Today’s use of the word salvation comes from Luke 3:2-6

the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan River, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet,

“The voice of one shouting in the wilderness:

‘Prepare the way for the Lord,

make his paths straight.

Every valley will be filled,

and every mountain and hill will be brought low,

and the crooked will be made straight,

and the rough ways will be made smooth,

and all humanity will see the salvation of God.”

Here we see John the Baptist preaching a “baptism of repentence”.  The writer of Luke links this ministry with Isaiah 40.  Interestingly, Isaiah 40 is a turning point in the book of Isaiah.  It is the start of the last third of the book, which up until that point has been a treatise on God’s greatness, Israel’s sin and prophecies of doom.  At Chapter 40, the book abruptly shifts into words of comfort and kindness from God to His people.

Once again, this salvation of God is not directed only to the Hebrews, but will be seen by all people.

A note: somehow it escaped me until today, but the word “salvation” is not used in the gospels of Matthew or Mark.  Yet, certainly the idea of salvation is not missing from the first two gospels.  So, I searched for “save” and “saved”.  There are a lot of entries for these two words.  The next use of “salavation” doesn’t show up until Luke 19.  So I think I’m just going to back track and start looking at the uses of “save” and “saved” in Matthew and Mark and then add salvation back into the mix once we get into Luke.

Today in my study of the word salvation in the New Testament, we’ll look at Luke 2:30-32.  This is the proclamation of Simeon over the infant Jesus as he was brought into the temple for circumcision:

“”For my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples: a light, for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.”

Once again salvation is said to be embodied in Jesus.  Salvation here is again identified with light.  As the light is also a revelation, we can probably understand the light of salvation as a revealing light which brings understanding of things  which were previously dark and hard to perceive.  The salvation will be a glory for Israel.  However, unlike Zechariah’s prophesy in Luke 1, Simeon makes it clear that this salvation will be for all people, including the Gentiles.

This pobably isn’t the best way to re-start my long dorment blog, but I have a need of doing a word study on the word salvation in the New Testament and I figured that I would do it via a series of blog posts as a way to give it some structure.  Sooooo. . . here goes.

We find our first uses of the word salvation in Luke 1:67-80 in the middle of John the Baptist’s father Zechariah’s prophesy over the infant Jesus:

Then his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,because he has come to help and has redeemed his people.  For he has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from long ago, that we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all who hate us.

He has done this to show mercy to our ancestors, and to remember his holy covenant – the oath that he swore to our ancestor^, Abraham.

This oath grants that we, being rescued from the hand of our enemies, may serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him for as long as we live.

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High. For you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give his people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins. Because of our God’s tender mercy the dawn will break upon us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

And the child kept growing and becoming strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day he was revealed to Israel.

OK, first we need to start with some context.  At the time of Jesus’ birth, Israel was under the control of the Roman Empire.  Historically, those times when Israel was living under the control of other powers, it was understood to be a judgement on Israel for its sin and faithlessness.  Therefor, the political condition of Israel and it’s spiritual need for redemption and forgiveness was seen as entertwined.  In the past, God had worked through righteous Israeli leaders to bring about the release of Israel from foreign rule.  These times were also a time for Israel to be redeemed from their sin and return to following God’s laws.  Again, the political and the spiritual are woven together.

In this context, it makes a lot of sense that the Messiah was expected to bring about both spiritual and political redemption to the Hebrew people.  While Zechariah’s prophesy does contain some elements which allude to the political, what is interesting to me is how much more clearly it the prophesy rests on the spiritual aspects of Jesus’ work.

For our purposes, I want to look at the two uses of the word salvation a little more closely:

Luke 1:69-70 For he has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from long ago, that we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all who hate us.

