I Wrote The Constitution
Posted on 21. Oct, 2008 by dewde in Christianity, Marriage, Parenting
Before I had children I read a book by my pastor, Andy Stanley. In one chapter he challenged me to think about the goals I had for myself and my family. So I reflected on them momentarily before continuing about the usual enterprise of life.
Then we had our first daughter.
Fathering children has a way of changing a man. I quickly realized that lofty musings and wishful thinking were no way to lead my family. So I went back and re-read the chapter in that book. I took it to heart when Andy challenged me write out my goals for my family. They say if you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time. I didn’t want to hit this target. So I opened Google Docs and I began drafting, in the words of http://dictionary.com, a system of fundamental principles according to which a nation, state, corporation, or the like, is governed. Substitute “or the like” with “my family.”
I began drafting a Family Constitution.
It became clear, in short order, that one document would not suffice. Maybe it’s the patriot in me, that my parents raised, but our Family Constitution felt remiss without an accompanying Bill of Rights. So I drafted one of those also, for the children.
After I had worked on it for a while I knew I needed external review. Actually, my new Family Constitution required it! I have a group of close friends and family that I consider my personal advisory board. I mean that literally. I have a group in my address book titled “Personal Advisory Board.” When my drafts were complete, I sent my board the following email.
Now that our family is growing, the time felt right to go ahead and write down some of our goals. Please feel free to question any of them. The wording, the importance, etc. Maybe they overlap, or maybe some need to be divided. Chew on it. Take your time. I guess the main thing I would like your advice on, is if I am missing any huge areas, principles, categories, or topics.
These two documents represent values that [Dewdette] and [Dewde] intend to prioritize as we raise our children and live our lives here on this earth. I’m sure it will be a growing and changing document. It will grow while we grow, as God teaches us lessons throughout our lives. I hope it stays very simple and concise as opposed to wordy or redundant.
That was 2 and a half years ago. Now it’s time to dust this puppy off. Reevaluate. Revise. and Refine.
The Family Constitution
Integrity
- To hold honesty as the foundation of our ethics.
- To always choose the harder right, as God defines right, over the easier wrong.
- To be sincere and genuine in our endeavors.
Charity
- To enrich the lives of others with our time and assets.
- To always rebuke with hesitancy and gentleness.
- To keep a sense of humor.
Wisdom
- To obtain counsel of reputable peers.
- To listen twice as much as you speak.
- To fellowship with God through prayer and study.
And also.
The Children’s Bill of Rights
- To be safe and nourished.
- To be given love, rooted in patience and tenderness, not contingent on decisions or actions.
- To be taught by example hand-in-hand with instruction.
- To be given unconditional respect, not contingent on decisions or actions.
- To be guided in the skills necessary to navigate life with peace and contentment.
- To be forgiven of all trespasses.
- To be disciplined with predictability and consistency.
I post them here for two reasons. First, I seek constructive feedback. Especially if you are of an alternate world view. Christians have a history of being terribly myopic. Actually, I have a history of being terribly myopic. And not just in the 5 years since my conversion, but my 10 Atheist years before that.
Second, I hope to inspire you in the same manner that I was inspired. Please consider, if you haven’t already, articulating your goals in written form, as you lead your family. I can name dozens and dozens of changes Dewdette and I made to our lifestyle as a direct consequence of the conversations we had while I drafted these documents.
This is time well spent.
Chris F.
Oct 21st, 2008
Don’t worry. It’s cyclical. In 5 more years, you’ll come around again. I’m praying for ya.
I like it a lot, though I think you would lose nothing if you removed the God clauses, or at least replaced God with something intentionally more natural. God hates shrimp, after all. God excepted, it’s a straightforward manual for fairness and respect.
Now, the tougher part is actually living up to its expectations! George Bush has discovered likewise, I think. The existence of a constitution doesn’t mean much if the leaders just do what they please.
dewde
Oct 21st, 2008
Thx man.
I considered sprucing it up with a picture of mountains and a midget. Maybe even a chart correlating two arbitrary memes, in order to illustrate that correlation is not causation… but that’s a bit played out.
