Lying in bed last night, unable to sleep, I was thinking about some photos of extreme starvation and poverty that I had just seen.

And I was wondering. All of us have the innate desire to reclaim the perfection that once was mankind’s in the Garden of Eden. We were meant to be beautiful, healthy, intelligent and strong, living in gorgeous surroundings, occupied by engrossing and challenging work. This was all ruined by our sin, and what we all deserve is to be starving, repulsive and ignorant, living in squalor and filth, engrossed with the struggle to survive, until we die and face God’s wrath.

The fact that any of us enjoy lives as materially blessed as we do is an incredible grace from God. But the problem with riches is that they insulates us from feeling the effects of the Curse. We can buy our way to being more beautiful, healthier and more edcuated. We can afford beautiful surroundings and occupy ourselves with interesting and challenging work. And so, we can forget what we really are. We can forget that without God, no matter what we look like on the outside, spiritually we are as emaciated and repulsive as those photos.

For Americans, this is a major problem. We have forgotten what we really are. Whenever there is a tragedy, like the VA Tech murders, we hear the cry that “We didn’t deserve this.”, “We are good”,”We are strong.” … There is no humility in the way that we act. The possibility that we might deserve bad things never crosses our minds anymore. The possibility that a nation that aborts millions of babies, that promotes greed, lust, gluttony and excess at every turn, might incur the wrath of God, is an utter impossibility in the minds of most Americans.

So I wonder about just how far we should engross ourselves in turning back the curses of sin. For instance, I got an interesting looking book out of the library which promises that with 20 minutes a day of special facial exercises you can take years off your appearance. This is appealing, and it doesn’t seem like an exorbitant amount of effort, but would it be more God-glorifying to be content with the ravages of time? How about interior decorating? How beautiful is too beautiful? How much is too much? How do we know when and where to draw the line and say enough is enough? I don’t want my heart to be ensnared and I’d rather be in safe territory than walking a fine line, but on the other hand, I don’t want to be creating man-made laws.

 I have a feeling that the more energy we expend on others, the less time we will have for such vain things, and the less they will matter to us. It’s nice to have a nice house, to be healthy and beautiful, but when there are people around us who need our love, care and attention, we just won’t have enough time or energy to overinvest in those areas.

Brendan and I have been discussing our favorite arguments against evolution. It’s hard to narrow them down, but here are our top 10 – with links to articles on AnswersInGenesis.org.

1. Mutations, the mechanism that evolutionists tell us accounts for the transformation of protozoa into humans, generally result from a LOSS of genetic information. There is NO mechanism for the increase of genetic information.

2. Evolutionists exclude evidence of the supernatural and spiritual. “Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic.” – Dr. Scott Todd. If you make the assumption that a supernatural explanation is invalid, you can’t arrive at a Creationist conclusion, even if it’s true.

3. Irreducible Complexity – You can’t change a cilium into a flagellum any more than you can change a bicycle into a motorcycle and have a functioning vehicle during the entire process.

4. Radiometric dating is unreliable. It is based on unprovable assumptions. Basically, IF you know the starting amounts of each element, IF you’re dealing with a closed system and IF the rates of decay have been constant, then you should know the age of the sample. But even so, dating methods frequently contradict each other.

5. There isn’t enough salt in the sea. Given the current rate of salination, and adhering to the evolutionist assumption that things have been pretty much constant over the history of the earth, the oceans cannot be anywhere near as old as they tell us.

6. The probability of evolution is incredibly small.

7. “Living Fossils” have been around, supposedly unchanged for billions of years. Why would they remain unchanged while everything else has evolved?

8. Fossils must form very rapidly, otherwise they would simply decay. This is consistent with a global flood.

9. There really aren’t any “Missing Links.”

10. There aren’t enough people on the earth for us to have been around for millions or billions or even hundreds of thousands of years.

Well, part of the reason for my testiness with those backhanded complimenters is that I have some bad news for them, especially for the one who had the impertinence to tell me “Now, no more!” Yes, that’s right, we’re having more, well hopefully only one more at this time. But, God willing, the Hanley family will be welcoming a new member in September, and yes, we’re happy about it.

