Last night I was finishing up some teaching and posting it on the training blog (the slide set and references are behind a password so it complys with university copyright regulations) when the son came up and asked be basically the same question Heathie asked. And I’d spent some of the day reading Helen Smith’s new book .
My answer was around the idea that most of the traditions that we have in society are functional or minimally damaging. IF a tradition does not work, the people who practise it die. Consider the Greenland settlement — when the little ice age started their traditional way of farming (northern European mixed cropping( no longer worked, for there was no growing season. And they could not see the Inuit — the Skralings as people to emulate. If you contrast this to the Puritan settlers, who after one season in the US (and losing half their population from starvation) they learnt from the Indians to grow corn, not wheat.
The marital and family traditions — man goes and works wherever he can and wife manages the home… works. In bad times. In good times. It’s sustainable. The state as the final provide is not. And in moving to a this more elaborate model, the state is falling down becamse it will not be able to keep up the transfer payments. Besides. the idea that a wife is a doormat is a lie. It’s like saying the Regimental Sgt-Major is a doormat because he is under orders. The wife, in traditional society, speaks, acts, and contracts for her husband. all. the. time. Because he is in the fields and she is at the house.
Onto today’s passage. The best reference for our character is not ourselves, it is those who whe have helped, those whom we have trained.
1Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Surely we do not need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you, do we? 2You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all; 3andyou show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
4Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. 5Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, 6who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
7Now if the ministry of death, chiseled in letters on stone tablets, came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses’ face because of the glory of his face, a glory now set aside, 8how much more will the ministry of the Spirit come in glory? 9For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory! 10Indeed, what once had glory has lost its glory because of the greater glory; 11for if what was set aside came through glory, much more has the permanent come in glory!
12Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness, 13not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside. 14But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside. 15Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds; 16but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. 17Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.
In this time of credentialism and references, when we have to document every thing we have done, and everything is audited, we end up missing the variations in quality between practice, and the humanity of the craft we are trained int. A checklist can be gamed. Quality cannot be — and there is a tendency to assume if the checklist is done, there is quality.
But this relates much more to being trained. Most jobs have an apprenticeship part to them. The professions know this. However, we have forgotten that raising children and keeping a home — which are essential jobs (which auditing is not) also have an apprenticeship part to them. This is the reason Paul told older women to teach younger women how to love their husbands and raise a family.
Our reference is not something on paper. It is our children, those we mentor, and those we influence. It is not the legal forms, but the reality behind them. Turning all this into a portfolio of paper is not merely unwise. It tends to destroy the real events and actions that make up training, raising, and nurturing.
So my advice? To women, listen to and support your husbands, and listen the few honest women out there who are trying to do this. Men, love your wifes. All, be cautions and careful, for the times are hard, and could get harder. And the state can look after itself.