[Link] Why Do Our Children Leave Christianity?

by Sam Williamson

Why do so many people—with incredible conversions—parent children who leave Christianity? History overflows with great saints whose offspring lose faith:

Samuel was a mighty prophet of God. His sons were a mess.

David was a man after God’s own heart. His children were a disaster.

Harvard, Yale, and Princeton were founded on the gospel. Now they lead the opposition.

I’ve witnessed dozens of families, churches, and ministries, who began with a furious fire of love for God whose next generation couldn’t blow a smoke ring.

Our children lose fire because of our mother-of-all-assumptions; we assume the gospel. Mack Stiles, in Marks of the Messenger, explains how we believers lose the gospel:

The gospel is Accepted —->

The gospel is Assumed —->

The gospel is Confused —->

The gospel is Lost

Stiles concludes like this: “For any generation to lose the gospel is tragic. But the generation that assumes the gospel … is most responsible for the loss of the gospel.

We are that generation. We are most responsible. Who has bewitched us?

Forgetting Conversion

It’s virtually 100% predictable that we are converted by one message and then preach another. We are converted by the unbelievable hope of God’s love for those who don’t deserve it, but we lecture on behavior. Everyone I know does it, even when we don’t want to. Including me. And I bet including you.

A friend of mine lived wildly until the age of thirty. He slept with scores of women, drank an ocean of beer, and was a self-admitted, abusive jerk. In a desperate time of loneliness, he heard the hope of the gospel and talked with Jesus. He became a pastor.

He was converted by grace, yet his sermons nagged and scolded:

• You should never tell coarse jokes or cuss.
• You should be generous, and that includes making sure you tip 20%.
• You should always bring your Bible to church.
• You should watch Fox News and never CNN. (I’m serious.)

Day after day, week after week, he proclaimed the Nike gospel, “Just do it!”

The Presumption of Assumption

One day I asked him why his messages concentrated on behavior and not the gospel. He replied, “My congregation knows the gospel. Now they just have to know what to do.” He assumed the gospel but wondered why his shrinking congregation was so joyless.

His own moral life was empowered by a gospel-fueled heart, but he scolded, rebuked, and ragged on behavior. In his personal life, he remembered, “What DID Jesus do?” yet he publicly harangued and lectured WWJD, “What WOULD Jesus do?”

Martin Luther wrote in his Commentary on Galatians,

Continually listen to the gospel that teaches not what I ought to do (for that is the job of the law), but what Jesus Christ has done for me. For that is the gospel.

The gospel is the primary article of all Christian truth. It is most necessary that we should know this article well, teach it to others, and beat it into our heads continually” (slightly edited).

The gospel is God’s love first, behavior second. Moralism doesn’t reject the gospel, it just forgets the gospel and emphasizes behavior. The Gospel is God’s initiation first, then our response. The heresy of the Pharisee is our initiation first, then God’s response.

We need to beat the gospel into our own heads continually, because we constantly assume it, confuse it, and lose it. And if we do, so will our kids.

Read the full article: https://beliefsoftheheart.com/2021/03/24/why-do-our-children-leave-christianity/

[Link] Is Sunday School Destroying Our Kids?

Several years ago I met with a woman distraught over her son’s rejection of Christianity.

She said, “I did everything I could to raise him right. I taught him to be like the ‘heroes of faith,’ with the faithfulness of Abraham, the goodness of Joseph, the pure heart of David, and the obedience of Esther.”

She wondered why he had rejected Christianity.

I wondered why it took him so long.

Here Is How We Destroy the Gospel Message

Look at almost any Sunday school curriculum and you’ll find the following:

• Abraham was faithful, and God made him the father of a nation. So be faithful like Abraham.
• Joseph was a good little boy (unlike his “bad” brothers), and God made him prime minister of Egypt. So be good like Joseph.
• David had a pure heart (unlike his brothers), and God made him king of Israel. So have a pure heart like David.
• Esther was an obedient girl. God made her queen of Persia, and she saved God’s people. So be obedient like Esther.
• Finally, if we fail to be good, Jesus will forgive us. (This comes as a PS tacked onto the end.)
• What’s so bad about these Sunday school lessons?

Nothing really. Except that they lie about God, they lie about these “heroes of the faith,” they lie about the Bible, and they lie about the gospel. Oh, and they create “younger brother” rebels and “older brother” Pharisees. Apart from that, they are pretty good.

Is the gospel our central theme, or is it a PS tacked onto the end?

The Gospel Is More Than Good Morals

We need moral people. In a world where darkness expresses itself in everything from petty theft to genocide, healthy morals enable us to peacefully coexist. And that is good. Essential, even. It just isn’t the gospel.

Continue reading: http://beliefsoftheheart.com/2014/12/02/is-sunday-school-destroying-our-kids/

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Editor's Note: For me what this article gets right is that we focus too much on teaching children that God loves the good kids and is willing to forgive the bad ones, but don't be a bad one. Whereas, the truth of the gospel is that we're all bad, through and through. Filthy rags and all that.

