Cigarettes and beer: The heady perfume that transports me to my childhood



I remember the smell of cigarette smoke in the 1990s. It was the last time in America when you might smell cigarettes in a bar or a restaurant. It’s a smell that always reminds me of my childhood.

Nostalgia. Memories. The world that was. The world we saw, heard, and smelled.

Those were the smells of our dads. Cigarettes, beer, liquor, gasoline, sawdust, the garage. They make me smile.

I sound like an old-timer memorializing another era. But it was only yesterday, wasn't it?

Thirty years ago now.

Gas on pump two

My dad smoked. Marlboro Lights. I remember standing next to him in the gas station countless times. “Gas on pump two, and two packs of Marlboro Lights in the box.” That’s what he would always say. He would motion to the boxes with his hand or lean over the counter a little as he asked in a voice he never used at home.

He smoked in the car. The window cracked, his elbow on the door, the cigarette hanging right above the glass. I could smell it so faintly in the back seat. Just barely.

I remember late at night, on long road trips, the sight of that orange ember on the end of the cigarette in the dark night. The green lights of the dashboard and his hand on the steering wheel.

My dad didn’t smoke in the house. He would stand at the door to the garage. Crack it about six inches with his hand on the doorframe so the smoke wouldn’t come in. The smell of Stroh’s, cigarette smoke, and cold air. I remember standing in the kitchen talking to my dad right there. The smell of all those things together. That’s a memory.

Bacon and eggs

My grandparents smoked, too. Salems. They bought them in the carton. They smoked inside the house. We didn’t live too far away, and we visited them often. Sometimes we would stay over the weekend.

I remember my grandpa standing in the kitchen frying eggs in an electric frying pan, an ashtray on the counter and a burning cigarette turning to ash. The smell of syrup and bacon grease, smoke and coffee. Still in my pajamas.

My grandparents drank 7&7s at night. I would watch my dad sitting with my grandpa, smoking and drinking. The sweet smell of the 7-Up tainted by the unappealing, all-too-adult scent of Seagram's. The look of the sweaty glass. Cigarette smoke in the air.

These are old memories, places I haven't been to in years. Moments I can’t find in a picture or a video. But certain smells linger. They connect to some place behind my eyes, and I am there again. My grandpa and my dad. The smell of cigarettes.

Basics and Bud

My wife’s dad smoked. Basics. He worked out in the garage a lot. For her, it’s sawdust mixed with the smell of Basics and the faint aroma of Bud Light. Those are her memories, her dad. I knew my wife in high school. I remember walking through that garage and saying a quick “hi” to her dad as he stood back there behind his workbench.

Those were the smells of our dads. Cigarettes, beer, liquor, gasoline, sawdust, the garage. They make me smile. Our dads; they seem so big when we are little. They seem so grown and so old.

I am his age now. Do I loom so large over my son? Those smells felt so familiar, yet so strange and unappealing at the same time. Beer and cigarettes don’t sound good when you are little kid, but they are the smell of your dad.

My dad always smoked when he was working on some home improvement project. I close my eyes and I can see him putting all his weight on a screwdriver with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Muttering profanities under his breath, cursing the cheap screws.

My son won’t have the same scent memories that I do. His grandfather doesn’t smoke in the kitchen over a pan of fried eggs. His dad doesn’t request the smoking section when we go out to eat. There aren’t any smoking sections any more. Some of his memories will be the same as mine, but not these. Those scents are from another time.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em

Yeah, we all know that cigarettes aren’t the healthiest thing in the world. I’m sick of hearing about it. I’m starting to think there are a lot worse things than a pack of butts, if we are being honest.

I’ve become anti-anti-smoking.

Those scent memories that still hang deep in my nose remind me of being a kid and looking up at my dad. How he held his cigarette between his fingers and how he brought it to his lips. Feeling so little and like nothing would ever happen to me because my dad would always protect me. Like everything would always be OK. I miss the smell of cigarettes.

Dress like the father you want to be



The modern world is a busy place — especially if you're a father.

On top of your regular job, you've got all the different jobs that come with having kids: chauffeur, chef, waiter, teacher, doctor.

Your average mother and father in 1964 dressed better than your average mother and father in 2024. The fertility rate was higher then, too. Coincidence?

To stay on top of all this, a lot of dads put family first — and themselves a distant second. Any time we spend doing something for ourselves that doesn’t seem absolutely necessary feels selfish or frivolous.