Here we see the political most clearly.  Jesus is referred to as “the horn of salvation”.  The horn called to mind a couple of things.  First, the horn was used to make noise.  It could raise the alarm or call people to temple or even be used to make music for hymns.  It was also the tool given to animals to defend themselves against predators.  The reference to the house of Israel’s greatest political leader, David, places the work of Jesus into the context of David’s legacy in Israel.  Likewise, the idea of being saved from enemies and those who hate us points to the usual understanding of the Messiah as working within the political context of the Hebrew people.  We should also probably note the the “us” at the end of these lines almost certainly refers to the Hebrew people and not a more inclusive view of humanity.  In this instance, salvation seems to be tied most closely with the political, as it often was in Old Testament times.

Next:

Luke 1:79-80 “For you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give his people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins. Because of our God’s tender mercy the dawn will break upon us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Here Zechariah is addressing his own son, John’s mission.  In this instance, salvation is rather explicitly spiritual.   Interestingly, we see that John is to bring knowledge of salvation.  We saw in the first verse using salvation, that Jesus is the “horn of salvation”, ie the tool of salvation.  John is to clear the way for Jesus’ work, by bringing the knowledge of salvation, which in this instance is linked to the spiritual rather than the political.  So, perhaps implicite in this verse is the idea that John will proclaim salvation as being linked to the forgiveness of sins rather than to political freedom, as people generally expected.  Reading further, if we allow that the dawn which Zechariah is speaking of is linked to this knowledge of salvation which is being revealed, then from these verses we see:

1. Salvation comes through the forgiveness of sins.

2. Salvation comes through God’s mercy.

3. Salvation brings light.

4. Salvation will lead us to peace.

“Hate was just a failure of imagination.”  That line comes from a book (which I have not actually read) called “The Power and The Glory” by Graham Greene.  (It showed up in this column by Michael Gerson which remarkably showed up in the Washington Post.  In it he compares prosperity gospel folks like Kenneth Copeland with the “whiskey priest” protagonist of “The Power and The Glory”.  It’s a good column – you should read it.)  The main character observes, “When you visualized a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity — that was a quality God’s image carried with it. When you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination.”

This struck me because I have often observed how hard it can be for people – and often particularly God’s people – to get past the sin and ugliness and abrasiveness of people to see the image bearing man or woman God created them to be.  I think that “a failure of imagination” is probably just the right accounting of the problem.  When I was growing up my mom used to look at someone who had fallen on the way of life and say, “there but for the grace of God go I.”  I don’t know if it was a habit or if she really understood the truth of what she was saying, but it taught me a lot about how to look at people and myself.  It taught me not to think too much of myself.  Given a different set of circumstances, a different upbringing, a different natural temperament, I could very well have wound up in the same place as anyone else.  Or at least be in grave danger of doing so.

It also taught me to actually consider how it was that other people wound up where they did.  When I was in college, I did prison ministry at a juvi prison not far from my school.  One of the biggest things that I learned from spending time with and talking with the guys there was that there are very few people who do evil things because they actually desire to bring evil into the world and the lives of those around them.  There are some of those people and I met a few.  But even among criminals, they are very much a minority.  For the most part these kids (some of whom had done truly heinous things), did the only thing that made sense to them in the situation that they found themselves in.  Now, this doesn’t mean that what they did was excusable or that they didn’t actually have other options.  However, suffering from their own lack of imagination, they simply did not see them at the time.  My point being that if I was willing to “visualized a man or woman carefully”, I would come to pity (I would say compassion is probably a better word than pity).  I could see the truth of my mother’s old, “there but for the grace of God go I.”  And at that point, hate or even contempt becomes a very hard thing to hold onto.

As an adult I have been surprised to discover that my mother’s habit of looking at the fallen or failing with “there but for the grace of God go I” seems not to be a common one.  Instead, it seems that in many homes, particularly Christian ones, the fallen and failing are morality tales to be used as demonstrations of what happens when one rejects God’s ways.  They are reduced to warnings defined by their failures and misteps.  But in doing so, we presumptuously remove “image of God” from how we see them.  And we have no right to try and remove or ignore something which God himself planted on another human being.

