I don't know a lot about ADD or ADHD.  I plan on learning more before I get into the classroom, as I will certainly encounter people diagnosed with one or the other.

In the meantime, though, I was reminded today of a kid I know who I'm pretty sure was diagnosed with one or the other who I'm friends with.  This kid, who is remaining nameless for the purposes of this post, is a great kid, but full of energy.  I, and others, have, in the past, been at our wit's end from time to time trying to figure out how to deal with this kid during structured activities.

One day my friends and I went shooting.  This kid went along.  Some people would say that this was a stupid idea, considering how this kid was both full of energy and could be extremely challenging to keep control of.

These people's fears would only have grown as they saw our group of friends in Wal-Mart before-hand, buying ammo and targets.  While my friends were shopping, this kid attempted to convince them that my beard was fake by pulling it out.  I saw some rather shocked looks on my friends' faces.  I'm not sure how much of the shock was because they were used to a slightly more dignified, defensive-of-his-beard me, and how much of the shock was because they weren't sure bringing this kid along was a great idea.

Before we got into the car to ride to the spot where we were going to shoot, I pulled the kid aside and said that the energy and mischief was fine now, but it would have to be completely stopped when we were shooting.  The kid affirmed that this would happen.

When we got to the spot to shoot, the kid calmed down.  Calmness reigned as my best friend gave instructions on the basics of shooting and shooting safety.  We let the kid shoot a .22 pretty quickly, as I recall.  The kid liked that the best and shot the .22 more than anyone else, I think, taking multiple turns.  The kid shot the .22 more and more as most of my friends either stopped shooting altogether or moved up to the higher-caliber guns.  The kid also shot a 20-guage shotgun a few times, but didn't like it as much, as it kicked a bit for the kid's taste.

And the kid didn't goof off at all.

Sure, the kid asked when the kid could have another turn at the .22 a few times, but not excessively.  The kid knew how turns work.

And, yeah, when I saw that the kid was getting bored, I took the kid aside and demonstrated how the bolt on my friend's old Mosin-Nagant rifle works.  And another time I took the kid aside and explained about the Mosin-Nagant's bayonet, how it is cross-shaped and how it attaches to the front of the rifle.

And that's all the diversion I remember doing in the entire half-day of shooting.

And I have to wonder: what kid wouldn't be bored if they had to wait while watching others shoot guns over and over again?  I mean, I got bored during some of it and I pride myself on my longer-than-average-for-my-age-group attention span.

And when we put the guns away again and got into the car, the kid was back to being energetic, mischievous and what some would call obnoxious.  But the guns were away.  Also, the kid calmed down some when I asked the kid questions.  That is, I gave the kid attention and the kid calmed down.  And everything was happy.

And, honestly, adults need to tolerate kids with energy.  Really, they need to relax and take pleasure in the exuberance in experiencing life this kid and others have been given by God.  And they need to realize that the idea that kids should be seen and not heard is a lie from Satan and they need to give kids attention, because kids are gifts from God.

People need to stop shaping kids that are made in the image of God into man-made molds.  We need to start shaping our systems to fit kids made in the image of God, because, honestly, "image of God" trumps "man-made system," don't you think?  I mean, that should be pretty obvious, right?

I mean, seriously.

Now to figure out how to apply that systematically…

Laptops for everyone!

More information here.  This really is a very, very cool project.

First, some stories from college.

When we first got to college, my roommate/best friend since kindergarten and I decided that we would spend the first semester checking out churches, with no real commitment to join any of them until we decided on a church over Christmas Break.  That didn't quite work out, as we got snagged by a wonderful church just after Thanksgiving, but it did give us a chance to visit churches that we knew ahead of time that we weren't going to plug in to, so we could see how other people do church.  The first church we visited was an Orthodox Presbyterian church that was in the final stages of becoming a full member of that denomination (I don't know the proper terminology for that, but you get the idea).  It had been started a short while before, apparently, and had been helped through the process by an Orthodox Presbyterian church in a neighboring town and was meeting in a hotel until they could get a building.

