Michael Frost
Appearances
Flightless Bird
Focus on The Family
We both grew up in New Zealand, conservative evangelical slash Pentecostal type Christianity. And both very familiar with Focus on the Family, aren't we, Shane?
Flightless Bird
Focus on The Family
For better or worse, mostly worse, not much better. And we lived in a time, I think, in New Zealand, kind of Christianity, when anyone with an American accent was immediately seen as very authoritative, very important and fancy and must be listened to. So like bringing in an American speaker was always like the pinnacle of what you wanted to happen in your church.
Flightless Bird
Focus on The Family
And Focus on the Family was beaming into our homes via the radio. Good times for all.
Flightless Bird
Focus on The Family
Yeah, it's interesting. There was all this kind of paraphernalia that then grew up around this whole industry of biblical parenting and the biblical family. In the Christian bookstores, there was this piece of wood that was shaped like a whale, and it was called Winnie the Whale.
Flightless Bird
Focus on The Family
And it had verses scribed into the back of it, like, "'Spare the rod, spoil the child, and train up a child in the way they should go,' and so on." And it was designed for the smacking slash spanking. You hold with the tail and you hit the bottom with the head of the whale.
Flightless Bird
Focus on The Family
That kind of pressure is really well designed for generating compliance and obedience. And so that's why it gets used. That's why it gets used in parenting. And that's why it's been used so much in religion and in other forms of authoritarianism as well.
Flightless Bird
Focus on The Family
I will say one of the things you were not allowed to do that always stuck in my mind was touch a girl's hair on her head, I should clarify, because at the time it was James Dobson had this whole thing about how intimate touching hair is. And so if you start touching hair, then one thing will lead to another. Looking back, I'm like, he just had a bit of a hair fetish, didn't he?
Flightless Bird
Focus on The Family
Petting, strange word in New Zealand. What would we go with? Fondling, perhaps? Caressing? Oh, a bit of a grope. Groping? Probably. Bit of a grope. Yeah. I remember it stood out to me at the time because I was, even then I was kind of a little surprised by it. It was all about the devil will try and get you at your weak moments.
Flightless Bird
Focus on The Family
So he told a story of how he had an argument with his wife and then he was so mad that he went out for a drive in his car. And then while he was driving in his car, feeling angry about the argument he just had, an attractive woman in another car turned and looked at him. And he knew immediately she wanted to have sex with him.
Flightless Bird
Focus on The Family
And she turned the corner, and I think in his tale of this, clearly inviting him to follow her by turning the corner. And he had to choose in his weakest moment, the devil was trying to get him, whether or not he was going to follow this woman and have sex with her or not. I remember thinking at the time, just, gosh, goodness, that's very confident. Indeed.
Flightless Bird
Focus on The Family
Now looking back, I'm like, that's very weird because what would have happened if he had followed her, turned to the corner and driven down the road and whenever she got out of the car, he'd have got out and said, okay, then let's do it. And she would be like, what?
Flightless Bird
Focus on The Family
all kind of geared toward, I think now looking back, obedience was the paramount virtue. So like create compliant, obedient children who will obey God and you'll know they're obeying God if they obey their parents, obey their pastor, they do what they're told and if they are good. And that was kind of the big goal in many respects.
Flightless Bird
Focus on The Family
So I remember reading a James Dobson book called Life on the Edge, which was a book for young adults slash teenagers. It was the next layer of kind of, okay, you've been hopefully parented into compliance and obedience. And now that you're starting to emerge as a human being, we've got to make sure we reinforce that whole structure. It uses a lot of fear of like, will you make it or not?
Flightless Bird
Focus on The Family
Essentially like one of the big final pleas, are you going to make it to heaven? You've got to make sure you do everything you can in order to make it there. So stay in line, keep following the rules, keep being obedient and keep being compliant.