Tuesday, September 30, 2008

"This Old World's Tawdry Voices"

Continuing my ruminations on faith and culture...

My friend David Mills has written this very thoughtful piece about raising children in a world that often tells them seductive lies.

The world lies to my children, and I cannot always keep them from hearing the lies of the world and believing some of them. I have but one voice, and the world has many. It not only preaches with attractive confidence but seduces with flattery and false promises. It has vast resources for bribery.

Worse, it makes the wicked, the cheap, the mediocre, and the tawdry all feel normal.


He goes on to reflect on the importance not only of giving our children good gifts, a "good life" (good art, music, books, values) but on the importance of showing them the encompassing love that leads us to value such good things in the first place. A love that helps us to resist those worldly voices when they try to allure us into believing things about ourselves and about the world that aren't true.

Well-worth reading. I keep going back to the final three paragraphs.

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