Surrender is Not a Strategy

From the day your child is born, you dream big dreams and hope the best for them. You desire to give them a better upbringing than you had and you fret about how you're going to provide it. You hope they won't make the same mistakes you did and you agonize when they do. You go the distance to get them a great education, to live in a safe neighborhood, to enrich them with social and cultural experiences, and to develop their athletic and artistic potential.

Great. Now what about their character?

It's surprising how many parents will instinctively respond to the question, "What do you want for your child?" by saying, "I just want them to be happy" without fully realizing the trade-off that could entail. Would you be satisfied if your kids grew up to be wealthy, well-educated, well-traveled, and even happy, but lacked the qualities of integrity, morality, honesty, trustworthiness, and empathy that constitute what we know as character?

It all begs the question: where is "good enough" when it comes to raising kids? Somehow we've devalued character and morality (if we ever truly did value them) to the point that if you just have the outward appearance of success or affluence or niceness, then inner qualities don't matter. Forgive me, but that is so California. And it is so bankrupt. I'm not saying that perfect character is or ought to be the goal, only that we've ceded far too much in the area of character development, so much so that young people could be excused for believing that there are no standards, and that in any case, it would be impolite and wrong to judge.

What set me thinking about all of this is news that the City of Mission Viejo is considering passing a "social host" ordinance which would hold parents liable when teens consume alcohol at their homes. The proposed law came about because teenage weekend house parties are rampant there (it's the O.C., after all) and other jurisdictions have had success in fining the owner of the property when alcohol is illegally consumed there. (I've since learned that in San Diego County, only Carlsbad and Del Mar do not have such an ordinance on the books.)

Want to discover someone's attitude about what a parent can and ought to do when it comes to communicating values and expectations and providing moral guidance? Start a discussion on the issue of whether parents should be held ultimately accountable for the behavior of their kids. The ordinance came up on talk radio recently, and a man who said he was the dad of two teenage boys weighed in with this:

"I have two teenagers myself and I've had a couple of parties for them myself...I take their keys, I monitor the party, and if someone's getting out of control, they're done...Just a small, closed group of friends over here, havin' a good time, they like to play 'Beer Pong' - what they call it - you know, and - if a parent is going to have a party, they have to be responsible about it."

From the outset, this dad betrays his own ignorance. For those of you who don't know, let me enlighten you about "Beer Pong". You set up cups of beer, usually in a triangle shape (think bowling pins), at opposite ends of a table and take turns bouncing or tossing a ping pong ball at the other team's cups. Ball in a cup = opposing team has to drink that cup. Once all of the cups have been drained, the losing side customarily has to drink whatever beer remains on the winning side. The goal is to get the other team to drink a lot of beer, fast. In other words, if you were - as this dad is apparently claiming - trying to teach kids how to responsibly enjoy alcohol, "Beer Pong" would be a poor method to use.

Moreover, as the dad continued it became evident he really had no idea how much the kids were consuming, nor did he care to know, because nobody was going to be leaving: "They all spend the night. I usually have about 7 or 8 couples, you know, that's about it, no more than 20 at the most." (You read that right - "couples". To which the host asked, "How do you know they're not groping each other?" and the father responded, "Well I don't know that, but they're teenagers, you know, it's gonna happen anywhere.")

Then the dad said, "But I don't let the kids get, you know, crazy drunk." (Drunk is apparently ok, just not "crazy drunk".) "Just like a bartender should...if they're getting to a point where they're way too drunk or they're - before that, you gotta stop 'em."

They say if you give someone enough rope, they'll hang themselves, and sure enough, the man's real rationale came through as he prattled on:

"Well, I've got - my boys are pretty good, you know? They've got a great group of friends, they all get good grades, they're all in sports, you know, they all do the right thing. They're not troublemakers." Then he hastened to add, "I don't tolerate any drugs. No drugs at all. You know, if I see that, they're gone."

