Resilient or Fragile?
We are all participating in the formation of the next generation. But what are we cultivating?
I received two very impactful, but also divergent, emails this week.
Have you ever had one of those moments where you were nearly certain that you were correct in your thinking about a subject, doctrine, person, idea, etc., and then you actually heard an articulate and accurate counterpoint that disrupted the whole apple cart? I have. I do. Remember when you were twenty-two and knew absolutely every. single. thing. about, every. single. thing? Sadly, our churches are still populated by a bunch of fifty-year-olds who are still twenty-two in self-measured spiritual maturity.
Let me lay this out for you.
The first email was from a ministry and movement for which I have deep value and the utmost respect. They are literally doing something that will affect generations of families because they have courageously targeted a difficult and highly emotionalized subject, which is children's rights. I know you are thinking, “That is not a difficult subject… we all value children’s rights.” That is actually very wrong. The divorce rate, the rise of homosexuality, the growth and acceptance of the transgender movement, the proliferation of adoption, IVF, surrogacy parenting, and other non-Biblical responses to our darkened culture have proven a thousand times over that we do not have righteous thinking about the Godly moorings to marriage and parenting that we should.
The chains that once anchored humanity's ship to the life of God have broken under intense tension.
Them Before Us (TBU) has inarguably shown and proven that the innocence of a child is directly and devastatingly damaged for life when the parents, who are supposed to be the ‘adults in the room,’ care more about their sexual freedom and feelings about their spouse than guarding the inalienable and divine right of a child to be raised by a mommy and a daddy who love them and care for them. A divorcing couple who just decide they don't feel the warm fuzzies for each other and directly damage the soul of a child, whose only crime was to be born to two infinitely self-centered people who produced them, is illustrative of how far we have fallen as a culture. When a parent ‘comes out of the closet’ in ‘pride’ and is applauded by friends, family, and culture alike, while there is a scared little child who cannot understand, we dismiss the child’s deep struggle, so we can ‘affirm’ the ‘brave’ adult who just perpetrated mental child abuse in public.
Check out this quote:
When you redefine marriage, you redefine parenthood. When husbands and wives become optional in marriage law, mothers and fathers become optional in parenthood law. Them Before Us opposes the redefinition of marriage not because we oppose LGBT-identified people, but because where gay marriage goes, children’s rights are violated.
And it is not just the LGBTQ militant army of demonically inspired groomers targeting the very pillars of humanity that they pull the mask off. They take the child’s side on the imaginary ’no-fault divorce’ enigma that rips a family to shreds because doing the hard thing of fixing one’s feelings toward a spouse that was VOWED to ‘have and to hold, until death do you part’ is way too much to ask a parent to do in our woke-based era of fluidity. In a time when feelings, emotions, and sexual urges are gods (small ‘g’), it is refreshing to have fellow-fighters like Them Before Us charging into the burning building because the kids are more important than the fire safety guidelines.
This week I read this article:
What Divorce Did to My Childhood
In summary, it was a heart-wrenching story of Blake and his sister being honest about their childhood experience at a time when their honesty could actually get them attacked, persecuted, assaulted, or cancelled by the social media influencers, the pundits, and the secular hoards of political prostitutes who are paid or required to carry water for the fakey-fake lie that gay parents are equally beneficial for children as traditional homes. Here is his opening line:
“My name is Blake, and I am a victim of adults putting their desires before their responsibilities as parents.”
And it only got more challenging from there.
This is his quote from the end of his testimony, which, in my humble opinion, was 100% accurate to the account of his life and experience.
“There are countless other stories I could share, but here is the message I want to leave with adults: it is not about you.
Children are fragile. They need protection, stability, and the daily presence of their mother and father.
No pursuit of happiness, no personal fulfillment, is worth sacrificing your child’s security.
In the end, loving your children enough to put their needs first will give you more joy than anything you’re chasing in the moment.”
I agree with his summation and declaration. Although, something stood out to me, because I am a child who went through parental divorce when I was around twelve years old. Blake stated in a matter-of-fact kinda way that, “Children are fragile.” That was what stood out to me about this moving account of an honest guy reflecting on personal history. The reason it jumped out at me was that it is not how I would synopsize my personal story.
