What should we teach kids about other religions?

We're about to embark on a meaty series in our classroom called "What's So Special About Christianity?" This was born out of a desire voiced by several parents that we address in some way the subject of other religions. A few months ago I heard from two separate parents about an assignment their sixth grader was given that involved identifying a "favorite" god or goddess from another religion and profiling him or her.

Learning about world religions is a standard part of the sixth grade world history curriculum in California. Juxtapose that with the fact that our kids have significant knowledge gaps when it comes to their own religion (such as the lack of Bible understanding I wrote about last week) and the problem presents itself: we have some choices to make. It would be irresponsible not to teach kids something about other belief systems, but what, and how much?

For the record, I think the "choose your favorite god/goddess" assignment is offensive to people of any religion. Gods are sacred, a concept we've lost hold of in today's world. They are not toys or Disney characters to be merely admired or be printed on t-shirts. I don't have to be a relativist to believe that, nor to understand that disrespect for spiritual beings in general leads to disrespect in specific - literally, profanity. If I ever hope to bring someone to a belief in God, the specialness of God must be preserved.

So a good starting point with kids is to have them recognize the sacred/secular distinction, that a spiritual reality exists and that man has long reached out for it and wanted to connect with it. And that from a Christian perspective, God has reciprocated, not staying distant, but offering himself in relation to people - Emmanuel, "God with us".

I've always been uncomfortable with the idea of "teaching" another religion because I'm not an expert in other religions and I'd probably get it wrong. And, on the other hand, I don't like the idea of a non-Christian - either a schoolteacher or another religious leader - representing Christianity. I've long thought that in education, when presenting an ideology or philosophy, it's best to let kids hear from primary sources, and I would hope anyone doing a comparative religions course would incorporate that practice. A high school teacher once extended me that courtesy and it was a privilege to have an hour to speak to her students and field their questions.

No, I can't teach about other religions and do them justice. Instead, I think it's much more helpful to ground kids in the distinctives of their faith and guide them to an understanding of where Christian thought clashes with what passes for contemporary American spirituality, a kind of pop paganism that values the power of positive thinking, materialism, and self-gratification. After all, it's rare to encounter someone - even someone who professes to follow another religion - who is pure in their ideology. Among Christians alone there is great variety of belief on all sorts of minor issues, and regarding the majors, some Christians hold on more tightly than others. But what entices people away often isn't whole bodies of thought, but individual nuggets of truth that work for them - a belief in karma, for example - and at the same time lead them away from a Christian worldview.

It would be easy to teach kids that other religions are weird or strange or nonsensical, but is it helpful? All that has to happen is that they meet one person (a Buddhist, say) who shatters the stereotype they were taught and they begin to suspect that everything they were taught about other belief systems was based on suspicion and ignorance. Better to get into the "stuff" of the religion and examine those elements upon which the worldview is founded, in light of what the Bible tells us about who we are and why we're here and what is real.

These are the "distinctives" we're going to explore. I believe that each is threatened by a modernist, pop spirituality:

• The eternality of the soul (or, one life, one death, one judgment)
• A created being's purpose is tied to its creator
• God is a God of intimate involvement, not distant administration
• Humans have a sinful nature
• Only the power of God, not works or moral choices, can free us from the consequences of our sin
• The inherent imbalances in a world filled with free choices (or, why karma cannot explain the world)

Obviously, what you see above is the adult-language version of what the kids will get - "eternality" isn't a 10-year-old's word, but it is a 10-year-old's concept. Can a kid understand that we were created to worship and serve God, or that we possess an unquenchable desire to do wrong, or that their creator wants to personally shepherd them? I think they can. And come to think of it, they'd better, if we ever have hope of passing on a body of belief in a culture that increasingly brings a consumerist and pragmatic mindset to the practice of religion.

Bible-less Christianity

We Americans love to beat ourselves up when it comes to "what we don't know" about such-and-such. Maybe this is healthy, the ability to laugh at ourselves and our inability to name the vice president, or the capital city of England, or the words to the Star-Spangled Banner. More than a few social commentators have noted that although we live in an age awash in information, we're not particularly better informed because of it.

