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Books in 2012: Bible Basics for Catholics.

A week ago, at a Life Teen core team* meeting, each core member received a copy of Bible Basics for Catholics: A New Picture of Salvation History by John Bergsma, a convert to Catholicism, biblical scholar and professor at Franciscan University of Steubenville. As of tonight, it’s the nineteenth book I’ve read in full in 2012.

The book is, in Bergsma’s words, “a whirlwind tour of the biblical storyline.” The author draws out the Adamic, Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic and new covenants (figuratively, but also literally, using stick figures) and ties them each to each other and to what he calls the Eucharistic covenant (which is the new covenant. “However,” Bergsma wrote, “for the sake of learning salvation history, I like to call it the ‘New’ when it’s being prophesied and ‘Eucharistic’ after its fulfillment.”).

The book is equal parts incredibly easy to read and incredibly informative. And I may or may not have thrown a fist in the air in a fit of joy and shouted “boom shocka locka” when I finished reading the part about what Jesus did for us. How awesome is He? Just sayin’.

Here are some of my favorite excerpts:

On each of the covenants to be discussed in the book:

“When the priest prays at mass, ‘Time and again you offered them covenants,’ it means, ‘God repeatedly tried to make us his family.'” -page 4

 On the arrival of woman:

“The Bible tells us there was found no ‘helper fit for (Adam)’ among the animals, so the LORD put him into a deep sleep and made the woman for him out of his rib. The next morning when Eve was brought to Adam, he bursts out in rather nice poetry:

Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.

Some consider this to be the first poetry found in the Bible. Through it, we see the civilizing effect that Eve has on Adam. Up to this point, he’s just been sitting around naming animals: ‘Dog!’  ‘Ape!’ ‘Salamander!’ Now he sees this woman, and he becomes the Bard, belting out sonnets in iambic pentameter (well, not quite, but you get the point). Perhaps the author wants to point out that the arrival of woman is a high point in God’s creation, and that woman brings out the best in the man.” -pages 23-24

On Adam’s roles:

“This gives us our final portrait of Adam according to Genesis 1-2: firstborn son, king, priest, prophet and bridegroom.

 So what’s the point? Why bother talking about Adam’s roles? We began this chapter with the question, ‘What is the meaning of life?’ What is our purpose here on earth? The Bible addresses this question in the first chapters, by painting a picture of Adam that is a model for every human being. All of us are called to be sons (or daughters) of God, and therefore kings (queens), priests, prophets, and bridegrooms (brides).” -page 25

On sin:

“…the line between good and bad does not run cleanly between groups of people; it runs down the center of each person. Sin has infected every human being. St. Paul puts it like this: ‘All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God’ (Rom. 3:23)…” -page 44

On the significance of the Temple:

“For the ancient Israelite worshiper, the importance of the Temple can hardly be overemphasized. The Temple was a standing reminder of the covenants with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and David. It summed up all salvation history and represented all God’s relationships with his people. There was nothing greater than the Temple except God himself. Many years later, Jesus will describe his own presence by saying, ‘Something greater than the Temple is here’ (Matt. 12:6). When we understand how great the Temple was, we realize Jesus was claiming to be God.” -page 106

An important comparison between Jesus and Isaac:

“Calling Jesus ‘the Son of Abraham’ sets up a comparison between Jesus and Abraham’s son Isaac. The parallel is strong, especially when we think of the most important event in Abraham and Isaac’s life: the near-sacrifice on Mount Moriah. We have already discussed how this was a ‘mime’ of Calvary: the one-and-only-son carried the wood of his sacrifice up the mountain, where he is laid on the wood and offered to God out of love for his father.” -page 132

A summary:

“At the end of this book, we can now make a summary of the message of the Bible: the sonship Adam once enjoyed with God has been restored to us by Jesus Christ. Just as God breathed the ‘breath of life’ into the nostrils of Adam and made him a living being, so through baptism Jesus shares with us the ‘Spirit of Life,’ the Holy Spirit that makes us living children of God.” -page 154

