It’s been a while since I’ve updated my site, so here’s another look at what I’ve been writing over at WORLD on Campus. I typically have a new piece out every Tuesday, which both WORLD and I push via our social media outlets. Be sure to follow me on Twitter (@MichaelReneau) or WORLD on Campus (@WORLDonCampus). And I should say thanks to WoC Editor Leigh Jones for cleaning these up each week and making sure I don’t sound like a moron.
- “Stand for public education” (November 6, 2012) My friend Rachel Lonas helped me understand why Christians — even though we support and endorse private and homeschooling — can’t give up on the public education system.
But one thing we all can do to improve our public schools is to let the spheres of society often left unmentioned by progressives — family, church, and the local community — help correct the problem. Get involved in your neighborhood. So many struggling public school students lack those structures supporting them, hence the untenable growth of the school system’s reach.
- “The case for conservative positions” (November 13, 2012) — Since the election, the onslaught of pundits calling for conservatives to abandon social issues and take up economic ones has been almost constant. You can’t untangle those spheres from each other, though, so such banter is misguided at best.
The makeup of our families invariably affects the economic well-being not just of those specific families, but of whole communities and society at large. Social and economic factors work together to promote or inhibit human flourishing. This is simply reality, and to neglect that reality is to neglect the cultural mandate given to us in scripture.
- “Seek the welfare of the city” (November 20, 2012) — We get caught up in making big ripples in the big places. While there’s a place for that, as the U.S. becomes more and more post-Christian, it’s in the smaller spheres that real change will — and must — come first, as my friend Greg Fleming helped me see.
The danger of an untempered focus on the higher echelons of power is that it can lead to utopianism, an ideology antithetical to Scripture’s narrative, because it is based solely on man’s doing. Grand visions of society’s golden age demonstrate a dangerous ideology, Fleming told me.
- “The benefits of restraint” (December 4, 2012) — Sometimes a so-called “quiet” life is the path leads to virtue — and the most common good. Restraining our ambition for influence is often the wisest path before us.
Because with the drudgery of everyday life — paying the bills, feeding a family, maintaining a home, building a resume, gaining experience, becoming a better friend — come wisdom and prudence.
- “Stiff-arming parenthood” (December 11, 2012) — It’s become common for young couples to put off having kids for years. Many times that’s warranted, but is our culture adopting a posture that implies quality of life is solely dependent on our W-2?
So even if hard economic times befall us, even if a great deal of economic uncertainty meets us, and even if our kids aren’t guaranteed the material comforts we had growing up, is that reason not to bring new people into the world to share God’s love and the love of parents? Is that following God’s example of creation, even with the knowledge that we would mess things up?
Michael Reneau 