should learn to obey specific rules.)

Leaders take responsibility.  Leaders must be decisive.  How will we raise children who are decisive?

Some decisions are moral decisions.   For these we must teach our children the Word of God so they can discern between right and wrong.  But that is not the subject of this post.

To give our older children opportunity to make decisions while they are still under our guidance and protection, we can use what Van Fleet calls mission-type orders – where you tell a person what you want done but not how to do it!  By doing this, you

…open the door wide for your …[child] to use his initiative, his imagination, and his ingenuity to solve the problem you’ve given him.

I dislike being micro-managed and enjoy a project much more if I have room to make decisions.  Our children are no different.  Let them decide what size bowl to use for the cookies or how to organize the garage.

And what about those times in life when one feels stuck, and a major life decision needs to be made between a number of legitimate options?  Dr. James Greer gave us some decision-making tools that we are passing on to our children.

1. Definitions: write out your problem concisely — one sentence if you can.
2. Blue sky. List all possible alternatives, even those that initially seem wild. If they are not sinful, they are options.
3. Build alternatives, thinking through all of the implications and consequences. Gather lots of information and seek counsel. Remember that there are always trade-offs with any choice.
4. Through all of this, articulate and write down your values and their order of priority: church, marriage, education of children, financial aspects, stewardship of gifts, extended family, stability, etc.
5. Give all of this process time; allow for a time of incubation. Keep a notebook to record priorities, alternatives and information gathered. Do not let emotions drive you away from good process. Pray through each step.

Ruthiey decided to forego the hike and keep her job.  Now she has time and a place to build alternatives.

 O LORD, bless us to raise decisive children for your glory.

Thanks that is 30 years overdue.

This week I wrote a letter to Reformed Book Services, a book store in Ontario, that had a significant impact on my life some 30 years ago:

 To Whom it may Concern,

I have for some time wanted to thank you for being an instrument in God's hands for my salvation.

Thirty years ago I had graduated from Calvin College and was living in Toronto.  The tidy structure of school was gone, and I was fearful and bewildered.

Some years earlier, a friend had introduced me to a devotional  -- all excerpts from works of Martyn Lloyd-Jones.  Delighting in Lloyd-Jones' understanding of depression, I later purchased Spiritual Depression at a used book store, .  A summer free of commitments yawned before me, and when I drove past your store, I decided to stop in.   There I saw volumes of sermons on Ephesians by Lloyd-Jones.   Reading them and taking notes on the sermons seemed a good way to pass some of the summer.

Though I grew up in the Christian Reformed Church, I had a woefully inadequate view of my sin before a holy God.  Sin was robbing banks, stealing someone's spouse,  and stabbing people in back alleys.  Surely it was not a word to describe me through and through.

But God had been gently and surely convicting me of my love for recognition (glory-stealing) and a lack of love for others.  As I read Lloyd-Jones on Ephesians two,  I came to the sentence about not being able to be found unless we are lost.  God showed me his glory and I knew myself to be a sinner before a glorious and mighty GOD.  (I weep as I write).  

I had hoped to be a writer, but then and there I gave my writing and my future to the Lord.  I told him that I wanted to live for his glory. I told him that if my writing was not for his glory, I wanted none of it.

Some years later I married and God gave us eight living children.  God has given me a small place to be faithful in, a perfect place.  I am glad to be his daughter and to have him as my Father.  

And I am grateful for the day he led me to to buy Lloyd-Jones at your store.   May God continue to bless your business for his glory.

For the King,

Jeannette Paulson

Moral Decisions

What if we are not sure of what is right or wrong in a particular situation? Saint John says that sin is lawlessness.  God's law defines sin.  I find the Westminster Larger Catechism  list of what the law commands and forbids very instructive.  It is a careful study of scripture. For example, do you think of  "undue delay of marriage" as a violation of the seventh commandment?  It is. Many of life's decisions would be clearer if we were better students of the word.

Freud... and religion as neurotic disease

 I have never heard the Freudian view of religion expressed as clearly as in J.H. Bavinck's The Church Between Temple and Mosque

In recent times an even more pernicious verdict has been given on religion. Freudian psychology put forward the hypothesis the religion is a neurotic disease. The god whom we adore, on whom we feel dependent, whom we fear and whom we love, is nothing but a gigantic projection of the father image of our youth. In a healthy mind this image dissolves naturally, and the “ego,” the feeling of self-reliance, takes its place. But due to all kinds of circumstances this father image in some people does not disappear, but it is projected and becomes a god. This projection is, of course, harmful for the development of one’s personality, and people will never become sound and mature men and women as long as they live under the spell of this self-made god.

