BaylyBlog: Out of our minds, too...

Christ Church Ministerial Conference: Father Hunger...

Register now for the Christ Church Ministerial Conference on Father Hunger October 16 & 17 in Houston, Texas. The conference is aimed at pastors, elders, deacons, and those aspiring to the work of these offices. David and I attended  the conference last year and greatly appreciated it. We hope we'll see you there. (From time to time, I'll put this ad back up on the top of the page, so please look below to see if there are other more recent posts. Thanks.)

In the midst of life, we live in death...

(Tim, w/thanks to Bill, Tom, and Priscilla) Last year, my dear friend, Bill Mouser, passed on this report by his friends, Tom and Priscilla, of the death of Priscilla's parents. At the time, Mary Lee and the rest of our family were coming to the end of six years sharing our home with my own Aunt Elaine Bayly, who died the end of December. I thought this meditation on life and death was helpful and asked Tom and Priscilla for permission to put it up for others to share. They kindly agreed and I thank them.

So here, first, is a letter from Bill Mouser introducing the letter; followed by Tom and Priscilla's letter, itself...

A wedding sermon...

(Tim) From the Pulpit of Church of the Good Shepherd
Wedding of Lucas Weeks and Hannah Bayly
May 17, 2008

That He Might Sanctify Her

Ephesians 5: 21-33

Lucas and Hannah, it’s a curious thing that the God Who made us, the One who is our Creator and therefore knows us best, has not left us free to develop according to our own inclinations. He does not abandon us to our own sentiments and passions...

Joy tinged with sadness on a wedding day...

As I was in the prime of my days, When the friendship of God was over my tent; When the Almighty was yet with me, And my children were around me; When my steps were bathed in butter, And the rock poured out for me streams of oil! (Job 29:4-6)

(Tim) Lord willing, in a few hours our third daughter, Hannah Marie, will be married to Lucas Dee Weeks, son of Ron and Doris Weeks. This will leave Mary Lee and me with one child still living at home--Taylor, our fifteen year old son.

As I sit here writing the wedding sermon, it occurs to me that the joyful sadness Mary Lee and I feel as our Hannah departs is a graceful sadness...

Happy Mother's Day!

(Tim) Tomorrow is Mother's Day, so here are pictures of David's and my mother, Mary Louise Bayly, and my father and mother-in-law, Ken and Margaret Taylor (Dad Taylor is deceased).

And honoring God Who gave us motherhood, here's a sermon on a wonderful Mother's Day text--Isaiah 60:10-14. This was the funeral sermon given several years ago on the occasion of the death of Bloomington's mother-in-Israel, Rita Cuffey...

Encroachments on liberty: It won't stop with the Mormons...

(Tim w/thanks to Dan) Speaking of the loss of liberty, here's one of an almost-limitless number of articles that demonstrate where we're headed in these United States. Western European nations, Australia, and Canada are already far down the trail, but it's still a bit of a shocker here at home. "As to be hated needs but to be seen." In time, though, I'm afraid we'll all settle in and decide no Christian witness is at stake here, there, or anywhere.

I wonder whether Christians right now believe spanking their children is a basic act of biblical obedience? How many evangelicals would, as an act of conscience, oppose national or state laws banning it?

You think you know something about the churches David and I serve, right? Well, we just lost a woman who'd been at Church of the Good Shepherd for twelve years because...

Counting our blessings...

Thus says the LORD, ‘I will return to Zion and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem. Then Jerusalem will be called the City of Truth, and the mountain of the LORD of hosts will be called the Holy Mountain.’ Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘Old men and old women will again sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each man with his staff in his hand because of age.

And the streets of the city will be filled with boys and girls playing in its streets.’ (Zechariah 8:3-5)

(Tim) When David and I speak privately, it's a rare conversation we don't speak of our gratitude to the Lord for the wonderful churches He has blessed us with. And this isn't the one-upmanship of two brothers who are both pastors. Trust us, we know about that. Rather, it's the true joy of men for whom the lines have fallen in pleasant places recognizing it's all of God.

My Scripture reading today reminds me of one of our principal joys--our congregations' great fruitfulness physically and spiritually. Physically?

Well, between Christ the Word in Toledo and Church of the Good Shephed here in Bloomington, Indiana, I'd estimate between thirty and forty children will be born or adopted by a Covenant family this year. And this happens year after year--fruit, fruit, and more fruit! Our aisles and nurseries and gym and hallways and cars and homes and fellowship halls are filled with boys and girls playing together...

