On being special

The other day I saw an interesting lesson on the children's show Ni Hao, Kai-Lan. (Not that I ever let my children watch television. When my kids get restless we take nature walks and do educational arts and crafts. I just happened to catch the show because I was, uhh, doing some research on slacker parents who let their kids watch TV. I would never resort to desperately grabbing the remote and imploring my children to "LOOK AT THE GLOWING SCREEN WHILE MOMMY COLLAPSES ON THE COUCH.")

Anyway, Kai-Lan is a little girl with a friend named Rintoo, and in this particular episode Rintoo isn't feeling special. Kai-Lan and her other friends seem to have an instinctive feeling that Rintoo must be special somehow, and spend most of the episode trying to figure out why that is. After some searching, they finally figure it out. At the climax of the episode, Kai-Lan announces that she has found the source of Rintoo's specialness! I suppose it was too much to hope for that she'd quote directly from the Catechism, since it's kind of hard to rhyme "man is the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake, and he alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God's own life" and "it was for this end that he was created, and this is the fundamental reason for his dignity." But I was surprised and distressed at what she came up with: he's fast. That's what makes him special. And she went on to tell her young viewers that the next time they're not feeling special, they should remember what they're really good at, and know that that's what makes them special.

Anyone else find that disturbing?

As I watched the little characters dance around and celebrate the various demonstrable skills that supposedly made each one of them special, I was guessing that this wasn't going to be the episode where Kai-Lan's slow, obese, mentally ill, physically disabled friend was introduced, because then things would get really awkward.

Though I don't attribute any malevolent intent to the show's writers, I think the sentiments they express in this episode belie one of the disturbing logical results of a completely secular worldview. It's an interesting look at what happens when we take part of the natural law that's written on our hearts -- in this case, the fact that every human is special -- and try to explain it without God. Kai-Lan and her friends know on some level that Rintoo is definitely special; and yet they are products of a secular culture which teaches that every truth must be provable by scientific methods in order to be accepted, that if you can't provide an equation or an experiment to validate its truth then it cannot hold much weight.

There are two main definitions for special: one is "regarded with particular esteem or affection" and the other is "superior in comparison to others of the same kind." The first is the more pure definition when used to describe the inherent state of each human being. But you can't get there by looking at the material world alone. In order to confine specialness to the realm of the observable and the provable, you must go with the later, twisted understanding, which leaves you with a malleable definition of what it is to be special. In Rintoo's case, what if the setting of the episode were moved to the U.S. Track and Field Team's practice arena? Or what if he became disabled and were no longer fast? What if, for that matter, all of humanity got together and agreed that being fast was not a good trait? Would Rintoo still be special? Chances are, he has other things he's good at. But what if he didn't? What if he were the dumbest, ugliest, most rejected, immobile person in the world with not a single thing to offer his fellow man? Would he still be special?

Without God, the closest we can get to explaining the truth of each individual's specialness is to say that they posses certain exceptional skills or qualities that are currently valued by other human beings, or to perhaps note the fact that each person is different by virtue of their unique DNA. But neither of those statements are accurate articulations of the full truth -- and somewhere, deep down inside, we all know it. The problem is this: the reason every single one of us is inherently special -- even the most flawed, the most unproductive, and the most decrepit among us -- is because we are special to Someone. It's because we are loved. And you can't prove love.

As I know from personal experience, when you confine your search for truth to that which can be measured and calculated and observed, you rule out gaining a deep knowledge of love. And until you find love, you can never know God (who is love), and you can never fully understand exactly why it's true that we are all indeed very special.

What's the big deal? It makes Kai-Lan and Rintoo feel good to think that they're special because they can run and jump. Why is that so important that it would make me exert the effort to lift my head from the mound of pillows on the couch and take sharp notice at this message (if, hypothetically, I were to by lying on the couch while the kids watched TV)?

Here's why:

Right now, the dark implications of the secular definition of what makes each person special are easy to ignore. Here in the Western world, we live in a time of unprecedented stability, peace and abundance. It is only certain types of people whose specialness we have motive to disregard -- the severely disabled and people who live in their mother's wombs -- and they are voiceless. But as soon as any elements of our society are destabilized, next time we are thrust into a situation of widespread shortage and fear, there will be a lot more pressure to disregard the value of other people's lives. And if we continue to see our fellow human beings as special based on arbitrary, flexible definitions that are ultimately rooted in human opinion, the devaluation of human life will spread to even more segments of society. And that's really, really scary.

