Like clay in the hands of a potter

Parents and children are made of the same stuff.

Parents are people too. Persons are not abstract. You personally were called to parent your children personally. There is not a singular perfect parent. There is not only one way to be perfect. It is okay to be you as a parent. You growing, you doing the work in yourself, but you. You are not enough, but you are assigned the task.

I want to say, goal is that they don’t need me but they already don’t need me.

https://c.pwm.fund/wiki/jrnl/You_can__39__t_reach_the_brain_through_the_ears/

He leaves no gate unlocked in his fortress of logic.

Incapacitated

See that you do not look down on one of these little ones.1

Children are looked down on, treated as less than, treated as incapacitated. For example, they are subject to the control of their parents and other authorities using methods and to extents that would be morally wrong for an authority to require of an adult. The same adult who decries the state for daring to regulate the size of cups at fast food restaurants will, in the same breath, condemn parents whom they deem to have failed to supervise their children’s diet with sufficient attention. What is it that is true about children, but not true about adults, that justifies or requires that children be treated differently? It is sometimes argued that children lack some level of brain development, or some particular understanding, or some mental ability, that is present in adults – “I am but a little child: I know not how to go out or come in.”2 This could make sense except that we do not test for the presence of some identifiable mental faculty before treating anyone over the age of 18 as an adult. Perhaps it is that children are too inexperienced, or too short-sighted, or too naive to be allowed to make decisions that could affect too long into their futures. But we all know too many adults who are unworthy of being trusted to make decisions for themselves.

are kids different that just “a person”. Do they have some sort of incapacity that renders them less than and so subject to the will of their parents. What is true about a child but not true about an adult, that allows or requires children to be treated differently? Force can be used against a child in situations and for purposes that would be morally wrong if so used against an adult – a fellow full person. Why? – It is not a question of a child’s incapacity or disability – It’s that parents are part of the multitudinal hierarchy of authorities, and therefore have responsibilities beyond just their kids – seeking the shalom of their dominion, instruction, rebuke, correction, the sword against evil-doers, kings tear down the high places, leaders seek the flourishing of those led but not flourishing towards just any goal. God demands our internal affections, but he commands (and entrusts authorities with enforcing) external behaviors – I don’t know if you love the Lord with all of your soul, but I require you to attend the yearly festivals.

Their brains aren’t fully developed. They lack impulse control. They can’t be expected to …

Adults

You can’t disciple a pagan. If your child is saved, they are an adult. Children can be enslaved, but they cannot be knighted. A man submits to his king – maybe the wrong king – but a man chooses his king and bends the knee.

Notes

All children of the king are under the command to be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. But of the pagans it says, “Let the dead bury their own dead”.

All men by nature desire to know. No, “all that can be known about God as already been made manifest to them”. All men desire to deceive themselves and others. All men desire to be known (seen) and loved. Delusion that I could finally love myself if someone else would love the “real” me. Not me as I am called to be, but me as I tell myself I am. Except I don’t know who I am, and what little I know I don’t like. Trans Visibility Day – I’ll finally be happy if I’m seen and accepted. We desire community, acceptance; but not to be known. We need and desire to be in secret, to be covered.

From a lower school email: ‘We believe that the first and most important goal of education is to help children grow into adults free to choose virtue, to make informed choices, and to engage actively and civilly in society. Mr. Fred Rogers reminds us, “Mutually caring relationships require kindness and patience, tolerance, optimism, joy in the other’s achievements, confidence in oneself, and the ability to give without undue thought of gain.”’

Mad-libbing. I wish I had [name an activity you did with your kids] more, because it hurts me that [son/daughter] is [name a painful experience your kid is having] now, and if I had done that more, then they wouldn’t be going through that. Full stop. No. Your child is their own person. Their problems are their own. You cannot ground your regrets in hypotheticals where you have the power to heal everything broken or bent in their soul. Regret that you should have done X because you knew at the time that doing X was required of you and you chose to follow your own brokenness instead.