It also sets out a clear delineation between us and them.  The fallen person is not like me.  I will not be like him so long as I don’t do what he did.  And I would never do what he did.  And we are never challenged to imagine ourselves in another’s place.  And lacking imagination, true pity and compassion never comes.  Hate is easy and love is hard.  In which case, all of our righteousness, all of our works, and right answers and words and moral living mean nothing.  So the first becomes last in the eyes of God.  But if we can bring ourselves low to imagine how we could wind up in the place of another, then we can love.  And it is only when we can love the image of God (ie another person), that we can actually approach the Living God in love.  But it all starts with a little imagination – “there but for the grace of God go I.”

So the other day, my 13 year old was telling us that he’d like to go camping as a family (my husband does not camp, so we’ve never gone before).

My husband, ever the smart aleck, decides to respond with a reference to a couple we know who shall remain nameless who got rather down and dirty in a camper, thinking the kids were all asleep.  Unfortunately their 14 year old daughter, laying all of 10 feet away wasn’t actually asleep.  Even more unfortunately for all of them, she didn’t say anything until the next morning.  She was livid.  The father responded with a classic line: “what do you think the Eskimos did?”  At any rate, my smarty pants husband says, “are you sure that would be a good idea Noah?  A tent is awful small and parents have been known to act up once they think the kids are asleep.”

To which my dear son (who does not know the background story, btw), shrugs and says, “eh.  As long as you have your own sleeping bags I don’t care.”

The hubby and I thought we’d never stop laughing.

And as long as we’re on the topic, I figure I’ll share a couple more best of sex ed episodes from our house.

A while back I happened to hear my then 8 year old son Collin make some comment about “s-e-x”.

Me: “Collin, did I just hear you spell the word sex?”

Collin: “I didn’t spell it.  It’s a code word we made up for sex.”

Me: “But that’s not a code word.  You’re just spelling it.  Why not just say sex?”

Collin: “We think s-e-x is a good code word.  We don’t want to just go around saying sex, that would be kind of weird.”

Yeah.  OK.

And finally, one of my all time favorites.  When I got pregnant with my youngest daughter Sophia, it was kind of a spur of the moment thing and very much my husband’s idea (long story).  At any rate, the running joke when I was pregnant with Sophie was that “it’s all Keith’s fault.”

So one day, Noah (then 10) heard me quip that it was Keith’s fault for the umpteenth time.  He turned to me and said, “what – did he get you while you were sleeping?”

Doesn’t really work that way, dear.  I least I would hope it doesn’t work that way!

And for those of you who are appalled that I would tell such embarrassing stories about my kids, don’t worry.  We plan on telling these stories and many more to their friends, wives and kids one day as well.   Not to mention the pictures.  Oh boy, do we have pictures! 

Two days ago, I wrote about how being gifted results in an experience of life and existing which is usually markedly different in intensity and complexity than what normal people experience. Today I’m going to talk about why so many highly intelligent people fail to see themselves as gifted and and why gifted people need to understand their giftedness and teach their children to do the same.

The first point which needs to be made is that contrary to the perception that unusually smart people are arrogant and think that they are better than everyone else, many, many highly intelligent people are in denial about their giftedness. People who belong to Mensa report that one of the most common things they hear from other members are jokes that someone must have messed up their test because they aren’t actually smart enough to be there. People who counsel and work with highly intelligent people find that many of them suffer from “imposter syndrome“. Imposter syndrome is a situation where a person feels that they are simply faking their way through life, that anything they have accomplished is due to luck and that their real abilities fall short of what others are capable of. I’m not aware of any actual research into the self perception of people with unusually high intelligence. However, based on reports from people with high intelligence and those who deal with them, it is probably safe to say that a large percentage of highly intelligent people do not see themselves as such. Contrary to the stereotype, many gifted people are not arrogant to the point of being unable to hold an accurate view of their own abilities.

