The R-Word
March 31st, 2010 § 7 Comments
by Matthew Raley
"Three Rebels," Pierre Alechinsky, 1967, Museum of Modern Art
I have found myself writing on parenting lately. The cloud that has settled in recent weeks over Michael Pearl’s dangerous parenting system is one reason. Another reason is that I am working on a book about how God passes his fatherly virtues to men, and makes them sources of vitality for their families.
In developing this book, I’ve been interviewing my dad. I’m grateful for my parents and their firm, grace-filled love. So Dad and I have been talking about the trials of men in general, and how Christ transformed him through his struggles.
One of the issues that comes up repeatedly is Dad’s colorful past as a rebel. In his youth, he rebelled against the Baptists — a common enough target. But in the midst of his career among hippies, he realized that their counter-culture was just fundamentalist legalism on acid. He still had to look right and talk right and have acceptable opinions. So he rebelled against hippies too. After he began following Christ, he rebelled (in no particular order here) against contemporary worship songs, Arminianism, and Christian parenting books (irony duly noted).
He came by his rebellious tendencies honestly. His father was a professional baritone who seems to have fired a succession of voice coaches. Dad’s mother found ways around church rules against playing cards and wine. His grandmother was shunned by the Amish for wearing straw hats. So the Raleys have a soft spot for rebels.
However, Dad told me in our interviews that his goal as a father was to lead my brother and me away from rebellion. He had two important intuitions. First, he saw that a father’s role is to help each of his children form unique identities. But, second, he saw that all human identity has to be formed in response to God’s authority. Rebellion perverts identity.
Dad recognized what most evangelicals have forgotten: rebellion is a sin.
Most evangelicals now think of it as a stage. Rebelling against authority is a necessary part of growing up. After the 1960s, many Christian parents feared they would make rebellion worse with too many rules, some almost abdicating their parental role when their kids turned 13. (12? 10?) To most evangelicals, the concept of rebellion as a sin is unmentionable — as if it were uncouth to bring up the r-word in sophisticated company.
The Bible is clear on this subject. Samuel says (1 Samuel 15.23), “For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry.”
Two fascinating things about this verse. First, the parallelism compares rebellion with presumption or insubordination as synonyms. Rebellion is the disregard or overthrow of authority. Second, Samuel compares rebellion with occult worship — that is, with the attempt to control things that are only controlled by God. He is saying that a rebel strives through perverse means to gain power.
Rebellion in a child is no phase. It confuses personal identity with control. It is lawlessness animated by wounded pride.
There has been a change in parenting attitudes over the last couple of decades. A growing minority of young families are reasserting parental authority and influence. The increasing use of home schooling, and the rising popularity of replacing dating with courtship are evidence of this shift.
So are Michael Pearl’s sales figures.
Parents who believe they should use the legitimate authority God has given them to nurture their children are absolutely right. Children need strong parents. Tools like home schooling can serve this aspiration well.
But parenting systems that employ behavior modification and promise total compliance are not the answer. Identity formation is a God-ordained process of maturing into adulthood. It is not rebellion. Parents need to recognize this process as a normal part of growth, and should not fear it or try to dominate it. There are profound differences between using authority and becoming an authoritarian — differences of tone, methods, and goals.
We need to restore the r-word to our vocabulary because it clarifies many of these issues. The restoration needs to start with an examination of the sin of rebellion biblically — what rebellion is, and what it is not. I will use the next several weeks here to lay out the case.
Audio: Jesus and the Eyewitness
March 30th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
by Matthew Raley
"The Crucifixion," workshop of Francisco de Zurbaran (1598-1664), Metropolitan Museum of Art
In this sermon on the death and burial of Christ, we ask why John narrated the story with such a focus on the fulfillment of Scripture. We reach the climax of the fourth Gospel with the sacrifice of the Passover lamb.
News Story on Lydia Schatz and the Pearls
March 26th, 2010 § 7 Comments
by Matthew Raley
Here is a link to a local Action News special report in which I participated. “For the Children’s Sake” addresses the parenting teachings of Michael Pearl in relation to the Schatz family. Many thanks to the news team for running this story!
A Community’s Agony Over the Schatzes
March 24th, 2010 § 5 Comments
by Matthew Raley
Kenneth and Elizabeth Schatz pleaded not guilty last Thursday to charges of torture and murder in the death of their 7-year-old daughter Lydia. The D.A. cited an autopsy concluding that she died of “‘blunt force trauma’ over a period of hours on Feb. 5, which caused a breakdown of muscle tissue fatally damaging her kidneys and other vital organs.” The defense attorney said he is “exploring extensively … other explanations for the death of this child.”