Don't sweat it

Often one of the first things to go is regular exercise. Hence the term "dad bod." The irony here is that in the long run, taking care of your health is one of the best things you can do for your family.

Clothes take a back seat as well. Look respectable for work, if you have to. But dressing for dad duty should be strictly utilitarian. And yet, like exercise, taking pride in your appearance can also make you a better father.

Sure, you've got more important things to do than shop or agonize over which shade of khakis to wear. And setting aside selfish concerns is an important part of growing up and becoming a parent.

But you can still get your kids to their 11th sports practice of the week and put a little effort into what you wear.

Certain expectations

The past is a helpful guide for discerning what is, and isn’t, frivolous. What did parents do in the not-so-distant past? What was normal?

Well, dressing decently was certainly normal. Your average mother and father in 1964 dressed better than your average mother and father in 2024. The fertility rate was higher then, too. Coincidence?

Men shaved every morning, wore pressed shirts, leather shoes, and sport coats. Women wore makeup, did their hair, wore dresses and heels. Not every single day, of course, but far more often than not.

Proper grooming was the minimum standard for functioning adults. Society had certain expectations, and it was your job to meet them, and in meeting them, you ended up better off yourself because looking good makes you feel good.

Hair shirt

I talk to other fathers and something I hear a lot is guilt at the prospect of spending time and energy on clothes. Prioritizing dressing well — something that feels less necessary for the good parent — feels wrong.

It may only take an extra 20 to 30 minutes a day to make a massive change in your personal appearance, but those 20 to 30 minutes can seem utterly indispensable when the 2-year-old is barreling toward the white couch with a fistful of crayons or the 6-year-old just gouged a big hole in the drywall getting his bike out. It feels like taking that time for yourself is selfish or wrong.

That feeling isn’t right. It’s not selfish or wrong to make yourself presentable for the day. But many good parents still feel it anyway.

A big part of getting over this unreasonable guilt trip is reframing, and correctly understanding, what the bare minimum actually is.

Slob story

The bare minimum isn’t doing nothing and looking like a slob all day. No. The bare minimum is 20 to 30 minutes getting ready for the day. The bare minimum is looking decent.

That comes close to what the norm was until just a few decades ago. That time allowance every morning would not be shocking to our grandparents. You can take that time as a parent.

One of the great struggles of being a parent is balancing our love for our children with the obligations we have to ourselves.

On the job

That sounds all hippy-dippy, I know, but it’s really not. If you are pointlessly miserable, you are not going to be the best parent you can be. If you look like a slob, you are not going to feel good about yourself. Some amount of misery and unpleasantness is expected in life. That’s the nature of this world. But unnecessary misery is another thing. It’s pointless.

Being a parent means you have an important job. It doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to care about yourself anymore.

You are allowed to dress nicely even when surrounded on all sides by tiny marauding savages. In fact, you might say that's when it's most important to do so. Being able to roll up your sleeves and roughhouse while also serving as a beacon of civilized adulthood — isn't that the essence of fatherhood?

Too busy to keep a journal? That's why you should keep a journal



I write in a journal every night.

Well, I try to write in a journal every night. “Try” being the key word. Saying that I write in a journal every night is somewhat of an aspirational statement. I hope that by saying it, I will end up actually doing it.

Kids say the funniest things. Sometimes, that’s all I write down. These years are only so long, and I don’t want to forget.

But I don’t. I never fulfill the promise. I always screw up. I miss days all over. I work too much. I don’t get done until right before dinner. Then, we eat and put the kids to bed.

At that point, I’m beat so I pour another cup of coffee and get back to work. Then, of course, I forget to write until I am lying in bed, and by that point, it’s too late.

My life is too busy to write every night. And tragically enough, that’s why I should write every night.

To the lighthouse

We all keep a journal for different reasons. I keep one to remember things I don’t want to forget. For some reason, writing down what happened helps me remember.

And even if I can’t recall it right away, after rereading what I wrote down all those years ago, a switch is triggered in my mind, and all of a sudden, the memories come rushing back. All I needed was a little lighthouse to get me to the shore. That’s what my journal is. I’m building little lighthouses on the pages so one day I can find my way back.

Sometimes, I sit at my desk and flip through the pages. I read an entry from years ago. March 20, 2019. That little lighthouse leads me back to that memory hidden in the dark corner of my mind. I’m there again.