Now, since those who like to make assumptions about my life also seem to like to make assumptions about my motivations, I’ll try and lay out my reasons.

Basically, God made my body in a certain way, with the ability to bear many children. I figure He did it because He wants me to bear many children. I figure He wants me to bear many children because He wants to create families, churches and nations with many children. He is the author and creator of life and I figure He knows best when and where to create that life. I also know that He wants me to walk by faith and not by sight.

I can’t see how it would be anything but presumptuous for me, healthy and rich and well able to bear another to child to say to God that my wishes and feelings are more important than whatever He has planned for me. I can’t say to God that He didn’t know what He was doing when he made me with the ability to bear seven children instead of two, that He may have designed the world to work this way, but I know better. I especially can’t say that I know who should be born and when and where to create life.

To me that seems selfish. I am not God and I have no idea how a new baby will affect my life. I need to trust Him and walk by faith. It would be wrong for me to do otherwise.

There are times, however, when I think God does give people enough information to make the decision to use birth control. Sometimes a mother’s health precludes pregnancy and in some situations using birth control to space children might in some cases be permissable. I can probably come up with a gazillion other situations which would qualify in my book. These are cases that aren’t a matter of presumption, where a couple isn’t saying that they know better than God, but are prayerfully trying to reconcile truly difficult circumstances.

I also don’t think that everyone who uses birth control when they shouldn’t is necessarily being selfish. Not that they aren’t being sinful, but the Bible talks about those who sin ignorantly and those who sin presumptuously. There are those who never give the whole issue a thought, who go along with what their spouse, church, family and culture promote without any thought to whether or not that’s actually what God wants for them. They sin in ignorance, and although I think that their sin has far reaching repercussions for the church and the nation, I don’t think that it necessarily has a very detrimental effect on their personal life and their walk with God other than denying them the blessings that more children would have brought into their life.

There are those people who do feel God’s call to have more children and who fight against it. They devise excuses for why their behavior is allowable and they do everything they possibly can to justify it. They are presumptuous and selfish and they need to repent or their sin will have negative personal effects.

I can’t go around figuring out who’s in the first set and who’s in the second. Heck, I can’t even figure out who is using birth control and who is not. God has, in His wisdom, given some families I know only one, two or three children. It’s not worth my while to figure out what God wants other people to do on an individual level. All  Christians have sin in our lives and we all are being sanctified in different areas at different times. Having a whole bunch of kids may mean you’re submitted in one area, but it doesn’t mean you don’t have other areas where you’re sinning, maybe even more important areas.

I do think that the Church on the whole needs to repent and to say that one of the reasons our culture is so messed up is that we’ve been trying to build it out of the wrong things. We need families who are dedicated to allowing God to work in their lives and who will trust Him to endow them with the correct number of children instead of leaning on their own understanding. It’s just one of the many steps we need to take to turn back the increasing worldliness in our churches.

Ok, I’m tired of people telling me “I don’t know how you do it,” “You must have so much patience,” and other back-handed  compliments  that  seem to say  “Your life must be so crappy I don’t know how you can stand it.”  I like my life. It’s not perfect and there are enough things I would change about it, but, personally, I’m so convinced that it’s a great life that I think more people should try it. Yeah, that’s right, I think more Christian women should stay at home, have six (or more!) kids and homeschool them.

Is it easy? Sometimes. Is it tough? Not as tough as going to work every day would be for me. Is it drudgery? Not much. The drudgery tasks are pretty well delegated.

Yesterday, for instance, I got up and did some Organic Chem problems, blogged and picked up my room and got dressed. Aidan made scrambled eggs for breakfast. I made the toast. At breakfast, Aidan, Fiona and I played a word game. Aidan cleared the table and Brendan cleaned up the kitchen after every meal. Fiona took care of the floors.  After breakfast I snuggled in bed with Aidan and read some books with him, and I read to Aine and Mairead a bit. Then we went to finish deep cleaning the boys’ room. Aidan did his math and phonics and then came and sprayed and wiped all the furniture. Aine did the baseboards while I moved the beds and sorted through the junk. Conall helped a bit and then made lunch. After lunch I commented on people’s sites and then went back to O-Chem while watching “The Secret Garden.” Fiona made an awesome dinner. I left the cleaning to Brendan again and went back to a little more studying and watching “French in Action” videos.

