A Template
by Kathy Brown on January 12th, 2010 | 0 comments
Perhaps it is time to find out what our young people really believe. It is an interesting quest. The Christian church tends to adhere to a template that if you raise children going to Sunday school, shelter them from the influences of bad peers and instruct them with the stories in the Bible, they well “turn out” to be committed Christians. Evidence shows a very different outcome.
Already Gone: Why your Kids Will Quit Church and What You Can Do to Stop It, by Ham and Beemer, points out why attending Sunday school hasn’t been a very effective tool for promoting adult Biblical belief. It is apparent that, although children can recite the answers to Bible story questions, they do not build on a very deep foundation. Usually, if they answer “Jesus” or “it says so in the Bible” everyone grins from ear to ear. Even coaxing a very young one to proclaim they have asked “Jesus into their heart,” without a clue what that means once they get past the initial response, gives teachers and parents a grand sense of accomplishment. The fact that Jesus Himself did not demonstrate baptism until he was a full-grown adult does not seem to matter. Maybe it is time to consider whether the complexity of nurturing faith registers somewhere beyond the pat answers and rewarding the church’s own political correctness.
There is something to be said for protecting youngsters from those things that do not please God. However, as kids mature, they are confronted with a culture that is very contrary to the one they have at home and within their family’s fellowship. (Foundational Presupposition Chart) The pressures around them generally have the effect of planting doubt; privately, since this would be a huge deal if brought out in the open. When ill equipped to respond with more than a rote reply, they breathe in the worldview around them and attach it to one they were told to keep. Once they begin the process of living on their own, without a logical, well-thought out ideology, they conform to the one that seems to swallow them up.
There is no “formula” for parenting those God has put into our keeping. The freedom human beings are given to accept or reject the Truth is very precious, and it must be respected more and more as our children mature. The important task for those attending young ones is to challenge them to think about the ramifications of ideas, especially conflicting ones. Demonstrating the habits of Christianity is paramount. In addition, we must know how to encourage critical thinking and provide a platform for defending and refuting worldviews. That depends, of course, on our own ability to handle the Word of God and all it implies.
From Acts 17:16 - 17
"While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synogogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there."
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