And back to Adam’s roles and what significance they have for us:

“Our faith teaches us that, as children of God through Christ, all the rights and privileges of Adam have been restored to us. Like Adam, we can call God ‘Father’ (Luke 3:38). As royalty, we rule over our passions and possessions, rather than being ruled by them. As prophets, we speak God’s word to the people around us. As priests, we offer our very lives on a daily basis, as a ‘living sacrifice’ for the salvation of the whole world. Finally, as grooms and brides, we find our love and joy in embracing our true Spouse every time we come forward to receive communion.” -page 155

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Click here to learn more about Bible Basics for Catholics.

* The Life Teen core team is the group of adults who help the youth minister at church run our youth group. I joined the core team this summer. Click here to see how awesome our teens are (and click here to learn more about our ministry).

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Books in 2012: Successful Strategies for Working (or Living) with Difficult Kids

In prep for my second counseling practicum (which starts Aug. 27 – prayers are appreciated!), in which I’ll work with children and adolescents, I borrowed a bunch of relevant books from my mom, who is a therapist.

One of them – Successful Strategies for Working or Living with Difficult Kids by Joyce E. Divinyi – is the 18th book I’ve read in full in 2012.

What I ultimately got out of the book is a better understanding of the importance of rising above your reflexes. When a difficult child is agitated, it might be instinctual to yell back, or return insult for insult, or criticize the kid for bad behavior. But those responses (and others like them) meet the needs of the adult (to be right, to be liked, to protect the ego, for instance). This is a problem because while the adult is meeting a need of his or her own, a child’s need goes unmet – the need for a role model, for example, or the need to be encouraged, even as he or she appears prepared to make a bad decision, to make a good choice (and that you believe he or she can do that).

The book is chock full of gems, as helpful for parents and future parents as for people whose professions require work with difficult kids (defined in the book as either defiant/disruptive or lethargic/unmotivated, whose emotional development might be arrested, all for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to having experienced a childhood trauma).

Here are some of my favorite excerpts:

On judging children: 

“Just as our emotional reactions to these children lead to judgments, our judgments have a significant impact on our expectations for these children. And children respond to our expectations. If we believe they are trouble, and will continue to be trouble, often they are. … The first step, therefore … is to suspend your judgments. … Start with the idea that this child has the potential for success at some level, and that with creativity, perseverance and the right structure, you just may be the one to help him or her succeed.” -pages 22-23

On the problem with “passive activity”:

“Passive activity may sound like a contradiction in terms but it is a good way to describe television viewing. Many children are being overexposed to passive activity because they spend most of their free time in front of a television. It is not just the content of television programming that can have an impact on their lives. … (There are) some excellent programs available for children and adolescents–but there are many things children can never experience or learn by passively watching. … how to play, how to imagine, how to problem solve, how to communicate, how to handle their emotions, how to think, how to develop a skill, how to overcome mistakes, how to set goals, how to compete, how to work, how to interact with others, how to respond to authority, how to discern right from wrong.” -pages 30-31

On discerning the difference between appropriate and inappropriate behavior:

“If the behavior is unacceptable in the workplace, make it unacceptable in the classroom. … If a behavior would get someone fired in the workplace, it should not be tolerated in the classroom.” -page 49

On predicting a positive future:

“Be careful not to predict a negative future. Do not say, ‘If you keep this up, you are going to fail.’ Say instead, ‘You’re too smart to fail. If you decide to work hard at this, you will pass.'” -page 56

“It is especially helpful to affirm their ability to make a good choice when they are very agitated and most apt to do something wrong. You can say, ‘You’re a smart person. You can make a good choice now,’ in the place of saying, ‘You better not do that!’ or ‘If you do that, I’ll…'” -page 57

On giving kids choices instead of demands:

“(Say) … “These are choices, these are the consequences and these are the benefits or rewards,”. The system helps eliminate angry reactions and battles of the will by defining expectations in the form of choices the child makes rather than demands you make.” -page 65