Does it sound so horrible? I made no meals, did no dishes. What housework I did was actually an enjoyable group activity. I had time for personal study and recreation. Can you see how I stand being surrounded by people I love and involved in the building of home? I guess I just must be crazy.

I had seen a few articles about the famous atheist, Richard
Dawkins, in the past few months and he made some statements that made me
wonder: Is he a charlatan or a fool? Can an educated person really make such
statements and believe them? Or is he just trying to manipulate people? So I
checked his book out from the library. He’s a fool.

One of my favorite ludicrous assertions he makes is when he
talks about the probability of God being small. God is a supernatural being and
therefore beyond the laws of probability. There cannot be such a thing
as the probability of God. It’s inherent in the definition of “supernatural.”
If Dawkins doesn’t understand the basic concept of a supernatural being, how
can his arguments have any validity?

I also love it when he talks about the “enlightened
consciousness” of scientists. These are the same people under whose nutritional
guidance millions of people were led to believe that margarine was better than
natural fats, that a low-fat diet was the best, and so on, and who have been
slow to correct these mistakes, even as Americans grow ever more obese and
unhealthy. They’re the same kind of people who in the last century wouldn’t
stop to wash their hands between touching cadavers and delivering babies, and
pilloried the man who insisted that they were responsible for maternal deaths.
“Enlightened consciousness?” We can barely trust them with our bodies, how much
less our eternal souls?

Dawkins summarizes his arguments with 6 basic points:

1. “One of the greatest challenges…has been how to explain
how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises.”

2. “The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of
design to actual design itself.”

3. “This temptation is a false one, because the designer
hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer.”

4. “Darwin and his successors have shown how living
creatures…have evolved… We can now safely say that the illusion of design in
living creatures is just that – illusion.”

5. “We don’t have an equivalent crane [explanation] for
physics yet… But the anthropic principle entitles us to postulate far more luck
than our limited human intuition is comfortable with.” (The anthropic principle
basically says that since we’re here, such an explanation must exist, we just
haven’t found it.)

6. “We should not give up hope of a better crane arising in
physics, something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology.”

Therefore, “God almost certainly does not exist.”

Ok, I can admit the first one, and the second, but the third
is illogical. The existence of the question of who designed the designer does
not prove that a designer does not exist. (Dawkins’ treatment of Aquinas on the
question of an unmoved mover is equally nonsensical.)  The fourth is based on the assumption that Darwin and his
successors actually have shown how evolution works. Since there are no known
instances of a genetic mutation resulting in an increase in genetic
information, this assertion is a stretch at best. (His treatment of Intelligent
Design is also completely superficial.) The fifth and sixth points are just
wishful thinking.

When Dawkins calls himself a deeply religious
non-believer, he is quite accurate. He is passionate, emotional and full of
faith, but short on logic and details. His book is incredibly boring and shows
a complete lack of understanding of Christianity. If he’s the best the atheists
have to offer, theists have nothing to fear.

Check it out! The Washington Post has an article on raw milk, and it’s quite positive. In fact, as my dad, who menitioned it to me, said, it makes the people at the FDA look quite foolish. Sally Fallon is, of course, interviewed and the whole tone of the article is very open, without being extremist. Great publicity for raw milk!

Also, I’ve been getting “Country Home” magazine, and the editor there describes a visit to the dairy with her grandaughter and mentions that they have been drinking raw milk. Is it a trend? I certainly hope so.

Well, I spent most of my blogging time yesterday reading the very interesting thread on birth control Becky’s blog. It made me think about having six kids and people’s reaction to our family size.

Though we do get an occasoinal withering glance from a bitter older woman, most people react fairly positively to our family. We often get kudos for having these kids as if we were some kind of heroes. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like the encouragement, but I don’t really feel like I’m doing anything that extraordinary. Yes, by our culture’s standards we have an extremely large family, but really, in the greater scheme of things, we’re just average.

