Becoming a Father (A Political Manifesto)

Becoming a father has brought clarity to my soul – one could say spiritually and in other significant ways. I have always been political, but now I believe I really get what that means. Politics is treated like a game, a sport, a business, it is even viewed as a necessary evil by many. 

Politics and sex are
similarly abused by many, and cheaply regarded by way
too many. They aren’t games, or sports, they are about
loving others, taking care for the next generation.
Politics and sex are holy, even if we do our best to
undermine them and rob them of their inherent godly
potential for good.
Consider the alternative to political organization-
anarchy. Who benefits from that? The strong, the
uncaring, the ‘might makes right’ crowd; not the
child, not the honest man looking for a stable
situation to raise a family up in peace.
Politics is the means we use to organize ourselves for
whatever larger principles we deem of value to society
at large.

Prior to becoming a father, I mostly
experienced life as a series of adventures where my
freedom to act as I wished was paramount. Fatherhood
forced me to confront the world through the eyes of
the most precious, most vulnerable human life
imaginable- my own child.
It shakes me to my core, that as much as I love my own
little ones, God loves them infinitely more. And His
love is not confined to my little tribe, He loves
everyone’s children similarly. Having this insight, I
can’t rest with it, like it was a nice platitude.
This has to be the basis for my outlook on public
life.

Looking around me, reading the news- I am
encountering the consequences of politics on God’s
children all over the map. If I expect God to care
when my children a little ‘under-the- weather’, how
can I not be alarmed when I read or see other children
suffering greatly through adult-made conditions? If I
am going around making big claims of faith in Jesus
Christ, and praying to God constantly to look after my
most beloved little ones- how can I miss that I also
have some pretty serious responsibilities- that do not
end at my front door? If being “my brother’s keeper”,
does not connect to me emotionally, add this
‘brother’s’ children to the mix, and I suddenly see
the Light.

In fact, I get it all now. Children are not
side-concerns, wedge issues, photo ops for politicians
who want to appear like they care about the world.
Children are the thing in itself- they are the
principle agenda- they are the test of us- as people
of God, as people of goodwill. They are the richest
example of just who is the ‘poor and vulnerable’ of
the world. And it is not enough that our children
live in comfort zones, and have access to decent
health care. If we turn our backs on the rest of
little humanity, how long before our children are on
the outside looking in? And when my children are
excluded from healthy, happy childhoods, how am I
going to regard those who are the ‘winners’ in a given
political system? When the claim is made that
children must suffer because their parents aren’t rich
enough or smart enough to navigate this beautiful
system we have created- does God nod in agreement?
When America is at war, where is the debate over what
will happen to the children in the country we are
going into? In churches, where are the prayers for
children exposed to the terror of bombs and violent
death around them?

Lots of prayers for ‘our
soldiers’, they embody our children- but when I saw my
own child’s fear over the loud noise of fireworks
exploding playfully in the July 4th sky- I got a sick
feeling. How does an Iraqi father console his
daughter when the explosions sound at night? Are the
explosions we set off or set in motion, completely,
100% necessary to protect our own children? Did we go
in to stop a genocide? A lot of people will have a
lot of explaining to do when all of this is said and
done. God is not American, He is not Iraqi. God is
on the side of the innocents, and children are the
most innocent among us. When you picture War, picture
children crying, not heroic men firing weapons.

And what of those war protestors, who scream out
against the horrors of war on innocents in one breath,
then cheer for the right to abort unborn children in
the next? Where is the consistency? They remind me
of how the war supporters play up the plight of their
soldiers, the threats against Americans, but almost
completely ignore the humanity of the Iraqi-
especially the children living in war zones of our own
creation. And these ‘pro-choice’ supporters do
likewise. They play up the distressed pregnant woman
or girl, and they studiously ignore even a viable
child in her womb. They turn away from the pictures
of abortion, just like the right-wing militarists shun
the pictures of dead children as pure propaganda. Who
is the more guilty? the bigger hypocrite? I’ll leave
it to God to judge. I, for my part, want none of it-
any of it.