Compounding the problem is the fact that in our culture it is rather hard to come right out and identify ourselves as gifted (although we all seem to want that label for our children, whether they deserve it or not). We believe that if we were to say, “I am a gifted/unusually intelligent person” we would be perceived as an arrogant braggart who thinks that they are better than everyone else. However, the fact is that a highly intelligent person is who he or she is.  We really put people into a bad position if they cannot just be themselves without being accused of trying to make themselves look good at the expense of others.  It is true that a minority of gifted people in a few circles such as high level scientific work or some university settings may view themselves as superior to everyone else. However, for the most part people with high intelligence have no interest in lording their smarts over anyone. After all, intelligence is an unearned attribute which doesn’t in and of itself make a person any better or worse than anyone else.

Further, because declarations of intelligence can trigger feelings of hostility and inferiority in others, people who come right out and say that they are gifted can be opening themselves up to impossibly high expectations from others coupled with increased scrutiny. Who wants to walk around feeling that people are watching you, just waiting for you to fail? Besides, being intelligent doesn’t mean that you won’t make mistakes. In reality, it probably just means that you’ll make bigger, more complicated mistakes than most other people.

Coupled with these barriers to acknowledging one’s self as gifted or unusually intelligent, most of us have an unrealistic idea of what giftedness is/looks like. (And those barriers have their base in unrealistic ideas of what high intelligence looks like anyways.)  First of all, since giftedness runs in families, a person can see their very unusual abilities as completely normal.  If your mom who is just a homemaker can finish a monster soduku puzzle in less than 5 minutes, then that must be what is normal.  If dad who is just an accountant can memorize the entire official rulebook for his softball league verbatim, then that must be what is normal.  The extraordinary becomes a baseline for average.

One of the other barriers to developing a realistic view of a person with unusually high intelligence is the fact that there is a greater diversity of abilities, interests and behaviors among the gifted than one finds in other populations.  Most people live within the range of normal ability.  While there is a great deal of diversity among people within this range, there are certain abilities which people do not expect to find within this population.  A person of normal intelligence has no expectation that they must have a photographic memory, be able to speed read, memorize pi to 1000 digits, come up with ideas that turn the world on its head, learn multiple foreign languages quickly, create whole new fictional universes, etc.  They do not feel pressure to maintain their “normal” status by exhibiting characteristics held by others in the normal range.  No one would say, “I can’t seem to get the hang of knitting, so that must mean that I don’t have normal intelligence.”

OTOH, when looking at the gifted population, there is the same range of abilities found among normal people plus a dizzying array of other potential markers for intelligence.  It would be impossible for one human being, no matter how intellectually gifted, to encompass all of the potential abilities of the human mind at its best.  For this reason, it is pretty much impossible to create a check list of unusual abilities that a person must have in order to be called gifted.  Rather, giftedness is assessed by comparing someone to what is normal and looking at how far outside the range of normal a person is.    Instead of using this measure, gifted people tend to assess themselves completely differently: how they compare to other people who are gifted.  Many people will look at someone who is gifted in ways that they are not, think to themselves, “well that person is really smart and I’m not anything like them, so I must not be really smart.”  And the second person may also say to themselves, “well, that person is really smart and I’m not like them, so I must not be really smart.”  What is so funny is that the two may have the same IQ.  We have a strong tendency to write off the things we are exceptionally good at as “just what I do”, “no big deal”, “easy”, “anyone could do it if they wanted”, etc.  Then we look at those who have abilities we don’t have, use them as the stick by which we measure unusual intelligence and find ourselves lacking.  (This article has a good explanation of this dynamic.)

Again, unusually high intelligence is an unearned trait.  We tend not to value what we do not earn.  But if we cannot acknowledge that we do have unusual abilities, it will be hard for us to develop them to their fullest extent in order to actually do something worth being proud of with them.  We need to value our abilities, not because they are just so magical and special and set us apart as better than others.  We need to value them so that we can develop them.  For this reason, some people refer to highly intelligent people as “high potential” rather than gifted.

