Month: November 2008

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Confessing My Bigotry

By Amy Spiegel

In recent months our country has made great strides to overcome long held prejudices and bigotries. It has been a time of historic progress and cause for much celebration. But it has also been a time of reflection and introspection. Both as a nation and on an individual level, we have been forced to assess our core beliefs and convictions. In taking stock of my beliefs, I have been saddened to realize that I have a deep-seated, narrow-minded intolerance of a certain group of people. Not so much the people, actually, but rather the activity in which they participate. After all, as we are taught in the Sunday School of Tolerance, “Love the sinner, not the sin.” So I have decided to come out of the closet and confess my long-held discrimination against . . . golfers. Not only do I not like golf, I hold this derogatory opinion unapologetically.

They say that many prejudices can be traced back to your upbringing and a lack of exposure to other people’s points of view. Perhaps this is true in my case as well. As a young child, I didn’t know any golfers. None of our neighbors were golfers and we certainly didn’t have any golfers in our family. My first contact with golf wasn’t until I was a teenager when I was asked on a golfing date. My date made no effort to dispel the stereotypes of golf such as that it is more boring than watching grass grow. He wouldn’t even let me drive the cart which has always seemed, to me, the best part of the game. It was, hands down, one of the most tedious afternoons I have ever spent, not to mention the worst first date I have ever had the displeasure to experience. (There was no second date with this fella, if you were curious.)

Later in life, when I might have overcome this morally handicapped view, my own perceptions was reinforced by bigoted professors who taught that golf courses were a great force for evil in the world. Their propaganda taught me that runoff from the fertilizers used on golf courses is a serious pollution problem, not to mention the waste of water involved in keeping those greens green. (But perhaps I am the pot calling the kettle black. Remember, I am the girl who contributes several 32 oz. Styrofoam cups to a landfill near you every week.)

The final nail in the coffin of my dislike for golf was hammered home when I married Jim, who is a strict segregationist. He strongly believes in categorizing as “sports” such competitive activities as baseball, football, and basketball, while golf belongs with such things as shuffleboard and tiddlywinks in the category of “games”. 

I am sure there is a great deal to golf that I am missing, but frankly, I don’t care to discover its hidden value. Let’s face it guys—the golf course is your shopping mall. True, shopping is more intellectually and physically demanding, since it requires math skills and is conducted without the aids of caddies and carts, but both activities give you an opportunity to hang out with your friends for hours on end while spending a great deal of money. So the next time the wife is heading out the door on her way to Macy’s, just envision her in plaid pants with a golf bag swung over her shoulder and wish her well. Maybe in this way we can all rise above our prejudices and recognize that golfers are people too.

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It Just Isn’t Fair

By Jim Spiegel

“It just isn’t fair.”  How often we hear those words, or utter them ourselves, and in so many contexts, ranging from NCAA football rankings to the problem of evil.  When our sense of justice is offended, we sometimes express our indignation with these four simple words.  Justice is defined generally as giving to each its due.  And when we complain about the injustice of a situation, it is because we believe that someone has not received what they deserve. When a good deed goes unrewarded, when a person’s integrity is overlooked, or when a crime goes unpunished, it just isn’t fair.

Well, lately I’ve found myself using this phrase—if only in my mind—in a different way, to express my incredulity at how blessed I am.  It isn’t fair that I should have a wonderful family, a decent house, a satisfying job, good health, fine friends, etc.  As I count my blessings, it’s really overwhelming that a flawed mortal like me should be lavished with such gifts.  But, of course, the injustice is more profound than this.  Given original sin—that natural state of rebellion into which we all are born—it isn’t fair that God should even allow us to take a single breath on this planet, much less to enjoy ourselves and have fulfilling relationships.  If God were to give us all what we deserve, well, we’d all have been vaporized early on.  But, thankfully, “he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities” (Psalm 103:10).

If it is unjust when someone is not given their due, then the Christian gospel is founded on a sort of injustice.  That God would condescend to redeem fallen humanity, to take our sin upon himself, and to rescue us from our rebellion is unfair to the extreme.  We call this injustice “grace”-a profoundly unmerited favor.  But it is precisely because we benefit from this injustice that rarely, if ever, do we think to declare it is unfair.  Just as we call a “good deal” a purchase in which we receive more than our money’s worth, we are likely to categorize the Gospel similarly.  When Jesus atoned for our sins, we got a “good deal,” right?  Yes, in the sense that we benefit in unfathomable ways.  But the truth is that it isn’t fair.  In fact, it is unfathomably unfair that the almighty, holy God would humble himself by taking on human form and then suffer a criminal’s death for the sake of those whose sin begat such evil in the first place.

