Robbie Rambles | August 4, 2023
Hey all, welcome to the first edition of Robbie Rambles for August 2023. Here are some things that I’ve been enjoying that maybe you will too.
For my book club, The Gap Year, we’re meeting tomorrow to discuss a couple of Michel de Montaigne’s essays, which I’ve been enjoying. Specifically, I’ve been chewing on “That men are not to judge of our happiness till after death” and “That to study philosophy is to learn to die”. Montaigne was a progenitor of the essay genre, and his reflections often read like early blogs.
Over at Mockingbird, Todd Brewer asks if aliens are saved by the blood of the Lamb too. I’ve been out of the loop with a lot of the UFO/UAP discourse going on, but this seems to be some compelling stuff. Talk of the theological “problem” of extraterrestrial life always reminds me of something C.S. Lewis wrote about it — basically, his concern is that if an alien species were to meet us, we sinful humans would either corrupt or exploit them. Human sinfulness is the true theological problem, in his estimation.
Over at Reason, Emma Camp points out that most high school boys aren’t, in fact, conservative. The reality is that most high-schoolers are neither conservative nor liberal, but either self-identify as moderate, something else, or entirely unsure. Once again, the reports of our demise by polarization have been greatly exaggerated.
I haven’t watched the Amazon documentary about the Duggar family, and don’t really have any desire to, but this piece by Sophia M. Feingold at Front Porch Republic was interesting nonetheless. I was homeschooled, an experience I’m ambivalent, but mostly positive, about. My family never internalized or practiced some of the more noxious expressions of fundamentalism that sometimes crop up in the homeschooling community, but I did know some kids whose parents could be described as overprotective. About this, Feingold had this to say:
It is possible that homeschooling has a problem with overprotection—not because homeschooling attracts overly protective parents, but because huge numbers of Americans struggle with helicopter-parenting, and some happen to homeschool.
And,
A Roman Catholic or Evangelical or mainline Protestant parent who sets out to create a positive moral environment for their homeschooled child, more than likely, will raise a child who wants to recreate that experience as an adult. A Roman Catholic or Evangelical or mainline Protestant parent who sets out to protect their children from the environment outside the family is more likely to see their children leave the homeschooling movement and, in some cases, leave Christianity altogether.
Control rarely produces the results we want.
Thanks for reading along, hope y’all have a great weekend!
Robbie