Her beauty knew no vanity. She disdained the cheap, the tawdry, the make-believe. She loathed everything farcical and hypocritical. Her genuineness was transparent. She radiated reality. Life to her was neither a mummery nor a charade but a daily expression of untainted sincerity.
So, in a sense, there was utter simplicity. Not because of the absence of complexity, but because of the presence of unity, concord, integrity. Like the pure simplicity of an impartial judge whose verdicts have perfect harmony, though one defendant goes free and another goes to the gallows.
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One of my stereotypes of Germanic DNA (her maiden name was Mohn) is sauberkeit (cleanliness)! During the three years I lived in Germany, I saw part of what made my mother (and me) tick. The women, with pails and rags in hand, daily washed the stone steps leading up from the sidewalk to their front doors.
Never did she laugh more than when my father came home from being away for three weeks, or four weeks, or two weeks. It would be Monday night (since his meetings ended on Sunday evening). Daddy flew home in the afternoon. There was a special meal prepared. And at the table we would hear tales of the triumph of the gospel, and we would hear the new jokes that he had learned.
And not just in domestic settings. Once, on a deep-sea fishing trip in Florida, she hooked a seven-foot swordfish. The kind that cause boat captains to fly special flags as they dock. It took over an hour to reel it in, with everyone in the family taking turns at the reel. But it was her fish. Instead of having it mounted, she had salted steaks prepared and shipped to us on dry ice.
So the diverse excellencies of work and joy, laughter and labor, singing and diligence pervaded my growing up. The effect of that on me has been, I suppose, incalculable. Only God knows. But I am thankful.
But for all her competence, it never occurred to me to think that the manhood of my father and the womanhood of my mother were functionally interchangeable. Both were strong. Both were bright. Both were kind. Both would kiss me, and both would spank me. Both were good with words. Both prayed with fervor and loved the Bible. But unmistakably my father was a man and my mother was a woman. They knew it and I knew it. And it was not only a biological fact. It was more deeply a matter of God-given personhood and relational dynamics.
But she did what she had to do. She gave the law and she enforced it. I recall only once being whipped by this little woman with a belt. I skipped Sunday night church when I was about fourteen. That was a double offense. Delinquent attendance and deceit. What made this whipping so memorable is that I stood there like a stone, as if to say she could not hurt me. When she left my bedroom weeping, I felt low and despicable for treating her so badly.
And then there was that regrettable vote at our church on a Wednesday night when mother stood entirely alone. I mention this just to show the kind of backbone she had, even when it was not a matter of shepherding her son, but instead of standing for justice. Racial issues were explosive in Greenville in the early sixties. White churches were being visited by African Americans to expose the racism of the responses.
Perhaps one of the reasons I happily embraced the moral wisdom of my parents, including a high view of happy holiness and separation from worldliness, is that my mother was not mainly a lawgiver and law enforcer. She was mainly a tender, caring, merciful helper in my struggles. The biggest struggle was that I was paralyzed in front of any group where I had to speak. We are not talking here about butterflies of nervousness that people joke about. This was no joke.
Mother took me to a psychologist at one point. After some Rorschach tests, the psychologist hinted that the problem might be my mother. I thanked her, left the office, and never went back. I did not understand many things in those days, but I did understand one thing: My mother was the one person in the world who was patiently, tenderly, lovingly helping me through those terrible years. And I was not about to blame her for anything.
Her care for me never stopped till the day she died when I was 28. Letters. Letters. Letters. For example, the last letter she wrote to me was from the airplane heading for Israel on December 10, six days before she was killed in a bus accident outside Bethlehem. In the ninety days leading up to that last letter, when I had just arrived in Minnesota, she wrote me fifty pages (I still have them) of news, encouragement, and advice.
I know God better because my mother embodied, with seamless authenticity, both an unwavering sense of right and wrong mingled with merciful tenderness. She was a lawgiver, and a law enforcer, and a gospel-saturated sage. How else will a child ever be prepared to know the true God of Scripture?
The only way to find happiness is by learning the true religion with which the Messenger of Allah (blessings and peace be upon him) was sent. Once a person finds this way, it will not matter if he sleeps in a hut or by the side of the road, and he will be content with a piece of bread, and he will be the happiest person in the world.
All around the world, from rich countries in North America to the poorest nations in Africa and Asia, men and women tend to differ from one another when it comes to their outlook on life, their family, their future and the world at large.
Women are somewhat happier than men with their lives overall, according to 38,000 interviews in 44 countries conducted by the Pew Research Center for the Pew Global Attitudes Survey. And, compared with five years ago, the women surveyed reported more often than men that they had made progress in their lives.
The global gender gap is not limited to happiness, for it also reflects differing life perspectives. Women show greater concern about issues that directly affect the family and home life. Men express more concern about issues outside the home and more optimism about the future. Men are happier with their family life and more optimistic about what lies ahead for their children.
In 37 of 44 countries, more men than women give cell phones a thumbs up. And, although strong majorities of women in most countries also think mobile phones have made life better, there are vocal dissenters. Two-in-five Japanese women and one-in-three British and Canadian women say cell phones have made life worse.
Men and women similarly like to surf the web. The only notable opposition to the internet is in Jordan, where more than half the women (54%) think it is a change for the worse, and in the United States, where a quarter (25%) of women criticize it. As with cell phone use, some of the strongest support for these new technologies, especially among men, is in Africa, where there is the least access to both the internet and cell phones.
Another technological achievement, birth control, is widely popular among both men and women. But in two-thirds of the countries surveyed (29 of 44) women are more likely to think that the ability to control reproduction is a change for the better. Men and women are most at odds over the pill and other such devices in Latin America. In Guatemala and Honduras, for example, two-in-three women support family planning, while one-in-four men oppose it.
When asked to reflect on specific aspects of their lives, women are inwardly focused, showing more concern about issues that affect them and their families. Men are more concerned with problems outside the home. For example, men in more countries mentioned the actions of the government and work-related difficulties when asked an open-ended question about the most important problem facing their family. Women in more countries volunteer health problems and difficulties with children and education. As might be expected, economic hardships are the most frequently cited concerns by both sexes.
Most people are dissatisfied with the way things are going in their country, and in half the nations surveyed women are the most dissatisfied. The greatest disagreements between the sexes are in France, where 39% of men but only 26% of women are satisfied with national conditions, and in the United States, where 47% of men are satisfied but only 36% of women agree.
When asked an open-ended question about what are the most important problems their nation faces, economics and politics are most often cited. But with regard to other issues, respondents loosely reflected gender-specific concerns. In a majority of societies, women mention troubles with children and education, health and the environment more often than men. Men single out political issues more than women do.
Regarding specific national problems, women are more likely to be worried about concerns closer to home. For example, in two-thirds of the countries surveyed (29 of 44), women are more likely than men to say moral decline is a very big problem. And in 31 of 44 nations studied, women are more likely than men to think that AIDS and other diseases are a very important national issue. At the same time, in a majority of countries (25), men are more likely than women to say corrupt political leaders are a major challenge for the country.
Men and women are equally worried about immigration, but women are much more concerned about emigration. In 29 of 44 countries women are more troubled than men about people leaving the country, possibly because women are the most likely to be left at home caring for the children, the parents and family farm or business while their husbands, sons and brothers go in search of work. This gender difference is particularly acute in countries such as Mexico, Pakistan and Bangladesh that have sent significant numbers of men to the industrial world.
Both men and women are dissatisfied with the state of the world. The only major disagreements between the sexes are in India, where men are much more unhappy about global affairs than women are, and in France and the United States, where women are more dissatisfied. As with their concerns about the state of the nation, the unhappiest people in North America and Western Europe are both men and women over the age of 50. 152ee80cbc