I’m finally home for the afternoon and remaining in an upright, less-pressure-on-the-sinuses position while I watch The Talk (a copycat of The View). They just did a segment on teen violence and apparently there was a YouTube video that went viral of kids beating up another student. I didn’t hear the entire discussion, but it ended on a note of reflection concerning the “other kids” – as in “where are the other kids who should be stopping this?”
One of the hosts started talking about how she does all kinds of things as a mom to try to teach her daughter to do the right things – eat good foods, pick up after playing, share her toys, listen to her parents and teachers, etc. But what she really wants is to raise her daughter in a way that when these things happen, she’ll have the understanding to know it’s wrong and the confidence to do something about it.
It made me really reflect about what it is that I value and what values I teach and model to my children. Yes, I want them to become all the things the host mentioned – a good listener, picks up, blah blah blah. But those things don’t change lives of other people. How do you teach compassion? How do you instill courage?
It reminded me of a recent blog post by Marko (formerly of YS) . Here’s what one professional/academic wrote:
Teenagers know, better than we do, that when we ask them to be Christians, we are asking them to do a very dangerous thing. The only way out is to adopt a “safe” version of Christianity (which might not be Christian at all) that helps them become good, nice people instead of people who love others sacrificially. But as we know, good and nice “Christianity” seldom lasts past high school, since teenagers quickly learn that people can be perfectly good and nice without Jesus anywhere in the picture.
So I think in the future, youth ministry will try to re-weird-ify Christianity, highlighting Jesus’ radical actions and peculiar self-giving love, in an effort to resist the American church’s habit of trying to tame the gospel into a middle class bedtime story. If Christianity is dangerous, then we need to act like it. Teenagers aren’t afraid of risk, but they want to know that Jesus is worth it. Young people are going to demand that we, the church, be who we say we are–people who obviously follow Jesus, which makes us “weird” in a culture based on self-actualization and self-fulfillment–or they’re just not going to bother with us at all.
Just some new perspective and new questions to ask myself about what it means to be a parent.
Category: Uncategorized (Page 110 of 188)
In the next month the church is going to be exploring “tough questions about Jesus”. Pastor Greg is going to cover things like “Was Jesus God or just a good man” and “Were Jesus’ miracles just an illusion.” In a flash of brilliance, I decided to open it up to our Sunday School group to compose our own list of questions to cover over the next chunk of time. Honestly, the Why Jesus questions aren’t where I spend my time or conversation (not that they’re not worth covering), so we went with a less existential angle. I’d like to share what I’ll be researching so that I can ask the group a series of questions about questions. These are seriously what are on my list:
- The chronological order of the universe: Where were the dinosaurs?
- Why did God “talk” to people before now, but not me? Where is the bush on fire now?
- Alien salvation. Yes, someone wants to know “is there intelligent life forms on other planets and can they be saved?”
- Why suffering?
- What rules still apply? Homosexuality, eating bacon… how do we know?
- What did they eat on the ark?
- Why can’t Matt have multiple wives?
- Was America founded on Christianity?
- What happens to those people before Jesus?
- How did Adam & Eve’s children procreate? (“Sometimes when a brother and a sister love each other very much…. err….” yeah, I’ve got no leads on this one.)
- OT vs. NT: why are they so different?
- Ned just added this one: free will to choose and being predetermined. (Yes, he knows how to keep it light.)
- Then I added: Why go to church?
- If we’re supposed to listen to Christian music, then why did God give Eminem and Beyonce the knack for such catchy beats?
We decided as a group that if we publicize the questions we cover each week, we might get a better turnout. Especially the week on polygamy. I think I might just record Sister Wives. That dude’s hair is pretty self-explanatory on how a trend can just die out.
I’ll trade Pastor Greg Jesus’ Miracles for Alien Salvation any day.
I could make you a list of the reasons that, following 3 years in seminary and even a degree upon completion, I did not go into ministry in a lead position. We’d start with 1. I’m not a good listener, move through to “lacks necessary levels of compassion” and “simply doesn’t want to bear the weight of the responsibility that comes with preaching.” But this evening helped me realize yet another reason: I don’t have enough answers to hard situations, and I’m easily frustrated by that fact.
Some friends and family are really hurting tonight as one of their good friends will likely leave this earth in the next several hours – just hours after delivering new life. It’s all so overwhelming and unexpected and completely heartbreaking. And try as one might to find one, there isn’t a good “reason”. The typical Christian response generally follows the lines of “We don’t know God’s plans, we just have to trust that He is good.” And for someone who hasn’t experienced God’s goodness (or hasn’t comprehended that experience), I can understand why such an explanation falls short. Goodness, anyone who has watched the funeral scene of Steel Magnolias with Sally Field’s soliloquy knows this.
Death is all-around hard; it’s most difficult for those left close in the wake. So in some ways when we ask, “why her?” we’re also asking “why me?” as we bear the pain of grief. Our enlightened minds want to know cause and effect, so we can prevent future pain and ensure fairness in the distribution of hurt. But these situations don’t provide what we’re looking for. We have more questions than answers, more pain than joy, more anger than understanding. You’re right. It’s not fair.
Jesus had a friend that died. The story in the book of John can lead one to many different “applications” and understandings, but here’s what I cling to: Jesus wept. And not just because his friend “who he dearly loved” had died, but also because he stood there and saw Mary, another beloved friend and When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.
Jesus knew the end of Lazarus’ story: he would rise again. All along Jesus had been explaining that Lazarus would be okay. But at the sight of a friend grieving, he broke down in tears. Perhaps part of it was seeing a grave marked “Lazarus”. Maybe a little of it involved his disappointment that his friends didn’t believe what he’d been saying. But the puddle around Mary’s toes surely made his heart heavy and his eyes brim. The human experience of losing someone you love – and watching those you love hurt – was too much. Not even reason and understanding (the answers!) could help Jesus put up a stoic front.
Perhaps a real pastor could provide a better answer. Maybe there really is a scripture out there that puts it simply and says “this is why. Now you have peace.” But I’ve only experienced this in the messy form, grief with tears and regret and pain and a Jesus that says, “I hate that this hurts so bad” and then stands there and cries with me. My hope is that in the coming days, that Jesus makes His presence known, that he weeps with us and for us.
That’s all I have.