Rep. Jim Leach is getting his internet gambling law. (See Sept. 20 post.) The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act was tacked onto the Port Security Improvement Act, which the Senate passed late Friday. The bill now goes to President Bush, who is expected to sign it into law this week.
Although I am not a gambler and I feel for people who struggle with gambling additions, I really wonder whether this is the right approach. Internet gambling is a problem worthy of congressional scrutiny, but does the answer really necessitate the involvement of the banking industry and the credit card companies? I don’t think so.
Internet gambling currently is illegal but since most of the gambling web sites operate in other countries, the prohibition is nearly impossible to enforce. The Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury already have a comprehensive regulatory enforcement mechanism in place for the banking industry, so Rep. Leach proposed to tap into that mechanism to mitigate internet gambling. Good intentions not withstanding, going after the credit card processors does not solve the problem. Private industry facilitating the payments system shouldn’t be saddled with the cost of Congress’s attempt to resolve yet another social problem.
It is true that many of the credit card companies and big banks favor the new gambling enforcement rules. Those companies, however, would be far better off implementing the bill’s provisions voluntarily rather than under the threat of fines and incarceration. In fact, banks and credit card companies build a world of good will when they take on serious social ills on their own.
The thing about money is there will always be people who choose to spend it foolishly, whether it be on gambling, pornography, recreational drugs or other nonsense. As people of goodwill, we have an obligation to help others make wise decisions about living well. That is a responsibility that falls on all of us, not just those who work in the credit card industry.
Monday, October 02, 2006
Friday, September 29, 2006
Pope Benedict XVI on Faith and Reason
One of the really good things to come out of the demands by radical Islamists that Pope Benedict XVI apologize for his September 12 speech at Regensburg, Germany is that the ensuing media brouhaha might actually incite some people to dig up the speech and read it. That’s exactly what I did and I hope you will too. Find the full text at Zenit.org.
Benedict delivered an absolutely brilliant speech about the inseparability of faith and reason. The great divide among God-fearing people in our world today is between those who believe God’s actions are completely random and indiscriminate, and those who believe God’s actions are in harmony with reason. Some people say God can do anything He wants, even evil. This doesn’t make any sense to me. We Catholics believe God cannot contradict Himself. God is pure love and evil does not come out of true love. Reason would require this consistency.
I am very grateful for the integration of faith and reason. If God’s actions correspond with reason, then I have some hope of knowing God and of understanding His ways. But if His ways are entirely separate from reason, then I have no way of discerning the meaning of God’s actions. I would have no way of knowing whether a particular action is godly or otherwise.
Benedict notes the Greek translation for “word” in the first verses of John’s Gospel. The Greek word is “logos,” which means both “reason” and “word.” Benedict said: “John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God…”
Although faith and reason are necessarily integrated, Benedict notes three distinct efforts in Western culture to separate them over the last 500 years. He notes, first, the Reformation of the 16th century which reduced faith to one component of an over arching philosophical system, unduly influenced by the philosopher Immanuel Kant who stated that “he needed to set thinking aside in order to make room for faith.” The principle of sola scripture, a pillar of the Reformation, dramatically reduced the grandeur of God and His revelation to mankind.
The second effort to bifurcate faith and reason came out of liberal Christian thought developed in the 19th and 20th centuries which focused on the humanity of Jesus. The idea, Benedict said, “was to bring Christianity back into harmony with ‘modern’ reason, liberating it, that is to say, from seemingly philosophical and theological elements, such as faith in Christ’s divinity and the triune God.”
The third effort, which is currently underway in some theological circles, discounts the significance of Greek culture in the presentation of the scriptures. It dismisses the word “logos” and its significance as merely a cultural phenomenon that should not have meaning in a world-wide application of scripture and theology.
Benedict states that faith without reason prevents religion from creating community because faith ends up being entirely personal. On the other hand, reason without faith offers a very narrow view of science which reduces mankind to something much smaller than God intended. The fullness of God's creation can only be understood in a context that honors the inseparability of faith and reason.
God-fearing people should be willing to have the discussion that Pope Benedict initiates with his speech at Regensburg. The radicals who threatened the Pope with death and burned his image in effigy clearly don’t want to have that discussion. Their reaction to the speech validates the importance of Benedict’s message.
While the opportunity for dialogue with Muslims may be minimal now, my hope is the opportunity is far greater with non-Catholic Christian denominations. What is the role of reason in a “scripture alone” theology? Was Kant right? Do we really need to turn off our brains before considering our faith? Pope Benedict in his speech affirmed that the Catholic Church says no.
Benedict delivered an absolutely brilliant speech about the inseparability of faith and reason. The great divide among God-fearing people in our world today is between those who believe God’s actions are completely random and indiscriminate, and those who believe God’s actions are in harmony with reason. Some people say God can do anything He wants, even evil. This doesn’t make any sense to me. We Catholics believe God cannot contradict Himself. God is pure love and evil does not come out of true love. Reason would require this consistency.
I am very grateful for the integration of faith and reason. If God’s actions correspond with reason, then I have some hope of knowing God and of understanding His ways. But if His ways are entirely separate from reason, then I have no way of discerning the meaning of God’s actions. I would have no way of knowing whether a particular action is godly or otherwise.
Benedict notes the Greek translation for “word” in the first verses of John’s Gospel. The Greek word is “logos,” which means both “reason” and “word.” Benedict said: “John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God…”
Although faith and reason are necessarily integrated, Benedict notes three distinct efforts in Western culture to separate them over the last 500 years. He notes, first, the Reformation of the 16th century which reduced faith to one component of an over arching philosophical system, unduly influenced by the philosopher Immanuel Kant who stated that “he needed to set thinking aside in order to make room for faith.” The principle of sola scripture, a pillar of the Reformation, dramatically reduced the grandeur of God and His revelation to mankind.
The second effort to bifurcate faith and reason came out of liberal Christian thought developed in the 19th and 20th centuries which focused on the humanity of Jesus. The idea, Benedict said, “was to bring Christianity back into harmony with ‘modern’ reason, liberating it, that is to say, from seemingly philosophical and theological elements, such as faith in Christ’s divinity and the triune God.”
The third effort, which is currently underway in some theological circles, discounts the significance of Greek culture in the presentation of the scriptures. It dismisses the word “logos” and its significance as merely a cultural phenomenon that should not have meaning in a world-wide application of scripture and theology.
Benedict states that faith without reason prevents religion from creating community because faith ends up being entirely personal. On the other hand, reason without faith offers a very narrow view of science which reduces mankind to something much smaller than God intended. The fullness of God's creation can only be understood in a context that honors the inseparability of faith and reason.
God-fearing people should be willing to have the discussion that Pope Benedict initiates with his speech at Regensburg. The radicals who threatened the Pope with death and burned his image in effigy clearly don’t want to have that discussion. Their reaction to the speech validates the importance of Benedict’s message.
While the opportunity for dialogue with Muslims may be minimal now, my hope is the opportunity is far greater with non-Catholic Christian denominations. What is the role of reason in a “scripture alone” theology? Was Kant right? Do we really need to turn off our brains before considering our faith? Pope Benedict in his speech affirmed that the Catholic Church says no.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Author, speaker shed light on gender differences
I’m reading a book by Myrna Blyth, who edited Ladies Home Journal magazine from 1981 to 2002. In the publishing world, the magazine is referred to as one of the “seven sisters,” the others being Family Circle, Redbook, McCall’s, Good Housekeeping, Better Homes and Gardens and Woman’s Day. These magazines have absolutely nothing in common with the industry magazines I work with on a daily basis, but I always find it interesting to read the musings of other magazine editors.
