The Household and Freedom
June Arts and Culture, Household Happenings, and Thoughts on Freedom and Responsibility
Welcome to the new and improved Notes from the Fray! I’m going to tweak this format as I go until I hit a stride that works, so excuse any stumblings as I get my legs under me.
June Arts and Culture
Here are some of the books, movies, and music I engaged with this month.
Movies
The World’s Fastest Indian - I can’t say I’d recommend this movie. It had a good story of a man (played by Anthony Hopkins) achieving difficult goals but was sprinkled with lots of fornication, which tainted an otherwise interesting story.
El Dorado - This was a fun movie and one my wife and I enjoyed. It was relatively clean and had good characters. The main character, a hired gun, is played by John Wayne. As with most older movies, it was refreshing to see men acting like men and women acting like women, without much of the confusion about roles most movies have included for the last several decades.
Books
Rules for Reformers, Douglas Wilson - I wrote on this here.
The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien - And I wrote on this, here.
The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien - I tell you what, Andy Serkis’s reading has made Middle Earth come alive. This audio production has made me resolve to read these books to my kids first, before they read them themselves and definitely before they see the movies. There’s just something about hearing a good story. As much as I love reading, it’s undeniable that there’s something about how God made us that is meant to hear things.
No More Mr. Nice Guy, by Robert Glover - You can read my review here. To sum up: not good, better to spend your time reading something else.
Love Among the Chickens, by P.G. Wodehouse - As always, Wodehouse’s book was delightful.
Fidelity: How to Be A One-Woman Man, by Douglas Wilson - This is a Wilson book I’d heard about from a couple of people but never gotten around to reading. So, when I was looking for my next read a few weeks ago, I settled on this one. I found it incredibly helpful and practical. Wilson managed to pull off his aim of speaking candidly and clearly, without being crass; a difficult feat considering the subject of the book.
Primeval Saints: Studies in the Patriarchs of Genesis, by James B. Jordan - A fantastic book. Although I’ve listened to many hours of Jordan’s lectures on Canon+, this was my first book I’ve read by him. I can’t think of a theologian who has had more of an impact on my way of thinking than Jordan has over the last year or so. I highly recommend you find some of his resources and check them out. This book was more of the same excellence. He goes through Genesis and brings out themes, types, parallels, and other literary features that modern readers rarely pick up on. I highly recommend this book.
Music
A Mighty Host - Brian Sauve’s newly released song has been an instant favorite of mine. Enjoy.
Glenn Miller and His Orchestra - I’ve been introducing my kids to Glenn Miller’s music, and they’ve been enjoying it. In high school, there was a year or two when I listened to almost nothing but Miller and a couple of other big band groups. It’s been fun to revisit his music.
Writing
Also, check out this piece I contributed to on
:Household Happenings
This month has been full of preparations for a household move. As we’ve grown and our values have become more defined, our goals have changed a little. Being close to family is more important to us now than it was before, mostly because we’ve thought more about it than we had before.
That being the case, we’ve made the decision to move to be close to family in East Tennessee. We prepped our house and listed it around the middle of the month and within a little over a week, had several offers. Needless to say, we accepted one and have been moving forward with moving plans. Our house has been busy with the packing, preparations, and other bumbling and bustling that surrounds a move (and a stomach bug, but that was just a little side quest to the main adventure). I won’t deny that I’m looking forward to being back in Appalachia. I’ve missed it and look forward to raising our children there, especially close to family.
We’re also planning a long-overdue visit to the other side of our family in Washington State, which we’re looking forward to. It’ll be a whirlwind of a summer filled with good things. Moving, midwife appointments, and sickness, combined with the bittersweet feelings of leaving one community for another have all been a part of our June. The Lord has blessed us so far in our adventures, and we’re excited to see what He does with the rest of the summer.
The Productive Covenant Household, Freedom’s Foundation
In July, we Americans celebrate our declaration of independence from Britain. Each year, as these celebrations come around, it gets me thinking about the differences between our nation now and our nation as it was founded. More fundamentally, I begin to think about the nature of freedom and what the American founders were aiming for. To use an oft-quoted saying of John Adams:
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. - John Adams
The idea is that a free people must also be a responsible people who have the moral compass to make responsible decisions for the good of their own households and the households around them. Of course, the Scriptures provide the foundation for morality. In society, the productive covenant household is the foundational piece God uses to establish freedom. When a household’s members are handling the appropriate household-level responsibilities of soceity well, the whole society is better off. Those responsible households then make up responsible churches and communities, which form responsible towns and cities. Once those households, churches, and communities are filled with responsible people and institutions, a society can handle freedom because those smaller units are taking care of things themselves at the proper level.
Responsibility: The Foundation of Freedom
To back up for a minute, freedom requires responsibility. A lot of the issues we see in society today stem from a wrong idea about liberty, held on both the left and the right. It’s the idea that we have a right to the peace, prosperity, convenience, and all-around comfort we experience for several decades. Americans love their freedom almost more than anything. But many have mistaken the peace and prosperity of late-twentieth-century America for the way things ought to be and will continue to be in the U.S., as if we have a right, or deserve, for our current comforts to be the case indefinitely. Not only does this display ignorance on our part, but it also erodes the freedom and prosperity we claim to deserve.