Approaching Atheists: Top 9 Do's for Talking About Christianity with Atheists

In our previous post in the Approaching Atheists series, Jason and I discussed what not to do when you find yourself in discussions about religion with your atheist friends and family members. Here is our follow-up list, The Top 9 Do's for Talking About Christianity to Atheists.

Some notes...

Here are a few miscellaneous notes I've been meaning to cover:

Questions about Catholicism?
I'm starting to get a lot of emails from people who tell me that they're exploring Catholicism but feel completely alone in their journeys. If you are in this position, or just have some questions about Catholic teaching, I highly recommend the Yahoo group called The Catholic Spitfire Grill. Red Neck Woman, a convert to Catholicism, started it with some other convert friends as "a safe place to ask questions of Catholics" since she was overwhelmed with questions on that topic on a religious forum she frequents.

I've been a member of the list for a couple weeks now and really like what I've seen so far. It's a great support network for those who are in the process of converting to Catholicism, as well as a helpful source of information for those who might not be interested in converting but would just like some questions answered. Recently people have written in with questions along the lines of "What's the deal with Mary?", "Why do you pray the Rosary?", "Why do some Catholics wear medals?", "Do Catholics have 'personal relationships' with Jesus?", "Why is there a Pope?", etc. and all have resulted in friendly discussion.


Highlights from my links blog
In case you missed it, here are some of my favorite links I've highlighted on my links blog recently:

• Free PDF's of classic books on the topic of religion.
• Kristen writes one of the most gripping blog posts I've ever read (again).
• The Modesty Survey - I thought it was fascinating. You'll see from the comments that not everyone shared my enthusiasm for the project. :)
• The story behind that famous photograph of an unborn baby reaching out and touching the doctor's hand during in-utero surgery.
  

Those are just a few that stood out to me in recent days. Enjoy!


Blogs by seekers?
As you can probably guess, I have a soft spot for people who blog through the process of seeking God / religion / answers to life's big questions / etc. I was considering putting up a post with a list of blogs on that topic but I'm not sure how many are out there. If you have a blog that is primarily about "religious seeking" (for lack of a better term), leave a comment or email me. (Or, if you've ever thought of starting one, now's your chance!)


Drew Mariani Show
I'll be on the Drew Mariani Show again tomorrow (Monday) during their pledge drive, sometime around 3:20 CST (times subject to change). I'll be telling everyone why they must stop what they're doing right now and donate.


Happy Mother's Day and blessed Pentecost!

Getting my life back

[This is a Part II to the post Putting Our Lives on Hold.]

This weekend will mark my fourth Mother's Day as a mom. It's stunning to think of how much things have changed since that first Mother's Day not that long ago. Three years and two more babies later, I see now that it was the crucible of motherhood that shattered the fragile life philosophy that I learned from the secular world, made me fearlessly seek truth and, ultimately, taught me the true meaning of life. Here are my reflections.


Back when my first child was born, I had a certain amount of angst about being the mother of a baby. It was odd. I loved my son dearly and saw the great importance of shaping another person's life...and yet, there was always this voice in the back of my mind that murmured, "What about my life?" Despite my tremendous love for my child, there was a part of me that felt like I'd hit the pause button on my life the day he was born. The full-time care that babies and toddlers require was so wearying, and I frequently commented to my husband that I couldn't wait until our youngest child went off to elementary school so that I could finally "get my life back!" I felt like there was always a carrot stick hanging in front of my nose, distracting me, promising the glory days to come when I would no longer have little ones around and I could finally get back to really living.

In my mind, the phase of life with babies and toddlers underfoot was drastically different than other phases of life. As I mentioned in my first post on the subject, I assumed that the only way to find fulfillment and meaning in life was to be self-focused. This was the default, the only way to live life to the fullest. Being the mother of little ones was a rare situation in which you were thrust into being temporarily other-focused, and was therefore something to just grit your teeth and endure until it was over and you could get back to the default.

After my second child was born in the midst of painful medical complications, life with little ones got even harder. You'd think that I would have found myself more desperate than ever to move on from this grueling time in my life, and yet, that didn't happen. This was around the time I had started to take a serious look at Christianity, and in the process of reading up on God and what he's revealed to us through his Word and his Church, I started to notice something interesting:

My life as a mother started to make a lot more sense when seen through the teachings of Christianity.

I've said many times before that reading the Christian explanation of why we are here, what we are to do and how we are to live was like reading an articulation of words that had been written on my heart all long -- and this was especially true when it came to motherhood. I increasingly found that my secular, godless worldview offered me no lexicon for describing what was so beautiful about motherhood, and why it was worth it; yet Christianity described it perfectly. I started to find some very interesting answers to that nagging question, "What about my life?"