If we can get a clearer view of our own abilities, free from the misconceptions about what it means and looks like to be gifted, then we will be in a better position to actually reach that potential.  When I think of the number of things that I didn’t attempt to do or even view as a possibility as a young person because those were things that “other, smarter people” do, it makes me cringe.   The simple fact is that being unusually smart is neither inherently good or bad.  Unusual intelligence brings a lot of potential pitfalls as well as potential accomplishments.  It is my opinion that we have the best chance of overcoming the pitfalls and attaining the potential when we have a reasonable, clearheaded view of ourselves.  Sometimes that means having the courage to say, “I’m a really intelligent person” and not modifying or apologizing for that.  Besides, you probably won’t be telling the people around you anything they don’t already know.  For reasons such as those above, the smartest people are sometimes the last to really know.

BTW, if you or your kids are (or think you are) gifted, I would highly recommend checking out the Hoagies’ Gifted website.  It is a great clearinghouse of resources, links and information.  In particular, I have found the “gifted adults” page very useful.  It’s all well and fine to learn about the kids and their needs, but if you aren’t at peace with your own giftedness, it will be hard to raise a child who is a peace with theirs.

OMG.  I had an awful bad mom moment this morning.  I signed my 13 year old up for a two day camp where he will learn to canoe.  For whatever reason, I had it all set in my head that it was an overnight trip.  So we packed PJs and a sleeping bag and headed out this morning to drop the boy off.  On the way in the camp counselors asked why we had a sleeping bag!  Because it’s not an overnight event, you see.  I only imagined that it was and got my kid all geeked for it and then embarrassed us by showing up for a sleepover we hadn’t been invited to.  If I had been thinking, I would have lied my pants off and told them that Noah was going straight from camp to a friend’s to spend the night.  But I’m not so good at thinking on my feet like that.  And apparently not so good at reading the various descriptions and packing lists I received for the deal.  I am very, very embarrassed.   I guess I should be glad that the other kids didn’t see us walking in, so it’s only the counselors who think we complete morons.

Over the last couple of years I have spent time off and on doing research into giftedness and living with unusually high intelligence.  It has been far more interesting and enlightening than I expected.  So I figured I would share some of what I have learned with y’all.  Today I will focus on some of the differences which tend to be characteristic of those with unusually high intellegence.  Tomorrow, I’ll get into why so many gifted people have a hard time recognizing themselves as gifted and why it is so important for them to understand their giftedness and teach their children to do the same.

First, the differences.  I always figured that high intelligence was just about how a person learns new information and skills.  What I have found out, however, is that high intelligence entails not just being able to learn new things quickly and easily, but affects a person’s entire experience of life.  People with unusually high intelligence take in and aquire information differently, process that information differently.  They frequently experience emotions and physical stimuli more intensely than others.  They have motivations and drives which others often find odd or bizarre.  In short, being unusually intelligent tends to create a whole life experience which is markedly more complicated and intense than what most people experience.

Psychologists who deal with highly intelligent people label these areas of high instensity and complexity “Overexcitabilities” or OEs.  They are generally divided into 5 catagories: Psychomotor, Sensual, Intellectual, Imaginational, and Emotional.  (This article has a pretty good basic examination of OEs.)  While not every highly intelligent person will have an area of OE, most will have at least one or more areas of OE.  These OEs are areas in which the highly intelligent person has unusually strong, frequent or deep reactions and experiences.  For example, a person with intellectual OE may be unable to stop thinking about the things which interest him or her.  They can get lost in figuring out some theoretical problem and spend a lot of time seeking out information and ideas related to the issue.  While this is just the sort of person you want to sic on a complicated problem, a person with intellectual OE can find the pace and intensity of their thinking exhausting.  They can also be impatient with others who aren’t able to intellectually keep up with them or highly critical of others and their ideas because they themselves are able to quickly and easily assess ideas for problems and flaws.  A person with this OE is not just aquiring information more quickly than those around them.  They are dealing with an interacting with that information in ways which are fundamentally different than others.

