“The Addendum”

The situation

Dale is not a real man. He's a composite, built out of cases that come across our desk every month, and nothing here identifies anyone. Dale is thirty-eight. He drives a parts truck for a plumbing supply house, and he's been divorced about two years. He has his two children, a boy who is nine and a girl who is six, every other weekend and Wednesday nights. He kept the small house and the mortgage that came with it so they'd still have their own rooms. On his Sunday mornings he takes them to the eight-thirty service and then out for pancakes. That's the whole routine. That's his life. On Thursday the second, at ten after four, a message comes through the co-parenting app from the parenting coordinator assigned to their file. Attached is a proposed addendum to the parenting plan. Paragraph four reads: Neither parent shall enroll the children in religious services, instruction, or youth activities without the prior written agreement of the other parent. The note under it says the children's mother has raised concerns about anxiety around religious content. The email says, please sign and return by Monday the sixth at nine a.m. so we can present an agreed plan at the review. If he signs, Sunday belongs to somebody else's permission. If he doesn't, the coordinator files a report that he declined to cooperate, with the words ongoing conflict in it, and Dale knows exactly what that can cost a father. It can cost weekends.

The technique

Here's what's actually being run on him. In the book, William Green's Rules for Radical Christians, there's a move called the conduct relabel. Nobody tells Dale his faith is false. Nobody has to. They restate his conviction as a behavior. Religious activities, sitting in a list beside travel and extracurriculars. Once worship is conduct, it can be scheduled, limited, and traded like conduct, and the man who says no is no longer a father keeping his children in church. He is a parent with a compliance problem. Watch the second layer. One word: agreed. The email says agreed plan before anybody has agreed. That's manufactured consensus. The agreement is announced first so that the only thing left visible is the one man standing outside it. Third layer, the clock. Thursday afternoon to Monday morning, and one of those days is Sunday. A short deadline is not about scheduling. It's about deliberation. He can't read the page twice, call his pastor, sleep on it, or have anybody who loves him look at it with fresh eyes. The book says it plainly: raise the price of speech until silence looks like wisdom. And none of this requires a villain. The coordinator may honestly want peace in a hard file. The mother may be genuinely worried. The machine still works the same way. Peace is defined as the Christian moving.

The temptation

Thursday night the children are at their mother's. Dale sits at the kitchen table with the packet and a pen and a cold cup of coffee, and the house is very quiet, and that's when the reasonable voices start talking. First one: it's only a season. The kids are nine and six. Sign the page, get past the review, revisit it next year when things have cooled off. There's truth in that. Seasons do change, and a wise man picks his fights. The danger is that the page has no season written in it. It's written to last. Second one: God knows your heart. He does. You can pray at bedtime, read them Scripture, teach them yourself, and no addendum on earth can reach that. True again, and that's exactly the trade being offered. Give up the gathered church, keep the private feeling. But Scripture says forsake not the assembling of ourselves together. A faith with no front door is easier to sign away the next time. Third one: don't put the children in the middle. Peace is the loving thing. Mostly true. But this peace is purchased by one parent surrendering, and children always learn which parent surrendered and what he surrendered. Fourth one: sign it and take them anyway, because nobody really checks. Maybe nobody does. But then your word is a lie with your signature under it, and the next report about you writes itself. Remember Daniel. The decree ran thirty days. Only a month. Only a season. And Daniel went into his house, and his windows being open toward Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, as he did aforetime.

Your move

Here is the counter, and it isn't a louder argument. It's different ground. Dale is not being asked to debate theology, and he is not being asked to fight his children's mother. He is being asked to sign a premise: that taking his children to worship is a scheduling preference, like soccer. Don't argue the paragraph. Deny the premise, courteously, in writing, and make the other side be the ones who put it on paper. So the first move is a reply in the co-parenting app, where everything is dated and kept, and it says this. I'll agree to anything that serves my children, but worship is a sincerely held conviction in our home. Please show me in writing what requires me to stop. Then one more line under it: I'm ready to sign the rest of the plan today. That line matters, because it proves he isn't the conflict. Second move: before Monday at nine, tell a brother and tell an elder. Say out loud, to two men who will ask you about it on Sunday, what you will sign and what you will not sign. A decision made alone at eleven at night is worth less than a decision made in front of witnesses, and pre-commitment is how you keep from folding at the table. Third move: let your own counsel read that page before you sign it. I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but the concepts have names you can ask about out loud. Sincerely held religious belief. Parental rights. A written request for accommodation. And a parenting coordinator is not a judge. Fourth move: be the easiest man in that file. Early for every exchange. Generous on every swap. Not one word against their mother where they can hear it. Make them write their report about a father they can't find anything else to say about.

Scripture & close

Deuteronomy chapter six, verses six and seven. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. That duty was given to the father. It was never given away, and it cannot be scheduled by somebody else's permission. Here's the takeaway. Sign nothing that renames your worship a scheduling conflict. This is the Family Mountain. If this is happening to you, Ask: rules for radical christians dot com, slash ask. Your first one is free. And to know which of the seven mountains you are standing on, take the free assessment at rules for radical christians dot com, slash start. Stand your ground. We'll see you on the wall.