I’ll keep the hocus pocus in there for now.
Turff
Oct 22nd, 2008
Unlike others, I could actually imagine a US Constitution without mention of God. While a government of/by/for the people will likely be a better government when actually and effectively guided by Christian principles (not necessarily those proposed and condoned by the “religious right”) will likely be better government, I don’t believe explicit mention within government documents to be necessary.
Having said that, I cannot imagine drafting a family/personal constitution that did not mention and embrace God. Effective fatherhood/parenting within the truth as I understand it absolutely requires His presence at the center of all I do. That’s not to say that I am consistently effective. It is only to say that when I am not, it’s almost always because I have departed from His guidance.
dewde
Oct 22nd, 2008
Turff:
I’m with you. It confuses me when Christians think mixing religion and politics is a good idea. I believe God is into liberty for everyone, not just Christians. How else can we explain free will?
Chris F.
Oct 22nd, 2008
I’m not sure precisely how this morphed into a state-church separation issue, but…
It’s a great thing to have religiously minded people openly skeptical of inserting more religion into government. It seems like to get elected to any public office, you have to at least pay strong lip service to being a god-fearing, church-going, prayer-saying person. That’s scary to me, since people who are so enthusiastic about their own faith seem often happy to deny people of other (or no) faiths any consideration when given the chance… as if they just *know* that their way is *the* way. The main reason that the popular evangelical Christian varieties of today are even around is that freedom to hold and mold your personal beliefs without interference from the government. It’s hard to believe that they’d enjoy the same level of success for very long with various state-mandated rules, even if those rules were currently aligned with the typical evangelical mindset.
And is it some well-known Christian fact that free will in fact exists? That’s up for grabs, isn’t it?
dewde
Oct 22nd, 2008
“The main reason that the popular evangelical Christian varieties of today are even around is that freedom to hold and mold your personal beliefs without interference from the government. It’s hard to believe that they’d enjoy the same level of success for very long with various state-mandated rules, even if those rules were currently aligned with the typical evangelical mindset.”
Very, very well said.
“And is it some well-known Christian fact that free will in fact exists? That’s up for grabs, isn’t it?”
Not really. Of course a subset believe in 100% pure, unadulterated divine predestination. But I think the much greater majority believe that we hold a measure of free will, as a necessity, in order for the whole justice angle to work.
Being held responsible for events you have no control over isn’t exactly justice.
dewde
Oct 22nd, 2008
Oh, and calling Turff “religiously-minded” in a bit of an understatement. He’s a youth pastor of sorts.
Chris F.
Oct 22nd, 2008
I’m not trying to jab at Christians with the free will thing. I just thought it was generally a philosophical topic that certain people enjoy debating. Certainly there are popular atheist writers who advocate that free will doesn’t really exist. To be honest, though, that argument is one that’s a no-op for me. I don’t believe in divine justice, so there’s no practical difference to me, IMO. This is way off topic, but why should an atheist care if free will exists? It’s something I never really thought about.
http://www.dividingbyzero.us/
Oct 22nd, 2008
Chris,
The reason you don’t care about fee will is because you lack the free will to do so.
And there are many families that would benefit from Dewde’s Family Constitution, whether or not they’re Christian.
Zero
Chris F.
Oct 22nd, 2008
I must be too dumb to know that the last comment was some swipe at me. And I agree that his goals are good ones. I just think it’s not inappropriate to substitute other features of nature for his uses of the word “God.” IMO, they represent the same ends but without, as Dewde put it, the hocus pocus. I consider the God component to be a minor point in the big picture of morality — that you can be a fundamentally good person with or without a belief in a god. But I am not at all disagreeing with his major themes of responsibility and personal growth.
http://www.dividingbyzero.us/
Oct 22nd, 2008
Chris,
Without some kind of underpinning how does one really know what good is? Without absolutes, good is just whatever someone makes up.
By founding a morality on the Christian God Dewde has a structure upon which he can build, instead of just making one up. Skip the mythology if you like – Jesus was at minimum an excellent example of goodness in a human being.
