Trust, Confidence, and Trust in Reality

Trust and confidence are two things that childhood has a profound effect on. As I've been reading some books about psychology, it seems that if trust and confidence are not established early, then both are extremely hard to come by later in life.

From birth, a child must rely on his mother and father to protect and provide for him (or her). That child is well aware of his dependence on the parents. The child also trusts that the parents will do what is in the his best interest.

However, if these are broken early and/or often, the child becomes skeptical of his parents' ability to protect and provide for him. Since the parent is the "first impression" the child receives of someone who promises something (protection and provision), if he has bad experiences, the child will grow up to question everyone that "promises" something to that child.

In some cases the child begins to question the idea that reality is even real, or that anything is objective (these are all things that society is acting out, yet saying something opposite- but that's a different post).

My point in all this is that if the family continues to break and be as dysfunctional as it has been, our children will pay the price with their confidence in reality.

When someone questions reality itself, many doors are opened. First, as a Christian, my concern is that if someone can't trust reality, then why should they trust the God who supposedly created it? Second, if reality is not to be trusted, then any implications about reality are not to be trusted either. These implications include morality. When the child (now teen or adult) realizes this connection, they are "freed" to do whatever they wish, with no lasting consequences.

Our children are watching our every move. When we break their trust and confidence, they get closer to moral relativism. It is truly amazing the kind of eternal impact parents have on their children. The repeat-offender parents are the one's that really need to pay attention and turn around.

If we allow society to continue to destroy the family and perpetuate our children's mistrust in parents, we may lose our kids forever.

I'm not trying to be Chicken Litter, here ("the sky is falling..."), but am trying to awaken parents to the damage they may be doing to their children without even realizing it. We all need to take a look at everything we do and ask ourselves "how would I feel if my mom or dad were doing that?"

We have all heard that we are "examples" that children follow. I'm not going to argue with that. I would even say that children are not stupid enough to not notice a bad example, too. But I want to take this one step further. Even though a child may recognize that you are a bad example and decide not to follow you, they still have not realized that their trust in someone who they believed to be trustworthy (you), has now placed one more strike against anyone else who would try to gain that child's trust. If you continue, the strikes continue to build a case for mistrust of everything.

For more on this subject check out these links:

Focus on the Family
Healing the Masculine Soul by Gordon Dalbey
Faith of the Fatherless by Paul Vitz
Bringing Up Boys by James Dobson

Information vs Education

This post will tie a bit into my previous posts "Why Should I Challenge My Own View" and "This Argument is Full of Crap!". Please read them before you read this one.

Have you ever watched Jeopardy or played Trivial Pursuit and wondered what good all that information is? Well the answer is this: to win a game. I have always been suspicious of people who are "book" smart, but can't tell you how the conclusion was obtained. When one has only "book smarts" or knows only trivia, they can answer only so many questions. They are unable to explain how the person to discovered the answer (that they are parroting) arrived at the answer.

This is called "information". You can have all the information in the world, and not understand how it all ties together. I'm not saying that having information is bad, because it is not. But having just the information limits the usefulness of that information.

When someone is trying to convince an opponent of another point of view, just spouting off facts is not usually going to convince them. They will have questions about the validity of the facts, how the facts were concluded, and what use in the real world they are. This last question is extremely important for worldviews or political positions. If one only knows the "slogans" of a worldview or political position, they are impotent to explain their reasoning.

"Education" involves understanding the "ins" and "outs" of information. If the one who holds the view cannot explain how or why their information should be believed, they lose all ability to convince. One of the best ways to "get educated" is to investigate your information or "slogans" for authenticity. I'm not talking about searching only sources that believe the information or slogan, but also those who challenge the information or slogan.

This, of course, is important not just for your "information", but also the oppositions "information". The more you are "educated" in both, the more you will be able to reliably defend your own "information".

All this can be summed up like this: Conclusions vs. reasons for conclusions. If you stick with information only, you may misunderstand the reasons. This will lead to the building of an underlying "strawman", which is detrimental if you believe it about your own information or your opponents information.

Websites:
Apologetics.com
Stand to Reason

Podcasts:
Apologetics.com Radio Show
Stand to Reason Radio Program
Just Thinking

Books:
Tactics: by Greg Koukl
Come, Let us Reason: by Norman Geisler

Why Should I Challenge My Own Views?

Something that I have noticed a lot in society today: people hold positions and swear that they never question or challenge their views (many believe that is a sign of how strongly they hold them). Unfortunately, for many of these people, you can easily believe that. Many of these same people are afraid that if they challenge their view, that they will find that it may not be the best or it may not even be true. I knew many Christians as I grew up who were like this. They tended to accuse others of not having "faith" because they questioned or challenged a view (see my post "Is 'Blind Faith' Biblical" for my answer to these people).