Christianity was telling me that all those things I yearned for that fueled my self-focused pursuits -- happiness, excitement, security, youthfulness, joy, importance -- were actually yearnings for God, and that I'd never find peace until I sought him. At first that claim sounded crazy, even after I thought it was possible that God might exist. But when I took a hard look at my worldly pre-motherhood life and recalled the travel, the parties, the socializing, the trendy size 8 clothes -- all those things that were supposedly my "real life" that I was so anxious to get back to -- I started to realize something: none of those pursuits ever brought me lasting happiness. In my self-focused life without God there was certainly happiness and joy, yet it was fragile. There was always a feeling of restlessness, a never-ending search for the next big thing. I felt like I couldn't stay still too long, or the happiness might go away.

"OK, I'll bite," I thought after contemplating this for a while. "If I've somehow been groping around for God this whole time and won't be able to truly rest until I find him, how do I go about doing that?"

It was when I got the answer to that question that my entire life -- in particular my life as a mother -- finally made sense.

I discovered that the path to God is the path of agape, of self-giving love. When John wrote in Chapter 4 of his first Epistle, "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love," he wasn't talking about just any kind of love. I "loved" traveling and sleeping in on weekends and pretty much anything that involved me doing things for me without having to make sacrifices. But that's not the kind of love John was talking about. The kind of love that leads to God, that God is, is agape: self-emptying, other-focused, inconvenient, sometimes-painful love.

When I started to seek God by seeking agape, everything changed. For one thing, the carrot stick disappeared; that siren song of the self-focused glory days to come when I no longer had children in diapers was silenced, the tension gone. My life as a mom of little ones was no longer in such sharp contrast to my future life without young children: either way, I'd be serving others. I found that this was the meaning of life, the secret to lasting happiness, the hidden key that unlocked the mysteries of the spiritual realm that I'd spent my whole life trying to find.

And, ironically, after I came to embrace the idea of a life dedicated to agape, I actually ended up with more time for myself. Because in my secular mindset the other-focusedness of the childbearing years was a temporary situation that you would extricate yourself from as soon as possible, my mentality was to just hold my nose and plow through it. I would have thought that to further embrace selflessness would lead to mental and physical collapse! But what I realized, through Christianity, was that a life of agape is not a life of running yourself ragged. To truly serve God and others to the best of your ability is to humbly accept that you are only human, and that there are limits to what you can do. Using the Rules of Life of religious orders as examples (I once posted the daily schedule of the Missionaries of Charity here), I began to see that it was simply not optional that I regularly find time for rest and prayer. I saw that the other-focused life doesn't mean that you can never take a time for recreation and relaxation -- quite the opposite, in fact. It means that you must regularly take time for recreation and relaxation, but that you put these activities in their proper place, realizing that they're not the meaning of life.

After doing it backwards for so many years, it fit like a glove to live a life that was other-focused for the long term and self-focused in the short term.


As this fourth Mother's Day rolls around and I look at my life with three children in diapers, I find that it's a perfect encapsulation of the mystery of human existence, a testament to that most counterintuitive, most important of all truths: that it is only by going through the discomfort of becoming other-focused that we will find what we're really looking for. To paraphrase the Evangelist John, it is only by knowing agape that we will know God.

I've mentioned before that I'm particularly ill-suited for this job: I'm easily irritated, disorganized, sensitive to noise, introverted, and come from a background of being a spoiled only child where I never had to lift a finger around the house. My daily life is not usually what you would call "pleasurable," at least not in the same way as my pre-kid days. I would almost certainly have reported more days as being overall "fun" or "easy" back when I had a cool career than now. From a secular, self-focused worldview, my life should be worse now than it was before. But it's not. I wouldn't say that "my life is better now," as much as I would say that "my life has started now."

Through Christianity, I understand that that the tension I used to feel about my life as a mother was the tension of resisting God, of fearing that if I emptied myself of ego and selfishness that there'd be nothing there to fill me back up. I finally understand that the life of a mom of little ones is in such sharp contrast to the typical life in our godless, secular culture because it is inherently a life of self-giving love, of being close to God.

The lessons I've learned are objective truths about the human experience, applicable to everyone in every state of life, whether or not they have children. Yet, for me, it took motherhood to teach me these lessons. I am so hard-headed and was so entrenched in my old ways that it took the tidal wave of agape that could only come with a house full of babies to break down layer upon layer of selfishness encrusted with fear, and free me to seek the truth.

Through the beauty of motherhood, I think I now understand what it's all about. And I finally got my life back.