It’s been my experience nature is a brutal, nasty, cut-throat state; terribly cruel and violent. I don’t think you can logically substitute “features of nature” for God. Nature has only one moral – survival at all costs.
Zero
P.S., I’d never take a swipe at you intentionally. Ultimately it’s beyond my control.
Chris F.
Oct 22nd, 2008
Zero,
Since this is so far off Dewde’s original topic, I’d vote that this is my last post on this thread. I’d be happy to continue elsewhere, though. I don’t want to appear snippy or arrogant here either… I really would prefer to understand what people consider as good reasons to do things for or because of God. I just haven’t found any of those reasons all that compelling myself, but it’s fascinating to talk about, particularly when beer is involved.
Anyway, to your points… I disagree that removing God from the moral structure necessitates just “making one up.” This is a common criticism of the atheist view, but I think it’s an invalid one. Sam Harris argues persuasively that (in a nutshell) issues of right and wrong can be thought of as an attempt to minimize suffering. The simple rule doesn’t mean things aren’t often very confusing, since minimizing the short term can exacerbate a problem in the long term, or fixing something locally can cause harm globally, etc. There are also good evolutionary arguments made for this point of view.
Also, in general, people who profess godlessness are indistinguishable moral judges from religious people. For example, the work of Peter Singer and Marc Hauser has shown that there’s no statistically significant difference between the choices made in a moral dilemma between atheists and religious people, nor between people of various religions. Morality really seems to be innate.
And if atheists are just bad people because they don’t believe in God, then you’d think that the prisons might be enriched in atheists. They are not.
Finally, I think you have a flawed view of the “survival” thing. It seems like you’re implying that evolution would tend to favor individual self-preservation actions over any other motivating factor. This just isn’t so, and evolutionary biology has recognized this for decades. Even simple bacteria perform altruistic acts to protect their cohorts from danger, and this ultimately serves to protect their close relatives and thus maximally extend the reach of progeny and their genes. I hesitate to bring up the Selfish Gene because the mention of Richard Dawkins often causes people to roll their eyes and dismiss the rest of the conversation… but, his Selfish Gene book from long ago describes good reasons why these observations make sense. All sorts of plants and animals carry out these kinds of altruistic behaviors. When humans do that, you might call it “moral.” Nothing wrong with calling it moral, but I think it’s a bit disingenuous to assert that the motivation to be moral comes strictly from God when real evidence to the contrary is available.
And this is unrelated to morality, but is related to your “absolute” morality that comes from God. Even assuming for the moment that the Christian God exists and the Bible version of your choice is 100% literally true, I think this foundation is not really absolute at all. The Bible cannot possibly contain every imaginable moral conundrum. Dewde couldn’t look for Paul’s letter to the Social Workers to find the absolute best way to handle his sidewalk interaction he posted about. If not every answer is scripturally available, then there’s some gray area. In this gray area, individuals are on their own to try to do the right thing. You might think this means an appeal to God is required for guidance, but I think you’ll see that I’m going to go back to my reasoning from the previous paragraphs.
So, I’d be interested to hear whether you refute these claims, or whether you assert that morality is demonstrated by something that’s outside of the realm of these facts. What is it about a religious sense of morality that you think goes beyond a natural explanation, and what evidence exists for it?
P.S. That was a funny P.S.
dewde
Oct 23rd, 2008
Whatever you do, please do not take this conversation elsewhere. It’s relevant and interesting.
And bloggers (that’s me) love comments (that’s you). We’re fairly indiscriminate about them.
http://www.dividingbyzero.us/
Oct 23rd, 2008
Chris,
So when you say “Sam Harris argues persuasively that (in a nutshell) issues of right and wrong can be thought of as an attempt to minimize suffering” what you’re really saying is that Sam made up the idea that minimizing suffering is good and moral. So I say, prove it. Where in some absolute sense is minimizing suffering demonstrably good, or is minimizing suffering simply what you and Sam Harris prefer?