For me this is not a news item or an abstract legal issue, but a regional agony.
I do not know the Schatzes. But I know and love many of their friends, a group that includes some of our church’s families. This wide circle of people is grieving for Lydia and for her surviving brothers and sisters, whose lives have been upended.
Friends of the Schatzes are also grieving for the parents, praying for them and trying to understand how they could have committed such crimes. These friends cannot match the picture of the Schatz home that has emerged in news reports with the family they thought they knew.
I can empathize with their sorrow, and I have no desire to add to it.
There is a larger group of local believers. The vast majority of Christians I know are sickened and enraged by Lydia’s death, and by the “not guilty” plea. They have no personal acquaintance with Kenneth and Elizabeth Schatz, and feel at liberty to vent.
It is tempting to hold one perspective as more pure than the other. Friends might feel that they’re maintaining love toward two sinners, no matter how extreme their sin. The wider community might feel that such love is twisted. Both perspectives have problems.
How should Christians conduct themselves in relation to the Schatz family? Some thoughts:
1. In their grief for the accused parents, the friends of Kenneth and Elizabeth Schatz are not defending or rationalizing child abuse. Anybody whose loved one has committed a crime knows the feelings of watching justice be done — understanding that it must be done, but also mourning over the personal losses. Friends have a right to grieve over this couple without their motives being impugned.
2. The community’s expressions of rage against the Schatzes are understandable but unhealthy. Comments that I have read on local news sites are frequently violent, profane, and hysterical. (If this describes you, don’t bother venting off-topic here. I am now moderating all comments.) The surviving Schatz children will eventually be exposed to the community’s rage against their mom and dad. The children can’t be shielded from it. Their grief will be long and complex, and they will not feel in the least comforted by the braying of a mob. Christians in particular should not join in. Justice is cool and deliberate for a reason.
3. I would urge friends of the Schatzes that this is not a moment for wishful thinking. Some may offer conspiracy theories about trumped-up election-year indictments or persecution of Christians in the media. These speculations blur the issue. The defense attorney’s suggestion that there could be a cause of death besides the beatings will stand or fall on evidence. But it in no way invalidates the claim that there were beatings. This grim reality, reportedly established by the autopsy, is not now in dispute. We have to face the horror of the abuse. The glare of media attention on it is right.
4. There is inevitably the foolish person who wants to find “the good that God is doing” through Lydia’s death. If you are this person, let me advise you as a pastor, and as a firm believer in Romans 8.28, that this is an excellent opportunity to keep your folly to yourself. Flippant applications of that verse are never a balm to those in mourning. There are times to grieve, to feel the bite of loss. This is a time for our whole community to feel the loss of a 7-year-old girl — a loss that will not be restored in this life. Grief is good for us.
Our hope for Lydia and for ourselves is not in some repair of this life, but in the redemption stored up in the next.
Audio: Jesus and His Accusers
March 24th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
by Matthew Raley
"The Betrayal of Christ," Hendrick Goltzius, 1598, Metropolitan Museum of Art
In this sermon, we survey all the trials of Jesus in John’s Gospel. We are not after the nuances in this large amount of material, but the big issues that governed the Jewish leaders and Pontius Pilate in their interrogations.
The Behavior Modification Gospel
March 18th, 2010 § 17 Comments
by Matthew Raley
"Puppet and Child," Sueo Serisawa, 1950, Metropolitan Museum of Art
So, I’m watching the ads on “mute” and I notice the repetitive cycling of images. One public service spot against smoking goes like this: parent takes a drag from a cigarette, kid puffs on his asthma inhaler, parent with smoke, kid with inhaler, smoke, inhaler, smoke, inhaler.
Soon, I’m fighting for breath myself.
This is the state of California spending yet more money it doesn’t have to change the behavior of its citizenry, and using the time-honored marketing tactic of repetition. It will probably work. I feel guilty by the end it and I’ve never smoked a cigarette.
Our society is mad about behavior modification. It works.
B. F. Skinner (1904-1990) became one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century by applying a simple discovery. He observed that, if you wanted a rat to press a bar, prodding him with stimuli was less effective than rewarding him after he pressed it. Skinner taught how positive and negative reinforcement could change behavior.