Of course, there is justice in the atonement in the sense that—through our mystical union with Christ—the crucifixion and death of Jesus satisfied God’s wrath.  But the mindblower is that God would take this step to begin with, that he would subject his only begotten Son to such unspeakable torture for our sake.  Amazing grace, indeed.  And it’s more to be thankful for than we can possibly comprehend, even if, strictly speaking, it just isn’t fair.

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Carnivores, Herbivores, and Everyone in Between

By Amy Spiegel

The holidays are fast approaching. At least, I think we are supposed to believe they are approaching, seeing that a variety of stores have had their Christmas decorations out since they put the blowup pools on clearance. I have begun my seasonal chant to the children. “It’s not about the toys. It’s not about the toys.” If only I could convince them that it’s all about the food. Soon after the pumpkins make their first appearance, the issue of food begins to creep to the forefront of my mind. Okay, it’s always in the forefront, but the issue of holiday food comes to the forefront of this ever-on-the-forefront issue. As mentioned in previous posts, Jim and I have been vegetarians for some years now and holiday gatherings often present a particular challenge to our ethics. You might think that being a vegetarian implies the obvious—that you don’t eat meat—and you would be correct, I suppose, regarding a large number of vegetarians. But we Spiegels always like to make things a little more complicated. Jim timidly suggested one day that we stop eating factory farmed meat after research for his ethics class left him horrified and more than a little queasy. I had flirted with vegetarianism since high school for a number of reasons, one of the more influential of which was probably just to irritate my parents. (In an act of divine justice, our kids as teenagers will probably defy us with pepperoni pizza and ham sandwiches.) So it wasn’t, as many imagine, that we woke up one day with a deep loathing for meat and have shunned it ever since. In fact, sometimes at night we lay in bed whispering sweet nothings to each other about the days of Wendy’s cheeseburgers and hot dogs at the ball park.

What amazes me is that here we are now a decade into that decision and I still feel like I am trying to figure out how to go about it. Again you might be saying to yourself, what is to figure out? You are a vegetarian, so don’t eat meat. What’s so complicated about that? A lot, actually. There are the “What qualifies as meat?” questions. There are obvious answers to this and not so obvious ones. Rump roast? Definitely meat. (I think we could safely qualify as meat anything which refers to a particular part of the body, rump, ribs, wings, etc). Fish we have ruled as non-meat. Contrary to annoying pleas I once made to a college boyfriend, I don’t think fish have enough going on upstairs to register significant pain and suffering. But there are all sorts of tricky, grey areas such as chicken stock and the bacon that comes on top of the salad that you didn’t notice on the menu but it’s already mixed in and you hate to make a fuss. When faced with such a situation, we usually make eye-contact and silently ask one another “Are you going to eat it?” It can, at times, be rather comical. We have good friends who are also vegetarians of the meat loving sort. At a university banquet a few years back, we each had a large portion of country-fried steak placed in front of us. After an embarrassed pause, we began to tentatively eat our dinners. By the end, I was restraining myself from licking the plate clean. Gravy—yummmm.

The holidays, as well as other family gatherings and church potluck dinners, are filled with tension and temptation. You want to be polite, not to make people feel uncomfortable and let’s face it, ethical dilemma aside, flesh can be quite tasty. I feel guilty just piling up on veggies as if my plate is some sort of moral judgment on those around me. I feel guilty adding a slice or two of turkey when (a) I have made the commitment to forego said turkey and (b) if I am honest, I am not just being polite. So I am faced with either being the party killjoy (this makes it sound as if our families sit around, knife and fork in hand, banging on the table and shouting “Argh, give us our meat wench!” which is far from the case) or being the party hypocrite. In reality, probably no one is looking and no one really cares what I put on my plate except for my kids who love to steal the best parts for themselves. So this holiday season, I vow to turn over a new, guilt-free leaf. Be my plate carnivorous, herbivorous, or somewhere in between, I will walk with my head held high. In other words, I will make sure I follow Jim through the line and only get meat if he does. What can I say? I guess I’m just chicken.