Christianity has not been untouched by this. For years, researcher George Barna has been tracking American's attitudes, beliefs, and practices when it comes to the Bible and has been sounding the alarm: our level of Bible understanding is dismal. Which leads to the question: what happens to Christianity when people can't, or won't, read their Bibles?

Let's draw two crucial distinctions. The first is the diference between reading the Bible and knowing the Bible. While 96% of evangelical Christians typically read the Bible during a week, this doesn't necessarily translate into Bible understanding or integration. Consider, according to Barna:

• The most widely-known Bible verse among adult and teen believers is "God helps those who help themselves" - which is not actually in the Bible, and actually conflicts with the basic message of Scripture.
  
• When given thirteen basic teachings from the Bible, only 1% of adult believers firmly embraced all 13 as being biblical perspectives.
  
• Less than one out of every ten believers possesses a biblical worldview as the basis for his/her decision-making or behavior.

Much of this, I believe, stems from the way the Bible is taught and habitually read, which is in bite-sized devotional chunks, rather than as a collection of writings which each had an occasional purpose. Our tendency to snatch verses here and there because they give us comfort or affirm a truth or are otherwise personally meaningful is penny-wise and pound-foolish: we know the words of scripture, but have no grasp of the message.

Take, for instance, the book of 1 Corinthians. There was a reason 1 Corinthians was written, and it was not to give us the verse "I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow" (3:6) or so that we would have a nice passage on love (chapter 13) to read at weddings! Instead, 1 Corinthians actually has a message, a purpose for which it was written, which was to address the specific controversies and problems that were dividing the church at Corinth, a port and commercial city where sexual immorality was widespread. The "Love Chapter" falls at the end of a discourse on spiritual gifts - apparently the church was divided over which gifts were to be most highly esteemed. Paul intends to show them "the most excellent way" - that if the exercise of gifts is not accompanied by love (agape love, not marital or erotic love), they are worth nothing. Read this way, 1 Corinthians 13 takes on a whole new light: it wasn't written for weddings at all!

Does that make it wrong to employ that scripture for that purpose? Well, no, but the point not to be missed is that once we start "applying" scripture indiscriminately, there's really no check on that. This is exactly how Jesus has been appropriated by all sorts of groups that want nothing to do with Christians but everything to do with Jesus' teachings - based on a particular verse they pulled out of the gospels. Read just the Sermon on the Mount and you can make Jesus pro-peace, pro-poverty relief, pro-works righteousness, anti-public prayer, anti-national defense, and anti-Individual Retirement Accounts, if you select just the right verses.

So, we have a great need to teach people how to read the Bible, because the method matters. But a second distinction needs to be drawn, and that is the difference between being unable to read and being unwilling to read. The inability to read is what we know as illiteracy, and can be remedied through instruction. But our kids aren't illiterate. What we're up against instead is the tendency towards a-literacy. An aliterate generation can read, but chooses not to.

And why don't they read? Too many distractions, less time, busier schedules, a more demanding amount of homework (much of it of dubious value), amateur sports leagues, video games and iPods - all of these are culprits. But an added consideration when it comes to the Bible is that Bible reading may not be considered necessary. Why read the Bible when there's no truth to be had there? If my interpretation is as good as yours, then there's no need to store it or think on it; I'll just turn to it when I feel like I need it. It's the McChurch phenomenon extended to personal devotions.

It's not impossible to minister to an aliterate generation, but the modern church, which is grounded in assumptions of literacy, is ill-suited for it. Indeed, it can be argued that Protestantism itself was founded on the proposition that the Church ought to follow the Bible and that individuals had the right and obligation to read scripture for themselves in order to hold the Church in line. Aliteracy is a great challenge for the Church because it leaves the Church fairly foundationless. Who gets to decide what is true, but even more, what is important and necessary and deserving of the church's time and attention if there is no written Rule to follow? Should a church evangelize, educate, advocate, fund-raise, caretake, respite, build, progress, conserve? The answers are grounded in one's theology of the Church, which ought to be drawn from the Bible. But if the Bible is irrelevant, or doesn't make sense, or believed to contain myriad meanings, then that theology will be formed from something else.

