Family
Rotten Core, Baltimore, Who’s Your Friend?
This past week saw the ISIS Islamo-Nazis take major cities in Syria (Palmyra) and Iraq (Ramadi).
In Texas, record rains have broken a ten-year drought, but now flooding rivers have left parts of Austin and Houston underwater with at least eight people dead and sixteen missing.
On the Memorial Day weekend, following a month of turmoil, a record number of people were shot and killed in Baltimore, America’s 26th largest city.
Let’s pray for the situations in the Middle East and Texas. But today, let’s focus on what is absolutely destroying Maryland’s biggest city (along with Detroit, Chicago, and many others).
Rotten core, Baltimore, who’s your friend?
As you know, Baltimore has been in the news for six weeks after African American Freddie Gray was arrested on April 12, 2015 and died six days later–apparently of injuries suffered either during or after his arrest.
Gray’s death led to rioting in the streets of Baltimore, a stand down order of the police force for a period of time, and millions of dollars in property damage as angry mobs looted and destroyed local businesses.
On May 1, six Baltimore police officers, (three black and three white) were charged in Freddie Gray’s death.
The Baltimore riots were the latest in a string of police-citizen confrontations that some have used to stoke racial fires all across America. There are many more than these, but three brought national attention:
In August, 2014, Michael Brown robbed a convenience store in Furgason, Missouri, resisted arrest and charged Policeman Darren Wilson who was trying to apprehend him. In this initial race-war escalation incident, people shouted false slogans about Brown’s innocence (“Hand Up, Don’t Shoot!) which were later de-bunked. Wilson was cleared of all charges.
The Furgason furor was bogus from the beginning–an excuse for anarchy and race-hustling.
Then, in December 2014 a New York Grand Jury failed indict officers in the chokehold death of Eric Garner who resisted arrest for illegally selling cigarettes. This incident was tragic yet accidental. Riots ensued.
Finally, Freddie Gray died on April 18 after being arrested by police for illegal possession of a knife (he had a long rap sheet). The verdict is still out of this one, but many believe that District Attorney Marilyn Mosby over-charged six officers in Gray’s death and fanned the fires of hatred via her words (“This is our moment!”).
Baltimore’s mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, also failed to protect the citizens of the “Star Spangled Banner” city by holding back police during early encounters with protesters. Her now infamous line: “We also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that.”
Baltimore was looted and burned–and it has only gotten worse.
This past month was the deadliest that Baltimore has seen in more than 15 years. More than two dozen shootings over the Memorial Day holiday weekend alone had city police working around the clock. From West Baltimore to the East Side, a spike in weekend violence took place all over the city. Over the Memorial Day Weekend, city police report 28 shootings and 9 homicides.
Baltimore Police say they responded to six shootings on Friday night, seven on Saturday, five on Sunday and eleven by night fall on Monday. One of those included a double shooting in which a 9-year-old boy was found shot in the leg and a man who suffered a grazed wound to his head.
I like Baltimore. I’ve been there a number of times. It has many great attractions as a city and a lot of good people. But two social elements have been extremely hurtful to the lives and future of Baltimore. There is also one friend who needs to help heal the carnage and point the way to hope.
What are the negative factors that have created a rottenness in Baltimore’s urban core?
Negative Factor One – Bad Leadership
Former Speaker of the House and presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich, penned an astute assessment of what is rotten in Baltimore from a leadership standpoint. Entitled “The Collapse of Baltimore City,” he points out that Baltimore’s problem has been one-party dominance by Democrats for decades. The Democratic Party and its ideology have destroyed the once great city of Baltimore.
I don’t particularly like party labels because I know good people in both political parties. But it’s also true the today’s Democratic Party is not the party of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, or even Franklin Roosevelt. It is generally far-left liberal, secular-based, socialism leaning, and produces many victims and government dependents.
Let’s use the modern term “progressive.” Progressive politics are regressive to people, cities and nations.
Here is Newt Gingrich’s fact-based proof that progressive leaders and policies play a major role in Baltimore’s rotten environment:
- Fact: the last Republican city council member in Baltimore City left office in 1942. That is 73 years of solid Democrat city councils.
