>Christian ideology aside, what is wrong with having children work
>(including "dirty" work) and punishing them for slacking and disrespect.
>Does anyone here think that the US liberal alternative of forcing children
>to be idle consumers of fashion and entertainment, sucking up resources
they
>did not earn and feeling "entitled" to them (on the pain of accusing their
>parents of child "abuse"), and being shown, time and again that they have
>rights but not responsibilities is a desired alternative?
Having kids work is not a bad idea on the face of it, but how do you interface that with their schooling and leisure time? After all, Wojtek, part of the general thrust behind "left thought" is to make the world less full of drudgery. As for the kids learning to respect authority, whose authority should they be taught to respect? And will it be respect, as opposed to appeasement?
Heh, just remembered a cartoon from Mad Magazine: "Parents think the minimum age for working should be lowered to seven and the legal driving age raised to 25 so kids would have 18 years to save up for their own car" (picture shows a fat, bored security guard admitting a toddling heavy industrial worker complete with hard-hat, lunch box, and security badge into a factory).
As for the description(s) of Christianity being bandied about: Christianity does have as its basis a radical rejection of the Material in favour of the Transcendental. This can manifest in "strong" or "weak" varieties: "strong" as in the Flagellants of the 14th century in Europe or the eremites of the Egyptian desert just after Christianity took off in the Roman Empire e.g. St. Simeon Stylites (the one who sat on a pillar to distance himself from the temptations of the World, Flesh, and Devil). Weak as in those who advocate sexual abstinence and a "turning" from the World e.g. St. Augustine of Hippo's Confessions.
Doug: there's a fair amount of consistency of the "Christianities" but only on pretty obvious matters e.g. the existence of one god who had a son named Jesus. As for the "niceties" of Jesus' materiality, et al., these were "officially" decided in the court of primal power i.e. with a big stick, in the favour of Roman Catholicism by the Roman authority, and there were countless wars and atrocities to create doctrinal purity which existed openly up to, so far as I know, the Eighteenth Century.
Remember: Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.
Todd !{)>