My roommate and I had a blast, even though we knew we weren't coming back.  The people were very friendly, the sermon was good, if I remember correctly, and we discovered that some people actually sing Psalms as hymns, something I think is an awfully good idea, especially compared to the rather frustrating tendency of a lot of contemporary praise songs to just quote a verse or two from a Psalm instead.

One thing, though, bothered me.  It turns out that the pastor of this church hadn't finished getting ordained or whatever by the Orthodox Presbyterians, so he wasn't allowed to give communion yet.  So that this church could celebrate communion, every month or so this pastor and the pastor from the "mother church" would travel to each others' churches and the ordained pastor would give communion in this church while his church went without communion for a week.  We happened to visit on one of those Sundays.

Another story: some of my friends, including my best friend, were in the college choir and thus went on the choir tour during spring break that year.  I remember hearing that one of my friends, who is Plymouth Brethren, decided to have communion, I think with some apple juice juice boxes and some tortillas that were on the bus.  It apparently took some major convincing of another of my friends for her to join in, because she wasn't sure you could "do that."

One of the most important doctrines in ecclesiology, I think, is the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers.  Basically, it says that no one stands between any Christian and Christ, who is our High Priest and who stands between us and the Father, where He mediates for us.  Not all denominations share this doctrine, obviously.  The "higher" you go on the high church-low church spectrum, the less this doctrine is going to be held.  Start with the Orthodox Presbyterians and other "mainline" churches, with communion only allowed to be "given" by those whom the synod or whomever has decided to allow and it gets worse and worse, from statements concerning priests absolving sins in the Anglican/Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, to the Catholic idea that the "Church" can decide that they don't like you anymore and excommunicate you, dooming you to Hell because they decide to withhold communion from you, depriving you of a vehicle of Christ's grace.

Obviously, pretty bad stuff.  I would go so far as to actually say that it is downright evil.

The thing is, I think that this undermining of the priesthood of the believer is seeping into the low church.  Remember the girl from my second story that wasn't sure you could "do that?"  She's from a pretty low church background.  And I don't think she's alone.  What is the cause of this erosion?  The "Superstar Pastor."

The idea is this: most evangelical churches today have pretty high standards for who they'll let lead them.  Beyond the biblical requirements concerning character, they often require a seminary degree, which is quite an accomplishment, by the way.  The pastor is also supposed to be a pretty good speaker, as well, because he'll be giving the sermons a few times a week.  He's also got lots of other responsibilities, which he might share with the leadership team, whether that be in the form of other pastors, elders, deacons, deaconesses, or a mixture of all or some of them.  On Sunday mornings, the pastor, along with the worship team/organist/pianist/choir does the morning service, which is on the level of a professional performance because, well, it is exactly that.  All the power in the church, then, is concentrated in the leadership team, and, to varying degrees, is especially concentrated in the pastor.  The pastor and his team have the training, skills, authority and audience that the laity don't.

Sometimes this works out pretty well so far as internal order and harmony go, for a few years at least, if not a few decades.  Sometimes the pastor is a humble man of God who believes in and practices servant-leadership, fulfilling his responsibilities with a sense of awe and humility concerning the amount of power he has, putting his all into tending the flock God has entrusted him with.  In short, sometimes churches invest this kind of power and responsibility into their pastor precisely because he can be trusted with it, despite the inevitable mistakes he'll make.

(Of course, this isn't always true.  Anyone who's spent much time in evangelical circles has heard stories about, if not witnessed, pastors who have become corrupted by their privilege and power and have come to abuse their power and their flock, either on a regular basis or in the occasional power struggle.  Some pastors have the gall to actually claim to be the "king" of their church.  This is not an exaggeration, sadly.)

Despite how this concentration of power works out internally, it almost always works to destroy, to one degree or another, the priesthood of the believer in the minds of the congregation.  The congregation starts to become passive, receiving and being fed (some would say breast-fed) from and by the pastor or leadership team.  They might like to help, but, they reason, how good of a job could they do, compared to the very professional leadership team?