It is also testament to the reigning maxim of cultural Christianity that we are far busier looking for outward signs of what we believe is morality rather than inward signs of true Christlike character. Just my thoughts though. Your mileage may differ.

Is it possible for an artist to do something so detestable that his or her work should be banned?

Wow. That's a tough one, primarily because as people we find it difficult to separate the creator from the work itself. In a perfect world, the work would be able to stand on its own merits and the creator's life wouldn't be taken into account when analyzing whether the work itself held value. I believe even a detestable person has the capacity to create something good (after all, in my belief system, we are created in the image of a creator, so creating comes naturally to us all in some way). 

For example, had Charles Manson written a great play, would it be "moral" to perform it because of the awful, horrible person he was? 

Personally, as long as the play itself wasn't detestable, I wouldn't hold it against a theater company who chose to perform it. But I'm sure the families of Manson's victims might feel differently -- and with good reason. 

In my own life, I know that Richard Wagner's symphonic works are often associated with Hitler and Wagner's own anti-Semitic views, but it doesn't make me appreciate the simple beauty of the melodies any less. 

I tend to discourage wholesale banning on any official level anyway, and I prefer to leave it up to individual people and companies to make those decisions based on their beliefs, values, and clientele. For example, a family-run, community theater might find performing a Manson-penned play a distasteful endeavor and refuse to produce it, but another theater troupe might enjoy sharing the work in spite of the Manson connection. It becomes, at least to me, a matter for the individual and individuals of the company to decide for their circle of influence, not for the governmental powers that be to decide for the rest of us. 

True censorship makes me feel very, very uncomfortable, because it involves making decisions about what's best for the whole of society, and I'm not content to let others make that decision for me -- or for me to make that decision for others, except for perhaps minors in my own house.  

(Thanks to James Wynn for this question.)

Drawing the Moral Line as a Writer

Is it moral for a writer to /choose/ to write just any kind of story?

I would say no. And that's a great question.

For example, because I don't believe (based on my Christian worldview) that life is essentially meaningless and purely about survival, I couldn't and wouldn't write a traditional nihilistic slasher film. Would I write one about redemption and self-sacrifice and the search for meaning in death? Absolutely.

But I see those as theme issues, which is where I draw the line. Morality issues are a grayer area because my characters must have different morals than me and each other in order to fully realize them as "people" in the illusion of the story. If they are all moral people who use the same guideline, then the story has no "truth" to it. It's just a setting for preaching to a choir (pick your choir, religious or political or socio-cultural, propaganda is propaganda).

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Post Facebook discussion addendum (warning -- theological content, proceed at your own risk):

I don't believe that morality is objective. I belive that we in the Christian community have confused morality and (what we call) holiness for way too long. Morality is culturally based, whereas the biblical principal of holiness is an objective one (in our belief). And we tend to care less about that objective one (with its dictates to feed the poor, take care of the widow and orphan, have no other gods before me, extend grace, love others like God loves them, be one in spirit etc.). 

That's one of the core reasons we Christians get into such a cultural/philosophical argument with the world, because we criss-cross our terms so much and try to argue an objective concept using words that reflect connotatively to the average listener a sliding scale.

I know its a semantics question for some, but in a world of deconstructionism, it's an important one, I think. To the rest of the world, morality IS relative, and that undercuts any argument of what's intrinsically right in any given situation. Therefore we must use words that speak to the issue.

For my part, I can only respond to the question by exposing what I mean when I say morality, i.e., is it moral for ME to write just any kind of story?

Emphatically no. 

When the theme of such a story opposes my values as I understand them, no.

When the content in such a story may however require understanding and grace from the reader to understand and not immediately judge my moral standing before Christ because of said content's presence in the story, that's a different matter.

Which brings me back to the morality/holiness semantics issue. I'll trample morality underfoot in my writing all day because it is inconsistent depending on the time period in which is standardized. Preachers can use "suck" or "crap" in the pulpit today in some places without a shocked face in the pew (or nice comfy chairs). Forty years ago, they would have lost their jobs. Why? Because the morals around what is profanity change. Besides, biblically, everything I've found about language involves speaking truth and not using oaths. And while we are biblically instructed not to engage willy nilly in sex, writing about sex is clearly not a sin or else it wouldn't be in scripture. Not even writing designed to titilate (i.e., Song of Songs, which would have hit readers in its context a lot stronger than it hits us today).

As long as I can write what I write while my soul remains clean before God (to couch it in Christian terms), I feel that is between me and God. As Mike Yaconelli once said, (paraphrased because I can't remember in which book I found it):

I stopped worrying about my behavior when I realized that it wasn't offending the least of these out of the kingdom and causing them to question the truth of faith (which is the meaning of that verse). It was only causing those within the kingdom to question whether or not I had it, and I could live with that.

If writing something causes me to stop loving God with all my heart, soul, and mind or loving my neighbor as myself, then I will not write it because to do so would be wrong based on God's standards of holiness. To practice some of the things I write about would be wrong based on that standard. To write about others practicing them, not so much.

That's the long-winded answer. How's that?