Today is Wednesday, November 20, and this is William Michael of the Classical Liberal Arts Academy. A day or two ago, I posted a talk on the unjust criticism of home school families, and I introduced a couple of principles that I think are important for us to consider anytime we think about or talk about the education of children, the behavior of children, and how it relates to the commandment to honor your father and mother. We don’t talk about commandments much in modern Catholic culture, and we need to. We need to get back to the basics.
We need to look at the commandments as really the pillars of moral life and avoid getting lost in the weeds as it were, dealing with all sorts of individual issues, constantly reacting to things that modern society, with all its craziness, comes up with, we can’t be people who define ourselves by reactions. There has to be a positive Catholic culture, positive moral culture, and that that positive culture is found or established, I should say, when we develop a life that’s guided by God’s commandments. And so I emphasized in that talk, the need to consider our attitudes towards homeschooling, our thoughts about other people’s children, which which really is none of our business, and how it relates to the commandment for children to honor their own father and mother. But as I, as I finished that talk, and as I’ve seen some of the feedback from that talk, which has been encouraging, I’ve noticed the need for another talk that relates to it, and it has to do with this common theme of awkwardness among home school students.
There is a common criticism of homeschooling that homeschooling students are often awkward. They’re socially awkward, uncomfortable in society. They have a difficult time transitioning into adult life and so on. And I’d like to address that topic, because I think it’s it’s exaggerated and mythical, and I’d like to explain why, if I had to choose as a teacher, as a father, as a business owner, even I could say as a farmer, since I live on a farm and own a farm, if I had To choose to have a so called Cool young man helped me with any of my work.
Or if I had to choose a an awkward, innocent, devout boy to help me with my work, I would always choose the innocent, devout boy for many different reasons, most of all, because I would actually enjoy being with the devout boy. And awkwardness is just temporary. It’s part of it’s part of being young. It’s part of growing up dealing with awkwardness.
But this, this idea that home school students are awkward, that homeschooling leads to awkwardness, is a common accusation. And I’d like to to dig into this a little bit, because I think it’s not really true. I think it’s not a fair criticism of home school students, as we explained in that previous talk, children have one responsibility. There is one commandment that directs the entire life of a child.
The moral duty of children can be summed up with the commandment Honor your father and your mother. It makes the life of children very simple, and as I mentioned, God promises to bless the. The child who honors his father and mother. So there’s not much more for children to worry about, other than whether they’re honoring their father and mother, whether they’re being obedient, whether they’re being respectful, helpful, grateful and so on.
The life of a child, morally speaking, is very simple, not easy, but simple. Now we come to the the interesting dilemma, which is that even though children are commanded to obey their parents, and their parents have their own unique personality, occupation, culture, circumstances and so on. There comes a time when the children become adults themselves, and as adults, they have the right and responsibility to make a life for themselves, to become independent adults themselves, and they can’t simply copy and paste the life that was lived by their parents. One of the reasons why children can’t just do what their parents did is that their circumstances are not the same as their parents circumstances.
Sometimes parents started out in wealthy circumstances and were moved into humbler circumstances. Sometimes the opposite happens. Parents start out in humble circumstances and increase in wealth over time and live in more abundant circumstances later on. And when the children come to their adult years, they’re often in the opposite circumstances that their parents were in when they started their adult lives, especially in America, where social mobility is so great and so as as children approach adulthood and look At their adult decisions that need to be made.
They often can’t just copy and paste what mom or dad did. They’ve got to figure things out for themselves. And this is difficult. This is very difficult.
They often have to take routes and pursue things that their parents are not experienced in that their parents can’t necessarily help them in and in order to do that, the children have to step into uncharted territory. They’ve got to figure things out for themselves. They’ve got to explore different opportunities, different options they have, and they’ve got to take some time to to figure out what they’re good at, what they’re not good at, what appears to be interesting, but turns out to not be interesting. And it takes some time to do that, and in American society, especially because the market is so competitive this this period, this transitional period of young adulthood, is going to take some time.
We’re not going to see children become financially independent at age 18, just because they’re legally recognized as adults doesn’t mean they’re actually independent adults, and both parents and children need to understand that. And as we consider other people’s children, which again, is really none of our business, we need to keep this in mind that this transitional period is necessarily difficult, and there’s no right answer for how it should be pursued. There’s no There’s no right way to go about it, other than to keep God’s commandments, to always keep God’s commandments, we could say that the one principle, if there is one, is found in Proverbs chapter three, where we read, do not lean on your own understanding, but trust in the Lord in all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths. I know that passage is very helpful for young adults, because when I was a young adult, basically running full speed into the dark that passage say.