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My Time at the ETS Conference

By Jim Spiegel

Its been a good couple of days at the annual Evangelical Theological Society conference here in Providence, Rhode Island.  This morning I presented my paper on the problem of evil—specifically, comparing the free will and soul-making theodicies—and it was received well by the 50-60 folks in attendance, several of whom asked some interesting and helpful questions about my thesis, which is that the two theodicies are properly seen as complimentary (because logically interdependent) approaches to the problem.  I have posted my paper on a separate page on this blog, which you will find on the right side bar.  I’d welcome any comments, pro or con, as I’ll be submitting it for publication soon.

In addition to attending many informative and stimulating (as well as a few ponderous and soporific) paper presentations on assorted issues, from apologetics to gender issues to the hiddenness of God, I’ve been perusing endless book exhibits, chatting on subjects profound and frivolous, getting lost in the labyrinthine convention center halls, and eating far too much food—including fresh, melt-in-your-mouth Atlantic salmon on two occasions.  (Amy’s going to be sick with envy when she reads this.  Sorry, honey!)  Yes, our brand of vegetarian diet—“ovo-pecto-lacto vegetarianism,” to be tiresomely precise—does allow for fish (that’s the “pecto” part).  It also allows for chocolate mousse, by the way.  And I’m paying for it now with some late-night indigestion (belch).  Oh, but it felt so good going down…

Goodnight.

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Paris Hilton, Feminism, and Carry-on Luggage

By Amy Spiegel

In response to my recent post regarding gender differences, a former student asked for an elaboration on my position on feminism. I was surprised by the difficulty I had in teasing out just what I did believe. Feminism is one of those terms with so much baggage attached that it looks like Paris Hilton headed to the airport for a week in Maui. Thrown about by so many people who mean so many different things by it, I almost want to come up with my own word rather than deal with checking all those unnecessary bags. If I were to come up with a word to describe my view, it would be “femaleness.” (Highly creative, right?) Still, when I think of what it means to be a woman in this fallen world, I think of the verse in Genesis 1: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God, he created him; male and female he created them.” As Matthew Henry says in his commentary, God created one human and out of that oneness drew the other, whereas with animals He made them the male and female separately. There is a sameness in substance between male and female that is undeniable, just as there is a sameness in substance in the Holy Trinity which we have the great honor to reflect.

However, just as in the Trinity, there are distinctions, in both duties and personality. Man and woman were created with different purposes and characters in mind and attempting to deny this is like saying that God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not just one but the same. This, however interesting (at least to me), is all pre-fall stuff and terribly difficult to translate into this distorted world we live in where each sex attempts to rule over the other. For the most part, men have been more successful at the ruling than women. No one can deny that there has been a great deal of abuse and discrimination against women over the centuries. I would certainly never attempt to brush that aside as if it meant nothing. However, when modern feminists attempt to define just what that abuse and oppression has been, too often, they include roles and responsibilities that are, in my opinion, basic to what it is to female. Being subjected to the whims of an unfeeling husband, having your rights and voice unrecognized by the legal system and so on is truly inexcusable. But so is being expected to not just be equal to men but the same as men. To close yourself to the possibility of having children, raising a family, and serving that family through the sacrifice of your time, hard work and often your dignity is to close yourself off to part, not all, of your very essence. (Obviously, there are many cases where these options aren’t available to women. Single women or those who cannot have children are no less feminine. They can look for other ways to express the character that makes women so well-equipped for the duties of mother and wife, and these roles are by no means limited to baking cookies and teaching Sunday School.)

Do women have the right to pursue careers in all fields and have opportunities in education, etc? Absolutely! But they have to recognize that in order to do so, they must be willing to make certain sacrifices. Once you make the choice to get married and have a family, certain compromises have to be made. “Fair” or not, for thousands of years women have committed a great portion of their lives to raising families. Feminists too often seem to think that this great gift (that is given to and given by women) is slavery. Yes, there is a lot about being a mom that is mind-numbingly dull but I think that raising responsible little people is actually pretty important and well worth the effort. Moms aren’t super-human. We are most definitely fallen creatures (just ask my kids) but to suggest that we are mindless zombies marching to the beat of someone else’s drum isn’t a truthful depiction either. For me, I have found a great outlet for expressing my gifts through staying at home with my kids. That doesn’t mean I think everyone has to make that choice. If I am willing to acknowledge the legitimacy of their choice, I will ask for the same respect in kind. I don’t want to align myself with anyone who thinks I am wasting my time. Just as God created male and female with their own unique gifts to contribute, so, I think, He created a great diversity within the genders. Trying to define female in one particular way is like trying to pack all Paris Hilton’s clothes in one carry-on. Better to get a luggage cart and bring everyone along for the ride. I hear Maui is beautiful this time of year.

