Dear Professor Theophilus:

Please, please write about this! How old is too old to stay living with your parents? I guess what I really mean is, is it normal to feel this enormous desire to venture out on your own, even if you love your family a lot and want to maintain a close relationship with them? I'm almost 21, finishing my third year of university, and I still live with my parents. I have a part time job and scholarships to pay for school, so it's not like I'm totally dependent on them. But my attempts to suggest the idea of me moving out haven't gone over very well. I think they're hoping I'll stay at home until I get married, but I'm not even sure I want to get married, at least not for several years. I want to be open to whatever God calls me to do.

What do you think?

REPLY:

You ask two good questions. Which one do you want me to answer first -- the apparent question, or what I strongly suspect is the real one?

The apparent question is, "Now that I'm an adult, is there anything wrong with wanting to move out of my parents' home and become independent?" What is it, though, that makes me suspect you're not really thinking about independence? Remember what independence would mean: You wouldn't depend on your parents for rent, groceries, health insurance, college tuition or anything. Right now, the salary from your part- time job goes toward tuition. If you became truly independent, you'd have to work full-time just to support yourself, and you'd have to find other means of covering tuition -- probably college loans. You say nothing about assuming these responsibilities. So your real question seems to be, "Now that I'm an adult, am I right to demand that my parents support me in an apartment somewhere, instead of in the family home?"

Now perhaps I'm wrong and you're thinking all sorts of responsible things that you didn't say in your letter. If so, I hope you'll forgive me. And I hope that's the case. But I don't think it is, so I'll continue.

The answer to the first question is "Yes, of course!" It's normal to want to assume adult responsibilities (if that's really what you mean), and these days it's rather heroic to relieve your parents of the burden of supporting you while you're still finishing college.

The answer to the second question is "No, of course not!" Your Mom and Dad aren't obligated to subsidize a life of bogus independence, in which you would actually remain dependent on them, but enjoy an adult's freedom to live outside their home, outside their gaze.

By the way, the law sees things the same way I do. As an adult, you have the legal right to assume responsibility for yourself -- financially and otherwise -- and your parents are no longer legally responsible for supporting you. If they do continue to help you out, they haven't any duty to do it on your terms.

I haven't yet addressed the background issues. Your letter hints that you view your parents as overprotective. They may be; some parents are. Suppose your view is correct. Still, you're already in your third year of college. It would be mighty hard to finance life and college on your own, and for what? To live under the rules of your parents' house for another year or two wouldn't be so bad, and if it seems to you that it would be, perhaps you're not as grown up as you think. Strings are attached to every privilege in life, and the difference between an adult and a child is that the adult has recognized that true freedom lies in the glad acceptance of responsibility. Growing up doesn't mean getting your way more, but getting it less.

Besides, if my guess is right -- if what you really want isn't real independence but faux independence -- then maybe your parents aren't so overprotective after all. Maybe, with the advantage of years, they've merely sized things up better than you have. Give them a chance.

Grace and peace,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

ZETA STRANGE, BETA PUZZLED

Dear Professor Theophilus:

I am looking for some insight into the strange behavior of a guy I know. My friends and I are baffled by it.

A friend of mine, call her Beta, works at a restaurant. She's pretty. Two years ago she started giving rides to work to another guy who worked there, call him Zeta. After a year of this, he started attending a class at her church and cut back on drugs. He now says that he was close to becoming Christian at the time, but only for emotional reasons. For a while he toyed with the ideas of Kierkegaard and Barth and said maybe God was beyond reason, then he heard a talk about hell and got more serious -- how serious I don't know. When Beta referred him to her pastor, Zeta and the pastor met a few times, then the pastor referred him to me, because he had philosophical objections and I can talk philosophy with him. We've discussed immortality of the soul, empirical rationalism, whether a separate power of intellect is needed to explain human knowledge, evolution, etc.

After talking with me for some time, he eventually said that he was happy as an atheist. Concerning the parable about giving pearls to pigs, he said "Yes, I am the pig." He never expressed these thoughts to Beta; what he tells me now is that he just "played convertible" with her, with the pastor and with me, "to see why we believe and how we approach converting someone". He's a writer, and says he loves characters and understanding why people (religious people) believe the way they do.

I'm still debating with him because I'm not convinced that he is really the "pig" of the parable. The more I do, though, the more hardened he seems. Since I've been hanging out with Beta and her friends, he also seems to be avoiding Beta.

All signs say Zeta just likes Beta and is using Christianity to get to her. I'd believe that, except he doesn't give that impression when you talk to him or see him with Beta. He seems asexual, if you know when I mean. Beta says she didn't think he even viewed her as a female.

You're awesome at unraveling stuff like this, so I thought I would send you the story and see what you think.

REPLY:

It isn't clear what your friend Zeta is up to. He says he's been playing games with you and Beta, but something about that doesn't ring true to you. We can rule out two possibilities immediately.

Possibility one is that he's not playing games with you, even though he says he is. We can rule out this possibility, because it's incoherent. After all, to say "I'm just playing games" when you aren't playing games is to play a kind of game -- isn't it now?

