The Hills We Choose

The Public Square
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New Warhorn Media post by Tim Bayly:

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Postman and Bradbury were so helpful. Though they weren’t Christians, they showed me that the 2nd Commandment isn’t just a continuation of the 1st. Images are dangerous.

Thanks for the discussion.

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It was encouraging to hear that both you and Mary Lee grew up without TVs. Convicting. Makes me almost want to toss out ours [and put real entertainment restrictions on phone and laptop]

I remember my poli sci professor in undergrad saying –more than once– “An educated person has read Plato’s Republic.”

I went out and got a copy from Barnes and Noble and it sat on my desk in my dorm for the next year or two. It was the second book I read after graduating college (Mere Christianity was the first). I kept thinking to myself, ‘How could I have a college degree and not be educated?’

It stretched me to give myself to a large book, and I’m glad I did. I love [good] movies, but there’s something about books, about the written word, that is unlike any other medium.

After all God chose to reveal Himself through words. As Ronald Wallace said: My experience of God has been ‘word experience’.

Thank you for the podcast!

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I recently instituted a “no phones before bed” policy for Isabel and I. It’s been great because then we read and talk. Words upon words. And it’s also fun because our personalities come out in what we are reading: I’m reading sermons of Benard of Clairvaux and she’s reading Jane Eyre.

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I was disappointed when I listened to God’s Battalions that the author never really attempted to keep the promise of his subtitle: The Case for the Crusades. I think you’d already have to believe in Roman dogma or unprincipled pragmatism against Islam to come away from his historical narrative truly pro-Crusade.

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Nothing new under the sun. To avoid our spouse we used to go out and be entertained (or commit adultery). Now we just entertain ourselves (and commit adultery) at any moment in our homes.
From John Angell James’ A Help to Domestic Happiness (purchase here)

MUTUAL ATTACHMENT TO EACH OTHER’S SOCIETY, is a common duty of husband and wife.

We are united to be companions; to live together, to walk together, to talk together. The husband is commanded “to dwell with the wife according to knowledge.” “This,” says Mr. Jay, “intends nothing less than residence, opposed to absence and roving. It is absurd, for those who have no expectancy of dwelling together, to enter this state—and those who are already in it, should not be unnecessarily abroad. Circumstances of various kinds will doubtless render occasional excursions unavoidable; but let a man return as soon as the design of his absence is accomplished, and let him always travel with the words of Solomon in his mind, ‘As a bird that wanders from her nest, so is a man that wanders from his place.’ Can a man while from home discharge the duties he owes to his household? Can he discipline his children? Can he maintain the worship of God in his family? I know it is the duty of the wife to lead the devotion in the absence of the husband; and she should take it up as a cross, if not for the time as a privilege. Few, however, are thus disposed, and hence one of the ‘home sanctuaries’ of God for weeks and months together is shut up. I am sorry to say that there are some husbands who seem fonder of any society than the company of their wives. It appears in the disposal of their leisure hours. How few of these are appropriated to the wife! The evenings are the most family periods of the day. To these the wife is peculiarly entitled—she is now most free from her numerous cares, and most at liberty to enjoy reading and conversation. It is a sad reflection upon a man when he is fond of spending his evenings abroad. It implies something bad, and it predicts something worse.”

And to insure as far as possible the society of her husband, at his own fireside, let the wife be “a keeper at home,” and do all in her power to render that fireside as attractive as kind temperament , neatness, and cheerful, affectionate conversation can make it; let her strive to make his own home the soft green on which his heart loves to repose in the sunshine of family enjoyment. We can easily imagine that even in Paradise, when man had no apparition of guilt, no visions of crime, no spectral voice from a troubled conscience, to make him dread solitude and flee from it—that even then, Adam liked not, on his return from the labor of dressing the garden, to find Eve absent from their bower, but lacked the smile of her countenance to light up his own, and the music of her voice to be the melody of his soul. Think, then, how much more in his fallen estate, with guilt upon his conscience, and care pressing upon his heart, does man now, on coming from the scenes of his anxious toil, need the aid of woman’s companionship, to drive away the swarm of buzzing cares which sting his heart; to smooth the brow ruffled with sadness; to tranquillize the bosom agitated with passion; and at once to reprove and comfort the mind that has in some measure yielded to temptation. O woman! you know the hour when the “good man of the house” will return at midday, while the sun is yet bowing down the laborer with the fierceness of his beams, or at evening, when the heat and burden of the day are past—do not let him, at such a time, when he is weary with exertion, and faint with discouragement, find, upon his coming to his habitation, that the foot which should hasten to meet him, is wandering at a distance; that the soft hand which should wipe away the sweat from his brow, is knocking at the door of other houses; nor let him find a wilderness, where he should enter a garden; confusion, where he ought to see order; or filth that disgusts, where he might hope to behold neatness that delights and attracts. If this be the case, who can wonder, that in the anguish of disappointment, and in the bitterness of a neglected and heart-stricken husband, he turns away from his own door, for that comfort which he wished to enjoy at home, and that society which he hoped to find in his wife, and puts up with the substitutes for both, which he finds in the houses of other men, or in the company of other women.

United to be partners then, let man and wife be as much in each other’s society as possible. There must be something wrong in family life, when they need the assistance of balls, plays and card parties to relieve them from the tedium produced by home pursuits. I thank God, I am a stranger to that taste, which leads a man to flee from his own comfortable parlour and the society of his wife, from the instruction and recreation contained in a well stored library, or from the evening rural walk, when the business of the day is over, to scenes of public amusement, for enjoyment; to my judgment, the pleasures of home, and of home society, when home and home society are all that could be desired, are such as never cloy, and need no change, but from one kindred scene to another. I am sighing and longing, perhaps in vain, for a period when society shall be so elevated and so purified; when the love of knowledge will be so intense, and the habits of life will be so simple; when religion and morality will be so generally diffused, that men’s homes will be the seat and circle of their pleasures; when in the society of an affectionate and intelligent wife, and of well educated children, each will find his greatest earthly delight; and when it will be felt to be no more necessary to happiness, to leave their own fireside, for the ballroom, the concert, or the theatre, than it is to go from the wellspread home table to the public feast, to satisfy the cravings of a healthy appetite— when will it be no longer imposed upon us to prove that public amusements are improper, for they will be found to be unnecessary.

But the pleasures of home must not be allowed to interfere with the calls and claims of public duty. Wives must not ask, and husbands must not give that time which is demanded for the cause of God and man. This is an age of active charity, and the great public institutions which are set up, cannot be kept in operation without great sacrifices of time and leisure by very many people. Those who by their wisdom, talents, rank, or property, receive the confidence of the public, must stand prepared to fill up and conduct the executive departments of our societies; nor should they allow the soft allurements of their own houses, to draw them away from what is obviously the post of duty. We have known some, who, until they entered into wedded life, were the props and pillars of our institutions, yield so far to the solicitations of their new and dearest earthly friend, as to vacate their seat at the board of management forever after. It is, I admit, a costly way of contributing to the cause of religion and humanity, to give those evening hours which could be spent so pleasantly in a country walk, or in the joint perusal of some interesting volume; but who can do good, or ought to wish to do it without sacrifices? I know an eminently holy and useful minister, who told the lady to whom he was about to be united, that one of the conditions of their marriage was, that she should never ask him for that time, which, on any occasion, he felt it to be his duty to give to God. And surely, any woman might feel herself more blessed in having sometimes to endure the loss of a husband’s society, whose presence and talents are coveted by all public institutions, than in being left to the unmolested enjoyment of the company of one whose assistance is coveted by none.

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