I want children, all children, to be at the forefront
of our political discussions on issues of war,
abortion, and most everything else. If we aren’t
living for our children’s sake and our succeeding
generations, then we are indeed a selfish lot of
rotten so-called adults.
I don’t believe that religious persons need to roll
over to the secularists when it comes to the
separation of church/state. It is our children who
are going to be subjected to a culture that tries to
ignore that God has a huge role in our lives; that
morality is linked to religion cannot be seriously
ignored. All the American Constitution protects
against is a theocracy, made to order by one dominant
religion or denomination thereof. The wall that
modern Secularists have been building up between
religious persons, and their government, is as
artificial and immoral, as the one the Israelis are
building to try and cage more Palestinians. Sorry
Secularists, I won’t be caged or cowed by those who
disagree with my beliefs in Christ and Church.

I
don’t seek a Catholic Theocracy, but I won’t pretend
that my Catholicism-especially the Church Social
Teachings- have nothing to add to America’s
well-being- especially that of our children. God
forbid we should stop legal abortion, stop unjust
wars, stop capital punishment, stop people from having
rights that include family wages, access to quality
health care and housing, and all the rest of that
religious-humanist mumbo jumbo.
The fact is that public monies should go to wherever
the service to humanity- and especially children- is
most effective and nurturing. Churches do public
service and charity much better than most direct
government agencies. It shouldn’t be a crime to use
public monies for such services, of course, with the
proviso that the monies don’t go to purely evangelical
activities- let the church/mosque/synagogue come up
with their own funds for self-promotion. But reward
good works, enable good works, I don’t care if
atheists are doing it- if it’s good and healthy- it’s
godly to my way of thinking.

Schools are another
example. Public schools have been put in an amoral,
anti-religious box, which is against the common good.
Government- federal, state, and local versions- should
be able to put monies or direct monies to private
schools which are serving a purpose in providing local
families with education that fits with their personal
moral values. It would be a violation of law to only
direct monies to Catholic schools, obviously. I would
like to see more schools, more types of schools, with
smaller enrollments- government resources could be
shared with Muslim, Jewish, environment-focused,
African-American-focused etc.. schools with that
particular mission statement at the forefront. If
these schools fail to successfully graduate
college-material students, then they will probably not
attract a continual stream of new students, and as
such, probably should not be helped along artificially
by the government. If a given area’s parents are
interested in establishing schools outside the bounds
of official public schools, for moral reasons, they
should be supported in many or most cases- we can draw
some boundaries- but the current boundary of public or
nothing is grossly unjust for parents trying to do
right by their children.

As a father, my fear of failing my own children is so
much greater than my fear of speaking what I perceive
to be the truth, and letting the chips fall as they
may. I’m not afraid to lose a political race, I’m
afraid of losing my children, losing my soul, should
I not put up a good fight for virtue’s sake. I won’t
be afraid of taking on the oil lobbies, the abortion
lobbies, the let’s destroy human embryos to save our
lives lobby, the US imperialist flag-wavers lobbies,
the pornography lobbies, the Secularist lobbies, the
pro-Israel/anti-Arab lobbies, the World Bank/IMF
lobbies, the gay marriage lobbies, the make- divorce-
easy lobbies, the torture lobbies, the hate- the-
Catholic church lobbies, the forget about reforming
prisoners lobbies, the big corporate multinationals
lobbies, the sweat-shop cheap labor lobbies, the beer
industry lobbies and so on and on…

Some of the
interests of children worldwide, as well as my own may
be served in part by some of these political entities
and persons- but when they are not- I will not stand
by. No one gets a free pass on placing children’s
concerns at the top of the heap of ‘special
interests’. As a father, I know I can’t relegate my
personal care for my own children to somewhere down
the list of considerations. My children come first.
And the world’s children must come first for any and
all politically active or concerned individuals. We
cannot content ourselves with spoiling our own
children, while other children are left to bathe in
sewers. In the end, there is no excuse for poor
parenting, for not caring, not trying. We may
disagree on techniques and discipline, but we cannot
disagree with the setting of our children, and all
children, as Priority One, for ourselves, for our
political leaders and institutions.
Being a father is the hardest work I’ve
ever encountered- and the work of saving the world
for children is next to impossible- but this is
joyful, holy work. I (we) are made for this- no use
in denying it, or prolonging our jaded
self-indulgences, which come at the expense of our
littlest human family members.

Thank You, Tim
Shipe FL House #31