Saving America Part 4: Some community level helps

Alex Newman talks about how American schools degenerated from Bible-based Christian instruction to government schools without religion. He refers to a succession of influential atheist/secularists: Robert Owen of New Harmony experimental commune, Horace Mann, John Dewey. This is in the context of an interview by a couple of homeschooling mothers. These are all Christians.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6erQhGDAN9s

Newman talks about the importance of phonics for teaching reading, and I just heard John McWhorter say he taught his daugher to read at the age of three and a half from a phonics book. I'd been thinking about the importance of phonics after hearing Newman, how it might be applied to the learning problems of poor kids in particular, and along came McWhorter to affirm its importance. I was taught phonics in first grade (you really want to learn the year? 1948) -- they called it "phonetics" at the time -- and as I later saw friends who had not been taught it unable to spell and stumbling over words I became an avid supporter of the method. English is a phonetic language. That is, our alphabet letters represent sounds, and learning to read is greatly enhanced by learning the rules that govern that relationship.

It's at 1;21:50 of the following discussion where McWhorter mentions the importance of phonics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5tY8vmddjs

And that is a great discussion for a lot of reasons that fit into this post. As usual McWhorter and Glenn Loury are discussing racial problems, specifically the ongoing problem of disparities between the academic performance and economic success of blacks and other populations, and how the Antiracist line is not helping them improve their situation.

Both of them offered their ideas of what might improve it. At 1:21:00 McWhorter says he thinks legalizing all drugs, aggressively promoting birth control, and improving education would turn around these communities in short order.

Loury had a list I like better. 1:17:45 -- Get the government to appropriate a small portion of the trillions they keep throwing down the garbage chute to minority communities "to boost the infrastructure of human development" through interventions that really would help. Say take ten billion ("chickenfeed" in today's budget) and give 100 million each to a hundred communities.

He mentioned having nurses visit new mothers to teach them how to care for their infants, pre-kindergarten education, and he said he'd even consider midnight basketball if it would stop the young men from killing each other by giving them something to do.

I appreciate that focus on practical suggestions. I tend to think in terms of volunteer work and the involvement of the churches, but with such practical ends in mind as well as bringing the gospel and the biblical perspective into the situation. The teenage gangs need men in their lives to mentor them in other interests as well as encourage personal responsibility. I gather literacy is probably a big problem so I picture volunteers spending time with people as they are welcome, to teach phonics and reading, and encourage reading to their children in particular. That's just a couple of thoughts out of many I could muse about. Ideally the people who offer the help should live in the community, whether they are already there, perhaps part of the local church, or decide to move there, perhaps open their homes to the neighborhood to get to know the people and their own view of what problems need addressing. Also, sure, focus on minorities, but I think poor white neighborhoods could benefit from the same sort of attention, working mainly from the residents' own ideas of what is needed.

Christians should have the lead in this sort of thing esepcially since it can be felt as a calling from God. Sure, government aid might be helpful but ordinary people who set their minds to it can accomplish a lot without government making rules about what should be done and how to do it or else. On the other hand, of course, not everybody can afford to put in effective time without extra means of support.

So much for my daydreams for now.

Saving America Part 3: It starts with the Church. WE'VE GOT TO GO BACK TO THE HEAD COVERING!

Saw the headline and had to listen. I like Todd Friel, I've watched quite a few of his Wretched Radio talks recently, and the headline to this one mentions the woman's head covering, one of my big topics. Well, I knew there was no point in expecting him to contradict the viewpoint of his own theological frame of reference. John MacArthur employs the usual false arguments against the literal head covering, so does Alistair Begg, so I know Friel isn't going to say anything different. It's going to be the same old totally misguided argument from culture. I might have wanted to be pleasantly surprised but I knew better than to expect it.

And sadly I was right. Always this sophistry about the head covering. Golly gosh, yeah sure it's God- ordained but it's shaped by culture. WAHAT is shaped by culture? Masculine and feminine expressions. Ay yi yi yi yi.

Why is this so difficult> Why why why? 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 is not about masculinity and femininity for starters, IT'S ABOUT HEADSHIP. HEADSHIP. HEADSHIP. It's about the HEAD, it's about authority, it is not about mjasculinity and femininity. It is about the headship of the man over the woman, and Christ over the man. THAT'S WHAT IT SAYS.

He starts from Paul's observation that women tend to wear their hair longer than men do. Why start there?: In the context of the passage it's one of what, four or five? arguments Paul makes FOR the head covering. This one is the least persuasive in my opinion, and when it is so frequently misread as prescriptive instead of merely descriptive, as in this case, I want to tear all my own hair out.

Some Pentecostals make the passage entirely about the long hair. In a discussion about this passage I had with some Pentecostals a woman told me her hair is so long she can sit on it, and she had grown it out to such a length because that is how she understands that passage.

But all Paul is saying is that we can see that women tend to wear their hair longer than men do. And from that observed fack he draws the conclusion that it is a sign that women know they are to have their heads covered. No, the hair is not the covering, if it were the fact that women do tend to wear it longer would suffice as the covering and Paul would not have had to write about the covering at all.

The logic of Paul's argument here is hard to follow but in the context of the whole passage it has to be understood to be another reason women need to wear a covering on their heads in the assembly. It makes no sense that he'd have written so much about headship only to answer it with the custom of long hair. The logic must be that since women naturally wear their hair long as a covering, it is one of the reasons for the additional head covering. In any case the rest of the passage makes it clear if this one argument isn't so clear.

The main argument in the passage is that because of the God-ordained order of headship women need to cover our heads as a recognition of that headship order. (Again if women normally wear their hair long that cannot be what he is advocating, there would be no reason to mention it at all).

No it is not about temple prostitution. Yes there were temple prostitutes in Corinth. If it's about wearing your hair long and women normally wore their hair long then again there would be no reason to exhort them to cover their heads so as not to be mistake for a temple prostitute. Any woman growing up in that culture would have known such a thing without needing to be told anyway. Good grief this is so ridiculous. Todd Friel, why didn't you just STOP AND THINK?

The man who caused all this confusion was a highly regarded Christian, but what he wrote about the head covering should be denounced effusively. I've written about it on the blog Hidden Glory, I'll only say here that the overall problrm with his essay is that he assumes from the beginning what he finally concludes. That plus thje fact that he's making up the whole cultural interpretation and the bigger fact that Paul is never ever talking about culture, he argues the whole point from God's Laws.

Here are a few of the best arguments for the head covering in my opinionj:

1. The fact that historically ALL Christians understood until the 20th Century that the passage rqejuires women to cover our heads, and it was not restricted to the assembly but women covered their heads most of the time TAKING IT FROM THIS PASSAGE.
2. The fact that we require men to remove their hats in the assembly, and the passage requires that of men, therefore it makes no sense NOT to require women to do the opposite and to cover our heads.
3. The passage is about THE HEAD, it is NOT about femininity and masculinity.

Good grief.

And I think the fact that this brief little piece of scri8pture is so mishandled to the effect that we disobey it has to mean the devil considers it a pretty important passage. If we disregard the Creation Ordinance to cover our heads we are very likely spiritually opening the door to all the other violations of God's ordinances which we see in the world and even in the churches today. Divorce, Gender Confusion, and every other abuse of sexuality that is bringing down wester civilixzation.

The conclusion being that if the churches saw this error and set out to correct it, requiring women to cover our heads in church just as we require men to uncover theirs, WE MIGHT MAKE SOME HEADWAY TO RECOVERING THE CULTURE.

GOOD GRIEF, CHURCH!!!!!!!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHpTlKN25Kg -- Friel's coments on the head covering start at about 3:45 and run for about two minutes.