My life and kept me calm, knowing that it was really not my responsibility to know what to do or to know exactly where I should go, but to simply trust in God, to acknowledge Him, to pray for his direction, to ask for wisdom and to trust that he would answer that prayer and reveal my path over time. And I believe he has that, I would say, is really the key principle to this transitional period as our children move into adulthood, and it’s a very difficult period, and as I said, we very often, almost always, need to enter into unfamiliar situations, and that is necessarily awkward. It’s always going to be awkward to do that. It’s always going to be uncomfortable to do that.
It’s uncomfortable for anyone. I’m a 49 year old man, and if I’ve got to do something for the first time, it’s awkward and uncomfortable, and part of becoming an adult, part of becoming mature is learning how to do things that are awkward and uncomfortable. There’s a way to go about doing such things. It has a lot to do with humility and patience.
So this transitional period when children come out from under their parents is not difficult or awkward because they were home schooled. It’s awkward and difficult because it’s awkward and difficult. It’s a necessary part of life. The transition into one’s own independent life is always filled with awkward and uncomfortable situations, because it’s unique, it’s new, it’s different.
There’s no way to specifically prepare for it and so on. Now I would say one of the problems, one of the problems with home schooled children, is that this transition, this transition may be more challenging for some reasons, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. And I like to use an illustration from gardening when I think about parenting, when we start young plants, let’s say tomato plants, to keep it to keep it common.
When we start to grow tomatoes, we start with seeds, and we don’t go out into the garden and stick the seeds into the ground. We start by preparing trays with potting soil. And we put the tomato seeds into this special potting soil, in these potting trays, and we cover them, and we keep them indoors, where it’s warm, where there’s no wind, where the the soil is not going to be flooded or disturbed, and where the seeds can germinate and begin to grow. We control the circumstances of germination very carefully.
This is what greenhouses are for and for for home gardening, private family planting. We do this through, through little seed trays that come with plastic covers, and we put them in front of a window. We keep everything watered carefully. We create a totally unnatural environment for the sake of germination.
Totally artificial. We shelter the seeds. We shelter the germinating plants. Why?
Because they’re young and weak and the elements are destructive. Are too rough for them. They’re not prepared at this early stage of life to handle the elements, and so we protect them. Why?
Because we’re rational creatures, because we’re not stupid. And we keep these young plants indoors in controlled circumstances where the temperature is just right, the moisture is just right, so that they can get started growing and gain strength before they face the elements. That’s just common sense. We shelter the young plants.
We provide them with artificial circumstances and conditions, and we continue doing so as long as possible, the longer the better. In fact, we continue doing so as long as we can, but then we finally come to a point where it’s necessary to transplant these delicate young plants, and we try to wait to do so until they’re strong enough to succeed when they’re transplanted, we make sure that the temperature outside is not too cold. We make sure that the moisture in the soil is not going to be too much or too little. We make sure that we don’t plant them out into strong winds that are going to knock them over and break them apart or dry them out.
We monitor these first days, even weeks after these young plants are transplanted. We make sure that they’re watered every single day. We don’t rely on the rain. We make sure that they stay weeded and so on.
We care for we cultivate these plants until they bear fruit, so that they can bear fruit. And nobody calls the careful gardener a weirdo. Nobody calls the plants in the nursery. Weirdos, they don’t call plants that are sitting in trays under protective plastic covers.
Weirdos, when the farmer or the gardener takes his plants out to the field to transplant them, nobody calls the plants weird. Nobody calls that transition awkward. Nobody says that the awkwardness of transplanting young plants is a sign that someone is crazy. That’s how gardening works.
Now the problem, and this is where this illustration becomes really helpful, is that a gardener could go straight out into the field, straight out into the garden, and just stick the seeds right into the ground and leave them to natural circumstances. He can go out back with none of this, none of this nursery care, none of these planting pots or seed trays, none of this greenhouse attention. He can go right out into the wild and just take his seed packet and go plant his seeds in the ground and walk away and leave them to the elements. And what would happen?
He would plant 100 plant, 100 seeds, and six or seven of the plants might actually make it, and we might walk out into the field a few months later and find six or seven plants bearing tomatoes. And some might point to these tomato plants out in the field and say, Look, there’s no need for all that ridiculous care. There’s no need for germinating the plants under controlled conditions and putting them in seed trays and using potting soil and all this kind of stuff. Look these.