On the importance of being consistent:

“Inconsistency in your responses to inappropriate behavior reinforces the very behavior you are trying to eliminate.” -page 73

On the importance of being firm, but respectful (i.e. don’t yell or talk down, don’t use “threatening words, tones or gestures”):

“These children need instruction in appropriate behavior and they need role models for positive behavior, conflict resolution and anger management. You are the model. You must show them how people work out differences or deal with angry feelings without being destructive to themselves or others. Many times you are their only opportunity to see these skills and traits in action.” -page 75

Yelling “communicates the message that you are not in control of yourself.” -page 84

On praising the deed instead of the person: 

“Praise should always focus on behavior or actions, not on personality or personhood. Say, ‘You did great.’ Do not say, ‘You are a great guy.’ Say, ‘It was so good to hear you use words to express your anger instead of hitting or yelling.’ Do not say, ‘You are so good because you are learning to say your feelings.'” -page 88

On our mission with children:

“Sometimes parents, and even those of us who work with children, forget that our mission is to teach children to be independent of us.” -page 95

On why kids should experience reasonable, natural consequences:

“…When you take away opportunities to experience the consequences of mistakes, you rob children of their personal power, especially the power of resilience.” -page 97

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Click here to read about all the books I read in 2012.

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“You throw like a girl.”

Ever hear one guy tell another he “throws like a girl” in effort to insult him?

EspnW.com contributor Sarah Spain weighs in on why men (and women!) ought not to use words as insults that are actually intended to identify females (and I wholeheartedly agree with her):

“It’s time to put an end to these lazy, damaging jeers. It’s time to stop spreading the message that being female is inherently wrong or inferior. The use of ‘woman’ or ‘female’ or ‘girl’ as an insult is sexist, plain and simple. … Assigning characteristics like ‘tough’ and ‘strong’ to men and ‘soft’ and ‘weak’ to women is not only lazy, it perpetuates stereotypical gender roles and can be harmful to both boys and girls. Those qualities are personality traits, not gender traits.”

Click here to read what she wrote in full. (And big thanks to reader Andrew for pointing this article out to me  in his comment on my post about the book The Purity Myth.)

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Our call to counter-intuitive love: How do we respond to people who commit crimes?

Last month, I stumbled upon a blog by a guy named Chris Schumerth. From it, I found a column he wrote for a newspaper, about his brother Shane.

On March 6, 2012, the principal at the Jacksonville school where Shane taught Spanish fired him. Shane left the grounds, but returned with a gun and fatally shot the principal and himself.

“Given the tragic events at Episcopal School of Jacksonville on March 6, it is certainly fair for the impacted communities to have questions about who Shane Schumerth was and why he would do what he did,” Chris wrote. ” … But like so many questions, perhaps the first step to answering who Shane was is to pose another question: Which Shane Schumerth are we talking about?”

Chris went on to tell Shane’s story–a truer story than the one our culture might have told about him otherwise.

What Chris wrote really moved me, and I invited him to write with me about why true stories like his brother’s are important. He agreed:

Arleen: Last month, I watched a video of James Holmes in a jailhouse jumpsuit in a courtroom, accused of killing 12 and injuring 58 others in the movie theater shooting in Colorado. After I watched it, I overheard somebody else who saw it share his opinion of Holmes: “What a piece of trash.”

A couple years ago, in the middle of the night, I watched Tampa cops corral the crowd that surrounded a man named Dontae Morris. Morris was in cuffs, arrested for fatally shooting two police officers. A cop led him through the crowd, from the police station to a squad car on live TV. The crowd erupted. People yelled obscenities. Shouted “dead man walking.” Spat at him.

The affected (directly and indirectly) respond. There is anger and grief. There are calls for justice (if not retribution). In it all, there is commentary. The community calls it as it sees it: “The perpetrator deserves the needle. Is scum. Evil. A monster. A loser. A street rat. A piece of trash.”