- Fact: the last Republican mayor of Baltimore City left office in 1967. That is 48 years of unbroken control of the mayor’s office.
- Fact: the Maryland Senate is currently 33 Democrats to 14 Republicans.
- Fact: the Maryland House is currently 90 Democrats to 50 Republicans.
- Fact: the last time Republicans held both the Maryland Senate and the Maryland House of Delegates was 1897.
- Fact: the last time Republicans held even one chamber of the Maryland General Assembly–the House–was 1917. That is unbroken Democrat control of the Maryland legislature since 1918–or nearly a century of Democrat control.
- Fact: 7 out of 8 members of the Maryland delegation in the U.S. House are Democrats.
- Fact: Last Republican U.S. Senator from Maryland was elected in 1980.
I think you get the point. Progressive “leadership” (Democrats) has made Baltimore what it is today.
Gingrich points out:
“The collapse of order has a continuing effect. There has been a drastic increase in shootings and homicides in Baltimore since April 27. More than 50 people have been shot. At least 10 have been shot and four killed since Saturday May 9. Nonfatal shootings are up nearly 50 percent. All of this happened under the leadership of a Democrat mayor who was worried more about the rioters’ free speech than about the safety, protection, and livelihoods of innocent Baltimoreans.”
He concludes his argument by reminding us that the first duty of government is to protect the innocent and the weak from predators and violence. But progressives “favored the violent over the victims.”
Newt also destroys the false charge that the police are racist. Here is his second “fact check” list:
- Fact: More than half of the Baltimore City police force is minority.
- Fact: Four of the six top commanders are African American or Hispanic.
- Fact: Half of the police officers being prosecuted are African American.
- Fact: The problem is not lack of money. Baltimore spends $17,329 per student, and its unionized, bureaucratic schools fail. (Amazingly, as Archbishop of Baltimore William Lori points out, the Catholic schools cost $6,000 a year and have a 99 percent graduation rate. Yet the Democrats are committed to locking poor children out of those schools if it takes a dime away from funds for failing, unionized public schools.)
Gingrich summarizes that in Baltimore, and many other progressive-led cities such as Detroit, Chicago, and New York, bad leadership policies have “trapped people in dependency, killed small businesses in favor of bureaucracy, and favored unionized workers over children. The result has been a 50-year disaster which no liberal Democrat is prepared to analyze honestly.”
Problem one in Baltimore is the rotten core of progressive leadership (or lack of it).
Negative Factor Two – Family Breakdown
The other major factor in the chaos, crime, and rottenness of progressively-led cities in America is the tragic breakdown of the African-American family. Whereas relatively intact black families were the norm in this nation all the way up to the 1960s, that is no longer the case.
Seventy percent of black children are born out of wedlock. Seven out of ten black teenage girls get pregnant and don’t graduate from high school. The “fathers” don’t take responsibility and split the scene. The single parent homes go on welfare. Crime increases in the neighborhood as fatherless children join the gangs to find “family” and peddle drugs to survive.
No one in America has been a clearer voice on the tragic breakdown of the black family that Fox’s Bill O’Reilly, anchor of the number one cable news show in America, “The O’Reilly Factor.”
Please take time to watch this short video. No one says it plainer than Bill.
The stunning collapse of the African-American family has produced poverty, bad neighborhoods, and rotten cities where it’s easy to light a match of racism or any other grievance and watch the culture go up in smoke.
Two human resources are rotting Baltimore’s core: Broken families and bad leadership.
So who is your friend?
The person who is the answer to all human needs is Jesus Christ, the God-man, who not only died for our sins but sends his Holy Spirit to live inside of those who turn and become reconciled to God.
God in us provides the will to reject violence and hatred; Christ in our hearts gives us the power to create strong and healthy families; God’s grace in our lives lifts us out of despair and poverty; Christ-centered leaders enact and enforce good laws that create security for people, good schools for children, jobs for the industrious and deterrents for criminals.
How does Jesus accomplish this? Through his people–the Church–who rise up like the morning sun to bless the city through their prayers, evangelism, charity, acts of service, and leadership
Followers of Jesus in Baltimore–this is your kairos moment. Flood the streets with God’s grace, justice and goodness and pray that the Lord of the harvest will make Baltimore a “city on a shining hill.”