These plants here out in the field were just seated right into the ground, and everything’s fine. That’s how plants should be grown. That’s the way that plants should be grown. And the existence of these successful plants is the proof that this is the way to grow plants, and that all that stuff is weird, all that stuff, all that effort, all of that artificial care is all unnecessary.
That’s what weirdos. Two and these thriving plants prove that this is the case. What’s wrong with that argument? What’s wrong with that argument?
What’s wrong is that no one gives an account for the 94 dead plants. No one gives an account or takes any responsibility for the fact that almost all of the seeds that were planted have died. And this is this is common when we talk about parenting, when we talk about raising children. You can take someone like me and my wife, it’s true of my wife, also, we were both public school kids, and someone could come along, someone who wants to promote public schooling, and they can say, well, look at you.
You’re a public school kid. You went to public school, preschool. You went to public school, elementary school, middle school, high school, you even went to a public university. And you’re fine.
Look at you. You’re a Catholic husband and father. You’re a lay Dominican, even you’re doing fine. So why would you homeschool your children when you are an example that homeschooling is not necessary, and my answer to that would be, everything that you said is true about me, by the grace of God.
However, my 99 friends from high school aren’t like me. In fact, some of them are dead. So while I may be an example of a public school student that was just planted out in the field, as it were, there are 99 examples of other people like me who aren’t in my circumstances, who turned out very badly, and I don’t mean badly necessarily in a moral sense, but just in a sense of conditions of life. They’ve had it very rough.
God has been very good to me. Providence has been very friendly to me. I can’t explain all of the good fortune that I’ve enjoyed in my life, but I also don’t presume upon it and assume that my conditions in life should be treated as normal. When my wife and I welcomed our first children into the world, it would have been insane for us to say, hey, look, we made it through the system.
Let’s just stick these kids into the system. We would never say that, because we know what it cost for us to get through that system. We knew how many of our classmates and friends had their lives destroyed by lack of protection, by lack of instruction, lack of care, and so on and so no, we don’t. We don’t point to the seeds that succeed out in the field, the six or seven of them, we point to the 90 plus dead plants and say, We want to avoid that.
We want to avoid that. That’s our actual responsibility. And so this is why it’s reasonable for Christian parents to take such care for the cultivation of their children. The fact that some turn out well, even from the worst circumstances, does not mean that putting our kids in the worst circumstances is reasonable.
It doesn’t, it doesn’t argue that seeking to control our children’s environment, seeking to protect them from harmful influences and so on, is is somehow weird or cowardly. Its response. Responsible. It’s how gardening works.
Gardeners will take 100 seeds and they’ll germinate and raise 99 healthy plants and. That’s the science of gardening. That’s the science of horticulture, throwing the seeds out into the field and finding that a couple of them take root and grow is not horticulture. And so with parenting, the question is, should we act like horticulturalists, professional gardeners, trying to grow 100% of the plants that they seed.
Or should we live like wild seeds tossed around by the wind in the fields? And call that normal, there’s no, there’s no, there’s nothing to be discussed. The answer is obvious that when it comes to parenting, we should be like the gardener who takes every possible precaution to lead those young plants to strength. And so as we talk about young adulthood, we’re talking about this, this period where the plants are moved from the greenhouse, or from in front of the window, out into the garden, where they come into contact with the elements from which they’ve been protected.
Now in gardening, to continue this illustration, we don’t actually move plants from the greenhouse out to the field. We don’t actually move plants from from the the window sill, out into the garden. There’s a period, there’s a transition period that’s called hardening, hardening. And what we begin to do is, as the plants grow and as the plants become strong in the artificial conditions, we begin to expose them in controlled circumstances to the elements that they’re going to have to face.
So if we’re working with seed trays, we might bring the seed trays out and set them on the porch or put them out on the lawn during the daytime hours so they can start to get sunrise and face the wind and the elements outside the house. We We then bring them back in at night, or we cover them up so they don’t have to face the cold night air. We don’t leave them unsupervised if we find out that it’s getting windy, or if there’s rain in the forecast, we go cover them up or bring them in. The plants go through a transitional phase that’s called hardening before they’re planted out in the garden so they’re given a chance to face the elements under controlled, supervised circumstances.
And then when we see that they continue to grow and thrive, and they usually begin to toughen up a little bit, we then finally transplant them in the field. And even then, we don’t just leave them to themselves. We continue to cultivate them. We continue to keep an eye on them.
If we notice changes in the plants, we adjust things. We keep the soil cultivated. We keep weeds out of the area of the plants. We make sure that they get consistent amounts of water, we add some fertilizer and so on.