Take 10

The next entry on the following page is five months later. My God. Why didn’t I write? What happened? I don’t remember anymore. There are fleeting images and events, but I can’t put a date to them. Was that 2019 or 2018? Or 2020? Where did my memories go?

They are there, I know they are. But I can’t find my way back. I’m lost. Why didn’t I write? Just 10 minutes here and there. That’s all I needed to do. I was too busy.

Kids say the funniest things. I write down a lot of those. Mispronounced words. Hilarious questions. Disturbingly insightful comments that only kids seem to make because they have no filter and their minds are free to wonder about anything they choose.

Sometimes, that’s all I write down. These years are only so long, and I don’t want to forget.

Built to spill

A journal isn’t only about documentation of memories for future reference. There’s something therapeutic about writing it down. Take a pen and paper out of the top drawer. Sit there, and write. Spill it all out. Don’t hold back. There’s no one watching. No one listening. You can be who you are. Don’t be afraid.

Sometimes, we need to get something out. Some people like to talk things out. But no one ever tells everything. We all keep the most tender parts hidden. But writing in that paper journal is our chance to bleed it out of us.

And after we do it, we feel better in some way. It’s therapeutic. We take part of our heart, put it onto paper, then close the cover, and slide it back in the bottom drawer. There we go. Take a deep breath, exhale.

The pen is mightier

Writing it all down isn’t like typing in some word processing program, either. It’s different. Yes, it takes longer, but that’s not really it. It’s that it’s personal. Truly personal.

You hold the pen against the paper. These things are real physical things you are grabbing with your hand. You write the words in the handwriting that is only yours. You yourself are spilled all over the open journal.

One day when you die and someone finds what you wrote, they will know it is yours by the handwriting that died with you. Those pages remain. They linger. Those pages of confession hang around after we are gone. Unless we burn them, of course. And that’s OK, too. The act of writing itself is enough.

It’s a little old-timey, in truth. It’s a bit of a lost practice. Now, we are either all so busy, don’t want to be old-fashioned, or think our endless stream of photos on our smartphones do the trick. They don’t.

It doesn’t really make sense why they don’t; a picture is worth a 1,000 words, right? But they don’t. The private journal — offline, away from the cloud, handwritten, secret. Something human and so personal. Something that can’t live on the internet.

There is no irony in your journal, no hot take, no condescension. It’s you. Truly you and nothing else. In our world of performative irreverence, the mask of social media is always tied on tight; a journal is a last stand of honesty. A catalog and a memorial of who we really are, deep down with nowhere left to hide.

I need to write in my journal more.

This Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for the greatest adventure



The unmoored young man can disappear for days or weeks at a time and move as it suits him. He can throw himself into barroom brawls or start them, testing his knuckles and chin. He can grow a wild beard or shave his head, waste time on pet causes, sample one too many whiskies, and risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss.

He can take such risks and liberties because no one and nothing really depend on him.

While his lifestyle has been greatly romanticized and is in many ways now incentivized, the Western ronin likely has no idea that true adventure begins when man sets anchor in truth and love — when he commits to God, to a woman, to children, and to a place.

When roaming, it's easy to intellectualize about starting a family but impossible to understand that when committing to a person for life and then together bringing little people into the world or adopting, your surface area as a human will vastly increase, exposing you both to multiplied risk, reward, suffering and joy. The corresponding responsibility is spiritually enriching. Nothing else compares.

This Thanksgiving, I thank God for the adventure of a lifetime; for the wonderful responsibility to and temporary guardianship over immortal souls; and for the worthwhile challenge of standing my ground by my wife's side until death do us part.

I pray that those solipsistic youth now adrift may similarly come to know such blessings.

The trouble is, however, that there are forces at work trying to preclude a great many from embracing them.

Gender ideologues, pharmacists, and surgeons have set about the sterilization and mutilation of children across the country, all but guaranteeing that the victims will spend their lives roaming. De-populationists and other anti-natalists have fed young people propaganda, promoting a culture of death and dissuading them from starting families. Kept in business by a eudaemonistic culture that promotes freedom from responsibility, abortionists, such as those who helped enrich the woman President Joe Biden recently awarded the presidential medal of freedom, have slain tens of millions of babies who could have loved, been loved, and starred in countless adventures.