But in the wake of a tragedy, one truth unchanged by it is forgotten: The perpetrator is a person.

Chris: First of all, I should say that in the aftermath of my brother’s death, my family’s experiences with Episcopal High School in Jacksonville have been positive ones. They have honored Shane’s humanity and respected that we, too, were experiencing loss. But that does not in any way diminish what you say; the kind of discourse you mention is very common and real.

You hint–correctly, I think–that the anger serves as a way for people to cover up their pain or vulnerability. We certainly can understand those feelings after something like Aurora. People have lost someone they care about (or at least are reminded of a time when they did) and they feel more scared about the world they live in, so they lash out. Our cries for retribution are often just that: a way for us to not have to feel our own weakness or tenderness. It’s easier to hate than it is to say “You hurt me,” isn’t it? I have certainly been guilty of this myself at various points in my life, more often than I’d like to admit.

To offer up another situation for comparison, think about the sex scandal at Penn State. It is certainly right to advocate for victims and to seek some sort of justice for those who either acted violently or inappropriately with children, or knew it was happening. But too much of the discourse–both publicly and privately–is so much more than that. It’s dehumanizing. We forget that even criminals have fears, insecurities, questions, dreams, and perhaps what we might be able to connect with the most, pain. People don’t just wake up one day and decide to kill someone. There is a whole series of complexities that lead a person there. This does not in any way “excuse” a crime like murder or rape or terrorism, but I think there is a certain way we can talk about people that honors their dignity. And I also think there is a drastic difference between disciplining or convicting from a position of love–which is possible but difficult, for sure–and doing those things from hate, which is what usually happens.

Sometimes it doesn’t even take death or tragedy for us to resort to this kind of oral or written dehumanization; it may just be that a person is on the other side of the political spectrum. Listen to certain Democrats talk about Rush Limbaugh or Republicans about President Obama, and too often you will hear language that suggests there are no redemptive qualities whatsoever about the person in question. If policy disagreements are enough for us to completely dismiss other people, you can imagine that we only escalate when a tragedy occurs.

Arleen: Sincerely. And I think it’s counter-intuitive in our culture to imagine after a tragedy that the person responsible for it had a childhood, hobbies, a personality, a sense of humor, a family that loves him or her no matter what. It’s counter-cultural to admit that he or she has dignity, let alone to talk about him or her in a way that honors it.

Instead, we rob them of their humanity, and of their intrinsic value. We reduce them to trash or we spit on them (often even we who aim to model our lives after Christ’s, who would never do that). We are afraid, really, to relate to them (and when we deny their humanity, disregard their value and distort the truth about them, we don’t have to admit that we can.).

But if we don’t let ourselves relate, how can we forgive? How can we reconcile? How can we love? To which (my gut says) the world would respond with this: Why should we?

Maybe we should love because love is what we’re made for. Or because a crime does not erase the humanity or dignity of the person who commits it. Or because in acknowledging that people who commit crimes can be loved (and by loving them), we model the kind of love the world desperately needs.

Chris: It’s interesting that you mention Christ, who was betrayed, spit on, whipped, and crucified. Real love and forgiveness certainly are counter-intuitive in our own culture, but these things are more perennial than we’d like them to be. The human condition is, indeed, very fallen. Still, it’s sad, and we all feel the effects in our broken relationships.

We particularly feel the effects when we are the ones dehumanized or dismissed–some people unfortunately spend their entire lives there–but I think we also lose when we do the dismissing. I recently read a book called The Wisdom of Stability by Jonathan Wilson-Hargrove, and I was struck by his referring to people as “gifts.” I grew up in the church, and yet, why hadn’t I been taught that, or better yet, why hadn’t it been instilled in me? That I am a gift, and so, too, are the people in my life around me. Too often we treat each other as burdens, and that message gets ingrained into our psyche. If Shane had believed and known with his whole being what a gift he was, he wouldn’t have done what he did. It is certainly not all my responsibility, but in some ways Shane’s final act was as much my failure as his own.

