Question Authority

"Question authority."

That was the slogan of a generation disillusioned
by what they saw as the abuses of those in power.
A steady stream of foreign policy failures, presidential
scandals, and corporate abuses left an entire generation
skeptical of authority.

According to some educators, for example, the only way
to teach children to have a balanced view of the world is
to teach them to skeptically question everything in the
curriculum or the text. Nothing is to be taken for granted;
everything is to be examined as an antagonist.

And for some, "authority" is synonymous with "tyranny."
There is no essential difference between the exercise of
authority and responsibility for others and a repressive
boot pressed across the neck of the people.


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Experimenting With Human Dignity

In H. G. Wells's novel The Island of Dr. Moreau, the survivor
of a shipwreck lands on an island in the South Pacific. There
he discovers that the island's owner has been creating human-
animal hybrids.

Wells's novel grew out of his revulsion at what people were
doing to animals. Today, the real source of horror is what man
is doing to himself.

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The Dead Don't Bleed

For one family in Venezuela, the space between death and
life is filled with more shock than usual. After a serious car
accident, Carlos Camejo was pronounced dead at the scene.

Officials released the body to the morgue and a routine
autopsy was ordered. But as soon as examiners began
the autopsy, they realized something was gravely amiss:
the body was bleeding.

Without anesthesia, they quickly stitched up the wounds
to stop the bleeding, a procedure, in turn, that jarred the
man awake. "I woke up because the pain was unbearable,"
said Camejo. Equally jarred awake was Camejo's wife, who
came to the morgue to identify her husband's body and
instead found him in the hallway--alive.

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Don't All Religions Lead To God?

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There is a dizzying array of options when it
comes to religion, and the culture around us
says that they are all equally valid. It seems
absolutely bizarre to people that someone would
say, "This one way is the truth and the only truth."

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The Sovereign

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For years, I never used the word "sovereign" as a noun.
I knew it could be used in this way--"Like a sovereign,"
writes Shakespeare "he radiates worth, his eyes lending
a double majesty"--I just never did. But trial and tragedy
have a way of waking us to words and realities overlooked.


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Playing Favorites

A friend of mine describes coming to terms as a little girl
with the sad thought that she would never be God's favorite.
Knowing that God had so many children, knowing that good
fathers love equally, she knew her hope of being the favorite
was never going to pan out.

When I first heard her say this, I smiled at the idea of a little
girl worrying so seriously about God's fairness and how it
affected her. God is much more often accused of being un-fair.

But the more I thought about my friend's disappointment, the
more I think this is exactly the difficulty most of us have with
God-- although most of us will never admit it. Yet here, the
unguarded honesty of a child voices what we do not: If we
are being honest, no one really wants to be seen as equal
to all others.


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By Its Cover

In a recent study included in the Archives of Pediatrics
& Adolescent Medicine children were shown to over -
whelmingly prefer the taste of food that comes in
McDonald's wrappers. The study had preschoolers
sample identical foods in packaging from McDonald's
and in matched, but unbranded, packaging.

The kids were then asked if the food tasted the same
or if one tasted better. The unmarked foods lost the
taste test every time. Even apple juice, carrots, and
milk tasted better to the kids when taken from the
familiar wrappings of the Golden Arches.

"This study demonstrates simply and elegantly that
advertising literally brainwashes young children into
a baseless preference for certain food products," said
a physician from Yale's School of Medicine. "Children,
it seems, literally do judge a food by its cover. And they
prefer the cover they know."


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Theology of Choice

Click on Cartoon to Enlarge

There are some stories that move us whether we hear them
at five or 55. The 1965 release of the first Peanuts movie,
A Charlie Brown Christmas, was instantly loved by adults
and children alike.

Interestingly, it almost did not make it past the television
executives who hated it. The movie was criticized for every -
thing from being too contemporary in music, to being too
religious in tone. But audiences everywhere confidently
disagreed. Having aired every year since its debut in
1965, it is now the longest-running cartoon special in
history.

One of my favorite scenes, which I no doubt share with
many, finds Charlie Brown on a hunt for the perfect "great
big, shiny, aluminum tree--maybe even a pink one" as
instructed by Lucy for their Christmas pageant.

At the tree lot, Charlie Brown walks through row after row
of flashing, shiny spectacles of color, trying his best to choose
well and please his friends. But then he sees a small, natural
tree, nearly overshadowed by the flash and glitter of the rest.
It is pitiful and loosing needles, but it is the only real tree on
the lot. In a moment of confidence, Charlie Brown chooses
the unlikely sapling over all the others (and is thus the target
of laughter and mockery by all).

Even as children, we know intuitively that there is something
remarkable about being chosen--perhaps something even sacred--
long before we understand the implications of choice at all. That
someone saw anything worth choosing in this sickly little tree is
a turn in the plot that quiets us. Charlie Brown claims the tree
as his own, and there is a part of us that feels chosen too.


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