We help the plants and help the plants and help the plants. And when do we stop? Never we never stop helping the plants. We provide the plants with anything and everything they need until they finally bear fruit.
That’s how gardening works. And I would argue that parenting is nothing other than gardening. So now, when we think about children coming to this period of adulthood, let’s think about home schooled children. These children have been kept in the greenhouse.
They’ve been kept in seed trays. They’ve been living on the window sill. They haven’t faced strong winds, they haven’t faced cold night air. They haven’t faced rain storms and so on.
They’ve been protected. They’re totally unprepared to face the elements, and that’s okay. That’s natural. They’re just growing.
They’re gaining strength. They’re establishing roots. They’re developing. Okay, this is their natural process.
Now in our society, what our society says is that when a kid turns 18, he just needs to be tossed out into the backyard and made to go live on his own. There’s no gardener who would ever do that. I don’t know where that advice comes from. There is no gardener who would ever do that.
The only parents who would do that are those who are selfishly thinking about their own comfort or thinking about how they would rather spend their money than quote, unquote, waste it on their children, and they’re looking to just free themselves from the work of parenting. No one would advise anyone to just let the kids loose at 18, or to expect that they should be able to live on their own because they’ve reached their 18th birthday. And so we face this period, as I said, of transition, which is comparable in gardening to the hardening period, where we’ve got to begin to expose the kids to the elements. And we’re not talking about the elements of the natural world.
We’re talking about the elements of the intellectual world, the spiritual world, the commercial world and so on. They’ve got to learn what it’s like to actually live where we live, facing the elements that we face. They’ve got to learn how to face them, and they’ve got to learn how to face them in their own way. Because unlike plants, or I should say, in a way that exceeds any kind of variation among plants.
The variation from one individual to the next is much greater. And so we’ve got to go into this hardening phase of life, this early adult transitional phase, into this transplanting phase of life and realize that it’s going to be uncomfortable, but the kids are not supposed to bear this period of life by themselves. They’re supposed to continue to be supervised and cared for by their parents, by their pastors, by their teachers, by their friends and relatives and so on. No one is supposed to go out into the world as an individual and face all these elements by themselves.
And often, when we find kids being criticized of being awkward, they’re being criticized by the people who are supposed to be helping them. They’re being judged by the people who are supposed to be helping them, who can help them. If you, for example, know what a child needs in order to transition into adulthood, rather than stand there and watch rather than watch him fail, rather than watch him struggle and say, Aha, see, I told you, so. Look at this stupid kid.
Look at these awkward homeschool kids. Instead of thinking that you’re the judge, you should wake yourself up and realize that you’re supposed to be helping them. Of course, they’re awkward. You know why they’re awkward?
Because they’ve got people like you in their lives who don’t help them, who don’t do their job. That’s why they’re awkward. They’re like orphans. They’re like plants with no gardener, and the people criticizing them are the people who are supposed to be helping them.
And that’s why I say this, this idea that that that home school kids are awkward is a myth. They’re just normal, unfortunately, in in the in the in the selfish and cruel society that we live in, especially in Christian circles, the people who are supposed to be helping other Christian kids have decided that what they’re going to do instead is stand back and just watch them and point out their failures, and imagine that what they’re observing is a problem that’s caused by homeschooling rather than by a. Much bigger problem, which is just a social neglect of the children that belong to the church. As I mentioned, criticism I heard was coming out of the mouth of a priest criticizing people’s children, and as I, as I was listening to that I was I was thinking to myself, trying to be respectful, thinking to myself, what kind of out of touch, crazy person with no self awareness do you need to be as a priest to criticize Christian children as if you’re sent into the world to be the the the inspector or the judge, rather than the shepherd of these children.
We live in a generation where where the pastors of the church, even though they’ve been to to college and seminary, most of them have advanced degrees, even doctoral degrees. They see no responsibility for the education of children in the parish. They don’t see that their privileged educational opportunities that have been provided to them as priests should overflow to provide for the education of the children in their parish. They see no responsibility.
And if we go back to the to the Baltimore council back in the 1800s in America, the bishops of the church demanded that pastors take responsibility for the education of children, and it’s especially important in our society, more than any society in history, because in our society, We have compulsory education laws that require children from the ages of five or six to 17 or 18 to be in school full time. We live in a society where the educational requirements are artificial. So our children have to go to school, they have to be educated. And so it’s more important than ever.
