Last Friday Lisa and the boys went swimming at a local lake with the neighbors' grand kids (visiting from VA), and then Friday night they all camped out in the back yard and roasted marshmallows.
A couple of recent interesting NPR audio segments: Preaching to the Pocketbook (via Mike Cope's blog):
All Things Considered, August 7, 2006 · Commentator Robert Franklin, a professor at the School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, is disturbed by the sermons he hears from "prosperity preachers." Listen
Morning Edition, August 7, 2006 · Sectarian strife continues to worsen in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. John Hendren is wrapping up the latest of more than a dozen visits to the war zone since early 2003. He sends us this reporter's notebook about Iraq. Listen
From a blog post of the same title in Greg Stevenson's blog (see his blog post for more);
With the consumption of so many violent stories in my youth, why have I not grown into a homicidal maniac? Especially since that is exactly what our society tells us happens. Violence is a problem in our society, as it is in most. Many have decided that the cause of this problem is the portrayal of violent stories in the media. Children who watch violent shows, they say, build up aggression and are taught that violence is the way to release that aggression and solve problems. Thus, they imitate in real life what they watch on screen. I have long suspected this was a shallow, naive, and ill-informed response to a complex problem. I certainly do not want to minimize the problem of societal violence nor minimize the role that the media may legitimately play, but blaming television or film violence as the primary cause is a bit like blaming the Hostess company for your weight problem. We often crave easy solutions to complex problems. The truth is that many factors are at play: the abdication of parental responsibility, societal attitudes, school culture, etc. Focusing on the media as the primary problem and suggesting shielding children from all violent content without distinction is problematic for two reasons: 1) It removes the focus from the other significant causes and thus creates a situation where removal of violent content becomes the "solution" that may not solve anything. 2) It distorts the actual role of violent stories in a culture... The fact is that violent stories permeate the Bible from beginning to end. .. Do we ignore the role of violence in the Bible or do we acknowledge that violent stories can be valuable catalysts for moral growth? I did not really know how to address the complexity of the role that violent stories play for children until I read a controversial book by Gerard Jones titled Killing Monsters: Why Children NEED Fantasy, Super Hero, and Make-Believe Violence... He argues that fantasy violence is essential for the proper emotional development of children. He tells stories of children who grow up in families where all access to violent stories are removed, and yet the child still cuts their toast into the shape of a gun and plays with it. He consults child psychologists who argue that playing Cowboys and Indians or pretending to be Darth Vader are healthy ways for children to cope with this world and to learn how to live peacefully in it. And what about all the studies showing media violence makes people violent? Jones examines these studies and demonstrates persuasively that they do not show quite what they claim to show and sometimes actually demonstrate the opposite. Jones is careful to distinguish between fantasy violence (the focus of his book) and realistic portrayals of violence that are not appropriate or helpful to children. Many would counter that children are not capable of distinguishing between reality and fantasy. For a handful of kids, that is true. But Jones argues, and numerous psychologists back him up, that our children are very capable of making that distinction and often do a better job of it than adults.
I have a similar experience. I certainly wasn't sheltered from violence as a kid (I LOVED professional wrestling!), but I have no personal interest or experience in violence. I've tried to keep my boys sheltered from it, yet battling the "bad guys" and each other with swords and guns is their favorite activity. I can buy that this is natural and harmless. However, I also have to think that repeated viewing of realistic portrayals of violence must tend to desensitize to it in real life (a recent study said the same about video game violence)...
From an article of the same title in the LA Times by Henry Chu:
As temp jobs go, Saroj Mehli has landed what she feels is a pretty sweet deal. It's a nine-month gig, no special skills needed, and the only real labor comes at the end - when she gives birth. If everything goes according to plan, Mehli, 32, will deliver a healthy baby early next year. But rather than join her other three children, the newborn will be handed over to an American couple who are unable to bear a child on their own and are hiring Mehli to do it for them. She'll be paid about $5,000 for acting as a surrogate mother, a bonanza that would take her more than six years to earn on her salary as a schoolteacher in a village near here. "I might renovate or add to the house, or spend it on my kids' education or my daughter's wedding," Mehli said. Beyond the money, she said, there is the reward of bringing happiness to a childless couple in the United States, where such a service would cost them thousands of dollars more, not to mention the potential legal hassles. Driven by many of the same factors that have led Western businesses to outsource some of their operations to India in recent years, an increasing number of infertile couples from abroad are coming here in search of women such as Mehli who are willing, in effect, to rent out their wombs… Current figures are tough to pin down, but the Indian Council of Medical Research estimates that helping residents and visitors beget children could bloom into a nearly $6-billion-a-year industry.