I mean, the Amish, who are as close to a non-birth control using population as there is, have an average of 6.7 children per woman. In the late 18th century in New England the birth rate was about the same, and in Virginia it was higher, over 8 children per woman on average (mostly due to higher infant mortality.) These women ran households without electricity and appliances. They made their own clothes, food, soap, and so on. I can purchase all these necessities, and a number of luxuries, like dark chocolate, as well.

And, while having six kids is generally busy, it’s not really all that much work. Really we have two adults, two almost-adults, two very competent kids, and only two who are still more liability than asset. The amount of work increases, but not more than the number of helpers.

I have to wonder what people are making a fuss about when they want to take reproductive matters into their own hands. I mean, I can see arguments for spacing children, and for limiting them under certain conditions, but honestly, having six kids is really not that big of a deal. Maybe if more Christians could wrap their minds around that, they’d have more kids.

My husband blogged a little bit about our family’s P.E. program, which is basically just making the kids run two miles almost every day. You might notice that my times are not mentioned at all in his blog. That’s because my feet hurt too much for me to really run two miles. I do jog/walk a mile almost every day with Áine.

But his blogging about running made me think about spanking. You see, I asked the kids a few weeks ago which was more painful, spanking or running. All agreed that running was far more painful. Running, they pointed out, lasts for fifteen to twenty minutes, while a spanking lasts only a few seconds. Obviously, nobody is going to turn us in to Child Protective Services for making our children run, yet the freedom to spank your children is threatened, especially in Europe. Why is it acceptable to cause pain in the name of physical discipline, but not moral discipline? Especially when spanking is really the most effective training tool there is.

Of course, the non-spankers like to set up a straw man and define spanking in a very narrow way. They refer to it as something that a person would only do in anger. Now, it might be true that some people will wait until they get so frustrated that they hit their kids. But that is irrelevant to the debate over whether or not spanking is morally ok. A person might get angry and verbally abuse their child as well, leaving far more lasting wounds than the parent who spanked. The fact that a parent can sin while they spank their child does not mean that they can’t not sin while they are spanking. It is, of course, possible to be perfectly calm and loving while spanking your children. (That is not to say that it is necessary to be perfectly calm and loving, although some Christians make the case for that. It does seem to me that their might be a time for righteous anger.)

Since we know that it’s ok for parents to cause pain to their children in other cases, such as physical discipline, why is it unacceptable to cause pain in the name of moral discipline? I suspect it’s that moral discipline is such an anathema to these folks that they can’t stand it being effectively enforced. That’s the only logical conclusion I can draw.

Recent Reading

I’ve decided to keep a list of all the books I read, the date that I read them, and an emoticon rating. I’ll be updating it as I go.

“The Lost Painting” by Jonathan Harr, December 2006

“Not Buying It” by Judith Levine, December 2006

“Diary of a Midwife” by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, December 2006

“Vermeer’s Camera” by Philip Steadman, December 2006

“Material World: a global family portrait” by Peter Menzel, December 2006

“Gregor the Overlander,” “Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane,” “Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods,” “Gregor and the Marks of Secret” by Suzanne Collins, December 2006

“Millions” by Frank Cottrell Boyce, November 2006

“Jane Austen’s Charlotte” by Julia Barrett, November 2006

“Secret Knowledge, Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters” by David Hockney, November 2006

“Ten Boys Who Didn’t Give In” by Irene Howat, November 2006

“Ten Girls Who Didn’t Give In,” “Ten Girls Who Made History,” and “Ten Girls Who Changed the World” by Irene Howat, October 2006

“Man of the Family” by Ralph Moody, October 2006 

“How God Used a Thunderstorm’” “How God Stopped the Pirates,” “How God Used a Snowdrift,” “How God Used a Drought and an Umbrella,” and “How God Sent a Dog to Save a Family” by Joel R. Beeke and Diana Kleyn, October 2006

“What Would Joey Do?” Jack Gantos, October 2006

“The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex and Feminism” by Carrie L. Lukas