At this point, allow me to translate:

"My boys and I have a bargain. I am their dad, and they know the thing I care about most is image, keeping up with the Joneses, but also being a cool dad. Really, I just want them to be happy. I like their friends, and their friends like me, and we've pretty much worked it out so that as long as no one makes waves (no drugs, no "crazy drunk" stuff), everything's chill. As long as they keep getting good grades and don't embarrass me, like by dropping out of sports and dressing all in black or something, I'll appease them by providing alcohol and hosting co-ed sleepovers at our house."

Well. A full consideration of this matter wouldn't be complete if I didn't also share with you the thoughts of another caller to the same show, this one from the opposite end of the age spectrum. The girl, who said she was 23, chimed in, "What better way to teach kids healthy drinking habits other than in their own home, I mean, kids are going to get drunk anyways, whether or not you fine their parents, but why not keep them at home and keep them safe?" Monitoring parties, "is harm reduction, you know? We can't prevent it, that's been proven: kids die every day in drunk-driving accidents, but why not keep it at the home and show them how to drink?" (She didn't say whether Beer Pong would be part of that curriculum.)

The point - in part - is that kids are not interested in being taught how to drink. Illicitness and overdoing it is part of the appeal of underage drinking to those who are underage. They get drunk because "you never know what might happen" as opposed to light social drinking that accompanies some other event. Here's a newsflash: Teenagers don't have parties so they can get together and catch up on old times. At teenage house parties, drinking is the event.

But the point is also bigger than underage drinking alone. The point is that no one seriously believes that parents have no authority or that there ought to be no standard, whether it's "no drugs" or "no getting crazy drunk" or "no drinking and driving". Everyone implicitly recognizes that parents have a right to, well, be parents, to put their foot down and draw a line and say, "Here is where I stand, and as my son or daughter, this is the standard that you will be held to." The question isn't as simple as whether the drinking age should be lowered or abolished (as some would have you believe) because even then, a parent would have to set limits - "Mom, why can't I go to the bar on Mondays?" The question is where will you stake out those boundaries of character development?

Underage drinking is an issue of character because of the often-ignored fact that it is illegal and as long as it remains illegal it will involve deception. Kids have to lie about where they're going and where they've been, they have to lie about their age or pay someone who will lie if questioned about why they're buying the booze, they have to lie about whether so-and-so's parents will be home, and they have to clean up beer stains and get rid of the trash so they aren't found out - and I have never known a busted teenager to be honest about how much they actually drank and not claim to have been surprised that alcohol was there ("It just sort of showed up").

Or, it need not involve (much) deception if they're friends of that Orange County dad, who presumes to decide for himself that that law need not be followed. Which in turn brings us back to the female caller, who opined: "Adults have a lot of influence. I grew up here and I went to a lot of parties and I watched a lot of my friends die in drunk driving accidents and it's unfortunate, but they never told us what to do if we got in trouble. It was always, 'Say no, say no, don't drink'; never 'don't drink and drive' or 'eat before you drink', there was never any of that."

Catch the doublespeak? "Adults have a lot of influence" - yet she chose to ignore the messages they were giving: "Say no...don't drink." I don't know why those messages didn't penetrate (but she did hear them, didn't she?), but her prescription is horrible. Enabling kids is not guiding them. Surrender is not a strategy. Responsible parenting is not advising kids to drink on a full stomach. That's not the point. The point is to do the right thing. Do it over and over. As caregivers of children, you have the right and responsibility to stake out the moral boundaries of those living under your care. (And yes, kids will develop and define their own moral boundaries, and one day they'll get to test them, and to see if they're practical and wise. But not while they live under your roof.) As I've written before, you absolutely have the right to hold kids to a higher standard than you yourself may have met. Without this idealism, our collective morality races to the bottom.

Ultimately, a social host ordinance can slap fines on overly accommodating parents, it can deter teenage drinking in homes, it can cause parents who've foolishly trusted their kids to mind the house for the weekend to be smarter; but it cannot give parents the fortitude to stop caving into the culture. Only the culture itself, or a force within the culture, can stem that tide. Parental idealism is one of those forces. It has pushed our kids to higher and higher levels of academic, athletic, and creative achievement. So why can't that idealism be brought to bear on our kids' character, too?

Where did Lucy go?