Possibility two is the only game he's playing is the one he admits to playing -- pretending to be "convertible" in order to collect material for his writing. We can rule out this possibility too, first because it doesn't explain his behavior with Beta, second because there are a lot less time-consuming ways for a writer to find out "how religious people act." I don't buy his line that he's a writer.

Here's my guess. He came to church with Beta not because he was interested in church but because he was interested in her. Once he got there, however, he became confused about his own motives. He probably doesn't know whether he has a real religious interest or not. However, he has so far successfully avoided a real encounter with Jesus Christ by having clever conversations with you about abstruse subjects.

The bottom line is that he's been playing games not only with you and with Beta, but also with himself, and he is a little confused about which game he's playing. Beta needs to stop missionary dating, and you need to learn how to recognize smokescreens.

By the way, I think you need to rethink your idea about "asexual" relationships. Any relationship between a man and a woman is affected by the difference of sex, even if it isn't romantic. That's one of the reasons why such relationships so easily become romantic -- even when they aren't supposed to.

I hope all this is helpful.

Grace and peace,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

THE CITY OF GOD

Dear Professor Theophilus:

I'm completing my M.A. in History at a state university, and set to begin my Ph.D. next fall. It is my desire to become a history professor and to use my position for the glory of God. I am thinking about switching my subfield to intellectual history so I can be more open in engaging issues with theological implications, such as natural law theory, religion in America and the impact of continental social thought in American social science. Can you please give me your take on this and where the real need lies with Christian historians? My desire is to influence students and colleagues as much as possible, and I sense that intellectual history can afford me a better opportunity than where I am now.

REPLY

It's good to hear from you, and I'm encouraged that you want to serve God through your scholarship.

Are you called to intellectual history, as you suspect? Well, you might be. If you are, you'll find that the best opportunity for you to glorify God will be in that subfield of history rather than in another one. But I wouldn't say that intellectual history provides the best opportunity for every Christian historian to glorify God. As Paul said, there is one body, but many gifts.

I suspect that for Christian historians the greatest need at present lies in rethinking how to write history. Secular intellectual assumptions lead to a certain way of writing it; isn't it plausible that Christian intellectual assumptions might lead to a different way? St. Augustine certainly thought so. Read what he says about history in his great work The City of God.

If you do think you are called to intellectual history, one thing I would urge you to study is the intellectual history of historical scholarship itself -- in other words, how Christians and non- Christians have written history.

Grace and peace,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

MIRACLES

Dear Professor Theophilus:

I'm reading C.S. Lewis's book Miracles. Maybe you can help me with a question he raises in the context of whether there must be "something else" besides the observable universe. He says that if you believe the universe evolved out of pre-existing elements in accordance with physical laws, then you're stuck with a deterministic universe: The way things are is the only way they could have been. If we can't accept that, he says, then we have to make room for the possibility of something else acting beyond the universe of matter, energy and causation. My question is whether his argument still works in light of the way physicists now talk about quantum states and probabilities. Not that I understand what they're talking about -- it just leaves the impression that matter, energy and physical laws are based on chance occurrences, rather than physical laws. Does this make Lewis's argument for "something else" less compelling?

REPLY:

Lewis himself had to modify his argument after criticism from the Christian philosopher G.E.M. (Elizabeth) Anscomb. With another slight modification I think that Lewis's argument still holds. What he is really trying to criticize is naturalism -- the view that material nature is all there is. Now it's true that not all physical theories are deterministic; for example, quantum theory isn't. On the other hand -- here I'm borrowing from the philosopher and mathematician William A. Dembski -- in all varieties of naturalism, the only allowable explanations for an event are either (a) chance, (b) physical law or (c) chance and law combined. None of these three explanations leave room for (d) responsible, intelligent agency -- decisions for which explanation calls for referring to the purposes of the agent.

When a naturalist is confronted by agency, he tries to show that it's an illusion -- that if you look closely enough into a decision, you'll see that it's just another example of chance, law or chance and law combined. Examples:

"You thought you made a 'decision' to kick the dog, but the real cause of your act was random events in your brain cells" (chance)

"You thought you made a 'decision' to kick the dog, but the real cause of your act was your bad genes" (law)

"You thought you made a 'decision' to kick the dog, but the real cause of your act was your bad genes, triggered by the accident of a branch falling on your head just as the dog was walking by" (chance and law combined)

So it's still true that if responsible, intelligent agency is real -- that decision is not just an illusion -- there must be more to reality than law and chance; there must be more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the naturalist's philosophy.

Do we, in fact, believe that responsible, intelligent agency is real? Deep down, even the naturalist himself thinks that it is; after all, he believes that he intelligently, responsibly decided that naturalism is true!

We could stop there, but it gets even worse for the naturalist. If he did reach his naturalism by an intelligent and responsible decision, then naturalism is false, because naturalism excludes such decision. On the other hand, if naturalism is true, then his decision was an illusion; something made him think that naturalism is true. In that case, he ought to be wondering how he can trust his thoughts -- even the thought of naturalism's truth -- even the thought that his thoughts can't be trusted!

How's that?

Grace and peace,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

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If you have a question you'd like Professor Theophilus to consider for this column, please send it to asktheo@trueu.org. Please note, all questions that are selected for "Ask Theophilus" may be edited for clarity and privacy and become the property of Focus on the Family.