[An encouragement from Steve Hall, Northwest Prayer Leader:
Can We Have an Intelligent Debate About Corporal Punishment?
Fox News got it wrong–and that’s not a good sign.
Last Friday night, Sean Hannity anchored a newscast of experts to debate the Adrian Peterson child abuse situation. Peterson–a star running back for the Minnesota Vikings–was indicted for beating his four year old child with a switch that left welts, cuts, and bleeding that were still visible four days after the incident.
His case is one of a string of domestic violence problems that are currently rocking the NFL.
As to Peterson’s child abuse, most of the Sean Hannity Show participants ascribed to the notion that all corporal punishment is wrong. Others, like Sean, said that because some people in the South were raised that way, do we really want to put people in jail for punishing their kids?
I was frustrated as I watched.
Can we have an intelligent national debate about corporal punishment?
We better–or we will miss the wisdom of God and hurt our children and society.
Usually Fox News is pretty good about elevating the biblical worldview when it comes to public policy. Fox is not run by evangelicals, but it has strong Catholic roots with a clear conservative bent. Conservative views, in the main, are the Bible applied to social, economic, and national security issues. On the other hand, liberal politics generally follow more humanistic or secular values and mores.
Fox News is the most watched cable news station in America because it resonates with the majority of Americans who are either traditional, conservative, Bible-believing, common-sense people–or a mixture of the above.
But Fox whiffed Friday on corporal punishment.
The gallery of experts that Sean Hannity called together to talk about this issue seemed to be clearly divided to the extremes.
The majority of them were against any form of corporal punishment. They believed in “talking” to young children, giving them “time-outs,” or as Sean said, “taking away their machines as punishment.” (Actually, only teenagers should have their own I-Pads and cell phones, so this really doesn’t apply to smaller children.)
On the other hand, the minority felt that it was okay to punish kids as some people do in the Southern states or who have been raised in a Christian environment.
But no one clearly articulated the wisdom of biblical corporal punishment and how it should be done.
Even the Fox News Poll that drove the debate asked the wrong question. Here’s the wording: Do you believe it is wrong for parents to strike their children?”
68% said yes. 28% said no.
(The undecided were high on marijuana in Colorado or Washington State–just kidding.)
Notice the word strike–which almost sounds like a right-cross to the forehead. Other panelists used the word “hit” or “punish” as in “inflict a lot of damage.”
If we’re talking about striking, hitting, or shellacking a small, defenseless kid, then put me on the side of the no corporal punishment crowd. I never did any of those things to my six children when they were little. That would have been wrong.
The Bible, which is the basis on our common laws in America, puts this activity in the category of a crime which we call domestic battery or assault. People can’t get away with striking, hitting, or beating anybody that leaves severe damage or pain.
Especially vulnerable children.
Of course, normal life has always tolerated the school ground fight, the heated argument, or even the jealous wrestling match between two adversaries.
But when mundane human depravity turns to violence–striking and hitting that causes severe physical damage and pain–then the law brings in consequences to protect the vulnerable and innocent.
If Adrian Peterson beat his four-year-old child the way the pictures portray, then he needs to go to jail.
Period.
But he said he was just punishing his son with a switch like he learned from his own father. If Adrian Peterson’s father used a piece of wood to bloody and bruise little Adrian, they he should have gone to jail.
Period.
But there is another way–a better way–that the Bible clearly teaches is the best way to raise children.
In the modern vernacular, we call it loving discipline or spanking. Spanking is not striking, hitting, beating, or mutilating to cause severe damage. It is the loving and controlled use of a neutral object to cause fear of disobedience and respect for God-given authority.
There are numerous books on this subject that are based on the biblical wisdom. My favorite title is Larry Tomzcak’s God, the Rod, and Your Child’s Bod. Like many others, it lays out the principles of how we should correct or discipline our young children for their good.
Let me share the principles, then give you an example from my own experience.
