Hello!
Occasionally, I dig through the archives of Titus 2 to see if I've missed any interesting posts. This post caught my attention because the title "Guarding Hearts - A Real-Life Situation" made me think it was about how to court while focusing on emotional purity - that weird tenet of Christian Patriarchy/Quiverfull (CP/QF) that says that falling in love to someone you don't marry is equally horrible as having sex outside of marriage.
(For clarity, I don't view either as a bad thing - but CP/QF treats premarital sex with a level of horror that most people save for pre-meditated murder.)
Oddly enough, the blurb was far stranger than anything I expected.
While at the zoo with his family, Steven Maxwell noticed some videos for sale:
Steven Maxwell has launched an entire ministry based on restricting his family's access to anything that Maxwell feels is not religious enough. Practically, that means that anything that limits Maxwell's ability to micromanage the lives of his kids is out. Most memorably, Maxwell turned into a crying mess while taking Nathan and Christopher out for ice-cream as preteens as he declared that no one in the family could take part in organized sports anymore. Maxwell was mostly worked up about the fact that his children were getting to know peers who had not been vetted by Maxwell himself and there also seemed to be some jealousy that the boys enjoyed being around the coach.
On the flip side, activities that Steven likes are allowed. The family runs because Maxwell runs. Maxwell approves of at-home weightlifting and body weight exercises so those are ok. Every year, the Maxwells decamp to Colorado and walk up some 8,000 foot mountains because Steve likes mountain climbing.
So, if Steven is allowed to buy two videos about a non-religious activity that is not related to his career for "educational purposes" - is that allowed for the rest of the family? Could Terri buy a set of videos about household organization which seems to be a hobby of hers? Could Sarah buy videos about world renowned botanical gardens? Even as I write these, though, the hypocrisy is obvious. The rest of the family is not allowed to have interests that Steven doesn't personally approve of - but his whims are educational.
The Maxwells take sheltering to extremes.
In homeschooling history, the Maxwells remove or black-out any section mentioning non-Christian religions. Their theory, such as it is, is that learning about other religions is the exact same thing as idolatry - or maybe it's the first step to becoming an idolater.
That rationale would not hold up against any scrutiny. The Bible is filled with allusions to other co -existing religions in the same area. When old Testament prophets rail against Baal, that implies that Jewish people in that area knew who Baal was. In Jesus' time, Greek and Roman culture was so prominent in the area that observant Jews knew that Greeks and Romans were polytheists.
No, the standard for idolatry is actively worshipping another God - and watching a documentary where a few minutes of time includes Sherpas praying is well-below that standard.
Steven mentions that the youngest kids are in bed - but the older kids are watching with him. How old do you think those kids are based on this next section?
I mean, he could have fallen to his knees and screamed "Oh, the idolatry! Why, God? WHY?" before ripping the power cord from the wall, too - but why sound overwrought when prim will do?
Let me suggest why he didn't turn the TV off.
Jumping off the couch and turning off a video while saying, " Children, cover your ears! We must not pollute our hearts with such heathen things!" followed by a 30 minute Bible lecture flies reasonably well when the audience is elementary school aged and the content being avoided is overt sexuality, drugs, or violence - like a Tarantino film or porn.
Doing the same thing while watching the 1998 released film "Everest" in April of 1999 with Nathan, age 22, Christopher, age 20 and 17-year old Sarah makes him look crazy - even to his less-sheltered older crew.
The amount of Tibetan Buddhism that "the kids" saw in the movie was small. The film looks respectfully at the practices of the Sherpas who are on the mountain - but the movie doesn't go into any real depth about the tenets or beliefs of the religion. From what I remember, viewers get the idea that the Sherpa are devout, have a variety of prayer methods built into Tibetan life, and maybe understand that the Sherpa build areas for prayer at base-camp.
And honestly, I'm probably overestimating the amount of understanding the Maxwell "children" walked away with because I am interested in high altitude climbing as something I read about - and I've read as much as I can get my hands on about the cultures in the areas that climbing occurs. Because of that, I recognize prayer wheels, wind horses, and prayer symbols. In "Everest", we see the climbers get covered in flour by the Sherpas by one of their prayer altars. What I didn't know when I watched it - but learned later - is being covered in flour is part of a blessing asking that you survive to old age. Since flour makes hair look white-gray and fades skin color like aging, it's a very literal demonstration of what the Sherpas are praying for. It is deeply moving and caring.
And if the representation of Tibetan Buddhism is anything like the occasional forms of Catholicism that you see tangentially in documentary moves, we've probably focused too much on non-essentials and missed entire important areas of Tibetan Buddhism.
It's certainly not enough information for any of the 'kids' to launch into being a practicing Buddhist which is the minimum requirement to reach the "Thou shall not have any other gods but Me" level of idolary.
Fun fact: It's nearly 22 years later - and none of those three kids has jumped the fence and broken with the Maxwell's belief system - although Nathan's kids are being raised in a slightly more stylish fashion than he was.
Amusingly, two of the sleeping kids - Joseph and Jesse - have broken important Maxwell doctrines of "Thou shall live in our neighborhood" and "Thou shall never live in an apartment".
So maybe watching this video had no strong negative effect on the "kiddos".
The one thing I'm sure of: Sarah's life would be a bit easier if Maxwell watched the rest of that second movie. Sarah suffers from acute mountain sickness (AMS) in the form of nasty headaches with nausea at a fairly low altitude and has been stuck at their vacation rental for several years while the rest of the clan hikes a 8,000 footer.