This attitude doesn't just affect how people contribute to the inner workings of the church, either.  It affects evangelism and discipleship, the whole point of the Church.  Evangelism? The laity isn't trained in that, they don't know how to do that.  They'll just fund those who do have the training and know-how.  They'll support missionaries and pastors, who can do that.  After all, that's their job!  Discipleship?  How many of the laity have even been discipled in a group, much less been individually mentored?  Given their lack of training, which has again been concentrated instead on the leadership team and the pastor, they hardly feel they can turn around and disciple and mentor others.  This leads to a church where a few highly trained, responsibility-laden elites run around trying to maintain and serve a bunch of Christians who don't do a lot more than consume and pay their offering.  Is it any wonder why pastor burn-out is so prevalent?!

I'd like to make this clear that this is an attack on the system of Superstar Pastors, not necessarily on those who play that role (with the notable exception of those who willfully abuse their position and call themselves "kings").  To a large degree, I think, this is an unhealthy system that hurts everyone, which people are engaging in because that's what they think they are supposed to do.  The system is evil, but a whole lot of the people involved in the system are involved because they think that is what is best, because they think that the system is how things are supposed to be, because they think that it is possible for a church to operate in a healthy way within the Superstar Pastor system.  They aren't out to exploit the church and power-trip.

Similarly, the laity whose parasitism victimizes the clergy aren't (usually) being parasites on purpose.  They think they are doing what Christians are supposed to be doing.  Sometimes they'll even try to help in ways they think laity can legitimately help. (Programs will then often sap their energy.)

At the same time, this doesn't negate the fact that the system is, in fact, evil.  It needs to be eradicated and killed, just as the high churches need to disband.  While people with good intentions live their whole lives in these systems, good intentions and sincerity don't make something right, and when you step back and look at all the damage, both internal and external, that disregard for the priesthood of the believer has done, and how lightly the doctrine is taken today, even among evangelicals, one can't help but be incensed.  A little sense of history would tell those same evangelicals that they are willfully walking down a path the founders of the evangelical tradition died to avoid.

So, I've had this blog for a few years now, with the title of "AnabaptistMK."  If I'm asked to explain the title (which is actually kind of rare) I can always explain the "MK" part rather easily: I'm the child of missionaries to the Japanese, a Missionary Kid.

The "Anabaptist" part, though, usually takes a bit more explanation.  "Anabaptist" isn't a word you hear every day, and most people aren't familiar with the the term or the movement, so I decided to discuss the history and beliefs of Anabaptists very briefly in this post (we're talking hundreds of years of history here, so this is a vastly simplified and summarized treatment).

The history of the Anabaptists starts starts with a man named Huldrych Zwingli, a one of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation.  Most people haven't heard of him because he is overshadowed by such giants as Luther and Calvin and because he died in a battle, giving him only about 12 in the Reformation, rather than the decades of Luther and Calvin.

Zwingli was the Roman Catholic priest in Zurich, Switzerland, and very shortly after he began work there he began to make waves, challenging fasts and the requirement that clergy stay unmarried.

In Zurich, the way for questions such as these to be solved was to have a disputation before the city council.  Several of these took place during Zwingli's career, the first one having to do with the Zwingli taking Zurich formally into the Reformation by rejecting some teachings of the Catholic Church.

Somewhere around this time, a group of men interested in the works of Erasmus began translating Greek texts into German, led by Zwingli, starting out as a cultural group but soon transforming into a Bible study group which worked on translating from Erasmus' Textus Receptus.  Zwingli seems to have left the group at some point.

Members of this group showed up to Zwingli's second disputation in front of the city council (along with almost a thousand other people), which had to do with images in the church and the nature of the mass.  It was decided, among other things, that mass shouldn't be done the way it was being done, nor considered to be a sacrifice.  When this was decided, Conrad Grebel, a member of the study group, asked how the mass should be celebrated if it was not correct the way it was at that time being conducted.  Zwingli replied that the council could decide, to which another member of the study group, Simon Stumpf, retorted that it was not up to Zwingli or the city council to decide how to conduct the mass, but that the Holy Spirit had already decided and put the instructions in the Bible.  He was overruled on this count by Zwingli and the council, but this is the central foundational event and doctrine of Anabaptism: the Bible is above every human authority in determining truth, belief and practice.