What we went through in my parents' divorce was equally as ugly, confusing, disruptive, and damaging as the enemy of humanity, the adversary of God and man, and the ‘accuser of the Brethren’ had designed that heinous assault to be. Jesus concurred that the devastating institution of divorce was only permitted because of the “hardness of men's hearts” in Matthew 19:8 and Mark 10:5. I am NOT saying that there are other children and families that have not had it much, much worse than I did. I am just saying that what I went through internally during that time and circumstance had the same capacity to take me completely out of the game of life, just as it has with many other kids in similar situations. The struggles were real when it came to identity, value, blame, condemnation, and dealing with the ideas of being a broken person, an outcast among my peers, and a damned or doomed repeater of perpetuating the stigma of a bad dad or husband. I had moments of hopelessness and desperation, like many of you have also experienced.
Nevertheless, I rejected most of that junk. I just determined it would be better for me to carry on, man up, put on my big-boy under-roos (mine were GI JOE), and charge forward with life. I would never have classified myself as fragile. In fact, I would have agreed with many others who know parts of my story and have called me ‘resilient’. I do not think I would have used that terminology as a thirteen-year-old, but the idea was in me. I just blandly thought that I should do better, work harder, get over it, and get on with it. I did not want to be a victim and really hated the idea.
On a side note… if you are reading this as a divorcee and my words are causing you to conclude I, or even God, has some wrath stored up for you because of past mistakes and scars, you are not hearing my heart… not even a little. There was a time 18 years ago that I had become a covenant-breaker in the most sacred of human relationships, the holy matrimony that my bride, Kay, and I shared. I was selfish, self-seeking, self-centered, and spiritually comatose, which culminated in egregious choices that I still confess with great humiliation and disgust as I reflect on who I was then. BUT! I am not that man, and I am also not named after my sins… by Kay nor God. If you have a minister in your life who understands the power of redemption, the working of undeserved grace, the scandalousness of mercy, and the transformative effects of love better than I do, PLEASE tell them how amazing and rare they are! In no way are any of my words meant to shame a person who has gone through a divorce. I am trying to magnify the unspoken and dismissed reality that there is no such thing as a ‘good’ divorce or a ‘victimless’ divorce. They are all bad, they all hurt, and they all have consequences that can last a lifetime, and that truth is twice as applicable to the innocent children who had nothing to do with the parents’ decisions.
When Jesus lovingly interrupted my anti-Christ direction at the fledgling age of twenty, everything, EVERYTHING, changed in the twinkling of an eye. I instantaneously and resolutely laid down my self-idolizing godship for the eternal Lordship of Christ. Kay and I eloped because it was God’s will to be married instead of being ‘shacked up.’ Shortly thereafter, we moved to Texas for me to attend Bible College because it was God’s calling for me to be a minister, and it mattered little to us that we were going to completely separate from our families and friends for that divine call. It was simply what was necessary to follow what we believed God wanted, consistent with our commitment to His Lordship.
It worked that way in my soul as well. I soon learned that I was a new creation in Christ, that the old was dead and the new was alive (2 Corinthians 5:17). That I should put on the new man, which, like God, was created in Righteousness and True Holiness (Ephesians 4:24). That I was born again, not of a corruptible seed, but an incorruptible seed which was the very Word (Logos) of God (1 Peter 1:23). And so much more that convinced me I had no right to allow anything from my past, whether done to me (divorce) or done by me (a dump-truck load of sinful choices) to stay with me past the Cross. Radical idea, I know. I actually believed it and applied it… in real time, too.
Because of these spiritual truths, I do not carry the luggage or scars that others do. Neither does Kay, and her story is even more painful and challenging than mine. This is why my residual internal image of ‘resilient’ that I adopted as a young man was now supercharged by the supernatural power of grace. My reflections on going through childhood divorce, demonically inspired selfishness, marriage idiocy, and many other self-inflicted and non-self-inflicted wounds were not capable of breaking me, because fragility was not in me. There was a resilience that I knew was in me, and it had grown even stronger since Christ moved in.
So Blake’s determination of the ‘fragility’ of children shook me. The ‘me’ that was, is, and intends to always be resilient. Now I am confused. I had legit compassion for Blake’s story and summation, but I also had my own story.
The next day, I received an email from Pastor Duane Sherriff, who is a friend, mentor, and serious influence to me in pastoring, ministry, messaging, and thinking. There was a time in the early years of Beloved Church, when we were still 20-ish people in a funeral home that people were avoiding by the thousands. Those excruciating weeks, months, and years felt like we were trying to plow a concrete parking lot with a pocket knife to turn it into a garden. Nothing was working, nothing (it seemed) was growing, and despair was a real enemy to fight. In the middle of those challenging times, my personal pastor died, and I was left feeling more alone and isolated than at any point previously. During those ‘wilderness’ years, my lifeline was Pastor Duane Sherriff’s teachings and wisdom, which were freely available to me, and needless to say, I devoured as much as I could get. He did not know this, but he was sustaining me in a dry and wasted place. From those days until now, he and his ministry have been enormously honored and prized by me and the Beloved Church peeps as well.