At least in a culture that was unable to read (first-century Gentile Christians, medieval commoners, for example), there was a willingness to defer to those whose job it was to read and understand. This was not necessarily a good thing. The lack of accountability that comes when only a privileged few can read the Bible led to egregious corruption in the medieval Church. The dissenters who did try to keep the Church within scriptural bounds were silenced with punishment. But the opposite extreme, in which everyone weighs in with a subjective interpretation, is also unhealthy. How many of us have sat in a small group where the discussion proceeds this way: "Let's go around the circle and everyone tell what this verse means to them"? Eight varying interpretations later, the group moves on to the next verse, and so on, as if the purpose of the passage was to to facilitate collective navel gazing. Verses, passages, and books of the Bible do have a meaning, but it is the one meaning that the author intended. That scripture is "living and active" does not mean we can yank it out of context and claim that the meaning of a particular passage is "what it means to me".

It is that terrible habit of Bible reading, I am afraid, that has led to the sort of Biblical anarchy we have today. Nothing means anything, your truth is as good as my truth, and "experiencing" God or the Holy Spirit's presence is held to be the be-all-to-end-all of religious life. I read of one church that dispensed with its Christian Education program for children in order to bring them into the adult service so that they, too, could participate in the speaking in tongues and giving prophetic words. Huh? Meanwhile, "more than half of all adults (53%) believe that if a person is generally good, or does enough good things for others during their life, they will earn a place in Heaven" (Barna) and "more than two out of every five adults (41%) believe that when Jesus Christ lived on earth He committed sins" (Barna again).

The answers are complex, particularly because churches haven't been effective in teaching people how to read the Bible, only in urging that they should. That's another way of saying that if tomorrow every Christian suddenly started reading the Bible, the problem wouldn't be solved. We need a conversation and a re-examination of what the Bible is and how it is to be used in our everyday lives. Is it the "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth" (B.I.B.L.E.)? Is it God's rulebook for our lives? Is it the answer to all of life's problems? Is it a history book, a science book, a textbook? Until we can articulate what the Bible is for, it will fail to warrant the attention of non-readers.

Our attempt at this, such as it is, is the class "Stumped by the Bible?" which will be offered for the first time beginning this Saturday. For $20 and three weeks of your time (a parent must attend with their kid), you'll get an overview of the Old and New Testament, a handy mnemonic for remembering the major events of the Bible and their sequence, a method called the "B.I.B.L.E." method (no, not basic instructions before leaving earth) for reading it, a brief sketch of how the Bible came to be, and a handy reference guide called "Turning Your Bedroom Into a Bible College." Call or e-mail us to register. We'll make a Bible reader out of your son or daughter yet.

The Good in Good Friday

Just in case you've forgotten, the kid year revolves around holidays. Any first grader knows that each month has its own colors, sights, and sounds specific to one or more holidays, and their observance - which often mean a day off from school - not only is the way to mark the progression of the school year, but provides the reason for near-constant celebration.

September is Labor Day - not much of a holiday, but maybe a trip weekend, but it just gets better from there. October has Halloween; November, Thanksgiving; and December, the granddaddy of them all - Christmas. New Year's Day for a kid is actually December 26, the day we begin looking forward to Christmas again. February brings Valentine's Day - usually the occasion for some school party, March is St. Patrick's, and April brings Easter and Spring Break. May is relatively holiday-free, but by that time you're in the home stretch for summer, so who cares? And of course, somewhere in there falls a kid's birthday, the second holiest day behind Christmas. Summer is a holiday of its own.

The reason holidays are so attractive to kids is that they possess all of the elements that make kid life fun and memorable - bright colors, presents, special songs, hats or costumes, stories, and often, candy. Each is memorable and distinct because the observance makes it tangible.

So this Easter, my message to parents is this: Don't miss the boat on Good Friday.

Of all of my memories of church growing up, Good Friday would stand out as the most impactful day of the church year. Not Christmas - we were too pumped about what awaited us at home. And not Easter Sunday - that was really just church with a LOT of people there. But on Good Friday, the rawness and reality of the crucifixion was driven home.

