Saw this yesterday and thought it was very appropriate for us. Beware the temptation of allowing embarrassement over who we were as younger Christians eat away at (what should be) our maturing thinking, and believing, today…
I recently ran into a woman who had taught me Sunday school as a child and was disconcerted to discover that she was not the simplistic thinker that as an adult I have taken her to be. I suspect that I had projected onto her the limitations of my own young self.
Perhaps when we think we are criticizing the narrow thinking of others, we are sometimes really just exposing the narrowness of perception of our past selves.
It occurs to me that it is precisely the fact that we are intent on teaching religion to the young that makes faith such a prime site for rebellion when emerging adults construct their own identities. As a peer reviewer for a publisher, I recently read the manuscript for a book that was an intellectual attack on Christianity. What struck me was that the sources for the skeptical views the author was commending were leading scholars, while the Christian beliefs were presented through recollections of what the author had heard various people say during his childhood.
Perhaps the most visceral reaction is the one that is rooted — unconsciously or otherwise — in embarrassment at our younger selves. This is hauntingly captured in the chorus of a Susan Werner song: “I’m sure that you remember I was weird in school / I’m sorry about Jesus and all that.” The fact that we enacted our faith in goofy ways as a teenager, however, should not discredit Christian belief as an adult option any more than the fact that we expressed our romantic desires in a cringe-worthy manner should permanently rule out love.
Christ calls us to become like children again. Counterintuitively, part of what this might mean is that there comes a time to get over our mocking, knowing, puncturing phase and learn to be true grown-ups. This is the maturity that once again allows us to proclaim truth in all simplicity, to be like children. To say it another way, true grown-ups can parent.
My students are often Christians who are old enough to mock mercilessly the people that gave of their time sacrificially to disciple them when they were young but who are not yet mature enough to be able to disciple others. I often find them quick-off-the-draw-ready with a forceful and sophisticated critique of most any traditional religious belief or practice.
They can be sadly flummoxed, however, by a simple request to explain what is true. If I wonder, “What are some problems with the doctrine of the atonement?” hands fly up all over the room, but if I straightforwardly ask, “What is the gospel?” the room falls strangely silent, and I find myself staring at rows of students quietly avoiding making eye contact.
To sketch what the gospel is would be to risk a rough draft that someone else would get the joy of critiquing; it would be to express a childlike faith; it would be to do the work of parenting.
— by Timothy Larsen