One of the real challenges that people with high intelligence face is learning how to deal with these OEs in ways that are healthy for themselves and others.  Even more so than for most people, the things which are their greatest strengths can also be very destructive for an unusually intelligent person.  This is why it is very important that kids who are gifted are taught about their giftedness, how it affects them differently than other people and how to manage those areas of OE that they have.  Because they are dealing with an unusual level of intensity and complexity, a gifted child may take longer to get his or her areas of OE under control than a normal child dealing with similar issues of self-control.  For example, it is not at all uncommon for a gifted child to be prone to inappropriate emotional outbursts well past the age that most kids have stopped throwing fits.  While we often attribute this to a lack of maturity, perhaps due to focusing so much mental energy on intellectual development, the reality is that this struggle probably has its root in an emotional OE.  When a person experiences emotions much more frequently, intensely and easily than other people, it only makes sense that it is going to take more time for them to learn to tame and manage them.  We can probably compare it to the difference between saddle training a wild mustang and saddle training a horse bred on a horse farm.  While the mustang may end up being the more magnificent animal, it is also to be expected that it will take more time to bring the wild animal under control than it will the domesticated one.

In addition to dealing with OEs, one of the problems which a lot of kids and adults with unusually high intelligence have is that they do not understand the ways in which they are different from most of the people around them.  They may realize that they learn things more quickly and easily than others, but may be wholly unaware that others don’t share their endless curiosity and may not have the strong feelings about things that they do.  Highly intelligent people may also find themselves odd man out because it is in their nature to think and work outside of the box.  They may know that they are doing this, but may not realize how threatening and disconcerting this often is to others.  They can be blindsided by the negative reactions they receive for doing things which they see as positive.

This fundamental different-ness combined with a lack of insight into the reality of the how other people’s minds work underlies a lot of the social difficulties which highly intelligent people often experience.  Unfortunately, the social problems that unusually intelligent people, particularly kids, commonly experience are usually pinned on some failure on their own part.  However, a good part of the social problems highly intelligent people experience are rooted in a lack of tolerance for their differences.  Take a child who uses vocabulary that his peers aren’t familiar with and responds to being shown a frog with an explanation of the life cycle of frogs and the similarities and differences between frogs and toads.   The other kids don’t usually think, “wow, he’s really smart.  I wonder what else he knows.  I bet he’d be an exciting person to get to know.”  They just think, “what a weirdo.”  How is the child suppose to handle himself to solve this problem?  Should he somehow figure out how to change his very nature so that he doesn’t care about the things he sees around him?  Should he not educate himself about the things which interest him?  Should he magically know which of the words that he effortlessly picks up his peers won’t notice and learn for many years to come so he can refrain from using them?  Should he cynically assume that other people suffer from what to him is an appalling lack of curiosity and not share what he knows (after all, he really likes it when people tell him new things)?  Obviously, pinning the “weirdo” reaction on the gifted child and expecting him to become more “socially adept” in order to avoid triggering it is wrong and ridiculous.  Far better to teach greater tolerance for these differences to the other children.  It would cost the gifted child a huge part of himself to “fix” this social interaction, while expecting greater tolerance from more normal kids would be a benefit to themselves as well as the gifted child.

OTOH, it is entirely likely that the gifted child will prattle on about frogs and toads far past the time available and without regard for the fact that others may have things they would like to contribute to the conversation.  So gifted kids do need to be taught to manage their tendencies in order to be respectful to others and capable of engaging in reciprocal conversations and relationships.  However, many gifted kids and adults struggle with figuring out what they are doing “wrong” in social situations.  They have taken the time to master the art of listening, asking questions, making small talk, providing positive feedback, making jokes, being intentionally kind and thoughtful, modulating emotions and reactions so as not to startle or discomfort other people.  And yet they can still find themselves isolated without knowing why.  The simple fact is that we can (and should) encourage gifted kids to develop good social skills, but if we insist on blaming them for all of their social problems, we are being very unfair.