Covenant children and the emasculation of the church, with a tribute to my father...

…Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation, and in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed… For I have chosen him, so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken about him. (Genesis 18:18,19)

(Tim) When the Lord entered into a covenant with Abraham, He was pleased for that covenant’s fulfillment to be dependent upon Abraham “command(ing) his children and his household… to keep the way of the Lord….” Still today, it pleases God to use means to accomplish his will, and he has declared the Church should be built up, instructed, and guarded by men—not angels. Where those men are missing or their work is soft and effeminate, the Church has suffered the removal of her vital manhood; she has been emasculated. (n. 1)

When we speak of the emasculation of the church, though, we are not saying she has been robbed of her Bridegroom nor that her adoptive Father has cast her out of his household. Christ is “faithful over God’s house as a son” (Hebrews 3:6 RSV), (n. 2)  and we have his promise that the gates of hell shall not prevail against her. So then, the Church can never be emasculated in any definitive sense, even though her officers may be characterized by a womanly softness and sentimentality.

Such, though, is the church of our time. About twenty years ago I heard Elisabeth Elliot Gren say, “The problem with the church today is that it’s filled with emasculated men who don’t know how to say ‘no’ to a woman.” At the time, I was floored by Elliot’s audacity, but now I realize she was guilty of understatement. Christian men today have a problem saying “no” to almost anyone—not just women. Preachers, elders, and Sunday school teachers place an overwhelming emphasis on the positive and have an almost insurmountable aversion to the negative.

In the mid-eighties, my father was asked to represent the pro-life side at a campus-wide dialogue on abortion held at the Stupe, Wheaton College’s student union. He began his presentation with the statement, “I am not here to represent the pro-life, but the anti-abortion side of this issue..."

A Maundy Thursday tribute to Rita Cuffey, mother in Israel...

There's much talk today about women needing recognition and, wanting to do something about it, it seemed a good day of the year--Maundy Thursday, when we celebrate our Lord's command that we follow his pattern in serving one another--to honor the woman who, more than anyone other than my own family members, revealed to me the glory of womanhood, femininity, and the humble service of motherhood. Would you please take the time to listen to this sermon preached at Mrs. James (Rita) Cuffey's funeral?

For eleven years Rita Cuffey was, other than my wife, my closest friend and wisest counselor. We met weekly and what a help those meetings were. Each time as she left, Rita would ask me what she could pray for me for? And since one of my most frequent prayer requests was that I would be faithful in my private devotional life, when she arrived one week, right out of the gate she asked if I'd had devotions, yet? One weeks the answer was "no," she'd cheerfully announce, "Well, I'll wait. You go ahead and have devotions and then we'll talk." I did while she patiently waited...

Now, I wouldn't want that for my own daughters...

(Tim) Robert Egan, owner of Hackensack, New Jersey's, barbecue restaurant, Chubby's, has appointed himself peacemaker-in-chief between North Korea and these United States. The latest (10/8/07) New Yorker has a profile of Egan and his particular brand of chef-and-shuttle diplomacy. The piece ends with Egan comparing North Korea and these United States:

This is what I like--the North Koreans ...are very family-oriented. And they have a better take on a man's role and a woman's role than we do. I think a lot of women in this country are trying to be men, and I think that could be the downfall of the family structure of this society. But, in North Korea, the man goes to work and the woman raises the family. Now, I wouldn't want that for my own daughters--I want them to be career girls, not dependent on any man but me--but in my own life I like the fact that a guy's a guy and a girl's a girl. You feel like a man when you are in North Korea. (p. 69)

Egan sounds pretty much like today's run-of-the-mill conservative Christian father who likes his own male perquisites alright, but at the same time wants his daughter to be impervious to the failures of any husband she may marry. So off she goes to college, graduate school, and her career. For himself, he wants a real wife and a real mother for his children. But for his daughters, he wants success, security, and independence.

Is this the life of faith?

Look at whatever alumni magazines you get--we're on the lists of Covenant College, Taylor University, Westmont College, and Wheaton College--and note...

A recommendation...

My friend, Bob Patterson, is a Contributing Editor to a monthly series of monographs published by Allan Carlson's The Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society titled The Family in America. Currently at Volume 21, Number 3 (they're a little bit behind), I've read this publication for many years after having it recommended by Herb and Terry Schlossberg.