Some time in the next two weeks, take your kids and go see Prince Caspian. It really is that good. They might not grasp all of the spiritual parallels, but they'll like the story anyhow, and the movie might cause them to pick up the book series. For your part, if you watch Caspian closely enough, you just might spot yourself.

As much as I liked Narnia, I loved Caspian. Not only did they produce a two-and-a-half hour movie that held my interest, but they adapted a book which uses lots of dialogue to bring readers up to speed on what happened in Narnia between the Pevensie's first visit and their return. While much of the first movie focuses on the kids (and the viewers) discovering Narnia, Caspian opens with the kids missing Narnia intensely; stuck in the world for a time, but eagerly awaiting another transcendent experience that will re-place them where their hearts had been all along.

It's the same "already-not yet" tension that we believers live in every day, and the movie captures this longing beautifully. Yet, none of the kids seems to know fully what to do with Narnia once they've arrived. Could this be the clue as to why we don't inherit the eternal kingdom at the moment of our salvation? The three oldest children sense that there is a battle at hand, but are still growing into their roles. But it is in Lucy that we see the picture of a girl with single-minded devotion to the one who enthralls her, her King, Aslan.

I think everyone who discovers Jesus goes through a Lucy period in their lives, when God is new and fresh and thrilling and it's enough just to be with him, demanding nothing. I can relate to that. But I can also surely relate to Edmund - carnal and tempted and wanting to enjoy pleasure too much for his own good; and to Susan - older, wiser, but too level-headed at times to appreciate the immaterial or too impatient to tolerate the intangible; and to Peter - serious about kingdom work to a fault (as an ambitious, battle-ready Peter exclaims in the movie, "We've waited for Aslan long enough!").

It seems no one can stay Lucy forever. New believers are confronted with the reality that others couldn't give two cents about what they believe. They meet the colder reality that even fellow believers don't share their zeal. They come to realize that the Church is filled with still-fallible humans - forgiven, yes, but still toting the baggage of the "old man" with them. Anyone who has grown into a ministry leadership position comes to terms quickly with the fact that laws of economics and politics don't check themselves at the front door of the church. We are forced to temper our idealism with a certain amount of practicality, even cunning. As we "grow up" in our faith, we lose our sense of awe. Bible stories that were once vivid become familiar and then passe; songs that once moved us become background noise; rituals that were meaningful become rote. Once we were enthralled; we become hardened. Once we were on fire; we cool to a steady burn. And before we know it, the baby skin is gone: Where did Lucy go?

The question matters to parents and others who work with children because if we are to guide them to a mature faith and a faith that outlasts Sunday school programming, enduring into young adulthood and anchoring them as they raise families of their own, we must understand how the character of religious faith changes as kids develop, and why. Or to put it another way, why can't Edmund, Susan, and Peter believe the way Lucy does?

To begin with, spiritual development is thought to be shaped by cognitive development. It is generally accepted that you do not speak to a preschooler about spiritual things in the same way you would speak to an adult: preschoolers lack the facility with language to make sense of immaterial concepts. Thus, in a preschooler's mind God is a kindly old man who lives in heaven (which is actually, physically, in the clouds) and people who go to heaven become angels (because the wings allow them to stay in flight). In one sense, the job of teaching adults is to reshape those perceptions formed as children which weren't quite right, but were necessary because a child couldn't understand it any other way (ever try to explain a "soul" to a five-year-old?). The degree to which cognitive development limits spiritual development is disputed by those who study child spirituality: Can a young child be as spiritually deep as a grown adult? is a matter of disagreement, and I can't settle the question here. But, nearly everyone would concede that a child's ability to communicate spiritual understanding is developmentally determined, and for purposes of measuring and evaluating, only what can be articulated is useful.

What happens as kids grow is that they begin to use language in ever-more sophisticated ways, and their holistic grasp of how the world works improves. Thus, a young child has no problem believing in Santa Claus, who is able to personally deliver presents to every girl and boy on Christmas Eve. Young children are given to magical thinking, and the existence of a loving God is no stretch. Lots of children's curricula have moved away from asking children to "ask Jesus to be their Lord and Savior" because such terms hold little meaning to a four-year-old. Instead, kids are invited to "ask Jesus to be their forever friend" - understandable and certainly more developmentally appropriate, but not fully adequate as a substitute for "Savior": I can be your friend (even your "forever friend") without being your savior.