In accordance with this stance on the Bible, the study group pushed for faster, broader reforms in Zurich and the conflict quickly centered upon baptism.  Rejecting the teaching that baptism brought one into Christianity and that it was a necessary vessel of grace for salvation, they instead taught that baptism was a symbol of one's identification with and trust in Christ and should thus be performed only after an identification with and trust in Christ was professed.  In a third disputation, Zwingli attacked this idea and it was ruled that those in the group not citizens of Zurich should be banished, those who where citizens should not be allowed to meet or preach and that there should be a penalty of death for those who were not having their children baptized as infants or who were practicing adult baptism.

In blatant contradiction to this ruling, the group and others met at Felix Manz's mother's house, where, after prayer, George "Blaurock" Cajacob asked Grebel to baptize him, which Grebel did.  Blaurock then was asked to baptize the rest of the group and did, marking the founding of the Anabaptist movement (on January 21, 1525).

The Anabaptist movement quickly underwent a period of intense persecution, during which most of its leaders were martyred and those who weren't martyred scattered.  Catholics who caught Anabaptists generally burned them at the stake while Protestants generally drowned them as an ironic third baptism.  Numerous enemies attacked the Anabaptist name as well as their bodies, associating these pacifists with apocalyptic groups such as the Zwikau Prophets.  The label of "Anabaptist," which comes from the Greek for "re-baptize," was actually given to the Anabaptists as a way to justify executing them, as the label "Anabaptist" had been applied to a totally different group to which capital punishment was applied.  The Anabaptists, with their first generation of leaders martyred, also sometimes were hijacked by those manifestly untrue to Anabaptism.  Despite the fact that non-violence had been adopted by Anabaptists in the Schleitheim Confession almost ten years earlier, a group of apocalypse-preaching, violent polygamists who happened to practice adult baptism and were admittedly influenced by Anabaptism, became associated with Anabaptism when they took over the city of Munster for about a year and then were violently put down.

Besides the main, foundational characteristic of holding the Bible to be the ultimate authority, the early Anabaptists held the following beliefs and practices, claimed in the Schleitheim Confession:

• Believers' Baptism: Baptism is a sign and symbol only and should thus only be performed when someone has become a Christian through belief.
• The Ban: Christians should practice church discipline, which includes shunning those who refuse correction after three attempts at correction.
• Communion for Christians: Communion, as it symbolizes the unity of Christ's Body, is for unified bodies of Christians only.
• Separation: Christians should refuse to associate with those who are not Christians, as nothing good can come of associating with the World.
  
• Shepherds: Pastors should be of good character according to the tests laid out by Paul, and should also be awarded the privileges laid out by Paul.
• The Sword: The famous Anabaptist renouncement of violence.
• Oaths: Prohibition of oath-taking.

What all of these positions have in common is their reliance upon the Bible, as all of these ideas run counter to the teachings of men of the day.  While I agree and disagree with them to varying degrees, my belief that the Bible is the ultimate authority is why I consider myself to be an Anabaptist.

The Anabaptists scattered mostly west into the Netherlands, north into Germany and west into Moravia, where, eventually, new, strong leaders emerged.  Those who lived in the Netherlands followed Menno Simons and became Mennonites (and Amish), those that went east followed Jacob Hutter and became Hutterites, and those that went north mostly followed Alexander Mack and became the various Schwarzeneau Brethren groups.

I hope this has been a helpful bit of history and doctrine for those interested or curious.  Other good pieces of reading can be found here and here and here.

I used to describe myself as a Feminist.  As one Feminist I dialogued with on Xanga years ago put it, I believe that, "women are people too," and heartily buy the idea that men in general exploit and abuse women in general in this society.  I think that, because of the former, the latter should change, because it is wrong.

I also used to describe myself as a Masculist.  By the same token that I believe that men in general exploit and abuse women in general, I believe that society in general exploits and abuses men in general.  Obviously, I think this should stop.

I don't describe myself as either anymore. 