For us, that meant Friday night church and a somber service where the last words of Jesus were explained. There was a giant wooden cross at the front of the church, and as each of the seven messages concluded, another set of lights was extinguished until only a spotlight remained on the cross. The last act was the raising of a giant black veil over the cross. Everyone was requested to leave the church in silence (for some reason I believed the pastors were bound by this until Sunday morning), and even though someone in our family would break this silence in the car on the way home, those 5-10 minutes of reflection left a huge impact on my 10-year-old brain. So much so, that 25 years later I can remember that the pastor concluded his final message in this way:

"Sunday we'll celebrate Jesus' resurrection, but tonight we don't look ahead. Tonight we're left where the disciples were on Good Friday - facing a dead Jesus. Not a sleeping Jesus...or a sick Jesus...but a dead Jesus." Powerful stuff.

Commercialism has no interest in Good Friday, and as a result, the symbols today still mean the same thing they meant then: the cross, the nails, the crown of thorns, the tomb. The death of Jesus is a reality that deserves to be faced, because it brings meaning to his sacrifice and also accentuates the miracle of the resurrection. The way we talk about the Easter event has become almost cliche: Jesus died on the cross and rose again. Ho hum. More accurately: Jesus was murdered, the disciples were anguished and scared and confused, and God supernaturally raised him from the dead in order to crown him as king. Good Friday brings us to the version of the story that ought to be told, because it captures the suspense and the drama and the heartache - the passion, if you will - of the death of Jesus.

Children are not too young to get this, but they won't get it if they're not exposed to it. You need not screen The Passion of the Christ in your living room; but simply constructing a wooden cross, letting kids touch and hammer nails into it, looking at depictions of the walk to Calvary, the raising of the crosses, the moment of Jesus' death - these lend a dose of reality to an old, old story. And if you think your kids are old enough, there are other movies less graphic than Passion that depict the crucifixion act.

Good Friday is good for Christians, and by that I mean not that it's meaningful, which of course it is, but that it has great utility. It recounts that at a particular, identifiable point in space-time history, the incarnate God, Jesus, was robbed of his life and that mankind, momentarily, lost its light. Easter completes the story, that Jesus didn't stay dead, and that hope was restored to the world. But on Friday, we rest in the place of sorrow that was very real. That's ok.

Maybe the reason kids love holidays so much is that they attach deep meaning to what are otherwise ordinary days. They give kids a sense of history. They cause us to sit up and take notice. Good Friday helps kids experience the reality of death in a way that causes them to fully appreciate the significance of hope.

Turn It Off! How TV makes us all dumber (ok, not all of us, and not exactly dumber, but we'd all surely be sharper with less of it)

First, a confession and disclaimer. I am not one to cast stones when it comes to TV viewing. I view plenty of it, and long have. Save for a four-month period when I deliberately stashed my TV in the closet in order to read and listen to the radio, it has been the background noise of my life. But, in the same way as I recognize the unhealthiness of soda consumption, yet drink it anyway, I do believe TV consumption has a corrosive effect on our potential to learn, to communicate, and to relate - and that's the subject of this week's post.

Last week I wrote about the connection between the act of reading and spiritual formation. My point was not to say that kids who are poor readers can't grow spiritually, only to point out that reading compliments spiritual growth, because when we read, we employ many of the same disciplines that help develop our spiritual muscles. The opposite is true of television: by its very nature and what it demands from a viewer, it's a detriment to spirituality; and as far as kids are concerned, the less of it, the better.

How does TV hurt us? Three ways, principally: it's a poor teacher, it makes us passive, and it cheapens our discourse - and all as a byproduct of being what it is. The danger that screen media (TV, movies, and some Internet sites) pose to spiritual development in children doesn't lie in the content, but in the nature of electronic media itself to discourage active engagement. With TV, we're just kind of…there.

If it's true that the best teaching answers the questions students are already asking, TV is the antithesis of that: you have to take whatever you get. For young kids especially this is not good, and in fact we know that TV viewing could impact more than just their potential to learn, but their very ability to learn as well. What science tells us about brain development in children adds urgency to the need to immerse kids in engaging, active learning environments. A baby's brain is rapidly establishing new nerve connections (trillions of them), literally building "brain highways" that will endure for all of life. But, this process doesn't continue forever. Around age ten, it slows down, and nerve endings that remain unattached begin to die off. (See - those of you who suspected kids lost their minds when they hit puberty - there's something to that!) What happens with our brains, then, during the first ten years of life is utterly crucial in determining how we will think and learn forever. And there are no "do overs"! That's why the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen media time, ever, for kids under 2, because a developing brain needs for the baby to be able to manipulate its environment in order to learn. TV gives them just the opposite of that.