In its pages, I've learned much about the interface of the Academy, the civil authority, historians, the law, demographers, sociologists, etc. and the family order God ordained in the Garden of Eden as recorded by the Word of God. But don't misunderstand me: Scripture is very rarely mentioned in TFIA. The monographs are not biblical scholarship...

The gift of an older friend...

You shall rise up before the grayheaded and honor the aged, and you shall revere your God; I am the LORD. (Leviticus 19:32)

He was an eighty-year-old Spanish American War veteran and I was a seven-year-old boy who loved the circus. He had a television set in his house and the Baylys didn't, so after dinner every Thursday evening I'd walk down the block to his home and knock on the back door. After a long wait, Mr. Fedders would come and let me in. Then we'd walk to his front room where, together, we would watch the circus and the first half of Sing Along With Mitch. It was the only television and the only pipe smoke of my entire childhood, there at Mr. Fedders' Thursday evenings. It didn't matter how much Mr. Fedders liked the circus nor how much I liked Mitch. The two of us--one seven and the other quite ancient--were friends.

Older adults were always a part of the Bayly family. Whether it was my older brother and sister, Joseph and Deborah, cutting grass and shoveling snow for elderly people in our neighborhood, my two younger brothers, David and Nathan, hitting up the elderly lady across the street for candy, or Dad and Mud caring for a woman in her eighties in our home until she died, old age pensioners (as the Brits call them) were our friends. If we all had to choose a favorite, I'm sure it would be Aunt Gail. She wasn't a blood relation but she was a part of our family. We all have warm (and a few not so warm) memories of Aunt Gail. Here are a couple of my own.

When I was in junior high school I would walk over to Aunt Gail's house after school one day a week and spend the late afternoon and evening with her, until it was time for me to go to church for our weekly Boys Brigade meeting. (Our home was eleven miles out of town, so this saved my parents some driving.) Often there were little odd jobs Aunt Gail would wonder aloud whether I'd mind doing for her. The one I detested was washing windows...

Domestic help and wet nursing: a clarification...

( Note: Responding to the post, Carolyn Custis James versus Jeremy Taylor and Brother Lawrence..., our eldest daughter, Heather, sent an E-mail detailing some concerns she had with the post. Here are those concerns, followed by my response.)

Dad,

I like the first half of your latest post, but the second half will come across as harsh to many women. I think the quote from Jeremy Taylor will be seen less as an indictment of daycare and more as a requirement that all women nurse as opposed to bottle-feed.

And the sentence, "Certainly the temptation has always been there for wives and mothers of means to hire out their domestic and maternal responsibilities" makes it sound as though a woman can never hire anyone to help with duties around the house without feeling as though she has sacrificed her biblical duty. I think Mrs. Keebler was referring less to women hiring others to take over their child-rearing duties, and more to the times in history when all women with any money at all had, at the very least, one household help, because it wasn't possible to do it all oneself.

Many women today who have large families, homeschool, and also try to keep up with normal household duties would give their right arm to be able to afford someone just to come help clean, sometimes. I clearly remember (Jane Doe) talking about the unbelievable expectations being put on homeschooling moms that they be able to do it all.

Love, Heather

Dear Heather,

Thanks for the help. Please forgive me for not being sensitive to how my post would come across to wives and mothers. A little explanation is in order.

In my experience, there are two kinds of women who employ domestic help. There are women who consider domestic work to be beneath them and have the money to hire others to do all of it (or almost all of it) for them...

Do your children help or hinder your ministry of hospitality...

Last week I wrote of our small groups' Christmas parties, saying that we had a ton of children in our house and that it was an absolute joy. Later my daughter, Hannah, commented that she and my wife, Mary Lee, had counted sixty-one in our home that night, thirty of whom were children. Other small group leaders wrote in to give a count of adults and children at their parties, also.

"How could you hear yourselves think" you may be asking? "Didn't the children make it impossible for the adults to talk? Weren't they interrupting all the time, crying or running through the room screaming like banshees?"

No, they weren't. Sure, one of the babies cried occasionally, but his parents were relieved by others so they didn't bear the full weight of his care throughout the three or so hours we had fellowship together.

"But what about the toddlers; weren't they disruptive?"

Not really. They were able to go to different rooms in the house. Others played outside for a while. Generally, we were able to have an ordered evening with eight to ten little groups throughout the house sitting (or standing) and talking together.

Which brings me to some observations about the potential children have for disrupting Christian hospitality, whether that hospitality is having others over for a meal or hosting a small group in our home.