“Wisdom’s Way of Learning” by Marylin Howshall, October 2006

“Corporateering: How Corporate Power Steals Your Personal Freedom” by Jamie Court, September 2006

“Jack’s Run” by Roland Smith, September 2006

“Disarming the Secular Gods” by Peter C. Moore, September 2006

“A Coal Miner’s Bride” by Susan Bartoletti, September 2006

“Don’t Stop Lauging Now!” Ann Spangler and Shari MacDonald, editors, September 2006

“Permanent Rose” by Hilary McKay, September 2006

“The Reptile Room” by Lemony Snicket, September 2006

“KnitLit too” Linda Roghaar and Molly Wolf, editors, September 2006 (not great literature, but makes me want to knit)

“The Mountain People” by Colin Turnbull, September 2006 (but an excellent book)

“Libby on Wednesday” by Zilpha Keatly Snyder, August 2006

“The Miserable Mill,” “The Grim Grotto,” and “The Penultimate Peril” by Lemony Snicket, August 2006

“The Greatest Game Ever Played” by Mark Frost, August 2006

“Everyday Comforts” from Better Homes and Gardens, August 2006

“You’ll Never Nanny in This Town Again” by Suzanne Hansen, August 2006

“The Vile Village,”  “The Hostile Hospital” and “The Slippery Slope” by Lemony Snicket, August 2006

“The Unschooling Handbook” by Mary Griffith, August 2006

“Guerilla Learning” and “Real Lives” by Grace Llewellyn, August 2006

“The Bad Beginning,” “The Wide Window,” ” The Austere Academy,” “The Ersatz Elevator,” and “The Carnivorous Carnival” by Lemony Snicket , August 2006

“Straight Talk on Decorating” by Lynette Jennings, August 2006

“Sasquatch” by Roland Smith, August 2006

“A Perfect Union -Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation” – Catherine Allgor, July 2006

“Cod- A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World” – Mark Kurlansky, July 2006

“Pagan Christianity” – Frank Viola, July 2006

A few weekends ago the Washington Post ran an editorial by Linda Hirschman, celebrating the fact that her “Homeward Bound” article for the American Prospect website struck a chord with some working women. Of course, it ticked off the stay-at-home mothers to no end. She innocently says “I did not know what a minefield the subject was.” Let’s see, she’s going to tell well-educated, intelligent women who choose not to work that they are “living lesser lives,” and that “what they do is bad for them,” and “certainly bad for society,” and she can’t imagine that they would be offended by that?

Her main assumption is that work in the home is unworthy of these women. She says “A good life for humans includes the classical standard of using one’s capacities for speech and reason in a prudent way, the liberal requirement of having enough autonomy to direct one’s own life, and the utilitarian test of doing more good than harm in the world. Measured against these time-tested standards, the expensively educated upper-class moms will be leading lesser lives.”

And in another place she says  “The family — with its repetitious, socially invisible, physical tasks — is a necessary part of life, but it allows fewer opportunities for full human flourishing than public spheres like the market or the government. This less-flourishing sphere is not the natural or moral responsibility only of women. Therefore, assigning it to women is unjust. Women assigning it to themselves is equally unjust.”

Needless to say, she doesn’t give any evidence to support these claims.

I am quite confused by this standard, as I think that life in the home does allow me to use my capacity for speech and reason in a prudent way, that it gives me more autonomy than many working women and that I do more good than harm in the world. I also don’t see how public spheres allow more opportunity for full human flourishing than private life.

Call me stupid. I mean, if I study nutrition for several years, and then implement that knowledge in order to improve my family’s health, am I not using my capacity for speech and reason in a prudent way? If I can arrange my schedule on almost any day to suit myself, can choose how my children are educated, and have time to pursue in depth research on any subjects I choose, don’t I have enough autonomy to direct my life? If I teach my children well and provide a warm and loving home environment, is that not doing more good than harm?