But just because you're older than 10, don't go running for the remote. Television works against us because it makes us passive. Not inactive, as in, we could be exercising instead, but passive, in the sense that it requires nothing of us. What's more, we couldn't give back to it if we wanted to. A television program can't answer our questions, doesn't really care for our reactions, isn't concerned with whether we need something repeated or just need to ponder it for a while. And even if the creators of shows did care, there's nothing they could do about it - because the show must go on.

And so we, as viewers, learn not to think, but just to receive, which in turn affects our perception of the world (particularly when it comes to world events) as a place where "things just happen." This phenomena is documented brilliantly in a 1986 book by Neil Postman titled Amusing Ourselves to Death. A viewer might see or hear something that confuses or intrigues or excites or saddens them, but they have no way to engage the messenger and thus no ability to affect the next message, or the next, or the next. You cannot set aside a TV program and write about it or think about it or dialogue about it (TiVo excepted) without missing the next! exciting! development! You are left with a choice: think actively about what you're watching, and miss the rest of the show, or stop thinking and merely absorb the cavalcade of images. If you've ever been watching TV with others and wanted badly to comment on something, but didn't for fear of missing what was coming next, you've experienced this.

Television actually works against one's ability to grasp hold of an idea, to wrestle with it and truly understand it. In this way, TV is the exact opposite of a good conversation or a good teacher: it does all the talking. TV will not let you think very deeply, and it does not invite your interaction. Yet these all need to happen if we are to learn.

The third harm from TV is the cheapening effect it has on our communication with one another. I'm withholding judgment on e-mail, instant messaging, and text messaging because I think the jury is out on those: they've resuscitated written interpersonal communication and allowed us to maintain fellowship with a wider circle than ever before. But TV's negative influence on discourse stems from its interference with one's ability to read well, which in turn affects one's tendency to read at all, which in turn affects one's ability to have meaningful conversations (because there is nothing of substance to talk about). (And this is the downside to the aforementioned text messaging instant messaging: most of the messages teenagers exchange are empty and banal. As Henry David Thoreau noted about the telegraph, "We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.")

All of this - the way TV dulls us, disengages us, distances us from real-world interaction, and causes us to read less - amounts to a hindrance for spiritual development. How? It robs us of the skills and knowledge required to carry on a spiritual relationship. Am I saying that TV viewers can't have spiritual lives? Not at all. What I am saying is that the richness of one's spirituality will be molded by habits of mind, heart, and hands - that is, our tendencies when it comes to thinking and processing, empathizing and valuing, interacting and serving. At a very basic level, families who spend lots of time individually watching TV and little time talking to one another grow apart. It's for this reason that families are urged to eat dinner together and have conversations, with the TV off. Similarly, kids who are conditioned to immediately turn on the TV when they walk into a room or can't stand solitude will find the prospect of spending 15 minutes of alone time with God unappealing and impossible. There are kids I've encountered in educational and church settings who are practically incapable of answering a question or having a dialogue because they are so unused to that, preferring instead to be talked to, which is what TV does best.

What's the answer? It's too simple to say "turn it off", despite the title of this article, because like any habit, it takes time to break. Moreover, we're hooked: every favorite show has become Must-See-TV, and to repeat, I'm not claiming any special exemption from TV's spell. But most kids would do better with less of it, particularly if it was replaced with a healthier alternative. It's probably not a good idea to wean your young TV junkie for the express purpose of having him sit alone in his room 20 minutes with his Bible. Some kids may be ready for that, but most would resent it. However, anything that involves fellowship and parent-child communication and engagement is a great substitute. Go to a museum. Go to the mountains. Go to a skatepark. Go clean up trash. Walk a neighbor's dog. Go learn a new sport. Go outside and play. Work up to family devotion time, then encourage individual devotions. And whatever you do, talk about it, before, during, and after. Brains were meant to learn that way. Kids were meant to grow that way. God is meant to be related to that way.