What is needed, then, is for us to be vigilant and diligent in following up with kids as they grow and as their capacity for grasping spiritual concepts changes. If we are perceptive, we will catch when they are ready for a more nuanced understanding. One way to do this is to intentionally dialogue with your child about spiritual things, and to listen. Too many people have the idea that unless we (adults) are doing most of the talking, kids can't be learning. Quite to the contrary, I believe the best learning happens when kids themselves are talking because they are being forced to put ideas into words - to think about what they think, if you will - and it's that very process that makes them more receptive to the answers adults have.

A second way to help kids keep their faith as they mature is to be developmentally sensitive and appropriate. In general, churches (and more specifically, the companies that write church curriculum) have done a good job adjusting down: preschool and early elementary Sunday school classes have the same look and feel as academic school classrooms do, and proven effective methods of communication and instruction have been adapted into a religious education context. The same cannot be said for what's out there for older elementary students. Some of the programs packaged for 3rd-5th graders are truly awful. They are, in a word, facile. They do not challenge kids to think and as such they do not teach anything; instead, they re-tell the same Bible stories kids have heard since they were three (leading to the widespread, documented perception among junior high-aged students that they pretty much know everything in the Bible and don't believe it has anything left to teach them). They are fraught with moralizing and allegorizing (the point of the David and Goliath story is not that God gave the Israelites victory, it's that we should be unafraid when facing the giants in our own lives), and focus mainly on developing character qualities, as if the reason Christ died was to motivate us to be better people.

A third imperative is to change the way we use the Bible. Most kids are unaware of the Bible's Big Story, or that it even has a Big Story, and tend to hold the "B.I.B.L.E." (Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth) mindset or the "Yellow Pages" mindset, wherein the Bible is believed to be a collection of passages on topical issues (Today: anger. Tomorrow: lust.). Kids are rarely taught that there is a continuity to the story, but grasping that continuity is the key to understanding why the Bible is consistent and why it retains relevance thousands of years after it was written! One way to do this is to teach two Bible stories side by side and ask kids to draw out the parallels: how did God act? What was common in the peoples' responses? How might God act in a similar way today? This method will be part of the Kids Games program this summer.

A fourth way to help kids accommodate their faith as they grow is to have someone else who knows your child spiritually who is not their parent walking alongside. The only way this happens is organically, as your child is continually exposed to older Christians in their church. Across the children's ministry at our church, we have made a deliberate attempt to match students with consistent small group leaders, but we are limited by ratios that don't lend themselves to familiarity (it's much harder to get to know 12 kids and their families than it is to know six) and inconsistency of attendance. When kids only come once or twice a month, the chances of bonding with an adult leader are much less.

As kids grow up, they'll naturally move beyond a Lucy stage. The job is not to hold them there, but to promote and cheer their development, to assure them that God is bigger than their doubts, to encourage their questions, to help them discern their role to play in God's kingdom, and to ready them for that. After all, the older children didn't love Aslan any less, but they did love him differently.

Whatever Happened to Modesty?

I wasn't going to write about Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana. Really, I wasn't. I try not to exaggerate the effect pop culture has on kids. Movies (The Da Vinci Code, The Golden Compass), "Harry Potter" (and the is-J.K. Rowling-a-Christian-or-isn't-she? fuss), teenage television shows (The O.C., Dawson's Creek, and MTV's appalling My Super Sweet 16), and Bad Boy & Bad Girl actors (Brittney & Jamie Lynn Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton) - all come and go. You (a parent) remain the most consistent, persistent, and willing influence in your child's life as long as they live under your roof.

I don't fixate on those things because I don't care about them much. Maybe I should care more. Yes, they create culture to a degree. But what makes them frightening - and does make me take notice - is when they actually reflect the culture, when I look at them and see us.