When asked whether the attack on the family is a coordinated effort or just a confluence of dark forces that look like they're working in concert, Dale Ahlquist, the president and co-founder of the Society of G.K. Chesterton, told Blaze News earlier this year, "Well, let's go back to the Holy Family."

"How did the [Holy Family] begin? With Satan trying to kill it, all right. Herod sends his soldiers to kill all the babies in Bethlehem. So here are the forces of evil at work, first on the Holy Family and then on the rise of the normal family. It is an evil act," said Ahlquist.

It should surprise no one that the institution that evil appears most keen to destroy is that most worth pursuing, building, and protecting.

I pray that our readers enjoy great success in their respective adventures and that their anchors hold.

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Fatherhood and the death of self



This year, I became a father.

They say that becoming a parent changes everything — and I agree. In the first moments that I held my son after he emerged from the safety of his mother's womb, I thought to myself, "My life is over."

When I take for myself, I flourish. But when I give up myself, my family flourishes.

But that is good — and for that, I am thankful.

Western culture today prioritizes self-actualization and the liberation from external influence. Subjectivity, personal feelings, and internal perceptions of identity are propped up as chief goods. And the dominant narrative we are told is this: I am the author of my life — and the story is all about me. My happiness is the most important currency in my life. If anything hinders my version of the good life, which I get to define, then I must immediately erase it from my life.

To have children is the ultimate way to fight back against this poisoned worldview. It is to embrace death of self.

Parenting, as I have experienced in my short 3.5 months and as I have witnessed in the lives of my friends, requires an identity shift. Parenting is not something that I do. Rather, I am a father.

But I am not a father in the margins of life. I am first a husband and father — and the rest of life is crafted around those vocations.

The compass that guides me is not powered by my personal feelings and desires. Instead, I am motivated to provide for and to protect my family, to serve and to lead them, and to pour myself out for them because I want them flourish.

When I take for myself, I flourish. But when I give up myself, my family flourishes. My self loses — but my family wins. Self-sacrifice and others-centered love is the name of the game.

In parenting, this is intuitive. The survival of our children requires us to spend years meeting their every need, sacrificing me for them. They would literally die if we did not prioritize them. The journey of parenthood, therefore, is an invitation to death.

But there is good news. Not only will embracing the death of self lead to a more fulfilling life — one in which we discover that true joy is found not in self-indulgence but in self-giving love — but it leads to life itself. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus says, "Whoever pursues after his own life to preserve it will lose it; but whoever loses [his own life], he will be given life" (Luke 17:33, my translation).

Ultimately, it is my faith that motivates me to embrace the death of self. To be a Christian, after all, means accepting Jesus' invitation to follow him into death and through it to resurrection life.

This thanksgiving, I thank God that he called me into fatherhood and gifted me the end of adolescence. He has trusted my wife and me to embrace the death of self to care for His son.

There is no escape hatch, and there is no going back. And for that, I thank God every day.

The navy knit tie: Dependable, versatile, and anti-fragile



So you want to start wearing a tie.

You’ve tossed your hoodies, and you are wearing button-ups these days. You even throw on a sport coat every once in a while. It feels good.

The navy knit tie is the anti-fragile tie for the father of young kids. It’s the fabric and the color.

You are dressing better than 95% of the guys in America in 2024, but you want to go further. You see those old photos, and you want to look like those guys.

You want to wear that mythical garment that was, once upon a time, a staple in every man’s wardrobe. Even the men who worked dirty jobs during the week had ties for church on Sunday and special occasions.

As women wore heels, men wore ties. It wasn’t in the ancient past. It was just yesterday, in the 20th century. But since then, our society has become increasingly informal, and ties have faded from the scene.

You want to wear a tie, but you don’t know where to start. It’s a small piece of fabric, but it’s a big step if you didn’t grow up wearing one. People will notice. It will stick out to some degree. You want to wear a tie for yourself. You aren’t trying to be a show-off or grab attention. You are hesitant.

A beautiful patterned silk is lovely. Ancient madder is luxurious. A bright and bold regimental tie is quintessentially preppy. A kelly-green motif tie is joyous. One can’t help but smile at a light and fluttery bird motif.

But they are all too much for you at this point in your style development. When you imagine wearing all those brilliant ties, an image of you wearing a neon sign around your neck that reads “LOOK AT MY TIE” appears in your mind. You don’t want that. You want to ease in.

So what do you do? Buy a navy knit tie.

A navy knit tie solves the problem perfectly. It’s quiet and simple. There are no stripes or figures that dance around your chest.