Here is the email:
“Raising Godly Warriors” with the subtitle: “Whimps Need Not Apply.”
Pastor Duane expounds on the difficult but necessary requirement that parents have for raising ‘children as arrows’ (Psalm 127:4), which highlights the essential virtue of resilience in direct contradiction to the fragility that Blake exhorted us to embrace. I liked the message, I agreed with the message, and I have actually preached or taught the same thoughts before I knew he wrote those things. Because the scriptures carry the idea of resilience in humanity as God’s Image Bearers, there was complete agreement in me with Duane’s message. But as a shepherd who has walked with hundreds of people through things that I cannot speak of without tears and a quivering heart, I am fully awake and aware of the ‘fragile’ hearts, minds, bodies, and futures of people and especially the most innocent among us… our precious children.
Are we then Resilient or Fragile?
Yes.
Kay and I recently spent time with a beautiful family that included a mosaic of adopted and biological children. The adoptive kids were there because the compassion of this couple would not allow those abused kids to stay in their dangerous environments. So, mom and dad rescued them from a Godless and traumatic future, giving them hope and love. They are a beautiful couple with a beautiful story. While we were fellowshipping with them, they pointed at a picture of one of the adoptive girls and said, “Do you know that on *Mary’s first checkup by the doctor, we found she had broken thirty-six bones…?” (*not her real name)
“WHAT?!?! How is that possible, since she came here when she was one year old?” we responded.
The story goes that when she was a baby, her slightly older siblings (two and three years old) would care for her because their mother was drunk, high, or actively prostituting herself. So, when Mary would cry because she was a hungry five-month-old, her two-year-old brother would take her to the kitchen and try to feed her. By ‘take her to the kitchen’ I meant that he would drag her by the foot, down the concrete stairs, across the obstacles in the way, to try and feed her. 36 broken bones in nine months. Today, she is a beautiful, healthy, active, happy, and loving teenager who you would never know had a history of that miserable magnitude.
Mary is Resilient.
Mary is Fragile.
This is one of the tensions built into our Authentic Christian walk that needs to be considered. Tension, when used appropriately, can help build muscle in a workout. Tension used improperly can cause a chain to snap, ripping the leg off the dude standing nearby who's just trying to help get a car out of the ditch. The Scriptures and the character of God are filled with tension. God IS love (does not have love, does not feel love… but IS love). Also, God hates evil, pride, and arrogance (Hebrews 1:9, Proverbs 8:13). These complement each other, not conflict. BECAUSE God loves us as part of His identity, He must war against what hurts or abuses us.
In modernity, we have become accustomed to comfort, fun, ease, and avoiding anything difficult, including the tension built into our journey. What if we, the committed people of God, all agreed that we would no longer shun the tension… the hard… the difficult… the needful things of life?
What if we raised our children as resilient arrows of war, but also compassionately recognized the fragility of their psyche, identity, and future?
What if the true shepherds of the Ekklesia stood in the pulpit as generals addressing their troops, able and ready to sacrifice themselves to take the needful territory to advance the Kingdom, but also stood at the altar as fathers embracing their wounded children as they came forward for a healing touch?
What if the men of our culture allowed the testosterone to flow enough for them to clench their fists in resolve against the sick monsters coming for the identity and body of their wives and children, but also allowed Agape to flow so that their wives and children knew the safest place their body and soul could be is in the presence of that testosterone-filled men?
What if our mothers were so secure in their identity and value that they could control a household, or even a corporation, but were so secure in their divine identity that they chose the higher calling of a ‘lowly’ wife and mother, serving those they could control?
This article today is different, I recognize that. I was hoping that there would be opportunities seeded throughout this message that would inspire better thinking and living. Many of these topics are politically incorrect and challenging, but that does not mean they are to be ignored or avoided. I say the hard things here because you are that rare breed of people who can and even desire to hear the truth, because there is nothing more liberating than the truth. Liberation oftentimes requires broken chains, broken noses of the captors, and broken routines.
I started today’s message admitting my confusion, but I end today’s message declaring my resolve. I will embrace the tension and build muscle because it is the weak people who put us in this cultural mess… but it is the strong who will get us out.
The fragility of those around us should guide our compassion, and our strength should build our resilience against the past and the present evil world.
Be strong, Beloved!
With love,
Steve