Category Archives: Faith

Both Sides Now

July 23, 2007

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

In spite of my mother’s best efforts to introduce me to God, I decided early in life that he was irrelevant to my well-being.

Fond memories of Baptist preachers, Presbyterian youth groups, and candlelit Christmas Eves were pushed aside by pragmatics. College life didn’t require God. Classes in psychology, English, and education were independent of faith, and I certainly had better things to do with my Sundays.

In the ensuing years, my distractions grew in variety and intensity. I married, taught school, raised children, opened a part-time business, and remodeled a house. Gradually, my views about God began a subtle shift.

Where I had originally dismissed God as irrelevant, I slowly began to consider him an irritation. People who went to church were entitled to their delusion, but they had better keep “their myth” to themselves. I was the one with a college degree and a rational mind.

Never bold enough to reject God outright…just in case…I was content to see God confined in a box over in the corner where he could not interfere with the real world. I associated only with non-believers, the academic elite “patted me on the back,” and I became adept at pointing out how God had inspired death and destruction beginning with the Crusades.

Separation of church and state for me back then was all about separation. I wanted the wall high enough and thick enough that God – and his deluded followers – would never be able to disturb me…ever.

Alas, my secular paradise came to an abrupt end in the flash of a millisecond. God appeared. And every minute of my life since then has cast a new understanding on my years of faith in the non-existence of the Almighty.

I’ve lived on both sides now, and it is a unique vantage point from which to view the battle between the faiths “in support” of God and those “opposed” to God. Because the truth about this battle is that “separation” is really a pretty mask used to hide the distress of non-believers when they are confronted with their own “faith.”

This is a battle that won’t end with the Supreme Court. Faith is foundational to human existence, whether that faith is in a Supreme Being or in the Supreme Human Being. In our innermost being, we desire above all an integrity that unifies our life and our faith with the world around us. We strive to be “at one” with ourselves and others.

When I didn’t believe in God, I needed to find ways to dismiss believers in order to sustain my own faith of disbelief. Their ever-present existence began to wear on me as a “challenge” to my rational reasoning and to my authority over my own life. My god was the human mind, and I wanted a world consistent with my god.

I didn’t want to co-exist with people of faith. I wanted them to “separate”. I wanted them to live according to my faith of non-belief, under my laws, and pounded into submission with “my” Supreme Court. I wanted a world based on fluid truth, changing with the whims of human beings in control of public policy. And today, my dreams are in danger of becoming a reality.

One by one, the court cases are moving up the ladder to the Supreme Court. America is demanding a decision about God. But the cases at hand are not about separating God, they are about removing God. They are about creating a new national faith that affirms the belief of those who “know” God doesn’t exist.

The courts are slowly encoding this “faith” into public institutions and our government. Lawyers do battle to preserve one essential faith as supreme over all the others: the faith that god, if he were to exist, is subordinate or irrelevant to human beings. It is a battle to declare the supremacy of the Supreme Human Being.

In a truly multi-faith nation, we would find peace and harmony in a government that allows special tax and zoning considerations for institutions of faith – all faiths. We would support use of educational scholarships to pursue consideration of spiritual matters – in all faiths…even if they contradicted our faith in the non-existence of God. We would welcome believers…of all faiths…to positions of authority and respect…most especially in the Supreme Court.

Which side of God will the Supreme Court come down on? The pro-God side or the con-God side? Hopefully, neither.

If America is to remain the land of the free and the brave, we must come to terms with the greatest of all fears, the fear of God. An America that cannot reconcile its existence with the existence of God is neither brave nor free.

Fear-Based Sex Education

September 4, 2006

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

Much has been said about fear-based sex education in the past few years.  And I finally think I have figured out what they are talking about.