It’s more important than ever, even than it was at the time of the Baltimore Council. It’s even more important that Catholic solutions be made available for the education of Catholic kids. And yet we find that many, instead of seeing this as a responsibility for adults to take upon themselves, they stand and judge children as they struggle to survive as young adults and the kids get critic. Get criticized.
The kids get made fun of. The kids are mocked by people who are mocking what they could be eliminating and helping, and that’s what’s really going on. That’s what’s really going on. Whereas I said in the in the previous talk, adults, when we speak to other people’s children, the first thing that should always direct our communication with them is the commandment Honor your father and your mother.
We should show respect for their parents, and we should teach them to also show respect for their parents. If I meet the parents of one of my students, I always go out of my way to speak on friendly terms to the parents to show respect no matter what state of life they’re in. I go out of my way to model for the students the respect that they should show for their parents. I don’t judge them by their education.
I don’t judge them by their appearance. I don’t judge them by their economic circumstances. I greet the parents in friendly terms, talk to them in friendly terms, ask about what they’re interested in, what they do, and so on, show sincere interest in their lives and model for the kids the kind of respect that they should show their parents. And every adult should do that.
Every adult should do that. In fact, I often get criticized. Yeah, for being friendly with people who I probably wouldn’t be friendly with if I wasn’t a Christian. There’s a funny story when I first became a Christian.
Real quick, when I first became a Christian, my my wife, who is then my girlfriend, was introducing me to her friends at church, and I was, I was a cool athletic street kid public school punk, hung out with all the cool kids in town, and this was my first exposure to Christian kids. And I remember my wife introducing me to these different kids. She was excited for me to meet these boys in her youth group and all this kind of stuff. We were, like, 17 years old, and I stopped her, and I said to her, I’m not going to hang out with a bunch of dorks just because they’re Christians.
That’s how I thought as a non Christian. That’s how I thought as an unbeliever. There are people who think like that as lifelong Christians, and so we’ve got to learn to examine ourselves and ask whether or not we’re actually thinking as Christians should think, and what the implications of our behavior is, if we’re snobs, if we’re arrogant, if we’re exclusive and so on, that has a significant negative effect on other people. If we shun other adults because they’re ugly or they’re they’re poor or they’re uneducated.
What does that say to their children, who are commanded to honor them? You can see how the effect of our behavior encourages sin among children, and this is common in modern Catholicism, homeschooling parents, who are taking responsibility for the protection and care for the germination of their children are mocked and criticized as weirdos by other Christians, and their children grow up hearing these things, thinking to themselves, my mom and my dad are weirdos. My mom and my dad are crazy people. They don’t let us get our ears pierced, they don’t let us get tattoos.
They don’t let us watch any show on television. You know, I had to go, and I was with these other kids, and they were talking about TV shows, and it was so embarrassing, because I didn’t know what they’re who cares. Who cares? You see, there’s just this overall weakness in Christian culture that has to be overcome, and this idea that the parents who are actually doing their job trying to protect their children from harmful elements so that they can Grow strong, strong enough to be able to resist evil.
They’re being called weirdos for doing so. Their kids, living inside the seed trays, covered by the plastic covers, are being called weirdos because they’re sheltered by the seeds out in the field who don’t even know if they’ll be alive in two weeks. The gardeners who are actually working to care for their children are being criticized by the guy who just throws his seed out in the yard and brags that six or seven of the 100 seeds he planted have actually grown and bear fruit. Yeah, if we want to act stupid and ignore the 95 dead plants, we can.
We can act like that, but I don’t want my children to be numbered among the dead plants. I don’t want to lose seven of my kids because of my own neglect of care. And say, Yeah, well, you know, Anna turned out all right. Isaiah turned out all right.
Everything’s fine. Who cares about the other ones that perished along the way? Yeah, who cares? Look at Isaiah and Anna.
They turned out all right. That’s not what parenting is. Jesus teaches the opposite. When he talks about the Good Shepherd, he says, The Good Shepherd leaves the 99 good safe.
Healthy sheep to go and seek the one sheep that’s lost. He takes responsibility for all of the sheep, not for the three or four that can wing it and survive on their own. That’s not shepherding. That’s not parenting.
I would argue that modern Christian culture does the opposite. I would argue that modern priests do the opposite. I would argue that modern bishops are doing the opposite. In most cases, they celebrate the strong and pretend that the weak are none of their business.
And we can do that as parents. Parents commonly do it. They’ll have four or five kids, and as long as one turns out all right, they’re content to let the other four rot, and they just point to the good kid, and they said, Well, look at Melissa. She proves that we provided sufficiently.