Looking for the tow truck driver

A recent comment I left over at one of my regular reads, A Former Leader's Journey, got me thinking about some of the best advice I've ever received in terms of understanding God's will:


Coming from atheism, the whole concept of there being a personal God who is somehow involved in all that we do was amazing...and intimidating...and confusing. As anyone who has read my 2007 archives knows, for many months I was fascinated with the concept of knowing exactly what God's plans were for all the little details of my life. I looked everywhere for signs: did my invitation to a friend's wedding get lost in the mail because I wasn't supposed to go? Did my computer crash while writing for my blog because God didn't want me to publish that post? Did all the difficulty we had getting to church mean that we should switch parishes? I wanted all the answers NOW, and wanted the world around me to act as a sort of spiritual Ouija board in which God gave me clear Yes's and No's when I asked him questions (that way there'd be no uncertainty and I wouldn't have to mess around with that sticky "childlike trust" thing).

At some point I realized that, unless being a Christian was supposed to make you neurotic, I was probably doing it wrong. So I emailed regular commenter Steve G. and asked him for advice. The details of my question and his answer are here (I highly recommend that you read the whole thing), but the summary is this: I offered him a hypothetical situation in which my car breaks down on the way to an important meeting, and asked how to know the mind of God based on that situation. How do I know if God means the car breaking down to be a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down about the subject matter of my meeting? Or could it be that God is trying to tell me something about my relationship with the person I was planning to meet? Steve G.'s response was not what I expected, not what I was looking for, and not what I wanted. But it was a profound insight, and it changed the way I saw the world. In summary, his answer was:

Maybe it's not about you at all. Maybe it's about the tow truck driver.

He countered with a hypothetical situation in which there is a tow truck driver who is in a bad place in his life and is having a crisis of faith. He takes a call about a woman whose car is broken down on the side of the road. When he gets there he sees a Bible or something on her seat that indicates she's a Christian, strikes up a conversation about faith, and ends up being led back to God through the discussion they have. In other words: I am not the protagonist in that story. I'm just "the Christian woman whose car broke down," a bit player with a small speaking role.

It was this advice that led me to one of the biggest paradigm shifts in my entire conversion: the realization that to be a Christian is not to make God part of your story, but to realize you are part of God's story (that phrasing borrowed from this fascinating post at Purify Your Bride). Up until this point, I would have described my goal as a Christian as "to make God a big part of my story!" To understand that it's not about me, that the story was never mine to being with, was so humbling, so intimidating. What would this mean? How was I supposed to control everything if I didn't even know where God was going with all of this?!

Though Steve G. actually offered the ultimate answer in his response, it took months for it to sink in. I had to learn it on my own, the hard way (as usual), after banging my head against the wall by trying to do it my way a few more times. Eventually I realized that what it means to accept I am part of God's story is to ask in every moment not "What is God trying to tell me with this situation?" but rather, "How can I better know, love and serve God through this situation?" It is to stop reading tea leaves to see what God thinks of all my great, important plans and to realize that my plans are neither great nor important in the grand scheme of things.

Whenever I am tempted to forget this lesson (which is often), whenever I get so mired down in the frustration or difficulty of a situation that I can't imagine how this could possibly be part of God's plan, whenever I get so fixated on my own desires that I fall into thinking of all events in my life as related to them, I remind myself to "look for the tow truck driver." The tow truck driver has become a symbolic reminder for me, a call to put it all in perspective and remember that I have the great honor of being but a small player in the story that God writes. And, sure enough, nine times out of ten when I set my gaze higher and look outside of my own little bubble to see what's going on with the other players on the stage, I find that it is surprisingly obvious that the drama that I find myself in the midst of is actually not about me at all. Indeed, it's usually about the tow truck driver.

Welcome, Drew Mariani listeners

I had a great time on the Drew Mariani show today. For those of you who missed it, we talked about my conversion from being pro-choice to being pro-life, my conversion from atheism to Catholicism, and how to evangelize to atheists. I think the interview will also be available in the Relevant Radio audio archives (you have to register to get access, but it's free).

Some posts related to the subject matter from the interview are:

• How I Became Pro-Life
• The "Approaching Atheists" interview series
• Finding God in Five Steps
• About this site
  

Also, this interview was sponsored by DarwinCatholic since MrsDarwin was kind enough to come over and watch my children while I did the interview. Hopefully while I was on air you couldn't tell that a mere door separated me from six rowdy children ages five and under.

Thanks again to Drew and his producer Cassie for having me on!