Yes, we are flawed, blatantly so. We will make mistakes, hurt each other. And if we’re going to talk about love and respect and dignity and forgiveness, let’s not be naive. It takes a ton of work to forgive. You don’t just take two warring sides the day after a huge battle and have them hug and sing Kumbaya together. Not to mention, it takes two willing sides to reconcile, and it’s usually hard enough to find one. A willing individual or family or community or nation is ready to put in the intentional time and effort and heartache to work things out together. That’s a lot different from what we usually see, which is that we put all the onus on one particular side to change, and when they’re willing, then we can move forward.

Meanwhile, we avoid, or we fight, and we part ways, because frankly, it’s easier to live that way. And yet, I trust that there is in fact a better way. I, for one, cannot afford to move forward with my own life without having been changed by the loss of my own brother.

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Click here to read what Chris wrote about Shane in the Florida Times-Union.

Click here to follow Chris’s blog.

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Discipline.

This + pizza = Friday nights from 1993-2000, give or take.

Over the weekend, I stumbled upon a Boy Meets World marathon, which, obviously, made my world a better place.

The sitcom, starring Ben Savage as Cory Matthews, was the best part of the Friday nights of my youth (perhaps second and third only to pizza and being allowed to stay up to 11, respectively).

After I saw the show this weekend, I like it even more. This is in part because I get way more of the jokes now, and in part because it is a wellspring of wisdom.*

In one of the episodes I saw Saturday, Cory turned for help to Mr. Turner, his seventh grade teacher, when he had to make a decision. Cory made his choice, it backfired on him and he returned to Mr. Turner. Allow me to reenact:

Cory: “I made the wrong decision.”

Mr. Turner: “I could’ve told you that.”

Cory [agitated]: “Why didn’t you?”

Mr. Turner: “You don’t listen in class, you’re gonna listen in life?”

PREACH.

The important part of Mr. Turner’s point is this: selectivity hurts us.

We tell ourselves it’s ok to be selective.

That we can slack off in one context and our willingness to work hard won’t suffer in others.
That we can be be dishonest in one context and our willingness to be honest in others won’t waver.
That we can tune out in one context and our willingness to listen won’t deteriorate in others.

But if an aspiring entrepreneur will not work hard when she’s flipping burgers, is she really gonna work hard when she’s starting a business?

If a guy will not be honest with his friends, is he really gonna tell his wife the truth?

If a boy will not follow directions in the classroom, is he really gonna follow directions in life?

Deciding to embody a particular quality does not determine whether you will. Discipline does.

And we live in a discipline resistant world. A culture captivated by uninterrupted contentment and effortless gratification is not interested in self mastery. It isn’t interested in always working hard, or always being honest, or always listening. It would rather work hard and be honest and listen only on its own terms, when the social and self-focused rewards for it are instant.

Which is why people who grow up in this culture pout while they wait in line, or when the Wi-Fi is slow (or there isn’t any), or when the cable goes out, or the call gets dropped, for instance.

But if we can’t wait in line (or wait at all) without complaining, how good will we be at waiting in other contexts?

Like waiting for the dream job opp to arise while we flip burgers in the meantime.

Waiting for what we want to buy to go on sale (and not paying more for it than we should).

Waiting to meet the right kind of guy or girl (and not shifting our standards so the wrong one starts to look right).

Waiting until we are married to have sex.

But there’s a bright side. If we work hard, and tell the truth, and listen, and wait when we don’t want to, we will be better equipped to do so when we want to.

Jon Acuff puts it this way:

“…discipline begets discipline. When you step up to a challenge before you, your ramped-up resources rub off on other areas of your life. You wouldn’t think eating less ‘fat’ would impact how closely you monitor your family’s financial budget, but it’s all tied together. Discipline and focus are contagious and they tend to spread their benefits all around.”**

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*It’s a wellspring of wisdom when compared with what’s new on TV today.

**This quote comes from page 22 of Acuff’s book Quitter.