Pay attention to the way people talk about kids. For example, “When students face challenges—and even failures— in a controlled setting and supported by caring and empathetic adults, it helps students learn how to bounce back from adversity and accomplish their objective. True achievement comes from encountering something difficult, persevering through it, and then finding success. As Dr. Charles Fay of the Love and Logic Institute explains, encountering real struggle is the only way children will develop the grit and determination to handle the much bigger challenges that life has in store for them when they’re older.” Hear the determinism. What choices is the student given. In what ways is the student treated like a person in himself. I, as the teacher, require that the student struggle to accomplish some feat I have chosen. If I require them to struggle until they achieve, then they will become adults who are able to handle bigger challenges. If I don’t, then they won’t become that. I control who the student becomes. I decide who they should be as adults, and my treatment of them makes them who they are as adults.

Your kids adopt their own lies and live their own faults. You see your faults in your kids because you see your own reflection in everyone. You can’t see past yourself. Whatever problems you find most glaring in others are in reality your own. If you don’t see youself clearly then you only see yourself when you look at others. If you saw yourself clearly, then you would see how little access you have to your own soul, and you would stop decieving yourself into thinking you have access to other people’s souls.

Treating people as people:

The right to take risks is a central part of human dignity and autonomy. Elder Law, Kohn.

Biblical:

Before (at the time) the child knows to reject the evil and choose the good. – but see also Jonah 4:11 where adults cannot distinguish between their right and their left.

When I was a child, I thought like a child

Titus 1 - an elder must have believing children. So a parent can control / decide / shape even belief in their kids.

The Mosiac Law does not explicitly forbid pedophilia. So law is intentionally incomplete (a hierarchy of principles with a god at the top). Nowhere is it written “thou shalt not lie with a girl as one lies with a woman.” The prohibition has to be inferred from more general prohibitions against adultery – you aren’t married to the child therefore it’s adultery. Most states in the US permit a child to marry an adult if the child’s parents give consent. Set aside the law, as a moral question: can a parent give consent on behalf of a child for an activity to which the child themselves could not consent. A child is not legally empowered to consent to life-saving medical treatment. A child is not legally empowered to consent to have their teeth cleaned by a dental hygienist. What moral principle distinguishes between a parent giving consent for a doctor to amputate a child’s arm to save their life; and a parent giving consent for a child to marry. Parallels between consenting on behalf of children and consenting on behalf of the senile. An agent holding a durable power of attorney is expected to make the choice they think the principal would make is they were able. There’s a difference between an agent you chose consenting for you, and unchosen parents consenting for you. We allow adults to make choices that harm themselves – to choose not to receive treatment, to choose to engage in risky behavior, to choose to overindulge on food or drug.

Eph 4 – building up to mature manhood.

You are not a man because you pass a test or attained some age or acheived some feat. Manhood is not a line that is crossed. It is a path that is walked. You’re a man when you own responsibility for yourself, and choose daily to grow.

Don’t let them despise you because of your youth. Age that adulthood happens. Importance of community celebrating becoming adult, and then holding to be standard.

Self-evident Truths

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all free, land-owning white men are created equally better than any other race, gender or economic stratus, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal and that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights. This is not true for the materialist. Evolved by definition means unequal – each member of the species is somewhere different on the spectrum of more or less fit. There is no human dignity or human worth, only power, only competition, the endless struggle to hoard limited resources and reproduce. There is no soul, no I, only flesh – indistinguishable from the flesh of any other animal. There is no hope for tomorrow, only this life today. The materialist is scary because if they ever finally acknowledge their reality, then they can rationally only become either a nihilist or a hedonist. Humanism is inherently irrational for a materialist.

What is true of all persons? Accountable before God. Rights: Agency, Secrecy. Are they stewards before they confess Christ?

What is a man

Deut 21:20 – The rebellious son was a “drunkard and a glutton”, which doesn’t sound like a minor child. -> Honor thy father and mother not just a command to little children.

  1. Matthew 18:10↩︎

  2. 1 Kings 3:7↩︎