For every person there is a set amount of responsibility and someone has to take it. The person themselves might do it, or their family and friends, or the government, but somebody has to take responsibility. Then, there are different corporate responsibilities assigned to different levels of society by Scripture. These have been summed up in the concept of sphere sovereignty, with the spheres of civil government, church, and household all having their own unique responsibilities assigned by God. Comparing the New Testament teachings with the Old Testament instructions to Israel for how to structure society, a consistent principle stands out: the principle of subsidiarity.
Subsidiarity is the principle that responsibilities belong to the lowest possible level of society at which they can be handled well. This is the way many of the American founders attempted to establish the U.S. government. Any responsibilities not given to the federal government were reserved for the states. Ideally, the states would then practice the same principle with counties, cities, etc.
All of this breaks down, though, when one sphere or level of government begins to grasp for the responsibilities assigned to another and that other party gives it up. This is what’s been happening in the United States. The states, counties, and households have been willingly giving up their responsibilities for the sake of comfort. We want to be comfortable and responsibility is hard, so we offer it up for the government to do take responsibility for us in ways they are not supposed to.
Welfare for elderly or disabled family members? Let the government handle it. Saving for our old age, when we’re unable to be as productive as we once were and want to spend more time with family? Social Security and IRA’s can handle that. Educating and training our children? Public education has your back. Can’t control your spending to afford things like higher education or technical training? Tax-payer dollars can take care of that for you.
Step Up
The way to reverse this trend is to start taking those responsibilities back. We should be stepping up to provide well for our households, so that we don’t feel the need to turn to the government to pay for our education, or our internet, or our groceries. As more people develop the skills and habits necessary to take more responsibility for their households, the government programs will be less used. In theory, this should also mean people look around and see more and more wealthy, well-educated, loving households and that none of them are relying on the government to provide for them. While the government is ever-reluctant to give up power, there is a point at which they can’t make a program look good anymore. That should be our goal. To show how great it is to live in a responsible household, causing people to be willing to go through the hard times that lead there, and also causing the government’s attempts at fulfilling those responsibilities to look clumsy and undesireable.
All of that said, it’s not that it’s unlawful to use assistance provided by the government. Recognizing something as our direct responsibility doesn’t mean we don’t accept help from the church or the government at times, but it does mean that, even as we do so, we do it with the knowledge that it is first our responsibility and only secondarily theirs. The welfare of our parents as they age, education of our children, and provision for our children and their children should all be things that we take care of to the greatest extent possible ourselves.
Taking up these responsibilities that we’ve given away will not be easy. However, it is an act of obedience to God and submission to His way of ordering the world. He will never let honest efforts to glorify Him go to waste. That doesn’t mean you’ll receive everything you’ve ever wanted and everything will be easy. On the contrary, for your lifetime, it will likely be harder and less comfortable than if you just let the government handle everything. However, abdication of God-given responsibility always catches up to you. If you don’t pay the price, your children and their children will.
Be Responsible, Take Risks
Reality is full of paradoxes. For example, the basis of the Christian faith is that one must die to live; the fundamental paradox. But there are echoes of that seeming contradiction everywhere, responsibility being no exception. We tend to think that taking the “safer” route of finding a 9-5 job at a large corporation with a nice 401k plan and good benefits is the best option for us and our families. There are plenty of reasons that this isn’t the case (just ask the people laid off during any of the many economic downturns of the last few decades). But one relevant to our topic is that the options before us that include a lot of risk are often also full of many responsibilities.
And here’s the thing, God blesses it when we take responsibility for things like serving our community, and even when we take a risk to do so. When we bury our talents (the wealth, skills, experiences, and gifting God gave us), we generally don’t make much progress. But when we spend those resources, investing them in people, businesses, and our families, we take a risk, yes, but we also make it possible to get a large return, both in this life and the next. We don’t want to be foolish, but the more I study Scripture, the more I’ve come to realize that the foolish thing is to try to play it safe all the time. Wisdom is more about choosing which risks are the best ones to take, rather than about avoiding as much risk as possible.
Starting a business is a great example. Although it feels riskier because of the likelihood of failure, in the long run, it’s either just as risky or less so because you are in control of the situation. Yes, everything is on you, but that also means that you can adjust and take responsibility for things that are completely out of your control when you work for a large corporation. Or take real estate, for another example. Maybe you buy a home that needs some work. It’s true, you may not know everything the house needs when you buy it and it may cost more than you thought it would to fix it up. But, when it’s all said and done, if you are able to see it through, you’ve now contributed a nice home to live in for you, a renter, or the next person that buys the home. In both examples, if done well, you’ve added value to the lives of the people in your community. And if you fail (and fail well), you’ve learned lessons that will help you to be successful with the next opportunity that God provides for you.
This is the way God has designed the world: the difficult road is not always the best road, but the best road is always difficult. Problems, conflict, and failure are all a part of life. We shoot ourselves in the foot when we try to avoid these for the sake of our own comfort and end up giving up the very things we’re trying to hold on to: a loving family, generational wealth, the respect of people in our community, and so on.
So, this July, remember that freedom entails responsibility and difficulty. As you’re celebrating your freedoms, remember the cost paid for you to do so and consider passing some of that on down to the next generation. Only by a willingness to discipline ourselves, take on responsibility and risk, and think generationally will we see our culture revived; or a new one built.
Happy 4th!
In Him and for His Glory
P.S.
If you have any suggestions, thoughts on the new format, or something you’d like to see more (or less) of, let me know down in the comments!
Arts and culture section is pretty cool, thank you for this
I'm digging the new format!