Category Image It's the Teaching Stupid


A friend sent me the following article. This was my response:

It interesting to mull over the possible reasons for the decline in children who consider themselves "born-again" Christians. Clearly the culture must play some part in this, although the culture in the 21st century Western world is not really all that different than 4th century Rome (When I see ads for "the Contender" or "Survivor" or "Fear Factor", I find myself wondering how far we have come from the Coliseum days). Rather, as Barna's research would indicate, we can look to the parents. However, is it the failure to specifically teach (as in sit down and specifically teach the catechism, for instance), or is it the infamous lead by example. Given the parent's response in this survey, I wonder how significant their faith is. After all, they claim to believe, but what do they believe? Clearly it is not that faith in Christ is terribly significant. I suspect, then, that they do not live out their faith in any discernible way. We know some folks who are both ministry leaders within their non-denominational denomination. Their kids are fully engaged in the culture, and outside of Church on Saturday night (rarely on Sunday morning), you never get the impression that Christianity is terribly significant. When they grow up, I suspect they will become, at best, cultural Christians. I have that same concern about our kids. How much is faith a part of our daily lives?

The other part that I don't think Barna looks into here, so I am merely surmising, is that we are looking at the second generation of children raised in a modern Christianity where relevance and "feeling" are so terribly important. IOW, Christianity is largely a form of entertainment. If it doesn't "move" you, then move on to something else. This, of course, flies in the face of millennia of Christian experience which tells us that there are significant times of struggle and spiritual dryness. Modern Christianity has adopted a worldly view. So for any such Christian, why should boring activities like prayer or meditation on Scripture occupy any of our time? Surely there are more important entertaining things. In John Ortberg's book, "The Life You've Always Wanted", where he is struggling to understand the how and why of spiritual disciplines, he at times advocates an approach to spirituality that seems less focused on what you should be doing and more on what you want. So, for instance, he advocates sleep as a spiritual discipline. The claim is that it will make you less cranky and more loving. An interesting, and very modern, hypothesis, but the point of Christianity is to be loving even when things are not going well. So, learning to be loving on less sleep is arguably the discipline (and the one that the great spiritual leaders throughout history would agree with). Sleep will make you feel better, so pursue it. Later, when discussing a prayer discipline, he discusses distraction during prayer. This is not a new phenomenon at all. In fact, the opening prayer in the Latin Secular Breviary and Anglican Breviary for any office is a prayer to keep our mind from wandering. John's argument is that if you are being distracted, that which is distracting you is that which you should be praying about. At times this may be the case, if you are really worried about something, or some issue is weighing on you, make sure you address this in your prayer time. However, this does not mean that you shouldn't work on focus. This morning, as I was reading Matins, my mind kept wandering off to the various projects and activities of the day. There was nothing particularly significant in any of them, its just more entertaining at times to ponder the next programming exercise, than to focus on the things of God. Just as its more entertaining to watch Sunday morning football, or sleeping in or whatever.

How much of this is an undesired mutation of the Reformation? I grant you that much of what goes on in the modern world would give Calvin, Zwingli, and Luther fits, but is this yet the next logical step on the Sola Fide trail? I hear from so many fundamentalists that its only belief that matters, and you don't have anything to do with that, so you are not in the picture. They will, to a one, say that you should pray and study, but these are merely the fruits of a faith that you have no part in, so if you don't do them you are not saved, and if you do, you are. As horrible a caricature that this is of Reformation theology, it is rather common today. If it is true that I have no part in my faith, why should I pursue it much? I think this belief has infected other denominations as well in an indirect way. The Ortbergs and Warrens also do not seem to believe that the point of the Christian life is to align ourselves with God and cooperate with His grace in our sanctification and ultimate salvation. It is to make our current life better, to be happier. If we have convinced ourselves that we are happy now - perhaps because we have the good job, nice car, people like us, whatever - why do anything more in our Christianity?

Posted: Tuesday - March 08, 2005 at 09:38 AM          

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