Maybe watching a video about the serious biological basis of AMS - and the ability of AMS to worsen rapidly - would have convinced Maxwell to find a different vacation destination that all of his family could enjoy.
Or not. Maxwell is the only one who really matters, right?
So, when my mother was a college student in the USSR, they were required to take a course called (this is a rough translation) "Academic Atheism" or "Scientific Atheism".
ReplyDeleteIt was just a basic (and as she describes, quite interesting) world religions course. There was no emphasis on "disproving" anything, just that here are some religions that exist and here is what they are like.
The USSR was, of course, a country with no freedom of religion, and a country in which much information was kept from the public. And yet, a world religions course was not only OK but required at my mother's school
Maxwell is more rigid than the USSR!
Healing Brush - that is an absolutely fascinating story!
DeleteI always felt a bit short-changed on my academic understanding of different Christian religions. At my Catholic high school, major non-Christian religions were covered in World History within the context of the culture in which they thrived. That was done well by an enthusiastic teacher. Christian denominations were supposed to be reviewed during Christian Scriptures class - but my teacher for that class was extremely burnt out and we barely scratched the surface of the Gospels let alone anything else!
That's how I felt until I was in a "Sacred Scripture as Lit" class during graduate school - but it was an undergraduate class. That's when I realized that a solid half of the class was unaware that Christianity and Islam both have roots in Judaism. I felt a bit better after that.
In undergrad, my (Christian) university required everyone to take several courses about religion. I took one on Eastern World religions. It was a really interesting and enjoyable course, but it unfortunately suffered from the sort of Eurocentrism that causes the department to divide all religions into "East vs. West." The poor professor was stuck trying to cover religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Shinto, and Taoism (which is more philosophy than religion but that's a whole other discussion), and with trying to shoehorn in indigenous religions all over the world, and earth-centred religions like Wicca, which are mostly practiced in Western countries. The Western World religions course was pretty much all about Christianity, Judaism, and Islam with a couple smaller ones like Baha'i and Zoroastrianism tossed in to try to round things out. Really, they could have been much more imaginative about the whole thing. Dividing things up to fit into a semester makes sense, but there are so many other fun ways to categorize religious practices.
ReplyDeleteI really wanted to take a comparative religions class offered at my small Catholic college - but it always conflicted with a lab time that I needed for my major class.
DeleteYeah, I don't know how I would have divided up the religions but "Eastern" seems like a huge box compared to "Western". And Indigenous religions could easily get their own course since there are so many related issues about culture, syncretism, colonialism, etc.
There really are so many potential topics. There's a reason comparative religions is its own field of study--humans have come up with a lot of different ways to connect with the divine over thousands of years.
DeleteWot a fragile, sad little man.
ReplyDeleteChristians like this always mystified me,even back when I was a fervent Christian for a while. They put their god in such a tiny box, wrapped so thoroughly and carefully, and then wanted to tell me what a mighty god he was.
Really? The god I knew was vast, and boundless, and completely unfussed by other religions. My god didn't need his followers to shut themselves away from the world. No, he sent them right into the thick of it, right out with the heathen and poor and sexy and worldly - heck, he even let us muck about with scientists! He wasn't afraid of us running into truth, or Truth, or reality, because he was all truth and definitely Truth with the capital T, and reality was his own creation. He wasn't a bit worried if we got a little grubby out there, if our faith got a few dings in it, because he'd already bought and paid for our salvation. He'd cleansed us in his very own blood, and that stuff would wash off anything. We could find him in the most absurd places - even in other gods. I mean, he said we couldn't have any other gods before him; he didn't say a word about the ones after.
And when my faith was ending, and I asked him if this was right, if this was the path he wanted me to walk, he just opened the door wide and let me go on my way. Because if he was real and true and love, he didn't mind a bit if I no longer believed in him, as long as I was still after things that were real, and truth, and as long as I loved.
I don't believe in gods anymore. But if my god and Maxwell's god actually exist, I'll bet on my god as being the actual almighty any day. An actual almighty god doesn't fit in such a tight little box. A god of truth isn't afraid of any truth at all.
It amazes me that they can content themselves with such a tiny, fragile deity. But I guess it makes perfect sense when you look at the ones who created it.
That's so very true, Unknown.
DeleteMaxwell honestly believes that he can read the state of a cashier or bagger's soul based on how well that worker conforms to Maxwell's personal beliefs. He gives himself a pass for speaking badly about his father and mother because they weren't his exact type of Christian. Maxwell admits to badgering Teri into agreeing with reversing his vasectomy - even though she was the one who bore the brunt of untreated postpartum depression combined with being shoved into homeschooling when she's not that into it. His obsession with sheltering his kids - who were mostly adults at that point - is laughable except that it's another example of how his whims are catered while everyone else has to kowtow to him.
I may have seen the same video in 7th grade. It was awesome and humbling, whichever one I saw, and I barely remember anything of the Sherpa faith. How sad these kids are deprived of likely even basic education about other beliefs; even Isaac Botkin went into detail about some of the ancient Egyptians' religion in his Egypt documentary (imagine Maxwell having to hastily explain to kids why no, there's a Botkin film you are NOT allowed to see!)
ReplyDeleteYou know you've started to drift into dangerous isolation territory when your children have to be kept from materials made by members of the same religious group.....
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