The premise of Blyth’s Spin Sisters: How the women of the media sell unhappiness and liberalism to the women of America, is that the seven sisters exploit women by promoting unrealistic images of beauty. They also play on women’s anxieties by printing a preponderance of journalistically flimsy stories about health, stress and safety.
Blyth offers a glimpse into how major media works, but what fascinated me most was her take on the differences between men and women. It seems so politically incorrect today to acknowledge any differences between men and women. But Blyth is not worried about political correctness. She goes into quite a bit of detail about how the media (not just the major women’s magazines) prepare stories differently for men and women.
“Coverage of health topics, which provide the best fodder for frightening stories, dramatically increased during the past decade both on television and in women’s magazines,” she writes on page 125 of the hard-cover edition I’m reading. “On TV, the increase was part of the ‘feminization’ of the media, the realization by executives that more and more often it was women out there watching -– and watching everything -– including the news. Media analyst Andrew Tyndall, of the Tyndall Report, a network news monitor, who tracked CBS news broadcasts in 1968 and 1998, saw the broadcasts shift from foreign policy, military, economic, and business issues to lifestyle topics like health, education, and sexuality. In fact, measuring coverage on all three networks, he found that the news time devoted to what he calls ‘news you can use’ aimed at women quadrupled from 16 minutes to 71 minutes a month and helped transform TV news in the process.”
Blyth cites a University of Michigan psychology professor in her explanation of the different way news impacts women and men. According to Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, “women tend to ruminate, brood, and worry a lot more than men,” she writes on page 116. “Through an extensive 20-year study, she found that many women spend countless hours thinking about negative ideas, feelings, and experiences.” This finding is in apparent contrast to men.
“Gender plays a powerful role in the perception of hazards, was the conclusion of Professor John Graham, founding director of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, after the center polled more than a thousand Americans to find out whether they believe in widely reported but unproven ‘hazards’ like radon and pesticide residue on food. Graham found that women were more likely to believe such scares were true by a margin of 10 percentage points or more.”
Blyth got me to thinking about a speaker I heard who addressed a group of parents in Arkansas last June. Dr. Philip Mango, the president and co-founder of Saint Michael’s Institute for the Psychological Sciences in New York City, described distinct neurological differences between men and women in his presentation at the annual convention of the Couple to Couple League. Dr. Mango doesn’t have a lot in common with Myrna Blyth but he affirmed the hypothesis that there are concrete differences between men and women, including the way they approach problems, think about things and come to conclusions.
Testosterone and vasopressin, the two primary male hormones, flood a man’s mind, affirming characteristics such as assertiveness, Dr. Mango explained. For men, maturity is a matter of harnessing these hormones.
Dr. Mango took us back to the beginning, noting that when a girl is born, her first relationship is with someone like her –- her mother, a women. This is not true when a boy is born. Initially, a boy identifies with his mother, but as his self-awareness grows at about 18 months, he becomes aware that he is not like his mother. His search to find his identity can affect his outlook for the rest of his life, Dr. Mango said. The greatest responsibility of any father, Dr. Mango said, is to love his son. A father must help his son affirm his identity.
“Most boys today are not getting that from their fathers today. Most boys are walking around hungry for their father’s affirmation,” Dr. Mango said. In the same way that God the Father affirmed Jesus at His baptism, saying “this is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased,” (Mt. 3:17) fathers should affirm their sons, Dr. Mango said. “God gives us affirmation; when we know that the King loves us, that gives us the power to go out and do anything. That is what fathers can give their sons.” Dr. Mango urged fathers to spend time with their children and show physical affection toward them.
I can read about the differences between men and women, and I can listen to speakers explain the differences, but I can learn the most just by watching my own two daughters and two sons. My girls have magnificent feminine characteristics and the boys have the classic masculine traits. Whatever this means for the way they will approach life as adults, I only know one thing for sure. My wife and I love those kids and that love is essential to their healthy self fulfillment.
The premise of Blyth’s Spin Sisters: How the women of the media sell unhappiness and liberalism to the women of America, is that the seven sisters exploit women by promoting unrealistic images of beauty. They also play on women’s anxieties by printing a preponderance of journalistically flimsy stories about health, stress and safety.
Blyth offers a glimpse into how major media works, but what fascinated me most was her take on the differences between men and women. It seems so politically incorrect today to acknowledge any differences between men and women. But Blyth is not worried about political correctness. She goes into quite a bit of detail about how the media (not just the major women’s magazines) prepare stories differently for men and women.
“Coverage of health topics, which provide the best fodder for frightening stories, dramatically increased during the past decade both on television and in women’s magazines,” she writes on page 125 of the hard-cover edition I’m reading. “On TV, the increase was part of the ‘feminization’ of the media, the realization by executives that more and more often it was women out there watching -– and watching everything -– including the news. Media analyst Andrew Tyndall, of the Tyndall Report, a network news monitor, who tracked CBS news broadcasts in 1968 and 1998, saw the broadcasts shift from foreign policy, military, economic, and business issues to lifestyle topics like health, education, and sexuality. In fact, measuring coverage on all three networks, he found that the news time devoted to what he calls ‘news you can use’ aimed at women quadrupled from 16 minutes to 71 minutes a month and helped transform TV news in the process.”
Blyth cites a University of Michigan psychology professor in her explanation of the different way news impacts women and men. According to Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, “women tend to ruminate, brood, and worry a lot more than men,” she writes on page 116. “Through an extensive 20-year study, she found that many women spend countless hours thinking about negative ideas, feelings, and experiences.” This finding is in apparent contrast to men.
“Gender plays a powerful role in the perception of hazards, was the conclusion of Professor John Graham, founding director of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, after the center polled more than a thousand Americans to find out whether they believe in widely reported but unproven ‘hazards’ like radon and pesticide residue on food. Graham found that women were more likely to believe such scares were true by a margin of 10 percentage points or more.”
Blyth got me to thinking about a speaker I heard who addressed a group of parents in Arkansas last June. Dr. Philip Mango, the president and co-founder of Saint Michael’s Institute for the Psychological Sciences in New York City, described distinct neurological differences between men and women in his presentation at the annual convention of the Couple to Couple League. Dr. Mango doesn’t have a lot in common with Myrna Blyth but he affirmed the hypothesis that there are concrete differences between men and women, including the way they approach problems, think about things and come to conclusions.
Testosterone and vasopressin, the two primary male hormones, flood a man’s mind, affirming characteristics such as assertiveness, Dr. Mango explained. For men, maturity is a matter of harnessing these hormones.
Dr. Mango took us back to the beginning, noting that when a girl is born, her first relationship is with someone like her –- her mother, a women. This is not true when a boy is born. Initially, a boy identifies with his mother, but as his self-awareness grows at about 18 months, he becomes aware that he is not like his mother. His search to find his identity can affect his outlook for the rest of his life, Dr. Mango said. The greatest responsibility of any father, Dr. Mango said, is to love his son. A father must help his son affirm his identity.
