When my kids were small, the brutal murder of a family two doors down caused
us to seek out a family counselor. We knew that Shannon, our two-year-old, wouldn’t
remember it, but we were concerned about the event’s effects on Brendan, who was six.
After several weeks of getting to know us, the counselor gave us her advice. I remember
being nervous as we entered her office, bracing myself to hear all the ways I was
already messing up my son with my best efforts at being a mother.
The counselor didn’t criticize us; instead, she gave us some strategies for
helping Brendan deal with anxiety. She advised us to let him work out his fears
through play. “Don’t sweat the action figures” she said, looking directly at me. “Play
between ‘good guys and bad guys’ is one way children come to terms with the fact that
evil exists in the world but it doesn’t have to win. Playing Power Rangers won’t turn him
into an ax murderer. It helps him feel like he has some mastery over a dangerous world
when he joins the Red and Green Rangers in defeating Lord Zedd.” Keep up the karate
lessons, she told us, and continue making home a safe and loving place. When he gets
anxious, take it seriously.
“Oh, and one more thing,” she said gently, knowing that I was a pastor. “You’ll have to
think about this, but you might consider laying off the religion.”
What is a pastor supposed to do when a family counselor’s advice for a child is to “lay
off the religion”? Kevin and I were intentionally trying to raise our children as Christians,
and we knew that transformative faith in Jesus Christ does not happen by osmosis. We
did what most Christian parents do: we read our kids Bible stories, prayed with them,
involved them in choir and Sunday school and worship. We made sure they understood
the religious meaning of holidays, and both our kids learned that, if you want to stay up
past bedtime, engage Mom in a religious discussion. She’ll forget all about what time it
is. Was this detrimental to our children? What does “laying off the religion” look like when
you desperately want your children to have the best source of joy in life that you know:
life-giving, liberating, self-giving faith in Jesus Christ?
At first, I was deeply offended by the counselor’s advice, thinking she was suggesting
that we were harming our children by raising them as Christians. After all, religious
people have committed horrific crimes while hiding under Christianity’s vestments.
From the crusades to genocide to a summer camp in Norway, the ease with which
humans use religion to justify violence illustrates how easily religious ideologies can be
manipulated for diabolical ends. The father who murdered his family in our neighborhood
on that awful night had ended the killing spree by dismantling the fire alarms, setting the
neighborhood on fire, and shot himself through the head while lying on a bed beside an
open Bible.
It is common for us to understand Christianity merely as a set of religious ideals, not
a life-giving identity. We Christian parents would probably say we trust Jesus, but our
lives often tell a different story. Look at our overscheduled calendars, our insatiable
consumerism, our relentless anxiety as a culture…we’re as vulnerable to these idols as
anybody else. Our kids know us for who we really are. One glance at our lives tells the
truth.
The most incontrovertible finding of the National Study of Youth and Religion (2004)
is that “we get what we are” with our children, in religion as in most things.[1] Faith is a
gift from God, not an ideology we can instill; getting kids to believe “in” Jesus is fine, but
in the end, it doesn’t change very much. Trusting Jesus, on the other hand—believing
Jesus, having confidence in God’s forgiveness and redemption and that Christ has made
the future a good and promising place to go—is a different way to live. Trust changes
things. Trust quells anxiety. Trust inspires hope. Trust alters how we live, allowing us
to live on God’s timeline instead of ours. If youth are to discover faith in Jesus Christ
through us, they are going to need to see us live out our trust in Him.
Of course, preparing a six-year-old for Christian faith includes telling him the stories
of faith and inviting him to participate in the broader Christian community as well. But
these are secondary. What Brendan really wanted at age six—and at age 16, and at
every age we confront a sinful, inexplicable world—was a God who could dispel anxiety
instead of contribute to it. He needed to see his parents living the Bible stories we read
at bedtime to interpret our family’s experience of the world, and to see us turn to the
church community to discern God’s movement amid the chaos of everyday life. Above
all, he needed to watch how, in good times and in bad, his parents trusted God with our
futures, and with his.
Lives lived in this reassurance are different than those drenched in anxiety. So it may
be that the very best thing that could happen to Christian parenting is that we “lay off the
religion”—which means, of course, that we must attend to faith, a life bound to Christ in
hope, trust, and love. You are doing that by using this parents’ guide, and by wrestling
with what it means to raise young people with consequential Christian faith. The fact that
you are doing this with other parents is significant; Christianity, like raising children, is a
shared endeavor. You will find in the pages that follow handy summaries, provocative
discussion starters, and a good deal of soul searching as we learn together ways to
approach young people more faithfully.
I wish I could say that we did everything right as we tried to raise our children in
Christian faith. We didn’t (and our kids will be the first to tell you that). But we didn’t do
everything wrong, either—and neither will you. The fact is that grace covers a multitude
of sins, including the ones parents visit on their children. In the end, our children belong
to God, not to us, which means their faith is in God’s hands, not ours. Our job is to help
our children recognize the gift of faith that God has given to them, and to offer ample
opportunities for living it out.
Raising Teens in an Almost Christian World by Dietrich Kirk of the Center for Youth
Ministry Training is a parents study guide to the National Study on Youth and Religion
and my book Almost Christian. This resource summarizes my response to the National
Study on Youth and Religion and offers readers a chance to reflect on how the church
and parents can address the findings of the study with their own children.
Raising Teenagers in an Almost Christian World is designed for small group studies,
classes, or parents at home. Lesson topics include:
• Becoming Christian-ish
• Faith that Bears Fruit
• Passing on the Faith
• Testify by Word and Action
• Transformation through Disorientation
• Hope for Tomorrow
Each lesson is followed with four practical resources to help parents address each
week’s topic in their own family in a variety of ways:
• Conversation Starters
• Tradition Builders
• Disorienting Dilemmas
• Experiencing Together
In a world where the church and parents are having a difficult time passing on the
Christian faith to young people, we pray this study will encourage families to embark
on journeys to know and love God. (FROM MY FOREWORD TO Raising Teens in
an “Almost Christian” World)
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