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Two Approaches to the Problem of Evil

By Jim Spiegel

One of the most challenging issues in the philosophy of religion is the problem of evil.  Put simply, the problem concerns the difficulty of reconciling the reality of evil—from immoral behaviors to diseases and natural disasters—with the existence of an all-powerful and perfectly good God.  If God is almighty, then he can prevent evil, and if God is morally perfect, then presumably he would wantto prevent it.  Yet evil exists—in massive doses, in fact.  On its face, then, the problem amounts to evidence against theism, at least as traditionally construed.  One way out would be to deny God is omnipotent, as Harold Kushner essentially does in his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People.  Another route would be to surrender belief in God’s goodness.  But these approaches contradict the biblical portrait of God.  So, it seems, the theist is in a fix.

Since the ancient philosopher Epicurus first posed the evidential problem of evil, theists have proposed many ways of eluding its logic by contriving “theodicies”—explanations as to why God would permit sin and suffering in this world.  Two of the most well-worn among these are the “free will theodicy” and the “soul-making theodicy.”  Both of these aim to deny the premise that God would not want to allow evil.  Each explains God’s permission of evil in terms of some greater goods that God wanted to achieve in this world. 

According to the free will theodicy the greater goods God desired were the various goods that depend upon human freedom, such as genuine relationships and moral qualities.  But, of course, we have misused our freedom and, well, now things are a mess.  But the risk, so to speak, was worth it, or so say defenders of the free will theodicy.  According to the soul-making theodicy, the greater goods God aims to achieve by permitting evil is higher or “second-order” virtues which can only be displayed in response to evil.  For example, forgiveness requires sin to forgive, perseverance demands difficulty to overcome, and so on.  Such traits as forgiveness, perseverance, patience, compassion, mercy, etc. are good and beautiful virtues, and well worth the price of evil to achieve.  Or so say proponents of the soul-making theodicy.

I think both of these theodicies are helpful in dealing with the problem of evil.  But is either one preferable to or more helpful than the other?  This question has been occupying my mind a bit lately, as I will be giving a presentation on it at next week’s national meeting of the Evangelical Philosophical Society in Providence, Rhode Island, which will be held at the Rhode Island Convention Center.  (Once it is finished, I plan to post my paper on this blog.)  If you’ll be in the New England area from November 18-21, you might want to consider checking out this conference and hearing presentations by some leading lights in the world of Christian philosophy and theology.  It’s not too late to register.  And I also invite you to consider joining the EPS or its sister organization, the Evangelical Theological Society.  In each case, membership is inexpensive and includes a subscription to the society’s journal (Philosophia Christi or the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society).

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Snapshots

By Amy Spiegel

Brief comments on film by Amy.
Some old, some new.  Domestic films and foreign too.

Atonement — I went into this movie with pretty low expectations, but wanted to give it a try since it was nominated for several Academy Awards. When will I learn? This movie was like a puzzle that should fit together nicely but somehow everything doesn’t come together. The lovers separated by lies and war, the soldier trying to get home to his girl, the wrongdoer trying to make things right. What’s not to like? Unfortunately, a lot. For me the characters were difficult to understand and the ending was one of the most dissatisfying I have ever seen. It seemed as though the makers of the movie and the writer of the novel (that’s right, I read the book just to make sure I wasn’t missing something; I wasn’t) were trying to say “Atonement isn’t possible in the real world. Everything is senseless and without meaning. Atonement is just the fantasy of a sick mind.” Uplifting, huh? I don’t mind “depressing but true” but this one only qualified for the former.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly — Now here is a depressing but true movie. True in both the sense that it is based on a true story and in its themes and message. I want to give as little away as possible but the basic story regards a man trapped in his body with only a limited means of communication. He faces the choice of sinking deep inside himself or struggling to the surface in order to touch those around him. Ironically, while The Diving Bell would certainly never appear on any “Top Ten First Date Movie” list, and movies like Atonement (am I beating a dead horse, here?) are touted as great love stories, I believe The Diving Bell portrays the truest, deepest love and makes Atonement look like a cream puff (a stale cream puff, no less) by comparison. One disclaimer, however: the technique used to film this movie can be a bit tough on the stomach. If you are prone to motion sickness, grab a Dramamine beforehand.

