Integrity Study - Day three

Whew! What a morning! Let's just say it started out with overflowing toilet which the child had to clean up alone for once (and redirection multiple times to get it cleaned and never did a good job. *sigh*). This is day 6 of using Colon Clenz to try to see if we can get rid of this poo that's apparently perpetually backed up in her system and she's still clogging the potty. *deeper sigh* So far I'm having a sh*tty day which isn't showing signs of improving.

Last night I stayed up way late finishing most of the alterations on my sister's dress so she can get it pressed, I cut out and whipped together a sample jacket for the girls to try on this morning, wrote Kitty's FAIR Club assignment, created and worked on the Integrity Game board and questions for a new game I want to try with the kids, and I got a call from a friend who wanted to talk about the upcoming Katharine Leslie 2-day seminar in Fort Worth that I will be attending Wednesday and Thursday next week and offered to help with. I'm still working on trying to find a friend to travel with, and my friend in Fort Worth has offered a place to stay.

(If you can possibly make it you should! There are still seats available and as both a professional and a parent of children of trauma herself, Katharine gives ABSOLUTELY one of the best seminars on children of trauma I've ever been to. The professionals attending learn a lot, the parents learn practical advice. I saw her last year and it was one of the most recharging experiences I ever had. I can send you info if you're interested.).

So anyway!

The Integrity Study session started late as usual, and ran long. There were a LOT of big words and concepts in this one. We only got half as far as I thought we would, but I think we can still get it done tomorrow.

The Hypocrisy of the Pharisees

After defining Hypocrisy and explaining who the Pharisees are, we talked about how some people think of Jesus as being kind of hippy-like, all peace and love, but he was not feeling peace and love here! I had Kitty read the following passage "the way Jesus would have said it!" (really angry!)

Except for stumbling over all the big and unknown words and concepts, she did pretty well and I think the word stumbles helped because we could stop and explain them... all of them... and then explaining the words we used to explain them... and then giving examples...and then tying it back to what Jesus is saying...). This part took forever, and wasn't even the main focus of this section!

“Woe* to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites**!
You travel over land and sea to win a single convert***, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell**** as you are….
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs^, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous^^ but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness….
“You snakes^^^! You brood of vipers^^^^! How will you escape being condemned to hell^^^^^?”
Matthew 23:15, 27-28, 33

*Woe - not a command for stopping a horse! It means "pathos ('chaos'), anger, warning and derision ('looking down on someone and ridiculing them.'); and may include all of these at the same time."

• Derision - gave them the example of Rathbone from Disney's Pocahontas looking down on the Native Americans - Rathbone was the governor of the pilgrims if I remember right

**Teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites - we talked about Judge Frollo from Disney's Hunchback of Notredame - he was a perfect example of hypocrisy. Someone who dictates rules to others, but does not follow them himself. (I also verified that they did not believe that the gypsies/Romany were lying, thieves and they did not. *grin* They also think Esmerelda is cool!)
***single convert - "convincing someone to believe what you believe." We talked about evangelists. The example they understood best for once wasn't a Disney movie! There is a group of Christian weigh lifters that testify while doing feats of strength called Team Impact. Bear decided to be baptised after attending one of their events. One of the members of the team grew up in a family that did foster and adoption, and he wrote back and forth to Bear while Bear was in residential treatment.

****twice as much a son of hell - new converts are often more enthusiastic and vigilant about the rules, and enforcing rules is what Jesus is against.

^whitewashed tombs - whitewashing is putting a coat of paint on something to make it look nice and pretty and cover what's underneath.

^^on the outside you appear to people as righteous - back to Judge Frollo from Hunchback to explain the word righteous!

^^^You snakes - snakes were unclean because they crawled through the mud and muck on their bellies.

^^^^vipers - Bear didn't know this was a snake.

^^^^^hell - tangent on whether or not this was a bad word.

Pheww! Finally ready to move on to the next section, but it had even more hard concepts and big words, and to be totally honest even I got it a little mixed up.

· Ethics refers to a standard of right and wrong, good and evil. It’s what the Pharisees said they believed was right.
· Morality is a lived standard of right and wrong, good and evil. It’s what the Pharisees actually did.
· Integrity means “sound, complete, integrated.” To the extent that a person’s ethics and morality are integrated, that person has integrity. To the extent that a person’s ethics and morality are not integrated, that person lacks integrity.

We talked first about Bob and her plan to be evil and take over the world. We decided she had low ethics because she has committed to the Christian values of the church, but she says she's going to be evil and go against these ethics. She had high morality because she didn't actually act evil. She has low integrity because her stated ethics and morals don't match. If she had evil standards, and acted evil, she would be unethical and immoral, but would have high integrity because her ethics match her morals (she doesn't just talk the talk, she walks the walk).

We briefly touched on Hitler, but went off on a tangent about the ethics of using the results of the medical research Hitler conducted on humans. The kids decided that not using the research would mean that those people were tortured and died in vain. I talked about whether or not this meant others would felt that they condoned the means to justify the end, but the kids decided it was OK.

We continued the tangent with whether or not they would use products from companies that used animal testing, we talked about the difference between free range chickens and those that were not allowed to move and were stuffed with antibiotics and growth hormones, tuna caught in non-dolphin safe nets, child labor, prison labor, unions and domestic labor. It was a long, complicated discussion and the kids decided they would pay more for organic and to purchase pruducts from companies with unions even though they cost more. Of course they have no money and no way of telling which companies those are (Bear said he knew, and all his clothes were "safe.")

We finally just called a stop to the conversation, and I decided that the rest of what I'd planned to talk about today would just have to wait until tomorrow.

Speaking of waiting until tomorrow... all the rest of the stuff I needed to get done tonight will have to wait until then. I'm tired and it's 1am.

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Before I forget. Grandma told me today that Samuel was a High Priest not a king, and that after him the priests were elected or something so his sons didn't inherit the title. Honestly, that changes way too much of what we talked about that day, so I'm going to ignore it. If you decide to try this study with your kids, you can handle this as you wish. It was mostly a help with the 'taxes/government/ king' thing which wasn't in the original study anyway.