August 20, 2003

(Click here to bypass this). Some will read this article, get to the description of what sounds like great permissiveness and go "Hah! Those Heathen degenerates! They're like all the rest! I knew it!" To these people, I would point out that my point of view changes during the course of this article. That's the point of the article - not only am I arguing my way through to my current position, but I'm giving the reader some sense of the experience of getting there (and where it is that I end up is somewhere a bit less permissive than where I began). That's what we do in journaling.

Not satisfied? Very well, then, I would like to tell you a story. Yes, it's a true one.

One day, my family has just moved to the small Northern Illinois town I was lucky enough to grow up in, though it didn't feel like good luck at the time. But one thing we're all feeling very lucky about is the fact that we haven't been growing up in a nearby community where, we are told, there are no movie theatres. The town fathers won't allow it. They feel movies are too sinful, even the G rated affairs by Disney. Dancing is the Devil's work, they say, all of that bumping and grinding leading to thoughts of Heaven knows what, so no parties either. No rock music. No card games (fortune tellers use cards), no board games ... and the list goes on and on. My Dad is listening to all of this, and finally he asks somebody from this town what it is that kids have been doing for fun. "Mostly, they have sex". My dad is very quiet for a minute, clears his throat and says "you know, I'd be just as glad to have my kids go to the movies instead, but thanks for your concern, Reverend". Sometimes it is good to be a Jew (or Catholic, or Pagan as your preference may run).

"Yes or no", somebody will say, face flushed with blood and the veins in his temples standing out. "Yes or no - are you pushing for permissiveness". But it's not a "yes or no" question. We pay lip service to a greater degree of sexual permissiveness than that openly espoused by the mainstream of Fundamentalist Christianity. Those are words - but actions are a different matter. The difference is to be found in the fact that when we say that we're opposed to hypocrisy, we mean what we say.

In far too much of Fundamentalist (Pauline) Christendom we will find those who demand that all follow a lifestyle so constrictive, so smothering that no human being could abide it - and no human being seems to. All too often, those who have preached absolute restraint in public have been found to have practiced utter self-indulgence in private (eg. Jimmy "I have sinned" Swaggart). The deal offered by this brand of Christianity seems to be

"Do whatever you want, as long as you hate yourself for it. Be sure to keep looking over your shoulder, because all of your 'brothers' will be looking for an opportunity to expose you and each other, and if they succeed they'll get to pour endless amounts of abuse on you, with you being expected to abuse yourself in public while they do so."

Though not in the way Mr.Swaggart did, I suppose. There is nothing of Christ (who they claim to follow) to be found in any of this, though there is a great deal to be found of the self-styled cultural mainstream's difficulties with the concept of finding a happy medium - ie. moderation. This same problem shows when so many from such backgrounds convert to some brand of Paganism (usually Wicca). There is no concept of gentle correction. There is only "anything goes" vs. "bring out the whips", and neither will bring out anything good in the one so guided. All "humiliation for humiliation's sake" encourages is a desire to recover lost ground by finding somebody else to humiliate in turn, so that one's own public "disgrace" will no longer be the one on everybody's minds.

Jews and Hellenic Pagans alike do things differently, and so would Fundamentalist Christians, were they to read their own scriptures. One does not seek to do that which is right because one gets bragging rights by doing so, and a chance to talk down to somebody else. That's pride (not to be confused with self-respect) and it's frowned on. One seeks to do that which is right because as we do so, life becomes better for all. As a rabbi will explain to you, when somebody says that the demands of Torah are no longer binding because Christ washed away our sins, he is failing to understand that Torah is a gift given to Israel by a loving God, not a punishment, one that enriches the lives of those who are called to live by it. We might say the same of the moral law, except to notice that unlike Torah, we are all called to live by it. The question is, what is the moral law?

"Where's the mystery?", somebody might ask. "Just look at the commands in scripture" ... meaning the ones he cares to remember, since I haven't seen our fundamentalist friends worrying about the laws regarding Levirate marriage or Kashrut. "Yes, yes, but like I said, Christ's blood washed away" ... whichever laws we feel like picking and choosing after the fact, in effect using Jesus as our sock puppet and trying to bully our audience into not recognizing our own voices when they hear them? But the problem runs deeper than that. The argument projects a wealth of cultural assumptions onto a document from a Non-Anglo-Saxon culture, assumptions which not only don't fit, but which would be absolutely anachronistic.

