Monthly Archives: March 2010

Faith, Family

Finding the Real Sunday School

My husband and I used to teach Sunday School to 3 year olds. We really enjoyed getting to know the kids and playing with them each Sunday morning. However, I quickly realized that for the vast majority of them, I was their only source of Bible teaching. I would ask the kids who Jesus was and only one or two would be able to say anything about him. I spoke with other volunteers who taught other grades and it was a consensus that the vast majority of kids coming to our church on Sunday mornings were only hearing about God and Jesus while they were at church. This shocked me because I considered some of the parents of these kids to be really strong Christians and even leaders within our church.

What I came to realize is that although these parents have a relationship with Christ, they felt completely inadequate to pass any of that onto their kids. They brought their kids to church so that the Bible teachers and pastors could distill a faith in Jesus to their children. I believe it is part of the institutionalization that has been taking place for the past few generations. If your kids are sick, take them to the doctor. If your kids need to learn how to read and write, take them to school. If your kids need to learn about Jesus, take them to church. The problem with this thinking is that it is ultimately the least efficient method for caring for the needs of our children.

Our kids are most influenced by us, their parents. It is our calling and our responsibility as stewards of these young souls to bring them up to be Jesus-loving, responsible adults. We can’t shuck that responsibility onto institutions, no matter how prestigious they may seem to be. These resources are there to support our work as parents, not circumvent it. We need to pick up the mantle that we accepted when we brought our children into the world. We need to be responsible for their overall well-being: mind, heart, body, soul.

Besides, if we are truly Christians, meaning Christ-followers, shouldn’t our faith permeate everything in our lives, including our parenting? More is caught than is taught when it comes to just about everything, so our kids will learn more about who Jesus is and how to have a relationship with Him by observing us in our prayers, Bible reading, meditation, worship, praise, service, and so on and so forth. If the only Jesus that your child gets is the one hour a week in church (and that’s if you go every week), then that is the funkiest hour of their week. We do not want Jesus to be the funky hour of their week. We want the Jesus-less hours to be the funky hours of their week.

To get down to brass tacks, how confident are you in the efficacy of anything that only has exposure 1/168 of the time? Add to that the fact that they are being taught by strangers or people they hardly know. The strength of that influence dwindles even more. God made you the parent. God entrusted you with the young soul that is in your care. He has asked you to bring your child up in the training and instruction of the Lord (Eph 6:4). Just imagine the faith that your child could develop if their life was immersed in Jesus and modeled after the most influential person in their life – you.

Faith, Marriage

The Greater Good

This afternoon my sons were watching the movie ‘The Incredibles’. My favorite scene is when one of the retired superheroes asks his wife where to find his super suit. She responds evasively leading him to a final exasperated appeal, “We’re talking about the greater good!” I love her answer: “Greater good? I am your wife! I am the greatest good you are ever going to get!” I realized today that my love for this scene goes beyond it being a very humorously performed scene. The reason I love it is because of her point. He is planning on ditching their evening together to serve the community without consulting her at all. Despite the urgency and the clear gravity of the situation (I mean, come on, a killer robot is destroying the city), he is losing perspective of what is really important. His community may need him and leaving his family to serve them may be ‘the greater good’, but his wife is, in fact, ‘the greatest good’ he will ever get. Being her husband is his highest calling after loving God, and everything else must take lower priorities-even when duty calls.

The reverse is true as well. Actually, I was pondering all of this as another scene from the movie came up that caught my attention. It is when the main characters, Mr. Incredible and Elasti-Girl, arrive to fight the killer robot and he attempts to leave her behind in order to keep her safe. Her response is “You are my husband and I go with you.” I love it. She is choosing him in that moment. She is supporting his efforts for ‘the greater good’ rather than feeling passed over because she is part of the process.

In real life, we aren’t superheroes fighting killer robots for the greater good, but we are still choosing other things that we have deemed important over our spouses way more often than is good for our marriages. The things that we are choosing are usually really good things: work, children, church, family. The things that we are choosing are sometimes things that can’t be done with our spouse. The point isn’t whether your spouse is there with you as you do these things. The choosing comes in your manner of thinking.

When you consider accepting a request, taking on another obligation, or signing up for a project, do you first think about the people asking or about yourself or about your family or about your spouse? In my humble opinion, I say that it should be your spouse. It goes without saying that I will think about myself, at least as far as my availability and interest in the situation, but if I am ‘one’ with my husband then he should be right there in that consideration. I will be thinking in terms of ‘we’ instead of just in ‘me’. It doesn’t matter the significance of the request, even if it would be in service of the ‘the greater good’, I need to remember that my spouse is ‘the greatest good’ I am ever going to get and choose him above anything else.

Marriage

The Whole Oneness Thing

Having grown up in the Church, I have been exposed to pretty much every Bible story there is. And it seems as though there is always a part that leaves me scratching my head, thinking “How does that work, exactly?” Moses and the Red Sea. Jonah and the big fish. Daniel and the lions. Jesus walking on water. Most of them don’t have a tangible implication on my life, so I take them at face value as stories on faith. I don’t see myself needing to understand the mechanics of getting the Red Sea to open up for me, or how to survive in a whale for three days, or how to chill out with hungry lions for a sleepover, or how to walk out to a boat on the middle of a lake.

But, what about the stories that do have a real implication and leave me guessing as to how it is supposed to work? Take Adam and Eve in Genesis 2 as an example. Genesis 2:24 says, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” Now, Adam was made full-grown. He didn’t have any parents that he had to leave. He was able to go straight to union with his wife. This verse is for our benefit, so we know how this marriage thing is supposed to work. Step one, wave good-bye to the folks. Check. Step two, be united with your spouse. Double check. Step three, become one flesh. Huh? How does that work, exactly?

Unfortunately, reading the rest of Adam and Eve’s story doesn’t provide us with much direction on achieving that whole oneness thing. Instead it tells you how to mess it up, which is by sinning. But, it is not a lesson for getting it right. It takes reading the rest of God’s story to understand what is involved in living in a state of oneness with a spouse. Yep, I mean the whole Bible. Okay, so maybe reading the highly detailed instructions for building the traveling sanctuary for Israel’s wilderness wanderings doesn’t give us a whole lot of help, but even in there we get a valuable lesson. Follow God’s instructions and you will get it right.

So what are God’s instructions? Jesus boiled them all down to two. “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Mark 12:30-31) If you can get those two down, then you’re golden. Especially in your marriage. Love God and love your spouse more than yourself.

I know that I just left you scratching your head, thinking “How does that work, exactly?” Just keep reading Jesus’ story because He gave us some awesome examples of what love looks like in action. Do it like Jesus and you will be doing it right. If you are looking for specifics on the ins and outs of the daily mechanics of faith and marriage, it will take much more than this blog post to cover all that. As it happens though, I will be teaching on these very things at an upcoming couples retreat in June. It would be great to see you there and together wrestle with applying some of those head-scratching-inducing Scriptures on marriage.