I personally began to get an inkling of the idea that I might be different from other people in ways that I hadn’t previously realized a couple of years ago.  A woman from my bible study who I was trying to get to know (and who was being rather unresponsive) commented in a discussion, “I always think I’m so unique and different, but the more I get to know other people, the more I realize that they are interested in and looking for the same things as I am.”  It really hit me that my experience of life was just the opposite;  I always thought of myself as normal.  Yet the more I got to know people, the more I realized that other people are pretty much nothing like me.  What is so funny is that other people saw me and interacted with me and seemed to know immediately that I was different.  Yet I, the one who is supposed to be so smart, was frequently oblivious to this.  Actually, I wasn’t so much oblivious to it as I was oblivious to the effect that this difference has on the way people respond (or don’t respond) to me.  Once I started looking into giftedness, things started to make more sense to me.  While it is a little discouraging to realize that there is really nothing I can do to change some of the negative ways people respond to me, it is also freeing to realize that this doesn’t mean I’m doing anything wrong.

I have found that especially being a mom, when you are very different, it can be hard to find others who “get” you.  Unlike fields like medicine or engineering where gifted people are the norm, motherhood pulls in people from across the range of the intelligence scale.  One of the things which I appreciate about the internet and this blog is that it is much easier to find people who share my interests and probably a few of my OEs online than it is in real life.  So, especially to my regular readers and commentors, thanks so much for joining in here.  It’s nice to have an outlet where you are appreciated rather than just labeled “weirdo”. 

My 9 year old spent last week at a nearby nature center for summer camp. It ran from 8-4 with an overnight camp-out Thursday night. It was really the first time he’s spent that much time in that short a period away from his family. He had an absolute blast, got along very well with the other kids and only had one serious discipline problem through the whole week (which is some kind of record for this kid). And at the end of the week, I came to the conclusion that there is no way in heck I’m going to be sending the child off to school anytime soon.

While I’m pleased as punch that he handled himself well with other kids, I am not nearly so pleased with how quickly and (to me) dramatically, he oriented himself to his peers. Each day when he came home, he was wired up to the point of being completely out of hand. He was rowdy, rude, scattered and largely unresponsive to me and my attempts to get him to settle down. The problem is that he had spent all day getting positive feedback from the other kids for his antics. I actually heard a couple of kids telling their parents that Collin is really funny. Which he is. But he’s also quite over-excitable in a variety of ways. He will feed off the energy of those around him and rapidly become physically, imaginatively and emotionally over responsive. Once he gets going, not only is it hard for him to stop, but being in a state of over-excitement can be rather enjoyable so he doesn’t particularly want to stop. The simple fact is that he just doesn’t have the maturity to manage this aspect of his personality very well yet. And, unfortunately, because he receives positive feedback from his peers for this over-excitability, being with his peers all day only exacerbates this problem.

Now, if he were in a classroom with a decent teacher, he probably wouldn’t be quite as free to get himself wound up as he was in a fun summer camp setting. He would have to figure out how to toe the line (which for him would mean pushing just as far as he could while retaining a plausible claim of innocence for himself). However, simply figuring out when and where you can indulge in your favorite immature behavior isn’t the same thing as learning to actually manage yourself maturely. I’m pretty certain that he’d become one more kid who would say, “my family and teachers don’t know the real me. I’m one way around them, but when I’m with my friends, then I can be myself and I’m totally different.”

Real life is hard. In order to navigate it successfully, simply knowing how to act mature isn’t nearly enough. Our kids need to actually be mature in order to make good choices for themselves when they get out into the world. A young adult who’s “real” identity is peer oriented may know how to act maturely in certain settings, but will generally see their free-er, more irresponsible and immature selves as their true selves. Which in the real world usually means you need to get knocked around a lot before you start to actually become mature. Personally, I think we do much better by our kids to do whatever it takes to make sure that they go into the world already mature rather than letting potentially irreversible mistakes, tragedies and crisis teach them.