The Privileged Planet — Our boys are forever watching a Discovery Channel something or other and have learned to patiently listen as I drone on about how just because the narrator says we evolved from primordial soup it doesn’t mean that it’s true. So The Privileged Planet was a nice change of pace. Lots of really smart guys talking about how perfectly placed (as in by an intelligent designer and not the lottery of the cosmos) our planet is both for sustaining life and observing the universe. While not as detailed as others of it’s kind, such as Planet Earth, it was interesting and informative.

 Sense and Sensibility — I know what you are thinking: how many versions of the same story line can you watch? Answer: at least one more. This recent adaptation of one of my all-time favorite books somehow manages to tell a story that I have read and watched innumerable times and still have me in tears and breathless to see everything turn out all right. Whether you have failed to see any of the adaptations of Jane Austen’s works or you are a diehard anglophile, this is a winner. I would also recommend Miss Austen Regrets, a fictionalized account of Jane Austen’s later life, and Cranford, an excellent adaptation of several Elizabeth Gaskell novels.

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A Strange Satisfaction

By Jim Spiegel

Congratulations to all you Obama supporters out there!  Your man is going to the White House.

Prior to the election I expected that I would have been thoroughly disappointed by this result.  But, strangely, I am not.  I strongly disagree with most of Obama’s policy positions—from his extreme pro-choice stance to his position on (re-)distributive justice—and am deeply concerned about his moral judgment, but as I watched Obama’s victory speech late Tuesday night I was surprised by what welled up inside of me—a peculiar feeling of satisfaction.  What?!  Yes, I was almost euphoric as I watched Obama and his family walk out on that stage in all of their meticulously choreographed political glory.  The historico-social significance of the moment suddenly fell on me in a way I hadn’t anticipated and—at least for those few minutes—I was glad he won.  But how can this be, when the thought of the implementation of his ideas makes me shudder?

Flashback 33 years…  When I was twelve-years-old my family moved from Detroit, Michigan to Jackson, Mississippi, where I began attending a private middle school.  At this school I got my first dose of hard-core Southern racism-unmitigated hatred of black Americans, complete with brutal jokes and frequent use of the N-word, not just by students but teachers as well.  This terrified me, since, well, I didn’t hate black people, and kids who became known as “N-lovers” faced certain persecution.  I couldn’t understand how people could hate other people just because of their skin color.  My mother had always warned me never to have such an attitude, and she even scolded me when one day I accidentally mispronounced the name of the African country “Niger.”

One day in my eighth-grade civics class my teacher, Mr. Knox, went on a rant about how “our country would be better if we sent all them n——–ers back to Africa.”  Something in my head clicked.  Even at thirteen I knew this was evil, and I silently resolved to try to be a friend, not a foe, to black folks.  And as the years passed I found myself doing this almost by reflex.  Later that year I went out of my way to befriend a black kid in my neighborhood, and two years later I got my first job at a Popeyes Fried Chicken restaurant in the middle of a black neighborhood, where a friend of mine and I were the only white employees.  We loved it and even enjoyed how our fellow workers referred to us as “Pixie” and “Dixie.”  I suppose this was our meager way of raging against the Southern white racist machine.  Not a big deal, really, but for us as young teenagers in that culture, it sure felt like a big deal. 

Years later, after my conversion, I found that I sometimes had to rebuke fellow Christians for their occasional racist comments.  Even during my college years in the mid-80s this was not uncommon.  And the typical response to my challenge was a condescending roll of the eyes or a verbal dismissal—“Oh come on, Spiegel.  Lighten up.”  This was exasperating, but by now I had the resources—biblically and philosophically, to challenge their foolishness.  Still, they didn’t listen.  (By the way, I don’t mean to suggest that all white Mississippians/Southerners were hard-core racists in those days.  But racism certainly was, and perhaps still is, more rampant in the South than in other areas of the country.)