The hand is unostentatious. A navy knit doesn’t have any kind of glittery sheen. It doesn’t feel delicate or overly formal. If an elegant micro-pattern feels fine, a knit tie feels coarse. A knit reminds us of a thick rope, something almost utilitarian.

There is a deep texture to it. You can practically see through the fabric of a crunchy knit if you get close enough. When you hold a fine ancient madder, you use your fingers. When you grab onto a knit, you use your whole palm.

A knit tie bridges the gap of formality and informality. Any kind of tie is formal in 2024, but the knit tie dresses itself down. It’s a tie, but it can read as an informal one. A knit gives you plausible deniability in the way a bold motif simply cannot. It doesn’t scream out. It is quiet.

All of this is perfect for the guy who is new to menswear and doesn’t want to stand out. It’s also perfect for the guy who has been wearing ties for years. He doesn’t necessarily want to stand out, either. Clothes aren’t about shock and attention. The beautiful, quiet subtlety of the knit is useful for all men.

And the navy knit is one of my sartorial MVPs. I rely on it all the time. It’s supremely flexible. It works great with a wide variety of shirts and jackets. In many ways, with a navy knit you don’t even need to think. It’s there for you when you need it. When in doubt, I reach for my navy knit.

Maybe you are a father with young kids. They are always jumping on you, pulling on your clothes, and asking to ride on your back. This is no place for a tie, right?

Wrong. The knit tie is kid-friendly. With the more delicate ties you often end up concerned about creases and folds. If your tie falls behind the cushion of the couch and stays there for three weeks, it’s going to end up with some terrible wrinkles and creases.

But not the knit tie. You can crumple up a knit, slip it under your mattress, and wear it the next day. No one will know. Your toddler can pull on it with his little hands, and no damage will be done.

The navy knit tie is the anti-fragile tie for the father of young kids. It’s the fabric and the color. The crunchy, dynamic texture combined with dark, forgiving navy makes the navy knit tie the tie that every new father should buy. J. Press makes a great one.

The navy knit is everything you can ask for. It is versatile, subtle, understated, durable, and classic. It’s the perfect tie to help ease you into the wonderful world of neckwear. Whether you're a young guy, an old head, a father, or a bachelor, it won't let you down. Start with a navy knit, and go from there.

How a beloved children's cartoon turns fathers into mothers — and what the Bible says about it



As the Western world catches collective amnesia around the profile of the historic father, we’ve begun to move past portrayals of fathers as the bumbling idiot of shows in the 1980s and 1990s to a new kind of engaged, empathetic, and present father.

There’s only one problem with this new ideal father: He embodies almost all of the elements of the traditional mother, purged of the essence of elements from the historic father.

The poster child for this new depiction can be found in the mega-popular kids program "Bluey." The dad, Bandit, is seen as a constantly nurturing, always-present playmate to his two daughters, Bluey and Bingo. He’s so present, in fact, that fans of the show often joke about when Bandit finds time to work, and in the show, it’s clear that the mother has less time to play than the dad.

Our culture LOVES this depiction of fatherhood. It empties the father character of all the elements of the traditionally masculine father we’ve grown uncomfortable with, and at the same time, it provides freedom for the mother to get out in the world and explore her individual passions.

Everyone wins, right? Well, it depends.

God created the concept of male and female to create the kind of family that would maximize fruitfulness and multiplication and that over generations of collective effort would subdue and rule the created order.

It depends on whether there’s an objective ideal of fatherhood and motherhood, and if there is, then symbolic depictions seeking to reverse these objective profiles are problematic.

Embracing these kinds of portrayals, especially in a highly symbolic medium like in a cartoon, will go a long way in shaping our intuition around the essence of these roles.

Now today, almost no one thinks there are objective ideals to these archetypes, and if they are right — and they personally resonate with the father, mother, and daughter depictions in "Bluey" — then everything I’m about to say will be dissonant and probably offensive.

So let me say from the outset that, even in the conservative Christian world, my position is a tiny minority, maybe less than 1%. So feel free to stop reading if you’re getting triggered.

Let me lay out three premises I believe about this topic, and if you disagree with any of these, you’ll likely disagree with my conclusion.