“Most boys today are not getting that from their fathers today. Most boys are walking around hungry for their father’s affirmation,” Dr. Mango said. In the same way that God the Father affirmed Jesus at His baptism, saying “this is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased,” (Mt. 3:17) fathers should affirm their sons, Dr. Mango said. “God gives us affirmation; when we know that the King loves us, that gives us the power to go out and do anything. That is what fathers can give their sons.” Dr. Mango urged fathers to spend time with their children and show physical affection toward them.
I can read about the differences between men and women, and I can listen to speakers explain the differences, but I can learn the most just by watching my own two daughters and two sons. My girls have magnificent feminine characteristics and the boys have the classic masculine traits. Whatever this means for the way they will approach life as adults, I only know one thing for sure. My wife and I love those kids and that love is essential to their healthy self fulfillment.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
National security expert says we’re much safer
The United States is a safer place today than it was five years ago, retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey told a business audience in Des Moines, Iowa on Sept. 18. McCaffrey is a national security and terrorism analyst for NBC News and writes a national security column in the Armed Forces Journal. He is the president of a consulting practice based in Arlington, Va., and he is an adjunct professor of international affairs at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.
A year ago, I had a chance to interview McCaffrey when he was in Minneapolis. (See my November 4, 2005 blog entry.) Hearing him speak again earlier this week, McCaffrey largely re-iterated the message he delivered a year ago.
In Des Moines, McCaffrey urged his audience to review the web site maintained by the U.S. State Department, where 42 organizations are identified as terrorist groups that threaten U.S. national interests. He noted that the majority of these organizations are funded by criminal activity. One group is smuggling cigarettes out of North Carolina and selling them in New York, generating “tens of millions of dollars for a middle east terrorist organization,” he said.
The Taliban, which is operating in Afghanistan, is funded largely by its sale of opium and heroin. Last year, McCaffrey said, Afghanistan produced 582 metric tons of heroin, which is more than 90 percent of the world’s supply. “If you want serious resources as a terrorist organization, you have to get involved in the drug trade,” said McCaffrey, who noted the convergence of international crime, drug money and terrorism.
Many of the 42 identified terrorist groups, McCaffrey said, “are Islamic extremist groups who have hijacked Islam and have attempted to explain their terrible animosity and frustration with their own governments, which frequently they characterize as incompetent, corrupt and hypocritical toward Islam.” Americans are having a difficult time understanding the situation because “we don’t want to see it as a war of Islam against the West, nor do we believe that’s the case.”
The State Department web site also lists governments which it believes sponsor terrorism. Five years ago, seven countries were on the list –- North Korea, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya and Cuba. At the time, the United States thought five of those countries had weapons of mass destruction, McCaffrey said.
“We should understand that WMD capability is still resident in many of these states,” McCaffrey said. “There are probably 30 nations that could rapidly develop a nuclear weapons capability. Our concern is, can any of these 42 terrorist organizations gain access to that technology?” McCaffrey called North Korea and Pakistan particularly harmful due to their potential for proliferating such technology.
McCaffrey called the threat to the United States “considerable,” but described a three-pillar approach the country is using to defend itself.
The first pillar is made up of the country’s law enforcement agencies and its intelligence services. He called the CIA and the FBI among the greatest agencies in the world. Despite widespread international displeasure with American foreign policy, McCaffrey said the CIA continues to enjoy tremendous access to sensitive information. The FBI, he said, which traditionally has responded to criminal activity, is in the process of transitioning into a pro-active agency which prevents terrorist actions before they occur.
The second pillar, McCaffrey said, is the United States’ armed forces. He called the American soldiers in Iraq today the “most courageous, competent force we have ever fielded.” American armed forces, he said, are tactically nimble and very powerful.
The third pillar is the country’s domestic counter-terrorism effort. The Department of Homeland Security brought together 22 government agencies into one department of 177,000 people. Although much more work needs to be done, McCaffrey said progress has been made in many areas. “The nation’s 104 nuclear power plants are immensely better defended, and the nation’s aviation system has gone from unprotected to being pretty well defended,” he said.
Border patrol, McCaffrey said, is one of the greatest homeland security challenges. He said there are currently 12,000 border patrol officers. “Why would you think you could defend America’s 304 ports of entry with a force that is a fraction of the size of the New York City police department?” he asked. He said the border patrol needs 45,000 people.
The Coast Guard also is understaffed at its current level of 32,000 people. “That force ought to be 75,000 people,” he said. And the National Guard, he said, is not equipped to keep up with the demands that are being made of it. He said the National Guard needs more military police brigades, light infantry, engineering and medical resources and fewer F-16 aircraft and M-1 tanks.
“At the end of the day, the great question asked every 9-11 is going to be: Are we any safer? It’s a silly question,” McCaffrey summarized. “Of course we are. We have made enormous strides internationally and at home to better set ourselves up to protect us from these new forms of terrorist threat. To a large extent it’s working.”
A year ago, I had a chance to interview McCaffrey when he was in Minneapolis. (See my November 4, 2005 blog entry.) Hearing him speak again earlier this week, McCaffrey largely re-iterated the message he delivered a year ago.
In Des Moines, McCaffrey urged his audience to review the web site maintained by the U.S. State Department, where 42 organizations are identified as terrorist groups that threaten U.S. national interests. He noted that the majority of these organizations are funded by criminal activity. One group is smuggling cigarettes out of North Carolina and selling them in New York, generating “tens of millions of dollars for a middle east terrorist organization,” he said.
The Taliban, which is operating in Afghanistan, is funded largely by its sale of opium and heroin. Last year, McCaffrey said, Afghanistan produced 582 metric tons of heroin, which is more than 90 percent of the world’s supply. “If you want serious resources as a terrorist organization, you have to get involved in the drug trade,” said McCaffrey, who noted the convergence of international crime, drug money and terrorism.
Many of the 42 identified terrorist groups, McCaffrey said, “are Islamic extremist groups who have hijacked Islam and have attempted to explain their terrible animosity and frustration with their own governments, which frequently they characterize as incompetent, corrupt and hypocritical toward Islam.” Americans are having a difficult time understanding the situation because “we don’t want to see it as a war of Islam against the West, nor do we believe that’s the case.”
The State Department web site also lists governments which it believes sponsor terrorism. Five years ago, seven countries were on the list –- North Korea, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya and Cuba. At the time, the United States thought five of those countries had weapons of mass destruction, McCaffrey said.
“We should understand that WMD capability is still resident in many of these states,” McCaffrey said. “There are probably 30 nations that could rapidly develop a nuclear weapons capability. Our concern is, can any of these 42 terrorist organizations gain access to that technology?” McCaffrey called North Korea and Pakistan particularly harmful due to their potential for proliferating such technology.
McCaffrey called the threat to the United States “considerable,” but described a three-pillar approach the country is using to defend itself.
The first pillar is made up of the country’s law enforcement agencies and its intelligence services. He called the CIA and the FBI among the greatest agencies in the world. Despite widespread international displeasure with American foreign policy, McCaffrey said the CIA continues to enjoy tremendous access to sensitive information. The FBI, he said, which traditionally has responded to criminal activity, is in the process of transitioning into a pro-active agency which prevents terrorist actions before they occur.
The second pillar, McCaffrey said, is the United States’ armed forces. He called the American soldiers in Iraq today the “most courageous, competent force we have ever fielded.” American armed forces, he said, are tactically nimble and very powerful.