The truth is, homemaking is pretty much whatever you make of it. The position is open to interpretation and provides great scope for any intelligent, creative woman to make it whatever she wishes. The menial tasks of cooking and cleaning do not really need to take up much time in the modern age, leaving us with great latitude to pursue many different activities. But here is another thing I just don’t get. To the feminists, it seems that the same activity is worth more in the public sphere than it is in the private. For instance, if I decorate my home, it’s pathetic. If I run a successful interior design business, it’s admirable. If I make gourmet meals for my family, it’s silly, but if I’m the head chef at a top restaurant, it’s worthy. I use the same skills in the home that I would in the workplace, but to them the home is inherently inferior. So, when they decry the fact that the home does not offer opportunities for “full human flourishing,” they are simply denying the reality of what homemaking actually is.

When I look at people, either male or female, who have invested a great deal of themselves in the public sphere, I see people who are out of balance. Everyone is always saying to fathers that “Nobody ever says on their deathbed ‘I wish I had spent more time at the office.’” Our society generally recognizes that public success for both men and women often comes at personal cost, that the time invested in the pursuit of personal glory takes its toll on relationships and home life. Home life, on the other hand, offers a venue for the growth of love, kindness, patience and service, which is rarely found in the public sphere. It is my belief that those who find these qualities in their lives are the ones who have reached “full human flourishing,”not those who have found fame, fortune or power. 

The idea of seeking glory for one’s self is completely opposite to Christianity, which teaches us to be humble and prefer others to ourselves. But Linda Hirschman respects only power. Her real worry is not about women leading “lesser lives.” (In fact, if she had any respect for the intellectual powers of these well-educated, successful women who have chosen to stay home, she might realize that they would not choose “lesser lives” for themselves.) Her real problem with women staying at home is that “the behavior tarnishes every female with the knowledge that she is almost never going to be a ruler.” Since very few people, women or men, wield any great power, what is she talking about? It’s all about power in marriage.

The whole feminist agenda seems to be centered around the desire to get rid of the traditional marriage, and it’s not even about seeking equality, since Ms. Hirschman does advise women to seek unequal marriages where the man is in the subordinate role.  But their myths about marriage are a lot like their myths about homemaking. Women have always wielded an enormous amount of power, albeit, in a behind the scenes sort of way, but that’s not enough for the Feminists. When a man and a woman work together as a team towards a common goal, they almost invariably fall into the pattern of the man as leader and the woman as helper, or as one woman in Hirschman’s survey put it, the husband as CEO and the wife as CFO.  The Bible explains that this is because women were created to be a “helpmeet” for their husbands. Despite the fact that this is a sin-cursed world, most women accept and enjoy the unequal role. 85% of the well-educated, intelligent women in Hirschman’s survey do.

But in spite of the fact that the evidence, both contemporary and historical, shows that most women do not want an equal or superior role in relationships, Feminists just reason that “Feminism did not go far enough.” So they perpetuate these myths. If it were merely consigned to a few ivory-tower elites, that might be fine, but the problem is that everyone is affected by their choices. When these women go out to work they drive up the cost of housing, forcing many other women to go work at truly menial jobs. But that is a matter of unconcern for them. Those people are already leading “lesser lives” in their eyes, so why should their desires matter?

In the end, Feminism seems to just be a power grab for a handful of elite women. I for one have no intention of sacrificing my freedom and autonomy so that another woman can fulfill her ambition to become a petty tyrant. Just aint’ gonna happen

**EDIT**

I want to clarify a few things about how I feel about women working.

On the one hand, I realize that many women have to work, either full or part time, in order to help provide for their families. That’s just reality. Though the Bible does indicate that women should be “keepers of the home” and should put their energy into guiding the home as opposed to gadding about and wasting their time, I’m not sure that it clearly forbids working outside the home. It seems to me to be a necessary evil.

On the other hand, there is a lot of work that needs to be done in the world that doesn’t have a paycheck attatched to it. Child rearing is one task, but even after the children are grown, there are a lot of community needs that can and should be met by those who don’t have to work, especially women whose children are out of the nest. I wish that the church would value these women and the ministry that they can do, and inspire us to give up the material goodies that come with getting that job, in order to build up the church.

What I do think is wrong is the denigration of unpaid work, homemaking and the exaltation of careerism.