Fast forward two decades, and there I am watching a black man give a victory speech, having just been elected President of the United States.  Suddenly I felt the same way those people in the crowd looked—euphoric and satisfied.  I heard a voice deep inside me say “Take that, Mr. Knox!” and “Take that, old college buddies!” I felt vindicated somehow.  But most of all I was happy for our country, that we had reached this milestone in our racial and ethnic struggle.  It’s not the end of that struggle of course, but it’s a hugely significant step.  And I can’t help but feel good about that aspect of Obama’s election.

Of course, the Obama presidency will be about much more than racial healing, and even in that domain it is far from a cure-all.  There are enormous challenges facing the next administration, and it will be interesting to see how much success, if any, Obama can have in dealing with the problems they will inherit, particularly since he will enjoy strong Democrat majorities in both the House and the Senate.  For people like me who sharply disagree with Obama’s policies—we can at least give the man a chance.  And we can find some solace in the fact that our nation has taken a big step forward in its struggle with racism.

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The Tug of the Gender War

By Amy Spiegel

Despite the fact that I am a self-professed non-feminist, gender and the role it plays in relationships is discussed quite frequently at the Spiegels. This is in part due to fact that we have three boys and one girl. Watching them develop and relate to one another in such different ways generates a lot of conversations between Jim and me both on how to help our kids understand one another and how their differences translate to the larger scale of men and women in general. But obviously Jim and I, too, have the gender gap to overcome and find plenty of fodder in our own interactions as well.

A few Sundays back, we were riding home from the church with the kids and while I didn’t exactly have Jim’s full attention (I was competing with ESPN radio and the cacophony coming from the backseat), I took a moment or two to “remind” him of some projects around the house I thought needed his attention. This was the impetus of yet another discussion between us regarding the differences between the masculine and feminine approaches to life. He would say I was nagging and he would probably be right. Let’s face it girls, we nag. We take every opportunity we possibly can find to remind them of all the things they should be doing, could be doing, need to be doing. We cannot hold our tongues and let them do it in their own time. I can’t count the times when I have asked Jim to do something, probably more than once, and am getting ready to remind him again when he goes and does it of his own accord. And frankly when he does it on his own, when I come home and he has unclogged the toilet or cleaned up the garage, I don’t really find it as satisfying because I didn’t tell him to do it! If that isn’t a symptom of the fall of man (and woman) and the complete and total infiltration of sin into every crevice of our being, I don’t know what is.   

But here’s the thing. Even in the way that He caused our natures to be cursed and fallen, God has shown mercy. Eve overstepped her place in reaching to be like God, and Adam abdicated his role in not intervening and, instead, participating with her. So God said, “Okay Eve, you want to be in charge? Then I will pair you with a man who would rather sit on the Lazy Boy or act like he doesn’t hear the kids pulling one another’s eyes from their sockets.” And He says “Okay Adam, you don’t want to step up and be irresponsible? Then I will pair you with a woman who will nag you about cutting the grass and ask you completely unimportant questions when there are 30 seconds to go in the last quarter with the score tied and your team on the 10-yard line.” But it could be worse. God, in His wisdom, has allowed even our weaknesses to compliment one another.

Men struggle with irresponsibility when it comes to their duties at home and spending time with their families.  (I am making a generalization here. Please don’t e-mail me about how you are married to the perfect man who washes the dishes every night before he rubs your feet while you tell him about your day with the kids, okay? I get it. These are generalizations that are true to some extent in most cases. Is that a good enough disclaimer for you? Ditto for all those who think I am oversimplifying the follies of women). So God gives men women who are, generally speaking, good at organizing stuff at home and who love their husbands so much they are willing to force their spouse to spend time with them. Women struggle with keeping their emotions in check and overstepping the boundaries of their spouses. So God gives them men who are, generally speaking, much more steady in their mood swings and who are laid back enough to handle encroachment in the small areas and strong enough to repel encroachment in the big ones. I love that Jim is strong where I am weak and vice versa. It’s like spooning—you fit where your partner is lacking. So rather than belittling one another for the areas where we differ, let’s appreciate these as opportunities for grace and hope the other guy (or gal) will do the same. Otherwise we are back in the garden, once again trying to assign blame, locked in an eternal tug of war in which no one wins. So the next time the wife gives you the stink eye (again) for not putting your socks in the hamper (again) or the hubby drifts in and out of listening to the minute details of your day, just take a deep breath and move on. After all, it could be a lot worse.