Avoid the crazy, but love your kids anyway. [Matt 9]

Associating with people and helping does not mean that we approve of everything they do. Any parent loves their child: knowing full well that this person, this wonderful being, who makes them worry and gives them joy, can be a right little toad.

When your children are grown they will act in ways that do not reflect you. This may be good, as some of our own sins do not make it to the next generation. But it may be a distress and concern. Yet the same child can make one proud, and your love does not stop because they reject the faith.

But you probably will not approve: like Ozzy Osbourne fulminating when his teenage children got tattoos despite being covered in them himself. He’s thinking of what he did wrong and saying that he is a bad example: do not do it.

One cannot demand approval. Approval means that there cannot be mercy, for mercy implies guilt, judgment, and a debt. This is why we pray that our debts will be forgiven, as the word trespass can be translated both ways: it is when you owe monies or labour or recompense that mercy can be given.

If you approve, it is a reward.

As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him.

And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.”

(Matthew 9:9-17 ESV)

Christ was doing a home visit. The disease was sin, and his words were a cure: his sacrificial death is the cure. We await his return. Christ did things that shocked the Peoples of the day — who would have considered a tax collector to be much lower on the totem pole than the local male prostitutes putting their bodies on the rack (and probably across int he Decapolis, where this behaviour was considered Hellenistic, and approved).

In the meantime, our society is crazy. McCain is a year older than me, and hath bred a bit more, and comments wisely.

In a world gone mad, being happy and successful requires a process of subtraction, a list of dangerous craziness to avoid. This is why I find myself telling my kids things like, “Don’t become a heroin addict.” As obvious as that advice may seem, apparently a lot of kids never heard it, because OD’ing on heroin is now the leading cause of accidental death in Ohio, surpassing traffic fatalities. So here’s your fatherly advice, kids: “Always wear your seatbelt, don’t text while driving, be careful when driving at night or in the rain and, by the way, heroin is a bad drug. Also, never go on mass-murder rampage and don’t be a transgender weirdo.”

Young people can think of life as a list of potential outcomes and simply by subtracting the obviously bad stuff –psycho killer, heroin addict, “Caitlyn” Jenner — manage to live a decent and respectable life. You may never win any awards, become famous or make a million dollars, but at least you didn’t OD on heroin, murder nine people or embarrass the family by marrying a Kardashian and appearing on a magazine cover as a 65-year-old transvestite. (Of course, Never Marry a Kardashian is on my kids’ list of Things Not to Do.) People nowadays become wealthy celebrities for doing stuff that, once upon a time, would have gotten them locked up in a lunatic asylum, and yet people are surprised when a weirdo who can’t even get a girlfriend decides to become famous by shooting up a community college. This kind of Loser-Goes-Out-in-a-Blaze-of-Glory scenario keeps happening, and the media tell us to blame guns, because obviously we can’t blame the media.

Fathers, let us pray for our children. Let us love our children.

And let us continue to see them. Let is continue to warn them.

And let us grieve when things go horribly wrong. For, if we live long enough, something will happen. This life has a 100% fatality.