Yes, there is a lot of fear out there in the world of sex education.  It literally leaps off the pages of newspapers as editors willingly print the sound bites fed to them by people who are afraid of abstinence education.  One gigantic fear, built on lots of big, big fears:

  • Fear of admitting to differences between men and women…hormonal, physical, and emotional differences.  Any hint that men and women see sex and relationships from different perspectives is denounced as stereotyping the sexes.
  • Fear about medically accurate information on fetal development.  Any hint that students might think the “blob” inside the womb is a baby…this is denounced as teaching a moral value.
  • Fear about medically accurate information on failure rates of condoms in preventing sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy.  This is denounced as too much information.  Fear-mongers prefer to wrap up all this information into one vague promise called “protected sex.”
  • Fear of typical use rates about the real failure rates of condoms and contraception.  This is denounced is the wrong type of information.  Fear-mongers prefer teaching the laboratory rates of failure which occur when a stainless steel machine wears a condom installed carefully by a dispassionate lab tech under bright lights.
  • Fear of defining sex as absolutely inappropriate for youth.  Instead, fearing to set a line in the sand, these “sexperts” have decided to let children decide for themselves when they are ready for sex: “Are you ready to have sex, dear?  Go ahead and think about it.  You decide.  Don’t ask me.  Are you mature enough?  You are mature enough when you think you are mature enough.  Don’t ask me.”
  • Fear of scrutiny on sex education lessons such as those that promote mutual masturbation, redefined as outercourse (as opposed to intercourse)…fear of parents and medical experts exposing this type of “education” as a violation of sound judgment and medically accurate truths about its high-risk nature.
  • Fear of concrete language which sets unambiguous standards based on unambiguous information about healthy sexual behaviors.  Instead, fearing fear itself, they prefer to hide behind vague, undefined terms such as saf-er-er-er-er sex…and “protected sex”…and the all-important “responsible sex,” terms that children, once again, are left to define for themselves.
  • Fear of letting parents have control of the health and well-being of their own children, these advocates of saf-er-er-er-er sex prefer to hide behind “confidentiality”.  This conveniently allows them to provide STD testing and abortions to students, without the knowledge of parents, never having to deal truthfully with what happens when saf-er-er-er-er sex is not saf-er-er-er-er sex.

And finally…when all else fails…the champions of fear can scrape all the way down to the bottom of the barrel of their fears and dredge up fear of religion.  They make sexual intercourse into a religious value.  They make marriage a religious issue.  They make everything a religious issue.  And not just any religion.

Tapping into the deepest fear of Americans, these fear-mongers promote the idea that supporters of abstinence education are members of a draconian conspiracy conceived by Catholics and adopted by Protestants to teach religion, to have kids genuflecting before they graduate.

Yes, fear is rampant in public discourse about sex education.  Afraid that their version of liberated sex will be revealed by medically accurate information as a threat to the health and well-being of young people, fear is the major tool used by those who spend every waking and sleeping moment figuring out ways to derail, disembowel, and disenfranchise those who support abstinence education programs.

The greatest fear of those who promote fear-based sex education is that the truth will get out.  Waving their arms, like scoundrels crying “fire” in a crowded theater, they are hoping parents and legislators will close their eyes and run away from abstinence education, in a mindless panic.  But, in the light of thoughtful discourse, truth will endure.  It always does.

Abstinence education promotes healthy attitudes about sex for young people, attitudes and behaviors founded on medically accurate information about sex and healthy relationships.  Abstinence education advocates that sex be reserved for a time in life when it will produce the healthiest outcomes for our children…and their children…sex at the right time, for the right reasons, with the right person.

If this is a message that generates fear, then you have to wonder if these fearful “sexperts” deserve the right to teach our children.

 

July 17, 2006 –  Curing a Disease that “Wasn’t”

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Sacrificing Truth for Love

June 26, 2006

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. [John 8:32 KJV]

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

Quotes about the truth abound.  Hard truths.  The truth, we are told, sometimes hurts.

Hurt though it may, we are challenged. If the shoe fits, wear it.  Hard truths become real in a concrete picture.  Truth is pinching toes and chafing heels.  Here it is. Truth.  Now, wear it, we are told, like it or not.