The bacteria argument is intriguing. I like it. Note this: “simple bacteria perform altruistic acts to protect their cohorts from danger, and this ultimately serves to protect their close relatives and thus maximally extend the reach of progeny and their genes.” You’re adding morality to something that may have no moral component at all since I sincerely doubt that bacteria have either awareness or meaningful free will. You have to prove a few things in order to get to the “altruistic acts” part:
1) that the bacteria is aware of the threat;
2) that the bacteria realizes that sacrificing itself would help protect its bacterial buddies;
3) that the bacteria weighs its options of survival vs. sacrificing itself for the good of bacteriahood;
4) and that the bacteria then intentionally chooses to act in a manner that put its own survival at risk for the purpose of protecting bacteriahood.
Until you prove those points, I’m going to say that it was an entirely instinctive response programmed my millions of years of evolution. Higher life forms probably do the same. The thinking life forms take this behavior and call it “moral” but I say it’s about survival, not morality. Parents protect their genetic seed for survival, not because of some greater good. Societies protect their “way of life” for survival. It all boils down to survival.
Funny thing about the Bible – and I’m talking New Testament here – Jesus didn’t teach in absolutes very much, he taught by example. Even if he was not divine he expected people to think and figure things out on their own. He set enough examples and told enough stories that while reasonable people might disagree on some particulars there is quite a foundation on which to build. Jesus never said “hey, I’ve answered every single question of humanity here.”
Ultimately, if you don’t have an absolute foundation any morality is ad hoc.
Zero
Lefty
Oct 23rd, 2008
Dewde -
This is a fascinating exercise. Thank you for sharing it.
I do wonder how much weight you intend to give the document itself. Is it purely a thought exercise, and the resulting document has no meaning? Is it a list of notes to yourself to help keep you headed in the direction you’ve chosen? Is it meant to be a real document, shared and studied among your family, to give guidance on how to live? Or is it truly meant to be a contract, by which the choices of your family members are judged?
I ask because there are a few observations that I might make, that are ridiculously pedantic if the constitution is meant as a collection of guidelines, but potentially important if it’s meant as the law.
For example: Children under the constitution are, “To be forgiven of all trespasses.” I have no doubt that you know, to great depths, exactly what this rule means. But if your teen-aged daughter were to invoke it avoid being grounded, would you feel it’s specific enough?
Chris F.
Oct 23rd, 2008
Then you declare martial law and enact the punishment anyway, for the good of the people. Her trying to subvert the intent of the law is merely incitement and rebellion, and the public safety requires swift action.
http://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_A1Sec9.html
dewde
Oct 25th, 2008
@Lefty:
“I do wonder how much weight you intend to give the document itself. Is it purely a thought exercise, and the resulting document has no meaning”
I intend it to be more or less a vision statement. I do not intend to be dogmatic. As if I can keep half those ideals myself!
“For example: Children under the constitution are, ‘To be forgiven of all trespasses.’ I have no doubt that you know, to great depths, exactly what this rule means. But if your teen-aged daughter were to invoke it avoid being grounded, would you feel it’s specific enough?’
Hrm. Looks like I need a Judicial branch to interpret these laws.
I think you’re right. On its face it is not specific enough. I have this opinion that two types of social/relational debt can be incurred between two parties. The first is the kind that can be paid back. The second, and most common, is the kind that cannot.
If a drunk driver plows into a family and kills a child, the drunk driver has 2 debts to pay. First he has his debt to society. If justice is served, he will pay it. This is the type that can be paid. Second, he has incurred a debt to the child, and to the child’s family. This is the debt that he couldn’t pay back even if he wanted to. The family in question will either cancel the debt (forgive) or the account will remain open. Period.
So when I say that all trespasses will be forgiven, I don’t mean that no consequences will ever be delivered. What I mean is that in those cases where an un-repayable debt exists between us and them, we will choose to forgive.
I think I may need to work on the wording for this one. Thank you.
John
Oct 27th, 2008
there’s a lot to say. where’s seesmic when i need it..
dewde
Nov 11th, 2008
It's right there dude. Duh.
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