Americans tend to see children in one of two ways, both of which are mistaken: either we view them as a liability, a drain on us, and we try to limit how many we have and how much they are allowed to change our lives; or we view them romantically as the One Good Thing in Life, and therefore the ordering principle of our lives. As I said, neither of these views is wise, good, or biblical.

Against the first view, children are a blessing from the Lord (Psalm 127) and much of what we experience in true happiness and contentment in our lives is likely to be connected to the children God gives us. Late in life my Dad said repeatedly how the thing that really gave him pleasure as he aged was his children. As I age I hear his words all the time and only grow in my appreciation of my own children, and now their children, too.

Children are a blessing from the Lord and the man whose quiver is full of them is truly happy. Any father or mother who works to escape their child or keep him at a distance is sick, lacking the most basic indicators of emotional and spiritual health. Likely there are extenuating circumstances causing his sickness, but it is a sickness nevertheless, and others must not view his disease as simply another perspective on fatherhood. It's the very opposite of fatherhood (or motherhood). He is to be pitied.

But in the context of biblical Protestant church life, I'm more concerned about the other view of children, that they are the center of the universe. How is this an error?

Those who view children as the center of the universe have bought into the youth-worshipping culture surrounding us and inevitably allow their children to derail biblical priorities in their home and life. Nowhere is this as evident as the Christian gift and calling of hospitality. Homes ordered around children have turned God's gift into an idol. They must not be allowed to protest that God desires a godly seed and they're only fulfilling His demands.

When it's impossible to have a conversation around a dinner table because of constant interruptions by children, those children have become an obstacle to biblical obedience and must be taken in hand so this state of affairs may be corrected. This is not to say properly reared children will never spill milk, cry, refuse to eat, interrupt adult conversations, or throw up. But such interruptions should be the exception to the rule and should find the parents ready to take matters in hand in such a way that their guests don't come to feel they're only a distraction to the real business of the home--namely, children--and that the sooner they leave, the sooner the mother and father will be able to return to giving their little prince and princess the undivided attention they normally command.

When children are allowed to control the home and dinner table...

Ninth Circuit of US Court of Appeals subverts parental authority...

Parents in Palmdale, California filed suit against the Palmdale School District following their elementary school children being questioned concerning their sexual habits and thoughts. The children were asked questions such as how often they thought about sex and were they "thinking about touching other peoples' private parts?" The children's parents were not informed beforehand of the elementary school's plans, nor were they given an opportunity to withdraw their children from this questioning.

Losing the case in the lower courts, the parents appealed to the Ninth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals from which a ruling was issued yesterday, November 2, 2005. Here's the court's summary of its decision:

We ...hold that there is no fundamental right of parents to be the exclusive provider of information regarding sexual matters to their children, either independent of their right to direct the upbringing and education of their children or encompassed by it. We also hold that parents have no due process or privacy right to override the determinations of public schools as to the information to which their children will be exposed while enrolled as stu- dents. Finally, we hold that the defendants' actions were rationally related to a legitimate state purpose. (15064 FIELDS v. PALMDALE SCHOOL DIST.)

As I've often said before concerning the courts' rulings defending minor children making the decision to kill their unborn children without parental permission, nothing strikes more at the heart of the Christian home than this increasing tendency of the state to violate the borders of the Covenant home and the parent/child relationship.

God has given children natural sovereigns and those sovereigns must not allow the state to displace or replace them. The state may claim that it has the best of motives for inserting itself between parent and child but the damage of such usurpation is horrendous, and not only to Covenant families.

The subversion of the home must, then, receive the most careful and sacrificial attention of the People of God. We must lock arms in adamantly resisting the continued growth of such tyranny by the state.

The estimable Barbara Lehr on feminism...

Note from Tim Bayly: Dr. Barbara Lehr (who teaches English literature here at Indiana University) has a great deal of wisdom, particularly concerning the meaning and purpose of sexuality. So it seemed a shame for those not following the long debate in the comments section of the post, "But my daughters don't like Scripture's male markings...," to miss this, so I've placed it "up front" for all to read.

Someone, I think it was Tim, said on this string that women who wanted to "get it" would, and those who didn't wouldn't. As a girl who "gets it," and loves it, and adores our Father for His perfect wisdom in creating patriarchy as the social system under which both men and women flourish and thrive, I find women who don't want to "get it" to be worthy of much pity for how they are victims of a quirky and debased time in history, one that cares so little for them as females.