The third pillar is the country’s domestic counter-terrorism effort. The Department of Homeland Security brought together 22 government agencies into one department of 177,000 people. Although much more work needs to be done, McCaffrey said progress has been made in many areas. “The nation’s 104 nuclear power plants are immensely better defended, and the nation’s aviation system has gone from unprotected to being pretty well defended,” he said.
Border patrol, McCaffrey said, is one of the greatest homeland security challenges. He said there are currently 12,000 border patrol officers. “Why would you think you could defend America’s 304 ports of entry with a force that is a fraction of the size of the New York City police department?” he asked. He said the border patrol needs 45,000 people.
The Coast Guard also is understaffed at its current level of 32,000 people. “That force ought to be 75,000 people,” he said. And the National Guard, he said, is not equipped to keep up with the demands that are being made of it. He said the National Guard needs more military police brigades, light infantry, engineering and medical resources and fewer F-16 aircraft and M-1 tanks.
“At the end of the day, the great question asked every 9-11 is going to be: Are we any safer? It’s a silly question,” McCaffrey summarized. “Of course we are. We have made enormous strides internationally and at home to better set ourselves up to protect us from these new forms of terrorist threat. To a large extent it’s working.”
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Congressman pushes bankers to help stop internet gambling
I had an opportunity to listen to Congressman Jim Leach earlier this week speak about the growing phenomenon of internet gambling. It is illegal to gamble over the internet in the United States, but internet gambling web sites are among the fastest growing category of web businesses. Rep. Leach has introduced legislation to improve the enforcement of laws prohibiting internet gambling.
I have had the chance to cover Rep. Leach for more than 15 years and I have a great deal of respect for this Republican from Iowa, who often is called the smartest man in Congress.
“The fastest growing financial industry in the world and in the United States today, probably by a quantum measure, is gambling,” said Rep. Leach. He said $6 billion per year is wagered over the internet. “In the last five years, it’s grown three-and-a-half fold; it could grow at least that in the next five years.
“In gambling, in general, there are about 2 percent who participate who become what are called ‘pathological’ gamblers, which means they absolutely cannot stop. There are about 5 percent who become ‘problem’ gamblers, which means they can hardly stop, and about 20 percent of bankruptcies relate to gambling,” said Rep. Leach.
Rep. Leach’s legislation, which was approved by the House of Representatives, would prohibit banks and credit card companies from settling internet wagers involving credit cards. “If it works it is clearly worth it. If it doesn’t work, we will all have to reconsider,” Rep. Leach said.
Rep. Leach said he hopes the Senate takes up the legislation this fall. It will be interesting to see what happens. If credit card companies stopped honoring wagers made over the internet, they could shut down the internet gaming business instantly. But most bankers don’t like the idea of being cops. Bankers already don’t like their role in the Patriot Act and other anti-terrorism measures which require them to take extra steps to look for money-laundering. While most bankers would agree that internet banking is a problem, it will be interesting to see whether any believe they should be required to do anything about it.
“I personally think bankers ought to be amazingly sympathetic to this kind of approach because of concern for your customers, and concern for other Americans in a society that wants to save rather than go for the big pot at the end of the rainbow,” Rep. Leach told a group of bankers in Des Moines on Monday.
Rep. Leach said internet gambling is a particularly serious problem among college students, citing one study that estimated 10 percent of college students gamble on line. “The number of college males who reported gambling on line once a week or more increased four fold last year alone,” Rep. Leach said. “Never has it been so easy to lose so much money so quickly at such a young age.
“Gambling through the internet has been brought to the home and to the bedroom. It’s been brought to the office, to the college dorm, and increasingly in the very near future, to cell phones and Blackberries so you can gamble to and from work or while waiting in a movie line,” Rep. Leach said. “This is a very serious phenomenon.”
I have had the chance to cover Rep. Leach for more than 15 years and I have a great deal of respect for this Republican from Iowa, who often is called the smartest man in Congress.
“The fastest growing financial industry in the world and in the United States today, probably by a quantum measure, is gambling,” said Rep. Leach. He said $6 billion per year is wagered over the internet. “In the last five years, it’s grown three-and-a-half fold; it could grow at least that in the next five years.
“In gambling, in general, there are about 2 percent who participate who become what are called ‘pathological’ gamblers, which means they absolutely cannot stop. There are about 5 percent who become ‘problem’ gamblers, which means they can hardly stop, and about 20 percent of bankruptcies relate to gambling,” said Rep. Leach.
Rep. Leach’s legislation, which was approved by the House of Representatives, would prohibit banks and credit card companies from settling internet wagers involving credit cards. “If it works it is clearly worth it. If it doesn’t work, we will all have to reconsider,” Rep. Leach said.
Rep. Leach said he hopes the Senate takes up the legislation this fall. It will be interesting to see what happens. If credit card companies stopped honoring wagers made over the internet, they could shut down the internet gaming business instantly. But most bankers don’t like the idea of being cops. Bankers already don’t like their role in the Patriot Act and other anti-terrorism measures which require them to take extra steps to look for money-laundering. While most bankers would agree that internet banking is a problem, it will be interesting to see whether any believe they should be required to do anything about it.
“I personally think bankers ought to be amazingly sympathetic to this kind of approach because of concern for your customers, and concern for other Americans in a society that wants to save rather than go for the big pot at the end of the rainbow,” Rep. Leach told a group of bankers in Des Moines on Monday.
Rep. Leach said internet gambling is a particularly serious problem among college students, citing one study that estimated 10 percent of college students gamble on line. “The number of college males who reported gambling on line once a week or more increased four fold last year alone,” Rep. Leach said. “Never has it been so easy to lose so much money so quickly at such a young age.
“Gambling through the internet has been brought to the home and to the bedroom. It’s been brought to the office, to the college dorm, and increasingly in the very near future, to cell phones and Blackberries so you can gamble to and from work or while waiting in a movie line,” Rep. Leach said. “This is a very serious phenomenon.”
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Gratitude is key to living in the moment
One of the big mistakes that so many people make in life is they always think about the future. They never take pleasure in the moment because they are always worried about tomorrow or next week, next month or next year. They can never enjoy the present because they are too concerned about what they are going to do later. This is a particular problem for men, who by nature tend to be goal-oriented. Women, who generally are more process-oriented, don’t seem to fall into this trap quite so often.
I am convinced that excessive want, sometimes called greed, is at the root of this problem. People who always want something are always looking ahead to when they might get it; they cannot appreciate what they have and where they are at that moment. People who cultivate a real sense of gratitude find it much easier to live in the present.
I have found this to be an important concept in my business. As a reporter, I am frequently interviewing people. In my early days, I used to worry more about what I was going to ask next than about what the person was saying. I never really listened to the person because I was thinking ahead. I wasn’t appreciating the value of the moment, because I was worried about the future.
Over the years, I have become much better at interviewing. I make a great effort to really listen to people when they take the time to answer. I don’t think much about what I’m going to ask. Often, I find, an obvious question comes out of their response. I don’t have to dream up the next question; they basically give it to me. My interviews now are much better than they were 25 years ago.
I connect with people much better today than I did 25 years ago because I really try to live in the moment with the person I am talking to. I make the most of the present. This concept has proven fruitful in my work, but it has really been helpful at home. I try to live in the moment with my wife and kids. I try to give them my attention without being distracted. I actually put the newspaper down when Susan asks me something. I look my kids in the eye when they talk to me. This is simple, perhaps silly, stuff, but it has made a big difference in my life. I am grateful that they actually want to talk to me. I am thankful that they care what I might have to say. Since I started to really value the conversations and time I have with my wife and kids, I realize I don’t have to want anything for the future because I have so much in the present.
There are 525,600 minutes in a year. I invite you to commit that number to memory. If we can easily count each minute, then let’s make an effort to really live each minute. Rather than skipping over any of those minutes, really make an effort to live each of them. This is what I learned to do when interviewing people. This is what I try to do on the job. When an employee, customer or vendor brings something to me, I really try to live in that moment with them. That means listening to what they are saying, taking time to comprehend it and think about it. And this is what I try to do at home.
So much of respecting another person’s human dignity is simply acknowledging them. That means that when they initiate interaction with you, you take that interaction seriously. You shut out distractions so you can really focus on them. If they sit down next to you for five minutes, give them the full five minutes. Relationships are built one minute at a time and we should be thankful for each minute of attention that anyone gives us.
I am convinced that excessive want, sometimes called greed, is at the root of this problem. People who always want something are always looking ahead to when they might get it; they cannot appreciate what they have and where they are at that moment. People who cultivate a real sense of gratitude find it much easier to live in the present.
I have found this to be an important concept in my business. As a reporter, I am frequently interviewing people. In my early days, I used to worry more about what I was going to ask next than about what the person was saying. I never really listened to the person because I was thinking ahead. I wasn’t appreciating the value of the moment, because I was worried about the future.
Over the years, I have become much better at interviewing. I make a great effort to really listen to people when they take the time to answer. I don’t think much about what I’m going to ask. Often, I find, an obvious question comes out of their response. I don’t have to dream up the next question; they basically give it to me. My interviews now are much better than they were 25 years ago.
I connect with people much better today than I did 25 years ago because I really try to live in the moment with the person I am talking to. I make the most of the present. This concept has proven fruitful in my work, but it has really been helpful at home. I try to live in the moment with my wife and kids. I try to give them my attention without being distracted. I actually put the newspaper down when Susan asks me something. I look my kids in the eye when they talk to me. This is simple, perhaps silly, stuff, but it has made a big difference in my life. I am grateful that they actually want to talk to me. I am thankful that they care what I might have to say. Since I started to really value the conversations and time I have with my wife and kids, I realize I don’t have to want anything for the future because I have so much in the present.
There are 525,600 minutes in a year. I invite you to commit that number to memory. If we can easily count each minute, then let’s make an effort to really live each minute. Rather than skipping over any of those minutes, really make an effort to live each of them. This is what I learned to do when interviewing people. This is what I try to do on the job. When an employee, customer or vendor brings something to me, I really try to live in that moment with them. That means listening to what they are saying, taking time to comprehend it and think about it. And this is what I try to do at home.
So much of respecting another person’s human dignity is simply acknowledging them. That means that when they initiate interaction with you, you take that interaction seriously. You shut out distractions so you can really focus on them. If they sit down next to you for five minutes, give them the full five minutes. Relationships are built one minute at a time and we should be thankful for each minute of attention that anyone gives us.
Monday, July 03, 2006
Independence Day
What a precarious thing is independence, which we celebrate tomorrow. I just finished reading “1776” by David McCullough and it really gave me a sense for how fortunate we are to have any country at all. Victory over the British in the Revolutionary war was not at all certain. The tiny, rag-tag band known as the Continental Army was badly out-numbered, under-financed, ill-trained and largely unorganized; miraculously it defeated the best military of the time, and tomorrow we will cook hotdogs and hamburgers on the grill to commemorate the feat.
McCullough describes the American victory at Boston in spring 1776, and then the string of stinging defeats in the latter part of the year. The British had Gen. George Washington on the run all the way from New York, through New Jersey and across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. McCullough describes a dramatic turning point for the Americans with victories in battles at Trenton on Dec. 26 and Princeton a week later. They would fight another six years – 25,000 Americans would die in the fighting -- until the Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the war in 1783.
It is mind-boggling to contemplate the obstacles Gen. Washington faced. His army was almost completely untrained. He couldn’t even get an accurate count of how many soldiers he had. Every day, dozens of soldiers would just walk away, deserting their post. Others would feign illness. There were no uniforms and many didn’t even have shoes. Early in the war, there was a shortage of gun powder.
Gen. Washington had to rely on the colonies to send troops, and he never knew what he would get. At year-end 1775 and again in 1776, Gen. Washington begged his troops to stay on past their obligation because so few new troops were on the way. After 1775, most left, but on Dec. 31, 1776 he convinced many to stay only by promising them bonus pay that he didn’t even know for sure he was authorized to offer.
Reading this book, you get a sense for the loneliness of leadership. People honored Gen. Washington when things were going good, but after they lost New York, people began to doubt him. People left the army and even his own No. 2 officer wrote letters behind his back questioning his “indecisiveness.” Although this lack of confidence hurt him privately, Gen. Washington kept an optimistic public face and forged ahead. He did not give up. His surprise attack at Princeton was bold and courageous.
It is interesting, too, that when the fighting started in the fall of 1775, the battle was not for independence. Revolutionaries were fighting for representation in the British government. It wasn’t until the war got going that the cause morphed into full-blown independence. Members of the Continental Congress, most of whom had no contact with the fighting, passed the Declaration of Independence on July 2 in Philadelphia.
While some members of Congress and Gen. Washington were convicted about the need for independence, one gets the sense from this book that most Americans were uncertain. Many people remained loyal to Britain and King George III. The loyalists were key in the British victory to win New York. And when things looked bad for the Americans, many of them signed a document declaring their loyalty to the King so as not to be tried as traitors after the war.
I could not help but ask myself upon reading this book whether I would have sided with the rebels or the loyalists had I lived in 1776. What a difficult choice. For Americans living in the big cities of the day, living well and making money in the marketplace, what incentive did they have to fight for independence? Sure, there was taxation without representation but that was a small price to pay to be part of the greatest empire of the era. If you wanted independence, the odds seemed so totally overwhelming against you. How could the rebels beat the greatest military in the world? It seemed impossible.
The country was deeply divided, which gives me some perspective for today. We commonly hear that our country is divided on all of the important political questions but I am realizing that is not new. We were divided at the time of the revolution, at the time of the Civil war and today. One of the real tricks of living peacefully in any era is getting along with people who disagree with you.
“1776” is an optimistic book. It demonstrates what enormous feats can be accomplished even if you don’t have what you need, even if you don’t have supplies. Success must have something to do with will. Gen. Washington was willing to fight on Dec. 26; unlike the Hessian soldiers fighting for the British, the Americans weren’t hung over from Christmas Day celebrations; unlike the British who were waiting out winter in the comfort of New York City, the Americans were willing to fight in the snow and sleet storms, and in the end, it made a big difference.
Gen. Washington and the members of the Continental Army could not have imagined the scope of the United States of America more than two centuries in the future. What would North America look like today had Gen. Washington given up and the Continental Army lost? It is impossible to know. But we do know that we have a great country today and that that greatness has something to do with the courage and conviction exhibited by people like Gen. Washington and others throughout the last 230 years.
McCullough describes the American victory at Boston in spring 1776, and then the string of stinging defeats in the latter part of the year. The British had Gen. George Washington on the run all the way from New York, through New Jersey and across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. McCullough describes a dramatic turning point for the Americans with victories in battles at Trenton on Dec. 26 and Princeton a week later. They would fight another six years – 25,000 Americans would die in the fighting -- until the Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the war in 1783.
It is mind-boggling to contemplate the obstacles Gen. Washington faced. His army was almost completely untrained. He couldn’t even get an accurate count of how many soldiers he had. Every day, dozens of soldiers would just walk away, deserting their post. Others would feign illness. There were no uniforms and many didn’t even have shoes. Early in the war, there was a shortage of gun powder.
Gen. Washington had to rely on the colonies to send troops, and he never knew what he would get. At year-end 1775 and again in 1776, Gen. Washington begged his troops to stay on past their obligation because so few new troops were on the way. After 1775, most left, but on Dec. 31, 1776 he convinced many to stay only by promising them bonus pay that he didn’t even know for sure he was authorized to offer.
Reading this book, you get a sense for the loneliness of leadership. People honored Gen. Washington when things were going good, but after they lost New York, people began to doubt him. People left the army and even his own No. 2 officer wrote letters behind his back questioning his “indecisiveness.” Although this lack of confidence hurt him privately, Gen. Washington kept an optimistic public face and forged ahead. He did not give up. His surprise attack at Princeton was bold and courageous.
It is interesting, too, that when the fighting started in the fall of 1775, the battle was not for independence. Revolutionaries were fighting for representation in the British government. It wasn’t until the war got going that the cause morphed into full-blown independence. Members of the Continental Congress, most of whom had no contact with the fighting, passed the Declaration of Independence on July 2 in Philadelphia.
While some members of Congress and Gen. Washington were convicted about the need for independence, one gets the sense from this book that most Americans were uncertain. Many people remained loyal to Britain and King George III. The loyalists were key in the British victory to win New York. And when things looked bad for the Americans, many of them signed a document declaring their loyalty to the King so as not to be tried as traitors after the war.
I could not help but ask myself upon reading this book whether I would have sided with the rebels or the loyalists had I lived in 1776. What a difficult choice. For Americans living in the big cities of the day, living well and making money in the marketplace, what incentive did they have to fight for independence? Sure, there was taxation without representation but that was a small price to pay to be part of the greatest empire of the era. If you wanted independence, the odds seemed so totally overwhelming against you. How could the rebels beat the greatest military in the world? It seemed impossible.
The country was deeply divided, which gives me some perspective for today. We commonly hear that our country is divided on all of the important political questions but I am realizing that is not new. We were divided at the time of the revolution, at the time of the Civil war and today. One of the real tricks of living peacefully in any era is getting along with people who disagree with you.
“1776” is an optimistic book. It demonstrates what enormous feats can be accomplished even if you don’t have what you need, even if you don’t have supplies. Success must have something to do with will. Gen. Washington was willing to fight on Dec. 26; unlike the Hessian soldiers fighting for the British, the Americans weren’t hung over from Christmas Day celebrations; unlike the British who were waiting out winter in the comfort of New York City, the Americans were willing to fight in the snow and sleet storms, and in the end, it made a big difference.
Gen. Washington and the members of the Continental Army could not have imagined the scope of the United States of America more than two centuries in the future. What would North America look like today had Gen. Washington given up and the Continental Army lost? It is impossible to know. But we do know that we have a great country today and that that greatness has something to do with the courage and conviction exhibited by people like Gen. Washington and others throughout the last 230 years.
Saturday, June 17, 2006
Reflections on being a father
On the occasion of Father’s Day, I am pleased to reflect on the qualities that make a man a good father. As a man with four children ranging in age from 3 to 11, I know that spending time with the kids is very important. The kids crave my time and attention. It makes me realize what a position of honor it is to be a father.
There are so many things a man can do to be a good father, but I want to suggest that the most important two things that a man must do is love God and love his wife. If you do these two things, everything else a father does for his children will be more meaningful.
A man can show his love for God in all kinds of ways; keeping the commandments is one of the more obvious ways. Let me focus on two of the commandments: No. 1, “Love God with all your heart and have no strange gods before me;” and No. 4, “Honor your father and mother.”
Let’s look at the first half of the first commandment. One of the most important ways to show your love for God is to pray to Him. As parents, we are teachers, and one of the very important lessons that we teach our children is to pray to God, to talk to Him regularly, to develop a relationship with Him. It is very important for children to see their father praying to God. In our own home, I am pleased to lead prayers every evening for our children. In addition to standard prayers, we mention specific needs, asking for God’s grace.
Not all prayer is done in a group. I encourage each of the kids to pray on their own. Sometimes if my kids get up early they will see me praying by myself. I think it is important for them to see that for me, prayer is real. I mean it when I am talking to God, or trying to listen to Him. They see me on my knees, taking time to communicate with my Maker. There is no more powerful teacher than example and my sincere hope is that each of the kids will develop meaningful prayer habits that help them grow as close to God as possible.
It is typically said there are four kinds of prayer: praise, penance, petition and gratitude. In terms of being a father, I particularly want my kids to focus on those prayers of gratitude. We are so richly blessed, living in the United States in the early 21st century. We have a better life than most of the kings in history had. It is so easy to take our blessings for granted and this is a mistake. I really try to encourage my kids to take time at the start of every day to thank God for all that He has given to us.
While we can all work on being more grateful, I think gratitude is an attitude that is particularly important to develop in children. Media bombards our children with messages about things they should want. Those TV commercials are always telling kids they should want more. No matter what they already have, TV is pointing out the things they don’t have and encouraging them to want more. This sets a kid on the road to materialism, which never brings true happiness.
It is reasonable for a person to want the things that he needs, and perhaps a few things he doesn’t. Consider, however, that if a person allowed himself to be influenced by all the advertisements out there, he would want far more things than anyone could ever buy; he would be miserable. Perhaps adults can make distinctions about when to draw the line on more things to want, but I don’t think a kid is naturally equipped with that ability. I child will always want more and more, especially if the child is encouraged by the messages he sees and hears.
While we can shield our kids to an extent from these messages, the real antidote to want is gratitude. If a person has a healthy attitude of gratitude, those messages won’t sink in so quickly. If a child gets used to thinking about all the things they already have, they are less inclined to focus on the things they don’t have. I once heard someone say that one of the great tricks in life is to want the things you have, not the things you don’t have. That’s a definition of gratitude, and it is something I believe every good father needs to try to cultivate in their children; prayers of gratitude are one great way to do that.
The second part of that first commandment – ‘Have no strange gods before Me” – speaks particularly to fathers. We don’t typically think of false gods in today’s world. Nobody worships a golden calf anymore the way they did in the Old Testament. But in today’s world, I think men are particularly susceptible to making a false god out of their work. Many men relish their role as provider and some men get carried away. They focus all of their energy on their work and forget about their wife and kids. They justify consuming work schedules by telling themselves that they are providing for their families, but if a father can’t provide some time for his kids then the money he provides is far less meaningful.
My own house, like the homes of any family with four small children, is chaotic. For me, going to work is an escape. It is a place of peace compared to my house. It would be easy to begin to think of the office as my temple. It would be easy to begin to think of my work as my god. It would be easy to fool myself into believing that I need to work seven days a week, and that as long as I am earning money, it is okay that I don’t have any time for my family. What a mistake that would be. But I think a lot of guys make that mistake.
Work is important, but it cannot become our god. The second part of that first commandment is an admonition to keep our priorities in order. In any man’s life God comes first, then wife, then children and then work. The first commandment should help fathers remember this, even in the face of temptations to fiddle with that order.
The other commandment I really like to think about in terms of fatherhood is the fourth commandment. Of course, I like the idea that children are supposed to honor their father and mother. I make sure my kids know this commandment. I remind them of it whenever I can. But the real power behind this commandment is not what my kids should be doing for me, but what I should be doing for my own parents. Commandment No. 4 doesn’t stop when I turned 18. I had parents then and I still have parents, so the commandment still applies. I am still required to honor my parents, and I have to be mindful that my kids are watching.
One of the biggest issues for many people like myself –- people in their 40s –- is figuring out how to care for aging parents. My parents are living independently on their own at this point, but what will happen in the future if they really need my care? I need to be there for them. This means really caring for them, offering them my home if they need it. Just like being a good father means being there for your children, being a good child in adulthood means being there for my parents.
Living up to the demands of the fourth commandment is a big responsibility, and it requires planning. Where will mom and dad live in their old age? Where will the surviving spouse live after one of them dies? Although it is highly unfashionable for elderly parents to live with their children, I really think people should consider this arrangement and make plans for it as a possibility. Although thousands of people die every year surrounded by strangers at a nursing home, I can’t believe anyone really wants that. We don’t want to see our parents living in a nursing home. And I don’t believe any elderly person really wants to be there. People naturally want to be around the people they love, who typically come from their own families.
So honoring mom and dad means thinking about these end-of-life issues and making plans to deal with them in a meaningful way. Of course, this is not easy. Many older parents don’t want to talk about it. Many aging parents have judgment that is adversely affected by their pride and sense of independence. They consider themselves to be a burden rather than the gift from God that they truly are. Adult kids have to talk with siblings about this; they have to plan as best they can, and they have to be willing to consider the welfare of their parents to the same degree that they would consider their own welfare or the welfare of their children.
Children will always watch how their mom and dad treat their parents. I know I did. I was fortunate as a child to have the example of my own father who cared lovingly for his dear aging aunt. I watched as he visited her daily, took care of her affairs and brought her to our home frequently for visits. So honoring your mother and father is an important commandment from at least two perspectives. First, as adults we need to care for our parents as part of our own obligation, and second, the degree to which we care for our parents is likely to be the degree to which our own children one day care for us.
In addition to heeding the commandments, the other thing a man can do to be a good father is love his wife. I can think of at least a couple of ways to do that.
The first is to show complete unity with your wife in front of your children. When it comes to raising kids, I think it is essential that the kids get a consistent message from their parents. So when it comes to guiding the kids, Susan and I are always in agreement. We discuss differences in private, but in front of the kids, we display a unified front. Remember that natural order of priorities I mentioned earlier?… God, wife, kids, work. I think kids naturally understand this and they test it by occasionally trying to divide mom and dad. They play us against each other or try to win the affection of one parent over the other. But the best response from the parents is to show the child that mom and dad are in lock-step together. This might lead to some surface-level disappoint for the child but I think deep down, the child is actually glad to have the parents affirm a natural order where they love each other first, and then they love their kids.
I know one of the greatest ways I can show my love for Susan is to back her up in any situation in front of the kids. Most of the discipline in our home falls on Susan, simply because she is around the kids more than I am. So there cannot be any ambiguity about Susan’s parental authority. The kids need to know that what she says stands. Usually Susan’s own word is enough, but sometimes the kids press the situation and they need to hear from me that whatever Susan says goes. Again, while the kids might not like having to do what Susan asks, I think they are affirmed by seeing mom and dad in agreement.
The other way that a man can truly show his love for his wife is to think seriously about what it means to respect her human dignity. People are not things that should be used, like a good power tool. People are created in the image of God and therefore have dignity beyond any man-made object. So I cannot use my wife for my own pleasure or convenience. I have to respect the way she is made. Women obviously have a fertility cycle that differs from men and I have to respect that. Attempts to change that are really just me being selfish. It’s me saying I don’t really like the way God made women and I think I can do better for my own purposes.
Nobody likes to talk about this because marital relations are so deeply personal. Sex is a great gift from God and my own experience tells me I don’t need to try to improve on God’s plan for married people. He has given us the science to determine with incredible accuracy when we are fertile and infertile, and He has given us the will to act accordingly, if we choose. This isn’t something He gave to animals. This is something uniquely human, and Susan and I try to celebrate this Godly dignity in our marriage.
As my kids grow, I am gradually understanding more and more what it means to be a father. I understand now that fatherhood is a great gift from God, something I wasn’t necessarily clear on when we got our first child in 1995. I can see now that God is concerned about my salvation and one of the reasons He gave us kids is to help us get to heaven. We are born with natural selfishness and life’s journey is about moving toward selflessness. Children are really helping me along in this journey.
Before Susan and I had children, it was so easy to be selfish. It was so easy to focus on myself – what recreation I was going to pursue, what trips I was going to take, what I was going to buy next. None of that stuff is bad on its own, but collectively it was all about me.
Then the kids came along. All of a sudden, I am forced to think about someone other than me. I have to respond to my kids. And the more I do, the less I think about me. And fortunately, God understands my weakness and He gradually works me into the program. We didn’t get all four kids at once. With our first child, I really didn’t have to give up many of my personal pursuits. With the second child, I could begin to see that I would need to make some adjustments to my lifestyle. By the time the third and fourth child came along, I had given up most of my personal pursuits, and was now directing my energy and time to someone other than me. And this has been a great blessing… the great blessing of fatherhood.
There are so many things a man can do to be a good father, but I want to suggest that the most important two things that a man must do is love God and love his wife. If you do these two things, everything else a father does for his children will be more meaningful.
A man can show his love for God in all kinds of ways; keeping the commandments is one of the more obvious ways. Let me focus on two of the commandments: No. 1, “Love God with all your heart and have no strange gods before me;” and No. 4, “Honor your father and mother.”
Let’s look at the first half of the first commandment. One of the most important ways to show your love for God is to pray to Him. As parents, we are teachers, and one of the very important lessons that we teach our children is to pray to God, to talk to Him regularly, to develop a relationship with Him. It is very important for children to see their father praying to God. In our own home, I am pleased to lead prayers every evening for our children. In addition to standard prayers, we mention specific needs, asking for God’s grace.
Not all prayer is done in a group. I encourage each of the kids to pray on their own. Sometimes if my kids get up early they will see me praying by myself. I think it is important for them to see that for me, prayer is real. I mean it when I am talking to God, or trying to listen to Him. They see me on my knees, taking time to communicate with my Maker. There is no more powerful teacher than example and my sincere hope is that each of the kids will develop meaningful prayer habits that help them grow as close to God as possible.
It is typically said there are four kinds of prayer: praise, penance, petition and gratitude. In terms of being a father, I particularly want my kids to focus on those prayers of gratitude. We are so richly blessed, living in the United States in the early 21st century. We have a better life than most of the kings in history had. It is so easy to take our blessings for granted and this is a mistake. I really try to encourage my kids to take time at the start of every day to thank God for all that He has given to us.
While we can all work on being more grateful, I think gratitude is an attitude that is particularly important to develop in children. Media bombards our children with messages about things they should want. Those TV commercials are always telling kids they should want more. No matter what they already have, TV is pointing out the things they don’t have and encouraging them to want more. This sets a kid on the road to materialism, which never brings true happiness.