And the truth is, those other kids need more help. And yes, those other kids need help because they are weak, they have problems. They need more help. They’re going, it’s going to be very annoying dealing with them.
They’re the kids who who follow the crowd. They’re the kids who are obsessed with worrying about what other people think. They’re the kids who make terrible moral decisions and bring upon themselves all kinds of problems, and their parents can either let them perish or continue cultivating them. But my point is that this criticism of awkward kids, awkward young adults, awkward, uncomfortable young adults, is a judgment that none of us have any right to make.
The only thing that we should be thinking about is, what can I do to help? And yes, what I would argue is that most people who talk like that pretend that they’ve like deceived themselves into imagining that the few kids who succeed justify their way of thinking and the the abundance of kids who who collapse and fail and fall through the cracks, they they imagine that they have no responsibility for those kids, and they point to the successful kid and said, There, that’s the one that we like. That’s the one. And we don’t have this.
We don’t have the attitude like like Cain who said, What am I my brother’s keeper? We don’t have a right attitude towards other people. We don’t take responsibility for other people, not to not that we’re accountable for their their decisions, but we are accountable for our actions toward them. We’re not responsible for the outcomes of their choices, but we are responsible for our choices as they relate to other people and their circumstances.
And when it comes to Christian children, all of us, Christian adults are responsible for helping all of the Christian children. We shouldn’t even need to say that, but you see, when we’re talking about how this group has awkward kids and this group, there are a bunch of weirdos, you can see that we don’t have a community minded view of other people, even if they’re Christian, people we’re competing against them, and we’re actually rejoicing or gloating in their failures, which is just insane to try and think about, at the very least, we’re responsible to evangelize everyone. How then can we be watching as people struggle? There’s nothing strange about a young person moving awkwardly into adult life.
That’s just the transitional phase of life. It’s normal, it’s necessary. Again, I’m almost 50 years old, and I have to constantly go through times of awkwardness and discomfort as I take upon myself new activities, do new things, learn new things. And so that’s a necessary part of life, and it’s.
Most intense in early adulthood, most intense, and it’s just normal and yes, for kids who have been sheltered from evil, that transition period is going to be more intense than the transition of a kid who was just thrown out into the field and happened to make it that transition for home schooled kids into the secular world, if they choose to enter the secular world. And we should say, you know, asterisk, they don’t need to transition into the secular world. They can always stay within the confines of religion and choose religious vocations, which many of them probably should. But of course, that’s not encouraged or supported either.
I You see how all of this, this mess of these knots, just gets deeper and deeper, if we dig around, but we should be asking, why all these Christian kids even need to make this transition into secular life, why don’t more of them just stay in religious life, and many of them should, but there’s no support. There’s no encouragement to do that. The education that they’re given, the education that’s available, doesn’t nurture religious vocations, doesn’t introduce them to contemplative life, the local Catholic schools advertise how many of their kids go to college. They don’t advertise how many of their kids become priests or go on to join religious communities.
They advertise SAT scores and college admission, as if that’s the goal of Catholic education when it’s not you can see how so much is upside down, and we’re criticizing the kids who have been protected from the world and calling them awkward and weird because they’re not all screwed up and stained like the worldly kids. They don’t know all of the dirty jokes, they don’t know all the cuss words, they don’t know all the latest Tiktok trends. They don’t know what style of clothing is cool at the mall. They don’t they don’t know what’s going on in secular circles.
They aren’t sitting around absorbing all of the YouTube content and Tiktok content, and so we say you don’t know about that. You don’t know about this. Oh, you’re so weird. You’re so awkward.
And you see how the whole culture is upside down. The whole culture is upside down. You want to know what’s really weird and awkward, worldly Christians, that’s what’s really weird, Christians who don’t pray, who don’t study the Scriptures, Christians who aren’t interested in religious vocations. That’s what’s weird.
Christian priests who know more about what’s on television and the internet than many of the working men in the parish do. That’s weird. That’s what’s weird. Worldly, silly priests, that’s weird.
Parents whose concern is that their kids are physically attractive and immersed in every social activity other than religion, that they’re that they’re clothed in the nicest, fanciest clothes, and they have the best provision materially, but they have no spiritual life, no devotional life taught to them. That’s what’s actually weird. And yet in our society, this is all flipped upside down, and so the Christian parents, who are actually teaching their kids to pray, who are actually bringing their kids to participate in the sacraments, whose kids are serving at the altar at Mass, whose kids are being taught religion at home, whose kids are being taught about the lives of the saints at home, who are made to help their families and help their grandparents and visit the sick and do all of the things that Christians are supposed to be doing modern Christian culture calls those kids weirdos, calls their behavior when they do enter into a secular environment, laughs at how awkward they are and weird. Not acknowledging that they’re awkward because they don’t spend their time in secular circumstances, but they’re actually living the Christian life and pressure them to abandon those Christian responsibilities and become experts in worldly things.
