The other evening, Ashley was taking her sweet little time eating her dinner. So, the rest of us cleaned up and left her there. She was happy with this solution, since it delayed the inevitable, and she didn’t really approve of the inevitable.

So we were in another room, and A. was still at the table. And what do we hear floating to our ears? A little, raspy voice singing..

“How low? How Low!? Big Brown Bass!!”

Laptop Saga

So, today I spoke with the gentleman who I was told is going to be in charge of getting me my lappy. He said that what was supposed to be a very simple boom-boom, has become very complicated, and they have a whole project set up to fix it.

Hehe… pretty funny, methinks.

Anyhow… He said he’d get in touch with me this afternoon.

Lost last night was kind of like Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. when Barty Crouch, Jr. get’s ‘the kiss’.

Deuteronomy 7:1-4

“When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them: Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the LORD be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly.”

‘For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the LORD be kindled against you‘.

In the past, I’ve had some good discussions with people about parental responsibility in raising their children up to be faithful Christians. A large part of those discussions centers around the parents’, and particularly the father’s, responsibility for particular sins committed by their children (and the same principle, I believe, holds for husband’s responsibility for their wife).

It is argued that a person is guilty of their own sins only, and no one else’s in any way. I argue that, first, a father is responsible to instruct and train his children faithfully, and when they fail to live faithfully, he failed in some respect to train them. Take, as a simple example, a child that screams his head off in the grocery store. It is his sin of anger, bitterness, and lack of self-control. But shouldn’t that child be trained to not be angry or bitter, and to control himself even if he is? The answer is yes. And the parent’s are responsible to teach him that. And, they clearly have not done a good job.

The question then becomes, are the parents guilty for just their own sin of neglect, or are they also partly responsible for the sin of the child? I would say the latter. They share in the guilt, for the child’s sin is partly due to their own sin. I am not trying to suggest that the child is any less guilty for his sin. He is not let off the hook because of his parents’ failure. I just don’t believe we should think about these issues as individualistically as is our first impulse.

Also, even if we consider the impossible hypothetical situation where a man is perfect in how he teaches his child, I still believe he bears responsibility for the sin of his child. He is the covenant head of his household, and as such is responsible for all that takes place in his household. Like Job, he should deal with the sins of his household before the Lord, even when he is not guilty of those sins. The father is united to his household by covenant, and when a child (or his wife) sins, he is responsible for her sin. Why? Because it isn’t just her sin… it is also the household sin. And he is the household, covenantally. He is the representative, before God and before man.

So, back to the text above… The pagan people are the ones that lead the sons away from following God, but God’s anger is against the fathers that married the sons off. God surely is angry with the pagans that draw away His people, but here we are specifically told that it is the fathers, that didn’t lead the sons away (directly), that He is angry with. Why? I believe for both the reasons I gave above… because they are responsible for the spiritual purity of their children, and also because they are covenantally united and responsible for what their children do.