Realizations

So, I’ve been reading tons of reports on Kenda Creasy Dean’s Almost Christian (and in the near future, I hope to actually finish reading the book itself) – ministry folks as well as secular news services have picked up the story so it is gaining a fair amount of momentum.

The basic point of the book is this: Dean’s research led her to observe that many church-raised teenagers enter young adulthood with a watered down, no-risk, shiny happy people kind of faith. When pressed, these teens and new young adults cannot speak about their faith in articulate ways and generally have a hard time expressing what it is (and in Whom) they believe.

In other words, they’ve been taught to fake it.

And who did that teaching? In a word: us. The parents did it. The youth ministers did it. The Sunday school teachers and senior pastors and grandparents did it. We all share the blame. It could be fear. It could be ignorance. It could be wishful thinking. But whatever the reason, we’ve given these kids a picture of a god who doesn’t match up with the great I AM of scripture. Kenda Dean and her colleagues call it “therapeutic moral deism” – belief in a great therapist god who doesn’t ask much of us (if anything at all), a god who simply wants us to be happy and be vaguely good.

We don’t demonstrate a passionate love for this god (in part because there is nothing passionate about such a deity), and consequently our kids don’t catch a passion for this god. And then we wonder why they leave the church and never come back.

Unfortunately, so many of us have got it all twisted around. I don’t believe we purposefully present children and teenagers with a false god – that we are living idolatrous lives on purpose. Instead, I believe that most of us start off with the best of intentions – we really do love God and want what’s best for our kids. We just don’t necessarily know what that is, or what it looks like – or we are afraid of what it looks like.

For example, it is an incredibly powerful and sacrificial statement for a parent to say “I want my child to be a Christian” and truly mean it. Because while conventional wisdom says that you should want your child to always be happy, to stay out of trouble and to get into the right college so that they can get a high paying job and be successful… well, the reality is that kids who fall in love with a risky, sacrificial Gospel are going to fall down, get their hearts broken, and make decisions that draw the notice of society’s gate-keepers (and sometimes the church’s gate-keepers). And kids who fall in love with the radical message, life and love of Jesus… well, they might not decide to follow the stable career path, opting instead to live out a life marked by fruitfulness rather than success. They might become activists, artists, care-givers, or even (say it ain’t so) professional ministers of one variety or another. In other words, they might not be financially stable in the traditional understanding of the phrase.

This is not to say that kids can’t choose to be faithful doctors, faithful lawyers, faithful business women… they surely can be. And faithful Christians can achieve high levels of success, earn large salaries and receive public acclaim. A few of us minister-types even become moderately well-known and celebrated. But eventually, a life of lived-out passionate Christian faith and love requires you to make decisions that don’t go with the flow, don’t fit the ways of the world, and don’t make a whole lot of sense to good sensible people. Eventually there will be days and seasons when it’s not all roses and you’re being lambasted for the choices you’ve made out of faith – times when some people (even close friends) will deny you, and you’ll find you’ve got a cross to carry.

The point is that a life spent loving God and following Jesus is so much deeper than the fluff that’s been floating around out there (and in here). It is both risky and worth risking for. It is both challenging and worth challenging the Church for. It is worth living for – and in some places, situations and times, it has been worth dying for. By following the great I AM (not doing good things because of some bland or moralistic sense of right and wrong, but instead living a life of love, compassion and justice because God loves these things), by living out the WAY that Jesus showed us through his life, ministry, death and resurrection… and by believing in the creative and saving power of God – by living this kind of faith, we model and teach something that kids can sink their teeth into. A faith with substance. Something worthy of passion and commitment.

Enough with fluff and fear. Let’s help our kids find a faith worth living.

A few months ago I set what I thought was a reasonable, attainable goal. I wanted to blog at least once a week, every week.

As it turns out, I haven’t been very good at that. In fact, I’ve failed outright. My last post was at the end of April – four months ago! If it’s possible to have an epic blog fail, this is probably one of them.

So, what happened?

It’s definitely not that I haven’t had things to say. I’ve had several “blog worthy” ideas fermenting in my head, as well as numerous encounters/experiences that have helped me to see or experience the Divine in new ways. I’ve seen Jesus walking around all over the place, so there’s been plenty to write about!

I could easily explain this away with the phrase: “I’ve been busy.” But that’s a cop out. While I have indeed had a full plate – camps and mission trips and retreats and meetings and vacations and planning sessions – I’ve still had plenty of time that I could have used to write. And I squandered it…or ignored it. Whichever it was, in the end it is all the same: I didn’t get it done.

Some friends would hasten to my defense, but this isn’t about beating myself up. Rather, it reflects some serious soul-searching that has taken place amidst the no-blog-writing and full-plate-having of the last four months. In past years I’ve noticed some things about myself, and this blogging thing (or not-blogging thing, as it were) is really just an example of a larger pattern.

What’s really going on is this: I’m afraid.

I am afraid of what I want most: being a “real” writer. I fear I don’t have the chops for it, don’t have anything worthwhile to say, don’t have the discipline or mettle to do the hard work required to get it done. And, counter-intuitive though it may be, having two books published this year is what really brought these fears up out of the depths of my self. There was definitely a swelling of joy when the Oh God! book came out, but that initial joy was quickly replaced by panic as speaking requests started to trickle in.

In that wave of panic, I just… stopped.

But my whole self is tired of this self-imposed holding pattern. Simpler though it may be to avoid my fears, even my body seems to know that I’m not the best Lara I can be if I’m not reading and researching and writing.

So, this is me ripping off the bandaid. In the weeks to come, I think I’ll be writing about “biblical origami” and some musings on the imago dei. They are the two topics I’ve been thinking about the most as of late, though I’m certain other things will come up as well. What I’m really hoping for is some accountability as I try to learn some discipline. If you haven’t “heard” from me in a few days or weeks, shoot an email my direction and remind me that I need to write.

Because I do.