The applications go well beyond marketing and management.
On June 25, 2006, the New York Times published an article called, “What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage.” Author Amy Sutherland related that, in the course of researching a book about animal trainers, she had an epiphany. “I listened, rapt, as professional trainers explained how they taught dolphins to flip and elephants to paint. Eventually it hit me that the same techniques might work on that stubborn but lovable species, the American husband.”
Could she get her husband to pick his dirty shirts off the floor and put them in the hamper? By rewarding small steps toward the desired outcome, she found that, lo, she could.
Her article was on the most-emailed list for a long while.
Evangelical parents are keen to train their kids in the right behaviors, and their focus is overwhelmingly on modification strategies. Here is some advice on how to deal “creatively” with lying:
Draw up a contract with your child. After everyone agrees that lying, for example, is a cause for correction, establish and transcribe a reasonable punishment. Have you and your child sign and date the document. Then, whenever a situation comes up that would invite lying, gently remind him about the contract. Knowing that you will follow through on the penalty may be the extra incentive your child needs to choose to tell the truth.
Notice that the decision about lying is incentivized. The child makes a voluntary agreement about the punishment, and is reminded of it under temptation. If this scheme works, the child is not being taught to tell the truth, but to negotiate and weigh consequences. If I wanted to nurture a little pragmatist, this is exactly what I would do.
More from the same article:
Last week we ran into a few “heart” issues with Haven. It all came to a head when we caught her lying. Her correction has been to listen to the New Testament on tape. She usually gets to listen to an Adventures in Odyssey tape, but for the next 20 nights she will be filling her heart with the Truth.
Not the New Testament, Mom! Anything but that! Sentimentalizing the consequence with the words “filling her heart with Truth” doesn’t cover up the fact that the Bible is being used as negative reinforcement.
Locally, we are dealing with the dark side of behavior modification in the killing of a 7-year-old girl. Michael Pearl’s teaching on parenting is now under deserved scrutiny, not because he advocates child abuse (which he does not) but because of his extreme views about training children.
Pearl repeatedly compares children with animals, and uses the words training and conditioning interchangeably, as here (To Train Up a Child, p 12):
If the dog learns through conditioning (consistent behavior on the part of the trainer) that he will never be allowed to violate his master’s command, he will always obey. If parents carefully and consistently train up a child, his or her performance will be as consistently satisfying as that rendered by a well trained seeing-eye dog.
“Performance.” “Consistently satisfying.” Even if that expansive claim were true, I wouldn’t want my sons to obey like dogs. I want them to obey as respectful human beings.
Pearl makes an easy target, with this kind of irresponsible comparison and with his outlandish doctrine. But our culture as a whole is fixated on behavior modification. From marketing to management to relationships, we are profoundly manipulative. And evangelical Christians are little different.
I believe Christian parenting can demonstrate the power of Jesus Christ. Christ does not condition children for performance; he raises them up in new life. A parent’s job is to guide a unique little person, made in the image of God, to his or her Savior.
This starts with recognizing that the child’s soul and conscience are able to relate to God directly, apart from our control (Luke 1.39-45; Matthew 18.1-4; Mark 10.13-16). Further, a wise parent does not frame behavioral issues in terms of giving a satisfactory performance, but in terms of the new life Christ gives (Colossians 3.1-17).
Our parenting should be about Christ, not about us.
It’s time to reject the degrading puppetry of behavior modification, regardless of whether the puppeteer is a fundamentalist or a psychologist. We need to engage firmly, humbly, and humanely with children’s souls.
Audio: Pray For Those the Father Gave You
March 17th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
by Matthew Raley
"Study," Giacomo Cavedone (1577-1660), Metropolitan Museum of Art
In this sermon, we conclude our study of Jesus’ prayer in John 17 by examining how he intercedes for those the Father has given him.
Excellent Resource For Questions About the Pearls
March 12th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
by Matthew Raley
I just found this post by Rey Reynoso on Theologica. It is a thorough treatment of what Michael and Debi Pearl teach from a theological and exegetical perspective. Reynoso’s discussion of the Pearls’ use of Proverbs is particularly insightful.
For those who accept at face value the Pearls’ claims to be biblical, this is a post to spend time on.