At no other time in western civilization has there been such disdain for the very essence and nature of woman: femininity. Tim often makes the point that we live in an emasculated culture, one that has femininized every aspect of life from warfare to public speaking. On this point... I partially take exception with this man of God.

I believe our culture hates and despises everything that is genuinely feminine, some attributes of which are: weakness, vulnerability, quietness, meekness, a love of beauty, a tender sensibility, a focus on less physical and measurable aspects of life, and, above all, a tenderness that needs much protection to survive. [correction, our culture hates these things in women, but defends them vociferously when they are acted out by the gay man down the street, since he is simply "being himself."]

Historically, these attributes that women are given by God have been esteemed and seen as worthy of the service of strong and capable men; indeed, God has often used a man's desire to protect the natural vulnerability of a woman as a way to aid him in acquiring courage when he faced fear. Why should George even try to defeat the dragon if Lady Una, helpless and lovely, isn't needing her people to be saved from its terrible clutches?

The fundamental problem with feminism isn't that it emasculates men...

On Christmas...

A Psalm of Christmas

Lord we blame
the innkeeper
for only giving you
the stable
when his inn was full
but what about
all the others
who lived in Bethlehem
that night
when you were born.
Why were
all their houses
that weren't full
of guests
fast closed
against the one
who contained you?
God bless
our little homes
this Christmastime
make them
big enough
to welcome you
contained in those
for whom the world
has no room
except
a cold and lonely
Christmas day.

-Joe Bayly

Happy the Man...

This poem came from a little, battered volume owned by a friend. Edgar Guest was known as the "People's Poet." His poems were sentimental, but this one rings forever true...

Rich

Who has a troop of romping youth
About his parlor floor,
Who nightly hears a round of cheers,
When he is at the door,
Who is attacked on every side
By eager little hands
That reach to tug his grizzled mug,
The wealth of earth commands.

Who knows the joys of girls and boys,
His lads and lassies, too,
Who's pounced upon and bounced upon
When his day's work is through,
Whose trousers know the gentle tug
Of some glad little tot,
The baby of his crew of love,
Is wealthier than a lot.

Oh, be he poor and sore distressed
And weary with the fight,
If with a whoop his healthy troop
Run, welcoming at night,
And kisses greet him at the end
Of all his toiling grim,
With what is best in life he's blest
And rich men envy him.

...Edgar Guest

Not to alarm you, but...

One of the more critical questions facing Christian parents today is how to go about raising our children so they will be inoculated against the quite-sophisticated wickedness in which they will be immersed for the rest of their lives, instead choosing to live for and please our Lord Jesus Christ. And if sex is one of the areas of our culture most toxic to Christian truth, sodomy (homo-sex) is arguably the most toxic part of this toxic area. It's the PCBs of the super-fund site.

For myself, I'm not in agreement with the Christian-home-as-fortress strategy employed by so many Christians today. The Christian home is to be a center of ministry--not a fortress into which our nuclear families retreat (except for trips to Sam's Club and the BP gas station). If Jesus gave the Apostles the command to "go into all the world" preaching the Gospel and making disciples of all men; and if Scripture promises the gates of hell will not prevail against the Bride of Christ; it's a sad commentary on our faith for us to retreat from the world hiding our children behind our aprons.

The Church is to be militant--not defensive. And I'm convinced that militancy is the fortress God intends to surround and protect our children from rebellion and apostasy. Instead of hiding them from evil, why not teach them to oppose it through a sound mind, the Word of God, and love?

And speaking of a sound mind, as you train and teach your children watch carefully the messages they're getting from the media. The hucksters of Madison Avenue are no fools.

In that connection, read this article about sodomy selling chocolate and chocolate selling sodomy. It could be an excellent talking point for the dinner table tonight.

Preparing for motherhood...

My mother-in-law studied for her degree in Home Economics during the late '30s and early '40s, graduating summa cum laude from Oregon State University. After marrying her childhood sweetheart, she gave birth to 10 children in 14 years. Her husband, engaged for most of the years when the family was young as editorial director of a religious publishing house, brought home low wages, so frugality was a necessity and the degree served this young mother and her family well.

Food preservation, hygiene, cooking, sewing, and home budgeting were part of the home ec curriculum and, along with the liberal arts training which came with every bachelor's degree at the time, these young women graduated with specialized training for their profession of choice--motherhood. Other women took similarly helpful majors in Elementary Education, Bible, Christian Education (my own mother's major), and Nursing.