It is reasonable for a person to want the things that he needs, and perhaps a few things he doesn’t. Consider, however, that if a person allowed himself to be influenced by all the advertisements out there, he would want far more things than anyone could ever buy; he would be miserable. Perhaps adults can make distinctions about when to draw the line on more things to want, but I don’t think a kid is naturally equipped with that ability. I child will always want more and more, especially if the child is encouraged by the messages he sees and hears.
While we can shield our kids to an extent from these messages, the real antidote to want is gratitude. If a person has a healthy attitude of gratitude, those messages won’t sink in so quickly. If a child gets used to thinking about all the things they already have, they are less inclined to focus on the things they don’t have. I once heard someone say that one of the great tricks in life is to want the things you have, not the things you don’t have. That’s a definition of gratitude, and it is something I believe every good father needs to try to cultivate in their children; prayers of gratitude are one great way to do that.
The second part of that first commandment – ‘Have no strange gods before Me” – speaks particularly to fathers. We don’t typically think of false gods in today’s world. Nobody worships a golden calf anymore the way they did in the Old Testament. But in today’s world, I think men are particularly susceptible to making a false god out of their work. Many men relish their role as provider and some men get carried away. They focus all of their energy on their work and forget about their wife and kids. They justify consuming work schedules by telling themselves that they are providing for their families, but if a father can’t provide some time for his kids then the money he provides is far less meaningful.
My own house, like the homes of any family with four small children, is chaotic. For me, going to work is an escape. It is a place of peace compared to my house. It would be easy to begin to think of the office as my temple. It would be easy to begin to think of my work as my god. It would be easy to fool myself into believing that I need to work seven days a week, and that as long as I am earning money, it is okay that I don’t have any time for my family. What a mistake that would be. But I think a lot of guys make that mistake.
Work is important, but it cannot become our god. The second part of that first commandment is an admonition to keep our priorities in order. In any man’s life God comes first, then wife, then children and then work. The first commandment should help fathers remember this, even in the face of temptations to fiddle with that order.
The other commandment I really like to think about in terms of fatherhood is the fourth commandment. Of course, I like the idea that children are supposed to honor their father and mother. I make sure my kids know this commandment. I remind them of it whenever I can. But the real power behind this commandment is not what my kids should be doing for me, but what I should be doing for my own parents. Commandment No. 4 doesn’t stop when I turned 18. I had parents then and I still have parents, so the commandment still applies. I am still required to honor my parents, and I have to be mindful that my kids are watching.
One of the biggest issues for many people like myself –- people in their 40s –- is figuring out how to care for aging parents. My parents are living independently on their own at this point, but what will happen in the future if they really need my care? I need to be there for them. This means really caring for them, offering them my home if they need it. Just like being a good father means being there for your children, being a good child in adulthood means being there for my parents.
Living up to the demands of the fourth commandment is a big responsibility, and it requires planning. Where will mom and dad live in their old age? Where will the surviving spouse live after one of them dies? Although it is highly unfashionable for elderly parents to live with their children, I really think people should consider this arrangement and make plans for it as a possibility. Although thousands of people die every year surrounded by strangers at a nursing home, I can’t believe anyone really wants that. We don’t want to see our parents living in a nursing home. And I don’t believe any elderly person really wants to be there. People naturally want to be around the people they love, who typically come from their own families.
So honoring mom and dad means thinking about these end-of-life issues and making plans to deal with them in a meaningful way. Of course, this is not easy. Many older parents don’t want to talk about it. Many aging parents have judgment that is adversely affected by their pride and sense of independence. They consider themselves to be a burden rather than the gift from God that they truly are. Adult kids have to talk with siblings about this; they have to plan as best they can, and they have to be willing to consider the welfare of their parents to the same degree that they would consider their own welfare or the welfare of their children.
Children will always watch how their mom and dad treat their parents. I know I did. I was fortunate as a child to have the example of my own father who cared lovingly for his dear aging aunt. I watched as he visited her daily, took care of her affairs and brought her to our home frequently for visits. So honoring your mother and father is an important commandment from at least two perspectives. First, as adults we need to care for our parents as part of our own obligation, and second, the degree to which we care for our parents is likely to be the degree to which our own children one day care for us.
In addition to heeding the commandments, the other thing a man can do to be a good father is love his wife. I can think of at least a couple of ways to do that.
The first is to show complete unity with your wife in front of your children. When it comes to raising kids, I think it is essential that the kids get a consistent message from their parents. So when it comes to guiding the kids, Susan and I are always in agreement. We discuss differences in private, but in front of the kids, we display a unified front. Remember that natural order of priorities I mentioned earlier?… God, wife, kids, work. I think kids naturally understand this and they test it by occasionally trying to divide mom and dad. They play us against each other or try to win the affection of one parent over the other. But the best response from the parents is to show the child that mom and dad are in lock-step together. This might lead to some surface-level disappoint for the child but I think deep down, the child is actually glad to have the parents affirm a natural order where they love each other first, and then they love their kids.
I know one of the greatest ways I can show my love for Susan is to back her up in any situation in front of the kids. Most of the discipline in our home falls on Susan, simply because she is around the kids more than I am. So there cannot be any ambiguity about Susan’s parental authority. The kids need to know that what she says stands. Usually Susan’s own word is enough, but sometimes the kids press the situation and they need to hear from me that whatever Susan says goes. Again, while the kids might not like having to do what Susan asks, I think they are affirmed by seeing mom and dad in agreement.
The other way that a man can truly show his love for his wife is to think seriously about what it means to respect her human dignity. People are not things that should be used, like a good power tool. People are created in the image of God and therefore have dignity beyond any man-made object. So I cannot use my wife for my own pleasure or convenience. I have to respect the way she is made. Women obviously have a fertility cycle that differs from men and I have to respect that. Attempts to change that are really just me being selfish. It’s me saying I don’t really like the way God made women and I think I can do better for my own purposes.
Nobody likes to talk about this because marital relations are so deeply personal. Sex is a great gift from God and my own experience tells me I don’t need to try to improve on God’s plan for married people. He has given us the science to determine with incredible accuracy when we are fertile and infertile, and He has given us the will to act accordingly, if we choose. This isn’t something He gave to animals. This is something uniquely human, and Susan and I try to celebrate this Godly dignity in our marriage.
As my kids grow, I am gradually understanding more and more what it means to be a father. I understand now that fatherhood is a great gift from God, something I wasn’t necessarily clear on when we got our first child in 1995. I can see now that God is concerned about my salvation and one of the reasons He gave us kids is to help us get to heaven. We are born with natural selfishness and life’s journey is about moving toward selflessness. Children are really helping me along in this journey.
Before Susan and I had children, it was so easy to be selfish. It was so easy to focus on myself – what recreation I was going to pursue, what trips I was going to take, what I was going to buy next. None of that stuff is bad on its own, but collectively it was all about me.
Then the kids came along. All of a sudden, I am forced to think about someone other than me. I have to respond to my kids. And the more I do, the less I think about me. And fortunately, God understands my weakness and He gradually works me into the program. We didn’t get all four kids at once. With our first child, I really didn’t have to give up many of my personal pursuits. With the second child, I could begin to see that I would need to make some adjustments to my lifestyle. By the time the third and fourth child came along, I had given up most of my personal pursuits, and was now directing my energy and time to someone other than me. And this has been a great blessing… the great blessing of fatherhood.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)