This is the first in a series of this blog’s occasional “Noon Wine” spiritual reflections, with this series focusing on Home as a theological theme, that your favorite blogger The Jitterbugger is posting here this week.
One of Leonard Sweet’s kazillion books is available on Amazon and at Barnes & Nobles, not to mention on the library shelves of so many seminaries around the world. He grew up on a cheerless street called “Hungry Hill.”
SCRIPTURE READING: See Matthew 5: 13-16
KEY VERSE: (15) “No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.”
The much-acclaimed and provocative theologian Leonard Sweet shared the following short but terrific tribute to his mother for Mother’s Day:
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“Here’s to Mabel Boggs Sweet, who raised three boys in the poorest section of a town (a street called ‘Hungry Hill’), who expected ‘her boys’ to get an education without any money to help them get that education (all three of whom went on to get Ph.D’s), and whose philosophy of child-rearing was simple: ‘I’m not going to isolate you boys from the world, but I am going to insulate you,’ and who herself home-schooled her sons in Christianity while she sent us to the public schools.”
The tribute sparked the following thoughts, not counting the quite obvious thought that Sweet’s mom is (or was?) an admirable, inspiring, salt-of-God’s-earth woman:
1. In such a free and blessed country, where success is always available to those with enough grit and determination to achieve it, Sweet’s mother obviously had so much faith and trust in God to provide for her sons’ education that failure didn’t occur to her–she expected the kids to go to college in spite of daunting odds against it. That kind of faith can’t help but open doors.
2. Sweet’s mom put in the kind of parental and spiritual sweat required to make sure her boys internalized the values required to succeed at school and in life in spite of their raising on a cheerless street called “Hungry Hill.” She was intentional in instilling Christian education at home to complement the secular education at the public school.
It seems to me that many Christians want to hand over their Christian responsibilities at home to the State, with State-sponsored school prayer and Christian indoctrination in public education. The Christian’s home duty, in my opinion, is to teach Christianity and Christian disciplines in the home (i.e., intentional and routine family prayer time, Bible reading and study, etc.) and not be so lazy as to let some school administrator (who may be a Pat Robertson 700 Club Christian whose theology I, for one, condemn) choose the daily prayers, or push Creationism “science” that’s not science at all onto a captive audience of school children.
Leonard Sweet makes a point to say that his mother “home schooled” the kids in Christianity while getting them off to public school every day. Obviously, that worked–Sweet, an ordained United Methodist minister, is an influential, theologian and writer (and his brothers also attained Ph.Ds!).
3. Sweet’s mother actually had a philosophy of child-rearing–and a profound one at that: She didn’t want to raise her kids in isolation, over-protected from the broken and sinful world in little bubble world at home. But she did “insulate” her kids, giving them security and protection from the intrusions of a sinful and broken world while allowing them freedom to find their own ways in the world.
Bubble worlds, like all bubbles, inevitably pop. Insulation protects quite well against the extreme weather outside.
Furthermore, that Sweet’s mother actually had an intentional, thoughtful philosophy about child-rearing is admirable in itself and makes me wonder how many parents really think through a philosophy of child rearing (or a philosophy of anything else).
I’ve always believed that having a genuine, intentional philosophy of life–and philosophies on all sorts of life matters–is essential.
More than once at this very blog I’ve condemned the philosophy of the philosopher (and militant religion hater and atheist) Ayn Rand, whose economic philosophy is in fashion (again) in some political circles. But I can agree with the argument she made in one of her essays (published posthumously as a book in 1982) that everybody ought to have a philosophy of life, and approach life philosophically to get clarity on their life goals and values.
That’s why I say that Sweet’s mother actually having an intentional and thoughtful philosophy about child rearing, stemming from her Christian faith and theology, was admirable in itself.
It happened to be a much Sweeter philosophy* that anything Ayn Rand could fathom.
Find more on Leonard Sweet here.
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* Pardon the blogger’s pun.
Or don’t.
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