Pearl Of Too Great a Price
March 10th, 2010 § 14 Comments
by Matthew Raley
"Roots of the Strangler Fig Tree," Eliot Porter, 1954, Metropolitan Museum of Art
After I criticized Michael Pearl’s teaching on parenting last week (here and here), I’ve heard a recurring question. Should we throw out a teaching that has helped so many struggling parents just because some points of doctrine are wrong?
Christian parents today are indeed struggling, often desperate to prevent their children’s falling away from Christ. Especially in the last twenty years, many have heeded the claims that righteousness is a matter of training. They want a system that yields results.
Please read this opening sentence from A. W. Tozer’s The Root of the Righteous with care:
One marked difference between the faith of our fathers as conceived by the fathers and the same faith as understood and lived by their children is that the fathers were concerned with the root of the matter, while their present-day descendants seem concerned only with the fruit.
In the criticism of Pearl’s teaching over the last several weeks, there has been a focus on the fruits of his system. But there has been a dearth of pastoral leadership calling believers back to the root of the matter.
I want to appeal to those parents who say they’ve seen fruit in applying Pearl’s teaching. I understand that you don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath. But you can’t ignore the connection between Pearl’s doctrine and practice.
A child cannot relate to God, he says. Before the “age of accountability,” a child is “too young to fathom God,” and needs a “surrogate god” in the form of a parent “until he is old enough to submit himself to The Eternal God.”
The parent, as God’s “surrogate,” purifies a child’s guilt through spanking. Pearl teaches this point in detail under the heading, “The rod purges the soul of guilt,” in his “Defense of Biblical Chastisement, Part 1.” Pearl states, “The properly administered rod is restorative as nothing else can be. It is indispensable to the removal of guilt in your child. His very conscience (nature) demands punishment, and the rod supplies the needs of his soul, releasing him from his guilt and self-condemnation.”
In this section specifically devoted to the nature of guilt and its remedy, Pearl does not mention anything about the cross of Jesus Christ. Not a single word. He says nothing about Christ purging our sin and cleansing our conscience, finally and eternally.
If you admire Pearl’s fruit, I need to ask you, “How do you believe your child is saved from sin? Can your child, right now, approach the Eternal God’s throne blameless by faith in Jesus Christ, the high priest? Or are you responsible before that throne for driving sin out of your child and making him or her righteous through training?”
To spank rightly in practice, you have to reject this teaching. If there is a baby in Pearl’s bath, she has drowned.
I also feel the need to appeal to other parents — a growing chorus — who are shocked by Pearl’s fruit.
Some of the fruit is indeed shocking. The killing of a child by people who apparently took the teaching to a logical extreme is a horror.
But what if Pearl’s fruit did not appear so vile? What if Pearl’s adherents all stayed perfectly within his stated limits for spanking? What if their fruit consisted solely of compliant, pleasant children who were helpful and never got in anyone’s way? What would we say then?
I would say this.
Those most resistant to the gospel of forgiveness by faith alone in Christ alone are the compliant people whose childhood guilt was purged by many spankings, and who never depart in adulthood from the way in which they were trained up. As Pearl himself says (in the same section cited above), a child relates “to his parents in the same manner that he will later relate to God.” Just try convincing a man trained this way that he needs, or could ever have, a Savior.
I urge my fellow critics of Pearl’s teaching to talk about the Gospel. This is the moment to contrast Pharisaical legalism with the power of Jesus Christ.
I waited too long to research Michael Pearl. I’m grieved that I reacted to fruit instead of studying more deeply. Pastors, it’s time for us to declare ourselves on the root of the matter. Our numbers are too small today (cf. this list). Join us!
Here is the root question I believe we have to raise with our congregations: “Is there any training that replaces Christ’s all-sufficient righteousness?”
Our people need to see the great price of following Pearl.
Audio (With Comments About Michael Pearl): Pray For Your Role
March 9th, 2010 § 2 Comments
by Matthew Raley
"Hands," by Jose Clemente Orozco, 1926, Museum of Modern Art
On Sunday, I continued to preach on Jesus’s high priestly prayer in John 17 (audio here). I focused on how Jesus prayed for himself in the unique role the Father had given him, and on how we ought to pray for ourselves in the many other roles we’ve been assigned.
It was heavy on my mind to comment on the distortion of the parenting role in Michael Pearl’s theology and practice. These comments begin about halfway through the sermon. For those active in the controversy around the country, please pray for us in California’s north valley, where the death of Lydia Schatz occurred, as we repudiate this teaching.
