A digital detox and even homeschooling should be on the family's agenda when the decision is made to get serious about God.
Coming out of a weekend where we give some of our time to look at life in a more deeply spiritual way, we generally feel challenged each week to work out in practical terms how we can develop a closer relationship with God, but it is a task that is hardly ever begun.
Here is part of a homily on the parable of the sower and the seed. The four different kinds of soil are taken to represent four kinds of responses to the Word of God which a person has received:
The third kind is like the seed that falls among the briars and brambles. I would suggest that a very large number of us are touched by this category. Anxieties about many things and the lure of material goods can gradually choke off our commitment to the Gospel in its fullness.
Our witness becomes seriously compromised and “there is no yield”, that is, we make no real contribution to building the Kingdom and changing the world. We sit on the fence and try to have the best of both worlds; we try to serve God and mammon, which Jesus says is not possible. I am sure many of us have matter for reflection here.
Father Frank Doyle SJ (See in full here )
Let's say we did want to make an assessment of our life, our lifestyle, our mental stance in response to the sirens of the world. Following are possible steps to a change for good, responses to the distortions in our life from where peace and satisfaction really lie through an intimate relationship with God.
1. Assess whether mammon dominates our life. Oxford defines this term as "wealth as an evil influence or false object of worship and devotion. It was taken by medieval writers as the name of the devil of covetousness, and revived in this sense by John Milton". In Milton's Paradise Lost, Mammon, "the angel who in heaven is rapt in contemplation of the golden pavement [instead of God Himself], becomes in hell the active leader of those who seek out precious metals for the construction of Pandemonium", as Robert C Fox put it.
Further thoughts: Once captured by the spirit of mammon, we are tortured as if in hell by the desire for power, for status among our wider family or colleagues or school mates or neighbours. Such a life is as if cursed. Secondly, we need money and savings for our future, for health care, for supporting those in need, and for the children's education, but are we prepared to desist in our worship of and devotion to our income if it is to save our family?
2. All those worries that clog our thinking, that verge on tipping us into a constant anxiety, demand immediate attention as a family. We need to list problems and prioritise them so as to deal with them step by step. If we can't remedy a certain problem, we should reshape our life in an honest way to accommodate that issue. For example, if worry is generated by the rush to complete a tight schedule of events, then reduce the events to those that are most important. If we don't have the money to support our lifestyle... Have the whole family sign on to the family's new commitment.
3. Also relating to priorities is renewing the family's commitment to praying together every day. For parents and older children, this will inevitably force a consideration of how time is spent, especially time online.
I enjoyed reading an account of one working mother after she and her husband decided that the family should have a digital detox. Every family will be different, but as to finding time to read the Bible, say the Rosary, to raise our mind to God, it must be the top priority of the day. The impact of screen time on our available time is huge. This is how the mother expressed her findings:
1.The kids don't crave screen time
2. I'm not as busy as I think I am
3. I've been missing out on sleep my body craves
4. The mental load of checking everything was gone
5. The kids haven't been getting my full attention
4. Be bold! We should take St. Augustine's saying as the truth to focus on in trying to loosen the grip of mammon:
To fall in love with God is the greatest romance;
to seek Him the greatest adventure;
to find Him, the greatest human achievement.
This is where a move to homeschooling can transform the character of a family. The implications are immense but many parents are realising that the toxic nature of much of Western culture leaves no option but to save their children from the public system.
The Associated Press just today ran an article on the growth in home schooling in the United States, stating "the rate of households homeschooling their children rose to 11% by September 2020, more than doubling from 5.4% just six months earlier. Black households saw the largest jump; their homeschooling rate rose from 3.3% in the spring of 2020 to 16.1% in the fall."
The article points out that the pandemic pushed the numbers higher through parents seeing the benefits to their children by guiding them through their lessons during lockdown periods. However, another element in the surge was that parents committed themselves to the challenge because of their religious beliefs.