You may have noticed that I didn't provide a moral justification for having been a Masculist.  In the culture within which I operate, I don't need to in order to make sense.  Because I am a man and I feel that society generally exploits and abuses me and my sex in general, obviously I'm going to be a Masculist.  In this culture, however, I need more than that to explain why I was a Feminist.  I have to take a step back and do my best to look at things from another point of view.  Obviously, as a man, provided I don't think too much, I can easily enjoy living in a society that gives me advantages over roughly half of the population and expects them to serve me to one degree or another.  For me to get past that, I need to, well, think– to try to understand the way things are working from a perspective outside my own.

That's basically why I don't describe myself as either a Masculist or a Feminist anymore.  The more I read of either side, the more I realized that they really were on different sides; neither side is working towards a better society in general but a society that is better for either men or women.  Instead of stepping back and saying, "Hey, society is messed up and we can make it better if we enact such-and-such a change," it seems like neither side is stepping back at all and that both sides are instead saying, "Society isn't treating me/us well and we can make it a better place for us if we enact such-and-such a change."

Both sides are based on subjective premises and thus are flawed in both their basic philosophical framework and their practical outcomes.

Philosophically, these sides are flawed because they are based on self.  Instead of seeing a flaw in society (admittedly made easier to see because you are experiencing it) and then concerning themselves with bettering society by fixing it, they experience an unpleasantness in society and concern themselves with eliminating the unpleasantness for themselves, with making their experiences better, not with making society better.  This concentration on self taints even actions taken by these sides that actually do make society as a whole a better place.

Practically, many of their outcomes are flawed because they are focused on self without regard for other points of view.  A prime example is "Lipstick Feminism", the school of Feminism that centers around using the female's sexual attractiveness to exert power over men.  Putting aside the (rather simple, in my opinion) question of whether Lipstick Feminist behavior is good for the women engaged in it, is it good for society in general?  Is one faction of society exerting power over faction of society ever a good thing?  Ironically, I would have thought those in the Feminist movement would have said "no!"

Good examples of this inside Masculism are a little less prominent– not only is the Masculist movement much younger and much, much less culturally dominant than the Feminist movement, but it is hard to distinguish between traditional "Patriarchal Male Chauvinism" and "Masculist Subjective Fallacy."  I was able to find this, however, after a little searching.  There are so many obvious ways this group fits the topic of this post, but the most basic, in my opinion, is the attitude of "if they can do it, so can we" which both puts this group firmly in the Masculist camp (as Patriarchal Male Chauvinists would be saying "we can do it, you can't") and doesn't address the issue of what is best for society as a whole.

Unfortunately, gender politics are not the only area where this vice of subjectivity affects our society.  One can see the effect this inability or unwillingness to think about things from outside one's own perspective has on class issues, economic issues, international issues and race issues.

The most recent high-profile example of this, I think, would be Obama's genius political move, where he decided to call police arresting an African-American friend of his "stupid." Now, are the general race-related grievances Obama expresses valid? Definitely.  What I question, however, is the President's judgment in, firstly, deciding to weigh in on an issue when he admittedly didn't have all the facts and would be biased and, secondly, projecting a race issue onto an incident that he (as he didn't have all the facts involved) didn't know was a race issue.  While it may be good for those in minorities to be able to cast racist doubt on any and every arrest, what good is that for society as a whole?  Should there be an uproar every time there is an irrefutable case of racist police action? Definitely!  What Obama did, however, was to approach the entire case subjectively rather than objectively.  He forwarded an opinion that he himself claimed was most likely biased, which can never be good for society, instead of withholding comment until he had all the facts and he had time to look at the incident from perspectives other than his own.  When this vice of subjectivity is as widespread and systemic as it evidently is, if we take the President's practice of it to be any indication, I fear this post will have precious little impact…

If, then, in conclusion, I can't call myself either a Feminist or a Masculist, how do I characterize my stance on gender politics?

Currently, I consider myself to be a Jonesian.  In my opinion, we can best hit upon what is good for society if we aim for what is good for the family, that is men and women and boys and girls and the relationships that each of them have with each other; but that's a topic for another post.