christian-righting the secular world

Those Savage Kids

My daughter is quite aggressive. She likes to hit and can escalate quickly into a joyful frenzy of “Spiderman stopping the Bad Guy” by wrangling her brother to the floor and then bounding away arms raised in triumph. Yeah, I’m working on channeling that enthusiasm into creative pursuits and maybe labor (when I need the house vacuumed).

So, I had a talk with her about hitting her little brother. Can’t do it. Wrong. Yeah, Spidey hits the Bad Guy, but only when the Bad Guy hits him first. Besides, that’s pretend. Actors, movie, story. Yeah, I know your brother was pinching you, but he’s not a Bad Guy, just a pretend Bad Guy when you play together. No hitting! Anyway, if you want to punch, hit a pillow or your Tigger.

Tigger?!? Never!

The notion of “hurting” her stuffed animal pal she’s had since she was a baby mortified her. She’s not exactly feeling the same emotional abhorence to hurting her brother because her brother hurts her, and because rivalry is alive and well in her 5-year-old mind. But you see, she has empathy and love for something. Just not her brother. (Yet, says the hopeful mom.)

Original Sin = Sociopathy

After this experience, I read what familiy psychologist John Rosemond wrote in 2006:

toddlerhood is a pathological condition that demands ‘cure,’ accomplished through a combination of powerful love and powerful discipline. … The toddler mindset and the sociopathic mindset are one and the same

In Going Behind Closed Doors in Christian Right Households, Jeremy Adam Smith writes of an email he received from Rosemond to clarify that statement:

Rosemond invoked the DSM-IV, the diagnostic bible of mental health practitioners, to justify his views and give them the veneer of scientific authority, but later in his response he made it clear that there is only one Bible that guides his parenting advice. ‘In every passage of Scripture that refers to the discipline (disciple-ing) of children, the central theme is leadership,’ he writes. ‘I am, first and foremost, a believer in and follower of Jesus, The Christ.’

Now, I’ve come to expect that Christian conservatives believe they embody the love of Jesus through their self-righteous diatribes on America’s godless secularism, manipulative threats from a phantom authority they call “Natural Law” whom only they can see and only they can speak for, and, of course, the fact that women are meant to obey and serve men, because, as we all know, men sin less and judge better. (This is, by the way, demonstrated in the world’s history of abuse, war, torture, crime, and tyranny — those darn women running amok!) I’m not even sure why we call these people “Christian” since their appeals to Truth almost always tie to the Old Testament, not the Gospels.

That’s old news, but what I had never heard before was the Christian conservative take on children. They’re “sociopaths.”

As I mentioned above, Havana can be quite a little savage. The problem with Rosemond’s argument, of course, is that my daughter has feelings, whereas sociopaths don’t. This was pointed out in the article and in Havana’s protective stance over her Tigger. The other problem is that her brain is still growing. I mean, she’s not able to read, either, so does that make her “mentally challenged”?

Science Can’t Answer Questions of Morality

In facing a “godless secularism,” Christian conservatives have found a need to appeal to a new authority: SCIENCE. That’s because their entire world-view is not about thinking for themselves but about obeying some designated authority. 

Not that their appeals to science are valid in any way. Too many people attach their personal prejudices to some authority when their ideas can’t stand on their own. Just look at the newest argument made by “Evolutionary Psychology” (EP). You newcomers may not realize EP is more accurately described as ”Enterprising Patriarchy,” doing for the secular world what the Christian Right could only dream. In Pseudo-science Blames Coming Depression on Boobs you’ll see how the language of science is tortured to become an authority in matters psychological and spiritual, if only by those who don’t have a clue what real science is.

Don’t get me wrong. This is a defense of science. I don’t want real science to be sullied by desperate believers toying with the human need to trust in something bigger, whether that’s cosmology or Jesus. I see the trend of Christians telling us that science can answer questions of morality – first, in the contrivances of “Natural Law” and now, the DSM-IV.

In any case, I’m worried less that my daughter and son remain slaves to original sin than that one day they may be told Jesus hates them by people who call themselves Christians.