Faith in the Present
While at the Shore, I read Randal Balmer's sometimes skeptical, sometimes mocking account of evangelicalism in the US: "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory." For me, it's a reminder of how Bible-believing Christianity is perceived by the majority of Americans: at best, quaint and earnest and well-meaning, at worst backwards and deceptive and just plain weird. To believe in the central tenets of the Christian faith - the supreme authority of the Almighty, the depravity of man, reconciliation and salvation through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ - is to be looked at with either amusement or incredulity or anger or ridicule. (Consider this recent article about singer Katy Perry's religious upbringing, and imagine the typical reader exclaiming, "gosh, her parents speak in tongues!")
In response to being seen as weird or in wanting to distance ourselves from those among us who really are weird, we believers can tend to apologize. "But I voted for Obama just like you!" "But I can have intelligent conversation about health care reform, too!" "But I also care about immigration policy and diversity in the workplace!" In some cases, we edge away not only from a fringe image but also from what is at the core of what we believe. The lordship of Jesus and the notion that hell is a real destination for many people are seriously questioned by significant portions of evangelical America. Positions on issues such as abortion, gay marriage, and women in leadership are taken more with political correctness than Biblical basis in mind. It can be unpopular and lonely and countercultural, in other words, to believe in the Bible and in making it the foundation upon which you will live your life and believe your beliefs.
It is typical for people who grow up in the church to fall away in their adult years, and to look back on their childhood faith as something that was appropriate for childhood, but not so relevant or handy in adulthood. It is typical for us Christian parents to respond to this common trajectory by wanting to shield our kids all the more from "the world," whatever we take that concept to mean.
I cannot control what choices my children will make as adults, as it relates to faith. I do know that they will not get much help from the world and from its take on evangelical Christianity. If they listen to the world, they too will sneer at the faith of their childhoods for being out of touch and out of date, not something any rational grown-up would be caught dead assenting to. I can only hope that, with God's help and with a lot of prayer, I can do my best each day to live out a life that is completely captivated by one God and one life purpose, to have a leavening influence on others around me including my kids, and to trust that the purposeful and merciful and intricate God I believe in can take that effort and redeem His story in a world and in a generation in which it is largely mocked, dismissed, and avoided.
The irony of Balmer's book is that its title is incongruous with its contents. Most of the chapters are caricatures familiar to most observers: the faith healer, the repressed Christian college students, the health/wealth/prosperity shillers. The glory of the true believer does not arrest public attention or command time on the evening news. It is found in the morning's quiet moments, in steady and resolute works of justice and mercy, and in faithful proclamation of truth in pulpits and mission fields all around the world.
My eyes have seen true glory, and more awaits. And my prayer is that others, who may share the world's disdain and dismissal of the many permutations of evangelical Christianity in America, may encounter true glory and emerge changed for it, willing to walk and think a certain way regardless of how that way collides with contemporary sentiment.
Comments
I don't think it should be that way. While Jesus's incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection are the heart of Christianity, they are also its skin, and lots between. Rather than trying to lead people through the snares mentioned above, whether by asserting "I voted for Obama just like you!" as you mentioned or by taking God's word ourselves at less than its full power, I wish that we would better proclaim the Gospel from the very beginning, and allow that truth claim to shape encounters with the culture.
As for adult children falling away - I had a lot of thoughts along those lines as I taught in a Christian high school last year. I think parents are right to desire to shield their children from the world, but wrong to think they can do it indefinitely. As I see it that shield should be selectively lowered so that children can gradually learn to encounter and digest the world on their own legs, so that by the time they are leaving home they are ready to face the barrage which comes their way.
Also required, as you mention, is an understanding that children will ultimately choose life or choose death for themselves, and trying to make that choice for them only makes them less able to make it for themselves.
All of that is easy, of course, for one such as myself without children to say. My prayers to you as you seek to raise up Aaron and Jada in the way they should go!
1. I kind of believed in Christianity, when I had nothing else to believe, but then once I grew older and saw there were lots of beliefs out there, I stopped believing in Christianity because I didn't have any real roots in it.
2. I want to believe in Christianity but I am repulsed by what Christians have done and so I cannot subscribe to such a faith.
3. If only I knew the real Christianity, I would believe, but no one has explained it to me or lived it out for me.
4. Truly believing in Christianity would get in the way of what I really want to be about - whether pleasure or independence or ambition - so I cannot honestly say that I am a Christian.
5. Believing in Christianity gets in the way of what I really want to be about - pleasure and independence and ambition - so I'll hedge my bets and say I'm a Christian but not really give myself fully to it.
6. I find the core tenets of Christianity to be backward, outmoded, and false, and so I reject it outright.
7. I have found a superior option for myself.
8. I am too busy or disinterested to examine even the basic aspects of Christianity.
9. I grew up in another faith and have not found any reason to deny it or switch over.
10. I don't know much about Christianity but what I know seems so weird or inane that I won't bother getting anywhere near it.
I'm sure there are other reasons but those were the ones I could think of off the top of my head. For myself and for my kids, the parable of the sower comes to mind: lots of seeds don't bloom, just the ones that fall on good soil. Hence the importance of tending to the soil. In a world full of birds, scorching sun, and rocky roads, would that we help each other be good soil.