The fundamentalist approach, in this situation, calls for us to interpret the commands of Christian (and selectively chosen Jewish) scripture in terms of a set of categorical imperatives with compliance being an all or nothing affair. This has never been the Jewish view, and as Christians refer to the covenant made by God at Sinai ... but it wasn't made BY God, it was made with God and that's an important distinction. The convenant relation is a contractual one, one under which both God and worshipper have responsibilities of their own. If one contracts with a store to buy office supplies and they fall one paperclip short, does one seek to have the management of the store thrown in prison? "Mellow out" becomes something akin to a moral imperative of its own, under such circumstances. Perfect fulfillment of one's side of the bargain entitles one to perfect fulfillment of the other side of the bargain; near-perfection on one's side earns one near-perfection in return; and all becomes a matter of degree with gentle correction (not screaming) being the only mature response to mild imperfection, the one falling short being moved in the right direction through gentle persuasion.

Maturation is gentle persuasion of a sort, with better behavior demanded by increments. But it is a very bad parent, an unfit one in fact, who views his child as being a bad one because he does not act like an adult. It is the child's time in life to be a child, and the presence of certain childish imperfections are an integral part of what it is to be a child. A good parent (or uncle) knows that successful child rearing is a matter of give and take - "how much of an improvement can we see today", because any other approach would leave the child a broken spirit, not moving toward anything resembling a healthy adulthood. Let the kid be a kid - and a mark of that good parent will be a wealth of stories, told with great amusement, of what the little ones were up to at one point. The paradox is that one must approve without approving, negotiate without negotiating. You don't just let the little ones get by with their mischief - that's where gang bangers and Enron executives come from. But you gradually put the brakes on, a little more each day, and recognize that the child isn't the only one who needs to learn how to defer his gratification.

Let a kid be a kid. The principle does not cease to apply when the kid is 20, though the "kid" now takes over much of the role of parenting himself, as guided by life experience and his elders, who should know to start backing off a little. But there is still that give and take, and that need to know when to let himself go a little, and let him be himself, and have the pleasure of doing a few things he'll oaccasionally be mortally embarassed about later on, when he's a little older and more responsible. One of the most honestly damning things that can be said about the Midwest is that so many here have gotten in the habit of acting like Middle Age begins at 18 - and then acting like God has endorsed this ungracious attitude. The kids need to enjoy their pre-teen years. This much, is now widely given. It's high time that the Midwest joined the rest of the civilized world and started recognizing that the kids also need to enjoy their adolescences and young adulthoods, and are entitled to the freedom to do so. I say it elsewhere in this article, and I'll say it here - the kids will act up (or at least they should) and if a few 50 year olds have a problem with that, the 25 year olds aren't the ones who need to grow up at that moment.

"But it's God's will ...", somebody will start. Like (expletitive deleted) it is. If God made Man and God is as our holy rollers imagine Him to be, then Man's core nature is as it is because God so wills it, imperfections included. For a man to make himself and his children miserable by trying to make his family into the flock of angels they never can be, then, is either to suffer the results of a rebellion against the very Divine will he claims to honor, or to engage in pointless cruelty if the Divine is not as he imagines it. Which of these, we wonder, would the Puritans among us care to suggest is the praiseworthy option?

Not that either is realistic. As we say, it is either movies and chess or sex in the hayloft, to get back to the would-be Fundamentalist utopia near my old hometown. There is a maximum level of restraint that is sustainable, and if we try to go beyond it, the price paid is that the "kid" stops knowing when to say when, because his inevitable youthful rebellion will have to be done joylessly in secrecy and shame, and no amount of self-indulgence in private ever is enough to make up the difference. Yes, then, the spirit you see here will be more of a "live and let live one", in which less license is engaged in - but even less of it is payed for with self-flagellation and hypocritical community outrage on the part of those who ought not be throwing stones. The only thing shocking about this, is that anybody is shocked at all.

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