All the religions of the world, while they may differ in other respects, unitedly proclaim that nothing lives in this world but Truth. [Mohandas Gandhi]

The world proclaims truth.  Yet we chafe against the chafing shoe.  Modern discourse is never so painful as when the truth is at stake.  Truth is valued today…but…only so far as truth allows us to feel good about ourselves.

Modern discourse is all about being “nice.”  We have given way to political correctness.  Truth is now an enemy at any point where it hurts someone’s feelings, where the toes are pinched and the heel hurts.

We are enjoined at every turn to show tolerance.  In essence, we are told we must not make any statement that hurts someone’s feelings.  If truth must be sacrificed in the process, then, so be it.  This is modern wisdom.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell….The object of the superior man is truth. [Confucius]

The unfortunate and unexpected consequence of our failure to defend truth today is our inability to sustain love.  We have lost sight of the benefits of hard truth.  The truth that pinches our toes and chafes our heels is a saving truth.  It warns us of oncoming blisters, of ill-fitting beliefs that will eventually harm us if left unchallenged and untreated.

Truth is the foundation of a life of love.  It is the essential component of love…hard truth, truth holding us accountable, marking the points in life where we have erred, and sparking the corrections needed through a repentant heart forgiven in love.

We must not regard with contempt the rebuke of a just man, for such a rebuke is the destruction of sin and a healing for the heart, as well as a path for God to the soul. [Bernard of Clairvaux]

It is no mistake that Satan is described as the Master of Deceit.  Lies are the beginning of death.  They are the curtain that covers a truth we need for survival, a disguise that reassures us, that makes us feel good.

Removing truth from our popular culture is like washing the blood from a wound without applying stitches to close the gash.  In a topsy-turvy world, where nice is more important than truth, we have declared moral surgeons evil and cling to people who would have us believe we are no longer bleeding.

He who corrects a scoffer gets himself abuse, and he who reproves a wicked man incurs injury. [Prov 9:7 RSV]

Sacrificing truth destroys love.  It allows us to be “nice.” But “being nice” at the expense of being truthful is not an act of love. Instead, it is a selfish act rewarded by approval from those we excuse.  We purchase friendships and loyalty by blinking at lies and deceit.

When we reject truth in an effort to be “nice” we have violated the first requirement of love.  By rejecting the existence of an eternal truth that requires discernment and obedience, we are denying those we care about the fruits of love that flow from truth.

A rebuke goes deeper into a man of understanding than a hundred blows into a fool.  [Prov 17:10 RSV]

Truth conveyed by those who love me, is the kindness that keeps me from falling from the precipice of self-conceit.  It allows me a course-correction.  It is a gift of love risked by a true friend who is willing to suffer for my sake.

And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are true, and teach the way of God truthfully, and care for no man; for you do not regard the position of men. [Mat 22:16 RSV]

Just as world faiths have something in common in their search for truth, they are unified in their definition of love.  God is love.

Christ was defined as The Truth and The Way.  As God’s saving gift of love given to mankind, Christ personified love.  He is the perfect union of truth and love, fully necessary to save us from ourselves.

The lies that tickle our ears may make us feel good for today.  But in denying truth, we sell short the future for our children.  A society that sacrifices truth for the sake of love paves the road to death.

Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them.              –Joseph Story

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Joseph Story was an Associate Justice on the U.S. SUPREME COURT.  Justice Story delivered the majority opinion freeing the Amistad captives in March 1841.

 February 27, 2006 – The Science of Wisdom

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Still Golden After All These Years

April 10, 2006

 Do unto others…unto others?  Is it a poem?  Shakespeare?

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

I shudder with a mixture of dread and curiosity every time Jay takes to the street with his camera crew and a microphone in hand.  In a regular feature Jaywalking, Leno approaches people on a Hollywood street to survey their knowledge on current news or a particular topic.