The Drew Mariani Show - today at 3:45pm CST

I will be a guest on the Drew Mariani Show on Relevant Radio this afternoon at 4:00pm CST / 5:00pm EST. You can see if there's a station near you here, or listen online for free here.

UPDATE: This interview has been moved up to 3:45pm CST. Sorry for the last-minute notice!

Approaching Atheists: Top 9 Don'ts for Talking About Christianity with Atheists

In our continuing series about evangelization and atheists, Jason and I established that by far the best thing Christians can do to evangelize to their nonbelieving friends and family members is to simply pray and show Christ to others through their actions and words.

However, those of us who have many atheist friends, family members and/or coworkers often find ourselves in friendly discussions about religion even when we don't actively seek them out. Jason and I collaborated to put together a list of do's and don'ts with some tips for navigating these kinds of conversations when they arise. Our first list, Top 9 Don'ts for Talking About Christianity with Atheists, is up over at his site.

Being stung by scorpions in bed: some people are bothered by this idea, others are not, and never the twain shall meet

Yaya and I had another go-round about scorpions today (although this time, thankfully, we were talking about theoretical scorpions and not actual scorpions that were being shaken in cups in front of my face). It all started when I explained to her that that it keeps me up at night to ponder the following data:

(click to enlarge)

In the interest of full disclosure, I should add that a few weeks ago a nice friend at a baby shower told me that when she lived in France they had scorpions in their house and this never happened to her. At first her statement shattered my perception that scorpions always target people in beds at night. But then I had a delayed reaction in which I realized that she said this was in France. These are French scorpions. These are work/life balance scorpions. Maybe her experience indicates that not all scorpions are as inherently aggressive and creepy as I thought they were, or maybe les scorpions were en grève because the threadcount on her sheets wasn't high enough. The data is inconclusive, hence it has been omitted from the chart.

Anyway, after taking a moment to ask if I seriously lie awake at night stressing out about things in chart form (yes, welcome to the world of a neurotic nerd), my mother-in-law gave me this look that all my Texan relatives give me when the subject comes up, a sort of bemused smile that says, "And the problem is...?" I wanted to react by sputtering hysterically, "And the problem is WAKING UP TO SCORPIONS STINGING ME IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT WHILE I AM SOUND ASLEEP HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE WHAT THE PROBLEM IS THERE?!" but I decided to make a futile attempt to have a civilized dialogue on the subject, out of morbid curiosity if nothing else.

Yaya took this opportunity to explain to me that it is only because of my pampered middle-class lifestyle that I even worry about this. She offered some light stories from her childhood of scorpions attacking them in the course of daily life. "Those suckers sure would get us good every time we got on that tire swing!" she recounted with a chuckle. "And we didn't worry about it when they got in our beds -- you'd just brush 'em off if they got ya' while you were sleeping." She assured me that if I'd grown up in rural Texas in the days before fancy-schmancy houses with things like insulation and well-sealed walls, having a few scorpions in the bed here and there would be just a natural part of life for me.

Umm, no.

This is not, of course, something I can prove empirically. But I am certain -- like really, really certain -- that under no circumstances would I ever be nonchalant about scorpions in my bed at night. Maybe I am missing some sort of gene that makes you chilled out about surprise nocturnal attacks by stinging arachnids, but I do not believe that my distress about this situation is due to lack of exposure to it.

Her next point -- one that I've heard before and found no less perplexing this time than the first 100 times I heard it from other Texan relatives -- was that scorpion stings are no worse than wasp stings. Really? And to think I was all stressed out about this! I mean, seriously, that was the only thing I was worried about, the toxicity level of the venom. Because, other than that, there is nothing at all disturbing about being woken from a peaceful slumber in the still of the night by an explosion of pain and realizing that there is a scorpion wrapped up in your pajamas, attacking you, repeatedly stinging you, and between the darkness and your delirious state you cannot immediately locate it to get it off of you. As long as it's not worse than a wasp sting, that should be fine. ...Oh, wait, no, that still sounds like a hellish nightmare.

At this point the conversation ended with me uttering a long, defeated sigh and Yaya needing to yell at someone named Billy Ray on her cell phone.

What I have found is this: if you don't see what is disturbing about the idea of being stung by scorpions in bed at night, it is not something I can explain to you. I have tried repeatedly to show Yaya and my other Texan relatives my way of thinking on this, to find common ground in our different viewpoints, and I submit that it cannot be done. It is an unbridgeable gap.

At least I have a blog. Evidently if this ever does happen I will get no sympathy from my relatives about it; but hopefully, somewhere out there on the internet, I will be able to find at least one person who could see why I might be unsettled about scorpions in my bed.