  1. Masculinity and femininity are not social constructs or primarily biological concepts but are family concepts designed to create a certain dynamic and to construct a highly functional multigenerational family team.
  2. The Bible presents meta descriptions of masculinity/fatherhood and femininity/motherhood through symbolic characters primarily rooted in the story of Genesis.
  3. Meta depictions of these roles are good and necessary to give culture at large something concrete to aim at even, though all of us as individuals will find some elements of these roles dissonant with our desires or even our innate wiring.

I derive my first premise from the theological principle of first mention. When God created male and female, he actually revealed the purpose for gender, and that was to create a certain kind of family team.

“So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth" (Genesis 1:27-28 ESV).

God created the concept of male and female to create the kind of family that would maximize fruitfulness and multiplication and that over generations of collective effort would subdue and rule the created order. Genesis 1 does not yet give us content around the different male and female roles, only that male and female combine to achieve the purposes of the family.

The second premise is that Genesis gives meta descriptions of the various parts of the family, and these meta roles can be seen in the Hebrew names given to the people.

"Adam" = Man or Humanity
"Eve" = Giver of Life

But since we’re focusing here on fatherhood, the most important person comes when we meet a man named Abram.

"Abram" = Exalted Father

Abram is literally described in our language as a meta father. As he progresses in this role, his name is elevated again to Abraham, or father of many nations.

One struggle that Greek-minded people often have is to think "meta" means ideal or model. Abram is not the perfect father. He’s the meta father. We understand the elements of how God interacts with both the specific father Abram and the concept of fatherhood through the Genesis narrative.

I’ve learned that this idea is highly intuitive to people native to the Middle East but endlessly confusing to Western thinkers. That’s why of the three “Abrahamic religions,” Christianity is the one least influenced by Abraham’s depiction of fatherhood — and this is the West’s primary source of fatherhood confusion. Jesus, in one of his parables, referred to Abraham as “Father Abraham,” but — besides a particularly annoying youth group song — Christians do not think of Abraham through the lens of fatherhood. We see him more as an individual historic man of faith.

This lack of a symbolic depiction of fatherhood has untethered the concept of fatherhood and masculinity from anything objective and leaves us vulnerable to following the ever-changing depictions of fatherhood and masculinity invented by modern cultural sensibilities.

This brings me to my third premise and back to "Bluey."

I first heard of red flags in "Bluey" from my two teenage daughters, who watched an episode after hearing from so many Christian families who loved the show — and they immediately saw what was happening.

You might think that 'Bluey' is a wonderful depiction of fatherhood, but please don’t be naive about the power of symbolic depictions, especially ones aimed at children.

Their first statement was something like, “They treat their dad like a plaything.”

I then watched one three-minute clip on YouTube from a different episode and saw what they were so alarmed by.

There are hundreds of interesting elements of fatherhood that one can glean from studying how God interacts with the meta father (Abram), but I’m pretty sure Bandit is in no way tethered to this understanding of fatherhood.

And this tethering is not hard to do. When I’m in the Middle East, I see it everywhere. All the good and toxic depictions of fatherhood I see from those native to this region I recognize as coming from these Abrahamic stories. It’s increasingly hard to see in the Christian West.

We need to get into the details of the beautiful biblical balancing of the life-giving presence of motherhood and the training, territory expanding, and leadership of fatherhood.

But let me say one more thing that concerns me.

One reaction I’ve received is from people who think it’s absurd to criticize a cartoon. You might think that "Bluey" is a wonderful depiction of fatherhood, but please don’t be naive about the power of symbolic depictions, especially ones aimed at children.

We spend almost one-third of our lives experiencing symbolic depictions in our dreams, and most of our entertainment is created by watching stories filled with meta characters and what they symbolize. Symbols tend to bypass our conscious awareness and form our intuitions about the nature of truth and reality. These symbols include things like numbers, colors, animals, objects, shapes, and storylines. The Bible is full of these kinds of symbols, and most Western Christians are totally unaware of their power. When Jesus says things like “how many baskets did we pick up” after the feeding of the 5,000 and 4,000 and the disciples reply, "12" and "seven," he expected his disciples — and us — to immediately get the symbolic significance of what he did. But we don’t.

And in the same way, creating a daughter named Bluey using the color blue is totally lost on us. It goes right past our conscious awareness. If we do think about it, we think it’s cool that they’re reversing the gender stereotype of colors. We’re playing checkers with those who are playing chess, and we’ve been checkmated over and over again.

Editor's note: This essay was originally published by Jeremy Pyror on his Substack and was republished with permission.

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