One night it’s history.  Leno asks passersby how many judges there are on the Supreme Court.  A young man laughs, shrugs his shoulders and tosses a number in the air.  Thirty six?  Leno laughs, too.  So, he asks, did you go to college?  Yeah, the man replies.  I graduated last year.

The Golden Rule?  It’s a mathematical formula, isn’t it?

In a variation on his regular theme, Leno one night lets people choose their questions from either a 4th, 6th, or 8th grade text.  Jen, a registered dental assistant, says the Grand Canyon is 3200 miles long, and an Alabama State student says Columbus discovered America in 1842.  What country did we fight in the Revolutionary War, Jay asks Selena.  Oh, my gosh.  I don’t know this stuff, she admits.  I really don’t know this stuff.  Keeping a straight face, Leno tells her, I believe you.

Another night, and another question…laughter gives way to sadness as we witness the current state of affairs in modern American life.  What is the Golden Rule, Jay asks.  One after another, each person stares at him with a blank face.  You know, he persists.  The Golden Rule…do unto others…?  That’s enough to get them started.

The Golden Rule?  Do unto others…before they do it to you.  Yeah, that’s it.

The ethic of reciprocity is a general moral principle found in virtually all religions, often as a fundamental rule. It is most commonly heard as “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  This traditional rule is so highly valued that it has been known in English for centuries as the “Golden Rule”.

How did we manage in America to loose sight of the Golden Rule?  Why is it impossible for these regular people to immediately recite the simple statement for Jay?  How can we possibly teach our children new attitudes of respect and love when we have lost sight of a common cultural law as basic as the Golden Rule?

So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. [Mat 7:12 NIV]  A nation that does not have this law written on its heart is a nation that has forgotten how to love.

As I would have them do unto me?  Would I have them yell at me and trash me with vulgarity and accusations on Jerry Springer’s show?  Certainly not.

Would I have a dear family member meet me center stage on a national television talk show to reveal a devastating “secret,” entertaining the world at the expense of my humiliation?  Of course, I wouldn’t.

What part of letting my friends get drunk on Spring Break is a measure of my love for them?  Not one bit of it.

Restoring a healthy expression of love to our nation is as simple as remembering one rule, golden in value:

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” [Mat 22:36-40 NIV]

As we take up the great commandment and make it the watchword for our life, it is exceedingly clear how much of modern life encourages us to focus on what is good for ourselves regardless of how it impacts others.

The Golden Rule is the narrow path.  It is the touchstone, the measuring stick, the weight and measure for all we say, do and think.  It is not merely a “good idea.”  It is the law.  It is a commandment.  It is the sight we must fix our eyes upon, the bandage for our spirit, and the balm for a hurting world.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

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New International Version (NIV), Copyright (c) 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society.  Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

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 November 12, 2004 – Old as the Hills

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The Best Christmas Present Under the Tree

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

December 12, 2005

In the 1940s, it was a Red Ryder BB gun…in the 1960s, a GI Joe.

In the 1980s, when my own children ran through the house, it was a Cabbage Patch Doll.  Over the past hundred years, several hundreds of toys have made the “most popular Christmas present” list:  Crayolas, Raggedy Ann dolls, View-master 3-D Viewer, Rubik’s cube, Mr. Potato Head, Beanie Babies, Razor Scooter and more.

Who remembers the must-have toy of 1996?  On a web site where comments (most of them) extol the virtues of this stuffed creature, one web writer tells about the “loons who went to the stores at the crack of dawn to fight the crowds to have a chance to buy a Tickle Me Elmo.”

A lot has changed in the past hundred years.  Only in America have toys taken on a new personality indicative of our wealth.  Mr. Potato Head, 8-1/2 inches tall and 8 inches wide, is now offered encrusted with gems and priced at $8,000.  If you want your Monopoly set in tooled leather, be prepared to fork over $5,840.