The other issue that came up with summer camp, which I found a bit disconcerting, was how quickly he developed a strong preference for his peers over his family. This summer camp included a night of camping out at the end of the week. I would hope, given the emphasis we have placed on family and the primacy of family relationships, that after spending a day and a half away from his family, that he would have some interest in reconnecting with them. Instead, he mentioned (twice) in an off-handed sort of way on the way home from his camping trip that he wished he were an only child. He also added that he wished his little sisters weren’t there so I could take him to the store on the way home. (Which is funny because it’s him and not the little girls who I don’t like taking into stores!) When we got home, before he had even said “hi” to his brother, he was begging to call a couple of the kids he had just left 1/2 an hour ago. For the rest of the day when I would suggest that he go to do something with one of his siblings, he would ask again to call one of his new friends or to invite them over. I guess that this makes some sense. You don’t usually have to sacrifice what you want to accommodate a peer’s nap schedule, temper tantrums or age differences. And when you are acting like a spaz, your peers will laugh or join in rather than telling you sharply to knock it off. Really, hanging out with his peers meant shedding the often uncomfortable bonds of self-sacrifice and self-restraint that living in a family imposes on you. However, that self-sacrifice and self-restraint are precisely the things he will need in order to reach his full potential in life. If he sees self-sacrifice and self-restraint not as natural and good parts of a normal, healthy life, but as impediments he can escape in order to seek his own happiness, he will be at a real disadvantage when it comes to achieving his best in life.

What is most amazing to me is that it is now 3 days since he got back from his summer camp. And he is still out of hand. I can’t even imagine what he’d be like if he were in school. I wonder how much problem behavior on the part of kids and immaturity in young adults is driven by the sort of peer socialization Collin experienced last week. We like to think that the structure of a school setting and the demands of teachers and parents are enough to counter-balance this peer socialization. However, from what I’ve seen of kids and young adults, this seems to be one of those things that would be a great idea – if only we could figure out how to get it to work.

Now mind you, I’m not saying at all that kids socializing with their peers is bad or unnecessary. However, having a kid (especially one as overly excitable as mine) spend most of his waking hours with kids who reward and re-enforce their most immature and selfish tendencies doesn’t seem like a particularly good thing to me. And that’s why, although (because?) my kid got along great with the other kids at summer camp, he’s going to have to be a lot more mature before I’d consider sending him off to school.

So what do y’all think? Am I over reacting? Off base? Right on?

God works.  That’s all I can say.  You may have heard the howling and gnashing of teeth on both sides over University of Minnesota at Morris professor P.Z. Meyer’s quest to desecrate a eucharist.  He finally got his hands on one (I didn’t read closely enough to see if it was a consecrated host or not, which to Catholics would be enormously important of course).  What is just amazing to me is the method by which he decided to “desecrate” the wafer: he put a rusty nail through it.  Seriously.  A rusty nail!  A man who wishes Jesus, or the fable of Jesus or however he thinks of Jesus, would just wither up and die, put a nail through the body of Christ.  Because, you know, that just worked so well the first time!  And to top it off, he began the post in which he announced his torture of the “cracker” as he’s calling it, with these words: “It is finished.”  Hmm, seems I may have heard those words before:

Therefor when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “it is finished!”  And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit. – John 19:30

A chill ran down my spine when I read that.  I am in awe of how just as He did 2000 years ago, God can use corrupted human hearts and evil intentions to speak His truth.  (Amazingly, if you read the post, Prof. Myers seems to be wholly unaware of the echoes of the crucifiction story which are embedded in his words and actions.)

I can’t get too worked up over Prof. Myers.  God created him and God will deal with him in whatever way is best for Prof. Myers’ correction and redemption and God’s glory.  Unless I am called directly to be involved, it’s really not my concern.  However, I am just so touched and awed at the affirmation of God’s presence and power in the middle of a situation which to the human eye looks like the devil himself at work.  All I could do when I saw the picture of the host driven through with a rusty nail and discarded was praise God.  Which I’m pretty sure wasn’t what Prof. Myers had in mind!