The parents in one of those households, Arlena and Robert Brown of Austin, Texas, had three children in elementary school when the pandemic took hold. After experimenting with virtual learning, the couple opted to try homeschooling with a Catholic-oriented curriculum provided by Seton Home Study School, which serves about 16,000 students nationwide. [...] Robert Brown said: "And we wanted them to have very solid understanding of their faith.”
Heather Pray of Phoenix, Maryland, says homeschooling has been a major success for her 7-year-old son, Jackson, who has autism. [...] Pray is also homeschooling her daughter, Hayley, who’s going into 7th grade and had been attending a Christian school. “I had no idea how this was going to go — I just dove in headfirst,” said Pray. “I felt God was holding my hand.”
The Gonzalez family from Appomattox, Virginia – who are devout Catholics – opted to homeschool their three sons, ages 9, 13 and 15, after their Catholic school in Lynchburg closed in 2020 due to falling enrollment. They’re using the Catholic-focused curriculum from Seton Home Study School, which Jennifer Gonzalez, the boys’ mom, described as rigorous but well-organized. “My kids have just excelled,” she said. “We’re able to be home and be together.”
5. Finally, as a family dedicated to the Christian adventure, we must strengthen ourselves to be countercultural. We must return always to the goal of our life, which applies together and individually. That is, to know, love and serve God, and to give Him glory. That goal is certainly not the ultimate focus of most societies these days. Therefore, we have to make our goal come alive in our lifestyle. Unfortunately, we have to prepare ourselves to suffer the repercussions of standing against the tide, like our Master.
Christians are different and distinguish themselves from worldly people who live with their selfish and self-centred values, contrary to the gospel of humility, dying to self, compassion, forgiveness and humble service. This is the real challenge of being a Christian today, to have the courage to be identified as one. What the world wants is for us to be identified with them. The world wants us to absorb their worldly values so that we will not be a reproach to their self-centred lifestyle or be a conscience to society.
Today, the Christian message of freedom, marriage, sexuality, sanctity of life is being distorted, not just by unbelievers but even by false prophets from within our Church who want to please the world.
Why do some of us go through life without a sense of direction? We just drift through life, trying to keep ourselves alive with some pleasures and luxuries in life. But our life is meaningless. We have no real purpose for our existence. We work to keep ourselves alive and to make a living. We might even appear to be active doing many things but without direction and coherence. At the end of the day, we will be burnt-out with all sorts of activities, but achieve nothing substantial.
- Archbishop Goh of Singapore (slightly edited)
Our countercultural stance is also necessitated by the loss of the Christian context in society. Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is the term sociologist of religion Christian Smith coined early this century to describe what he found to be the de facto religion of the overwhelming majority of young Americans.
MTD, as a worldview, "is defined and driven by current culture more than by historic religious truths or a comprehensive and coherent doctrine" according to an new report. "This approach to spirituality asks little of its followers while providing the comfort, convenience, and community they long for."
These are its main features:
1. A God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
5. Good people [judged subjectively] go to heaven when they die.
6. There are no absolute moral truths.
The hold this "fake Christianity" has over young Americans (younger than 50) concerns Dr. George Barna, director of research at the Cultural Research Center of Arizona Christian University. He says:
The fact that a greater percentage of people who call themselves Christian draw from Moralistic Therapeutic Deism than draw from the Bible says a lot about the state of the Christian Church in America, in all of its manifestations.
Simply and objectively stated, Christianity in this nation is rotting from the inside out.
In the face of this, parents and all who have a sense of moral seriousness must act with urgency in a deliberate and countercultural way. Fortunately, the community of Christians who are stepping up to the plate to lead their section of Western society back to Christ is growing, and the resources, as with homeschooling, are extensive.
We know that God is with us.
Ω If you like this blog,
go to my Peace and Mind newsletter on Substack, where you
can subscribe for free and be notified when a new post is published.
No comments:
Post a Comment