Always tempting

John Owen in his book Overcoming Sin and Temptation does not underestimate the power of sin:

Sin is always acting, always conceiving, always seducing and tempting....There is not a a day but sin foils or is foiled, prevails or is prevailed on; and it will be so while we live in the world....there is no safety against it but in a constant warfare."

Do we take sin that seriously?  Would we be getting beat up less if we did?

"I don't remember starving...."

Peter Hitchens, Younger brother of the late Christopher Hitchens, is a brilliant writer.   In the village that I grew up, the store and garage were closed on Sunday, and none of the farmers harvested on the Lord's Day.  Here he laments the opening of supermarkets on Sunday:


"Those who thought Margaret Thatcher was a conservative should have realised she wasn’t when she wrecked the British Sunday.

Is there anyone who really needs supermarkets and other big stores to be open on Sunday? I don’t remember starving back in the old days when such shops were closed.

As for it being vital to our economy, Germany – whose economy is vastly healthier than ours – has the strictest Sunday closing laws in the world.
Doesn’t every home need a still, untroubled day of rest, when everyone can relax at the same time?

Even Joseph Stalin, at the height of his Marxist rage against private life, failed to abolish the Sabbath. It took Britain’s Tories to succeed where he failed.

And now, after an ‘experiment’ in longer Sunday hours during the Olympics (and what have the Olympics to do with Sunday shopping in the first place?), Downing Street is talking about extending it.
 
This will mean more pressure on shop workers to work on Sunday, and more small shops put out of business by the incessant greed and ruthlessness of the supermarkets."

A Glorious Family History

I don’t really know what first got me interested in church history, but I suspect  that my parents are largely responsible.   They both cared deeply about the church and truth.

When I was about 10, I remember one Halloween going with my parents and siblings  to see a film about Martin Luther.   My parents explained to us that it was actually Reformation Day,  the day that Martin Luther nailed the 95 Thesis on the door of the church in Wittenburg.  

My parents wanted us to know church history.   Knowing church history gives hope.  We see the church prosper and decline, but through the darkest days God is preserving, protecting and building.

With books like Trial and Triumph, we can teach church history even to small children. The author, Richard M. Hannula,  calls church history  ”family history.” With a few pithy, pointed stories he captures the lives of 46 major Christians.  I am as enthralled as my children.

Hannula starts with Polycarp. Taught by the Apostle John,  Polycarp was arrested at 86 years of age and brought to the arena.  Because Christians refused to bow down to pagan gods, they were considered godless.   When instructed to point to the Christian prisoners and say, “Away with the godless,” Polycarp pointed instead to the pagan crowds and said “Away with the godless.” He was burned to death. But the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. Rome was unable to stamp out the church; it only grew.

Or consider Patrick.  Kidnapped from England, he found himself hungry and cold, tending sheep on the rocky hills of Ireland.  Hatred and plans of revenge sustained him.  But he began to be convicted of his own sin, and to sense God’s fatherly care.  He escaped but could not forget the pagan Druid priests, the dark superstitions and animal sacrifices of the Irish.    He returned to fearlessly bring glaring gospel light for 40 years.  Thousands came to Christ and many young Irish men became missionaries.


Ambrose was Governor of Milan when the church pressed for him to be the new bishop.  He hid in a friend’s house and pleaded with the emperor to be excused.  But the emperor urged him to stand, and  Ambrose stood — even refusing communion to Emperor Theodosius after he refused to repent for a massacre in Thessalonica.  When the emperor pleaded the sin of David, Ambrose urged the repentance of David.  The emperor later confessed his sin before the church and made a law to regulate the punishment of citizens.

I want our children to know about Polycarp, Blandina,  Patrick, Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter Waldo,  and other brave Christians who stood and even spilt their blood for truth.   With God’s blessing, it will give hope and ballast. Passing on what my parents gave me,  I will tell our children their family history.

I pray they will see themselves a part of something glorious.