That’s that’s modern Christian culture, and it’s why there’s no religious vocations. That’s the modern culture where the priest is more excited about the Super Bowl party on Sunday evening than anything else, and the kids who and the working people and the parishioners who who don’t even plan on watching football on Sundays are made to give an account for why they’re not up on all the latest standings and statistics in the NFL. They’re made to believe that they’re weirdos, when the real weirdos are the Christians who have nothing to do on Sunday better than to watch what the world presents for their entertainment. That’s what’s actually weird, and yet this has become the norm, and the innocent kids are made to be ashamed of their innocence.
You the kids who have been trained in religion are made to be ashamed of their devotional lives and their religious disciplines. They’re made to be ashamed of them by other Christian people, even by priests, even by priests and and this is, this is the real problem in modern Christian culture, and I don’t think there’s any remedy for it, other than for the people who actually do their duties, who actually live Christian lives that make sense in light of Christian teaching for them to understand this reality and learn to ignore it. Now, there’s nothing we can do as parents. This is this is really upsetting as parents, because there’s nothing that we can do to prevent other people from negatively influencing our children.
We can try as hard as we want, we can try as hard as we want. To feed our kids with good influences. We can try as hard as we want, but there are so many anti Christian influences that are going to be influential in the lives of our children that we cannot control, and they’re going to have all kinds of detrimental effects on our children that we cannot prevent, and it’s why it’s important for us as parents to realize that these things are not in our control, and these things extend beyond the duties of parents, but we’ve got to make sure that we fulfill our duties, because that’s all that we can control, and ultimately, it’s all that we’re responsible for. We can’t quit when it’s uncomfortable.
We can’t just give up when our kids push back or complain. We can’t abandon our practices when other Christians mock us for wanting to teach our children to actually live like Christians. We have to persevere to the end like a gardener, as if he could be mocked by the elements. We’ve got to persevere thinking only of number one, our love for God and our duty to God and our duty to our children, for God’s sake, and I should say, for our own souls sake.
I seek to be a good father to my children, to influence them for good, to constantly urge them to virtuous living and religious life, whether that be actually as a religious vocation or as a devout lay person. And I do that for my own consciences sake, and we need to do that. We can’t control all of the influences. We certainly can’t control influences from Christian sources that we shouldn’t even have to deal with.
But unfortunately, in our generation, we do very commonly. We. We have to make sure that we persevere in our duties as parents for our own consciences sake, and not be influenced by this upside down modern Christian culture. So are these kids awkward?
Yes, and they should be they should be awkward when a Christian child enters into a secular environment. He should be unfamiliar with it. He should be uncomfortable in it. He should not like it.
He should want it to be over, and he should want to go back to his Christian environment that should be considered normal and commendable among Christian children, but it’s labeled as weird and awkward and embarrassing, cringe worthy and so on. But what I would like to see is, I would like for these worldly Christians to be brought into a religious environment and see how, see how comfortable they are, see how comfortable they are participating in the Divine Office at a monastery. Let’s see how let’s see how comfortable they are in a Christian environment. Let’s take out a hymnal and sing a Catholic hymn, and see how comfortable the worldly people are when it’s time to sing a Christian song or recite a Christian prayer or attend a Christian mass and so on.
What I would like for my children and for my students is to be comfortable in Christian circumstances and to be uncomfortable, if anywhere, in secular circumstances, to be considered normal in religious environments and to be considered awkward and different in secular circumstances, rather than be considered normal in secular circumstances and come to mass wearing an NFL jersey, which is weird. You can see how this is all flipped upside down. And the challenge for us as Christian, men and women, the challenge for us is to defend these kids. These kids are being bullied by irresponsible people, pressuring them to dishonor their parents and become more worldly.
And we need to take responsibility to protect these kids, to encourage these kids, to support these kids, and to push back when others criticize them, we need to defend the Christian kids. We need to defend the kids who are being raised to be religious Christians. We need to stand up for them, and if others are criticizing them, we need to say, Give us a break. They should be uncomfortable.
They should be uncomfortable in many of these circumstances. And if they, if they do, need to be present in these circumstances, they they need to enter into them carefully, rather than just run into them recklessly. They need to enter into them carefully and ask, how actually should I live in this secular situation? They need to figure out how a Christian should live.