Principles of Spanking (Loving Discipline)
1. It is only to be done on younger children who think concretely and don’t have the ability to understand abstract concepts. It is never to be used on older children or teenagers because they can be reasoned with and understand the importance of consequences.
2. It is never to be done in anger. Never. If you’re angry with your child for what they’re doing, then you need to settle down first before you represent God to them by bringing loving discipline.
3. Never use one of your own body parts (a hand or foot) as the tool of punishment. Use a neutral object so that the chastened child will associate the punishment with something separate from you. The Bible calls this a “rod.”
4. Never spank or discipline in a public place. If the child is defiant or acting up, take them from the room or public area and do the correction in private. Spankings should never humiliate the child in front of others.
5. Talk to the child so that they know what they are being punished for. Do it soberly and clearly showing your grief over their continued disobedience which has led to this moment.
6. Don’t spank often–only when there is defiance or continued disobedience. I only spanked my six kids a few times in their lives. After the first couple of disciplines, they learned quickly to respect my authority and avoid punishment.
7. Spank them primarily on their “bottoms” where God has provided ample fat cells and padding. Make it sting or hurt, but never enough to break the skin, bring welts, or cause bleeding. That would be assault and battery. Two or three swats is sufficient to place the fear of God and you in them.
8. After you finish spanking them, hold them in your arms to show your love and protection over their precious lives. Talk to them about how wrong it is to disobey and how you loved them enough to do something you hate to teach them to obey God-given authority.
9. Help dry their tears and send them on their way with a great lesson learned.
That is biblical corporal punishment. It’s what the all-wise God knows that we human beings need. It will help us grow to respect authority, have a healthy fear of sinful behavior, and desire the rewards of obedience. Those lessons will help us live a wise and successful life. (Biblical Basis: Proverbs 13:24, 19:18, 22:15, 23:14, 29:15, Ephesians 6:4, and Hebrews 12:6-7.)
Now here’s my story.
Our four year-old David was refusing to share his toys with his twin sister. I asked him on a number of occasions to share and play well with her. Instead, he defied me, kept grabbing them from her, and generally was being a small bully.
I finally said, “David, stop doing that and be nice to Bethany.” He turned to me in a look of defiance and said, “No!”
In three seconds, he knew he was in trouble.
I got up out of my chair and started moving toward the kitchen. In a special drawer there was a wooden spoon with a hole in it that everyone knew was the Boehme “rod.” (In later years we duct taped it and it became a famous family heirloom and source of many “wisdom-learning” memories.)
As I approached David with the spoon in my hand, his eyes got as big as saucers and he began to try and extract himself from his doom. “I’m sorry–I’m sorry,” he yelled to all in the room that would hear.
Unmoved, I picked him up with one arm while holding the spoon in the other. We then disappeared upstairs where the lesson would occur.
Sitting him down on his bed, with the door closed, I shared with David both what I was about to do and why I was doing it. The words went something like this:
“David, I love you very much. And because of that love I am going to spank you for being mean to your sister and not obeying me. I want you to learn to treat others properly and to learn to obey your parents. What I’m about to do will hurt me more than you.”
I then pulled David’s pants down to his knees and laid him face down across my lap. Using the wooden spoon, I gave him three quick swats on his behind with enough force to make it sting. David began to cry, and the spanking was over quickly.
Pulling his pants back up, and cradling him in my arms, I held David close and told him that I loved him enough to do something I hate doing to teach him the importance of obedience. I then prayed for him as he cuddled on my shoulder. After talking some more, and drying his tears, I took him back downstairs and he returned to playing.
He rarely disobeyed me again. Neither did any of the others. I was teaching my children through the loving use of discipline to fear punishment, learn to do what’s right, and respect authority.
Those are big lessons in a fallen world, and when we don’t teach them well, our kids grow up to be careless, rebellious, unloving, disrespectful, and unwise.
Can these lessons be learned through other means?
Sometimes.
But not with every kid. Some need tough love at an early age to learn that life is not about them–it’s about obeying God and others who are important in our lives.
I wish Fox News had laid out the case for wise, biblical discipline. It isn’t no to all corporal punishment or yes to child beating.
It’s the loving use of discipline for the good of our precious children.