If money is absolutely no problem this year, parents can splurge on Microsoft’s new Xbox 350 costing around $300…or an original Teddy Bear available at Christie’s auction for $17,000 to $26,000….all the way up to a $300,000 3-D motion simulator from the “Rolls-Royce of toy stores” FAO Schwarz.

Advertised as a replacement for friends, you can buy your child Hammacher Schlemmer’s 7-foot, remote-controlled Robby the Robot…that is…if you have a spare $50,000.  Makes a parent long for a return to 1975 and the Pet Rock craze.  Like most fads, it never totally died.  There is even a web site titled, Pet Rock Sanitarium, where you might find a cheaper-than-cheap abandoned “pet” looking for a new home.

So…what’s hot this year?  You can bet merchandisers know.  Base on one survey, thirty-eight percent of U.S. teens would prefer cash for Christmas this year, followed by cell phones or portable electronics.  Other in-demand holiday gifts include clothing and a car, according to a survey of 700 U.S. teens conducted by Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

Engrossed as we are at this time of year in looking for all those special ways of bringing joy to our children, it seems fitting to look to the type of joy that lasts beyond Christmas.  That’s exactly what Otis and Elaine Dickerson of Duluth, Georgia, did over fifty years ago.

“On December 18, 1953, on the first birthday of their baby boy Eric,” writes Benin Dakar, “the young and determined African-American couple were married in the modest home of Otis’ mother in a working-class Baltimore neighborhood.”  Today in their 70s, the Dickersons talk about their commitment to marriage as a way of providing joy and security for their four children.

Dakar notes that their story is worth telling in an age when “fewer and fewer young black couples who find themselves in a ‘family way’ are following their lead to the altar.”  Indeed, statistics from the Brookings Institute show that 70 percent of black babies are born out of wedlock.

For the country at large, 24 million children (34 percent) live absent their biological father, and 40 percent of children living absent their father have never set foot in their father’s home.  The Dickersons wanted better for their children.

Their lifelong commitment to each other in marriage helped them through the rough waters that all married couples will face.  Dakar notes, “their partnership enabled them to succeed in the workplace, to become homeowners and to rear stable and productive children.”  We can learn from Otis and Elaine.  Their experience is confirmed through many important studies on the welfare of children.

In a report issued by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), important details outline the challenges facing single parent families.  “When an unwed couple has a child, the resulting family faces heightened vulnerability to a variety of economic and social problems affecting the couple, the parents as individuals, and the child.  In particular, there is a high risk they will be unsuccessful in forming a sustained and close family unit.  Because of these well documented risks and the consequences of nonmarital childbearing for parents and children, these families are now commonly called ‘fragile families.’”

This same report goes on to say, “research shows that children who grow p with married, biological parents have better outcomes than children raised in a different family structure.  On average, the former are more likely to be healthy, to complete high school, and to become economically self-sufficient adults; and in turn, they are less likely to be involved in drug and alcohol abuse or juvenile delinquency, or to be come teen parents.”

At Christmas, when we focus our eyes on what will bring joy to our children, the best present we can give is right within reach.  This is the perfect time to recommit to our marriages.  Married couples, attending marriage seminars, kissing under the mistletoe and holding hands in front of the hearth are building the perfect gift for their children, a secure home today and a vision for their children of what their own future could be.

The best Christmas present under the tree this year will cost the least.  But its value to our children is priceless.

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For a good dose of Christmas Cheer and fun information:

http://mymerrychristmas.com/2005/surveyteens2005.shtml

 

For the Most Popular Toys of the Past 100 Years:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10387831/

 

For the Most Expensive Toys of 2005:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10387451/from/RL.1/

 

For the full story of Otis and Elaine Dickerson:

Benin Dakar, “Drop in black marriages hurts families,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 12, 2005, A13.

 

For Report by Administration for Children and Families: “Helping Unwed Parents Build Strong And Healthy marriages: A Conceptual Framework For Interventions”

http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/strengthen/strengthfam/reports/conceptual_framework/framework_toc.html

See Archives for more past editorials.