Then came the frontal assault on housewifery and motherhood carried out largely by a new and powerful aristocracy, the "Information Class." (Footnote 1) During the late '60s and early '70s this assault reached fever pitch and the academy was ground zero. College and university students were assigned propagandistic tracts such as Ibsen's, A Doll's House, and joined the ranks of those determined to liberate the "Noras" of the world. (Footnote 2) Oxford historian Paul Johnson provides interesting historical details on A Doll's House, noting that both Karl Marx's youngest daughter, Eleanor, and George Bernard Shaw took part in its first private reading in London, Eleanor playing the title role of Nora. Johnson writes, the "clear message" of A Doll's House was that "marriage is not sacrosanct, the husband's authority is open to challenge, [and] self-discovery matters more than anything else." Johnson concludes, "[Ibsen] really started the women's movement." (Footnote 3)

The discipline of home economics (also known as "household arts") was an early casualty. Traditionally, home ec had enjoyed a comfortably apolitical niche in the world of higher education, and the guardians of this discipline had every reason to trust their academic peers would continue to be favorably disposed toward a curriculum so integrally tied to domestic tranquility. It was taken for granted that a dignified and competent wife and mother, devoted to her home and family, was a highly desirable constant in American culture.

To the feminists, home ec was anything but apolitical, so they attacked...

Practice hospitality without complaining...

Christian homes aren't for show, but for ministry and love. If we obey God's Word and "practice hospitality," it would be perverse for us to use that hospitality as an occasion to preen. Such behavior is the opposite of what Scripture commands:

Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor; not lagging behind in diligence ...contributing to the needs of the saints, practicing hospitality. (Romans 12:10-13)

We are to welcome those who cannot repay us (Luke 14:13,14), seating them around our tables and sharing with them the love and joy God has brought into our families. If our glasses get broken and our carpets stained, it should increase our resolve to be faithful to the biblical command to practice hospitality "without complaining" (1Peter 4:9).

Never in history have Christians had the kitchens, dining room tables, chairs, food, or leisure we have today, but as our wealth increases our hospitality seems to decrease. This ought not to be: "To whom much is given, much shall be required."

Brothers and sisters, when did you last have the poor, crippled, lame or blind over for dinner--anyone other than relatives? Husbands, do you have a godly wife who wants to wash the feet of the saints but she's married to a boor who is unwilling to share his table?

In her excellent book, "Open Heart, Open Home," Karen Mains points out that true hospitality doesn't vaunt itself. Rather, without pretension it aims at making others feel "at home." Look at your home and ask yourself why God has given you such riches? Is it only to satisfy a romantic daydream of life as it used to be?

When reporting a story for The New Yorker several years ago, I found that the less people cook, the more money they spend on cooking appliances. Like the people who stood in line to buy my cookbook, people bought professional-grade ranges in the hope that they would one day use them.

It should not have been surprising when, in the final decade of the twentieth century, food writers became the voice of an idealized past, issuing bulletins from a land where pies cooled perpetually on windowsills.

-Molly O'Neill, "Food Porn," Columbia Journalism Review 42, no. 3 (September/October 2003): 45.

For every Baby Doe, 10,000 Grandma Does...

With seventy-seven million baby boomers approaching second childhood (assuming most of us finally dispensed with our first), the projected cost of providing health care and other forms of assistance is staggering. Responding to a recent piece titled "Japan Seeks Robotic Help in Caring for the Aged" that ran in the The New York Times, Dennis L. Kodner wrote the editor:

Assistive devices... can be helpful tools, but will ultimately prove unable to close the huge gap between the disabled elderly's growing need for long-term care and the diminishing supply of paraprofessionals who provide hands-on assistance.

In our country, experts project the need for an additional 750,000 long-term care workers by 2008. Yet existing evidence suggests that many of these jobs will go unfulfilled. (NYT, March 9)

No wonder the growth industry in medical ethics is no longer abortion, infanticide, or even eugenics, but euthanasia. Chick Koop, father of pediatric surgery and long-time member of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, while serving as Surgeon General under President Reagan almost twenty years ago, warned of this coming danger:

My great concern is that there will be 10,000 Grandma Does for every Baby Doe.

-C. Everett Koop, Action Line: Christian Action Council Newsletter, Volume IX, No. 5, July 12, 1985, p. 3. (Christian Action Council is now Care Net.)

Poetic (or Divine) justice may demand that these parents themselves suffer euthanasia at the hands of their children. We're dealing with cosmic levels of blood guilt here, and God only knows how it will be connected in His divine economy. Suzanne Rini may well have it right: