This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
Of Herds and Villages
Oct
15
2020
I was inspired to write this after reading a column in World magazine. That column had referenced the quote “It takes a village to raise a child.” and what stuck with me from the column is what it takes to make a village.
What does it take to make a village? It takes families.
For a healthy village – one that would do a good job in helping to raise a child – you need healthy families. “Healthy” as in emotional and social health, not physical health. What happens if your village is full of dysfunctional families? You wouldn’t want your child raised by that village.
I connect this to the concept of herd immunity. “Herd immunity” in the realm of diseases and vaccinations has to do with if a large enough percentage of a population is immune to a disease then the disease won’t spread throughout the population.
If you replace “disease” with “dysfunction” and “physical health” with “societal health” then that’s the picture I was getting in my mind of what I wanted to convey. If most of the families in the village are traditional families then the children will be “immune” to a lot of problems that befall society (plenty of citations out there, here’s one).
People want to live in a good neighborhood, but if they’re not trying to be a good family and also good neighbors, then it’s not going to stay a good neighborhood. It’s like the saying about traffic: you’re not stuck in traffic, you are the traffic.
You could keep going with this concept: what does it take to make a good family? and then what does it take to make a good whatever that answer was? Etc.
This was the inheritance of the sons of Zebulun according to their families, these cities with their villages.
Joshua 19:16
This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 2:04 pm and has been carefully placed in the Life category.