May your journey from the realm of electronic clamor to unexceptional tranquility be blessed, successful, and worth it.

Turn It Off!

Is television curbing our appetite for the Almighty?

You always suspected it was so, didn't you? Now, an article in the Christian Education Journal supports it, but not for the reasons you may think. It isn't worldly themes or immoral content on TV or in movies that does the damage, but the nature of electronic media itself. Put another way, you could be watching Leave It to Beaver or The Real World -- it wouldn't matter; being plugged in stunts spiritual growth, especially in children.

The article by Linda Callahan, a child and adolescent therapist in Chattanooga, TN, lays out the idea that reading is the great casualty of kids' constant exposure to electronic media. Spending their days bombarded by what Callahan calls, "the Noise", there's no time and little inclination to spend time with printed material. The consequences for spiritual development are fascinating, and challenging.

Why does reading matter for spirituality? It's not so much that the accumulation of knowledge through reading produces a disciple; rather, that the same disciplines employed in reading - silence, solitude, study (and when a parent is reading to a child, fellowship) - happen to be those that are integral to the process of spiritual formation. By contrast, the inability (or distaste for or unwillingness) to reflect, to contemplate, to compose one's own thoughts or to understand the composition of another's - all of this has an effect on our ability to relate.

Sunday School, by its nature, has never been very good at teaching the relational aspect of Christianity. Classes are too big to allow for the kind of individualized questioning that would be needed to be helpful. Moreover, the kinds of questions that ought to be asked don't lend themselves to black-and-white responses. Sunday schools are good at being, well, schools, which always trend towards efficiency and quantifiable measures, rather than qualitative ones. As a result, a child can be really good at Sunday school, delivering all the right responses, but really bad at being a Christian.

Relationships, on the other hand, require the development of a particular set of skills, and the uniqueness of each child guarantees that these skills will develop at uneven rates, making "normal" or "standard" or even "expected" achievement a relatively worthless concept. The task for anyone who cares about child spirituality isn't how to ensure that kids acquire more knowledge, but how to give them practice in growing the ability to relate to an unseen God.

And this brings us back to reading, which itself requires those same abilities but which itself is also threatened in an increasingly wired world. Says Callahan, "In subtle and not so subtle ways, television and film are contributing to the indifference to Christian spirituality and to the high levels of alienation and purposelessness that are common in children, youth and adults today." However, the act of reading, which involves time alone, free from distraction, decoding and understanding written messages, helps to build the sort of skills (and, I would contend, even the temperament) needed to experience a relationship with God.

First, Callahan suggests, "Noise-free reading times should be a part of each day," and that "to get started the entire family should go the library." Parents and kids should own books, lots of them, and time spent exposed to electronic media should be sharply monitored. Care to guess how much time the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends is advisable for children under age 2 to spend each day in front of "screen media" (television and videos)? Exactly none; yet even this uncle of five has given DVDs as gifts recently, because videos of favorite cartoons have become so standard a part of early childhood it's hard to imagine a home without them. Exactly what's wrong with TV viewing, apart from its robbing time from reading, is the subject of next week's blog, but Christian parents would do well to heed Callahan's warning: there's far too much of it in almost every home.

Moreover, she writes, "Christians must deliberately counter the effects of the Noise within the church." From the nursery right up to the adult service, "modern" churches are marked by the degree to which they've employed video, graphics, musical and lighting elements that emulate professional stage productions - in other words, "the Noise". Therefore, it's important to understand that the prescription for Christian Education programs is not necessarily sustained silent reading (which would be impossible anyhow with young children) but the nurturing of disciplines - habits of heart, life, and mind - that foster spiritual development. Classrooms should be places of fellowship, not passive silence. The assumption that a quiet classroom indicates more learning and is therefore the key to spiritually flourishing kids needs serious reexamination. It isn't a question of whether classrooms ought to be noisy or quiet, but the effect of either on children's engagement: does it promote activity or passivity?

"The Noise" is not going away. But Christians can go away from The Noise. Daily unplugging and avoidance may prove to be not only a choice, but a necessity for healthy spirituality.