And you know what? That’s a lot more difficult than just running into it and not caring about Christian responsibilities and thinking because you fit in, you’re now somehow some kind of social expert, where you’ve never even taken up the challenge of figuring out how a Christian is supposed to conduct himself in that environment. You’ve just shed your Christianity at the door and imagine that your acceptance and comfort is some kind of achievement, rather than a shame to you, it’s difficult to figure out how to handle circumstances as a Christian. That’s one of the reasons why Christians are awkward in circumstances, because the fear of God is leading them to ask, What should I do here?
What is okay for me to do here, what is wrong for me to do here? That uncertainty creates an awkwardness that is. That is nothing other than responsibility. That’s responsibility.
As a Christian, I’m like that. I was a class clown in high school. I’m very comfortable talking, as you can hear in my talks. I’m very comfortable communicating, but when I’m in a situation, a secular situation, a worldly situation, where the conversation is about subjects that I’m not interested in, that really don’t pertain to the Christian life, where the culture is not Christian.
I’m very uncomfortable, and I’m thinking to myself how I should participate, how I should engage. I’m thinking to myself, how I can be a good witness, how I can be faithful to Christ in every situation. That’s my concern. That’s why, as as eloquent as I may be, as humorous as my mind may be, I’m careful and to some degree uncomfortable in that environment.
That’s called being a God fearing person. That’s what it means to fear the Lord and to avoid evil. It’s difficult, especially in unfamiliar circumstances, and we should understand, as Christians, we should understand that that’s normal Christian life. We should be different.
We’re supposed to be the light of the world. We’re supposed to be the salt of the earth. We’re supposed to be different. That’s why saints were persecuted by worldly people, because they were different.
That’s why they were persecuted. That’s why the symbol of our religion is a crucifix. That’s normal Christianity. Normal Christianity.
The New Testament teaches that all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus WILL suffer persecution. That’s normal life, normal and Christian kids should know that that that awkwardness they feel when they enter into a non Christian environment, or when they’re with non Christian people, that awkwardness they feel is actually a good thing. That’s a good thing. And the people who claim to be Christians and just bounce from worldly scene to worldly scene and seem to have no qualms or concerns, those people have to give an account for whether or not they’re actually being faithful in those environments.
The challenge is to be faithful, not to be comfortable. Anyone can be comfortable by denying his religion, pretending he doesn’t know anything about it, like Peter denying Christ, Peter, have no problem fitting in at a party if he’s going to deny Christ at every party he goes to. The difficulty is when you say, Yes, I do know Christ, and yes, I do fear God, and yes, I am concerned about keeping the commandments, and yes, I am concerned about the morality of this thing and that thing in this conversation, in that subject, yes, I am constrained by concerns for these things, and if that’s weird, then I’m weird. But I think I’m right too, and I am right.
And so as Christian adults, as I said before, if I had to choose between having at my side a cool kid or an awkward devout kid, realizing that the reason why he’s awkward is because he’s he’s conscientious and is uncertain about what he should do in the situation, I would much rather have an awkward kid, because I could say, Hey, kid, relax. It’s okay. I’m a Christian. I’m not going to ask you to do anything that’s not Christian.
And if there’s anything you feel uncomfortable, just just tell me. We’ll talk about if you have any questions, just ask, because I actually support Christianity here, and I respect your desire to be careful, I would much rather work and live with that awkward Christian person, because that awkwardness, Like I said, is caused by his not being immersed in worldly things, and often by still having something of a conscience that’s sensitive and is uncertain about how to act. So anyway, we’re over an hour. I want to wrap this up, but my main point here is.
We shouldn’t be judging anyone’s children. We should be encouraging them to obey their parents, and we should see ourselves as the protectors of the innocent, because the innocent are the good ones. They’re the good kids. Christians are supposed to be innocent.
They’re supposed to be awkward in worldly situations, and when we see that, we shouldn’t mock it or criticize it. We should offer ourselves as protectors for those kids and help them, if necessary, help them, help them to gain their footing. Figure out how they should act, how they should behave, and establish themselves comfortably, only if they can do so as faithful Christians, that’s the challenge, and the illustration of gardening is very helpful in meditating on that. So anyway, I want to wrap up there.
I hope that’s helpful. If there’s anything related to this issue or other related issues that you’d like to talk about, please get in touch. God bless you.
God bless you.
Mr. William C. Michael, O.P.
Classical Liberal Arts Academy