Such is the case now with Miley/Hannah. First she posed for some suggestive photos in Vanity Fair magazine, then it was disclosed that she has posted her own revealing shots on her MySpace page. By "revealing" I mean typical of what one would find on MySpace, and the reason this is news is that it's Hannah Montana for goodness sake, the Queen of Wholesome and Disney and the hottest pre-teen concert ticket around. (Amusing sidenote: hottest ticket for girls, anyhow. Recently when we played a game at our midweek program that asked kids to name a singer, almost every girl immediately wrote down "Hannah Montana". The boys, stumped, finally came up with "Elvis".) We didn't want to believe Hannah/Miley was, you know, like that, which is to say a "normal" or "typical" teenager, which is also to say, "just like everyone else."

Which shines the spotlight uncomfortably back on us and begs the question: whatever happened to modesty?

In case you're feeling out of the loop at this point, a primer: Miley Cyrus is the daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus whose fame has far eclipsed her father's, as the star of the Disney Channel show "Hannah Montana." She's a far cry from Lindsay Lohan, and in no way am I predicting this is the beginning of a long slide for her. But in this month's Vanity Fair magazine, she appears in a photo spread that, depending on your view of the pictures, you might choose to call "provocative" or "artistic" or "inappropriate".

From there, we've descended into a spiral of who's to blame? and just-how-bad-are-they? second-guessing, all the while missing the bigger picture. That bigger picture, apart from whether the photographer or her dad or the editors of Vanity Fair or Cyrus' agent bear responsibility for her appearing like that, is that she herself wasn't sufficiently bothered by the prospect of nationwide exposure (no pun intended). This fact was doubly evidenced by the revelation this week that her MySpace page features photos of her, for instance, stretched out across a boy's lap, in a bathtub (clothed) with two friends, and wearing far less than she'd ever get away with on Disney.

Cyrus said at first that the photographer was persuasive...then that she was embarrassed and sorry... Whatever. The point is (and the MySpace thing just backs this up) that her standards - our standards - are not very high, and they certainly don't include modesty. Kids, I think, are naturally modest when it comes to baring certain body parts, or seeing them bared on someone else. Somewhere, the "eww" factor always kicks in. But at some young age - and apparently 15 is not now too young - it becomes accepted and even expected to show much more. If maturity is the rush to throw off childish innocence, I would suggest that modesty has been wrongly discarded.

I'm not talking about shame, I don't think. Shame is unreasonable and it is imposed from the outside. Released from the spectre of shame, inhibitions are cast off. I'm talking about modesty as self-control, an internalized inhibition, a willful decision not to present myself in a way that shocks or draws attention or even flatters my own self.

Where did we get this idea that everyone is entitled to every private bit of ourselves - and even worse, that they desire that? So, this beautiful self-restraint might begin with physical appearance but it need not end there. A degree of modesty can be evidenced in the things I say, and in what I choose to talk about (namely, is my favorite topic of conversation me?); in what I own; in how I carry myself; in how I handle successes and setbacks. Immodesty is related to narcissism, self-love that is the fuel of boastfulness. We've all been around self-absorbed, boastful people - they're boorish. So why has our culture come to accept vane self-representations as any more welcome?

The problem is that somewhere along the line, modesty became prudish. Only very conservative religious types favored it, but for everyone else, sexualization and disclosure became the norm. "Being confident in yourself" and "having nothing to hide" got conflated with "letting it all hang out". As a result, we know far more about each other than we probably care to, or need to. Who needs scripted TV dramas when tell-all reality TV psychodramas are proving once and for all that truth really is stranger (and more engrossing) than fiction?

Which brings us back to Miley, in a way, because her MySpace photos are nothing if not representative of the flavor of the whole site: put yourself on display, hold nothing back, and make sure to add a little sizzle. The world is one big party, starring you. She's not leading the pack on anything here, she's reflecting the prevailing teenage social ethic. An ethic which is deeply self-obsessed, engrossed in drama, careless about sexuality, and pretty brazen about broadcasting all of it to the world. Teenagers, guarded and secretive as they are with grown ups, put it all on display on a MySpace page.

And it's all...a little much. And a little troubling. I'll not be modest about proclaiming that.

My Crazy Idea

I'm looking for a few good men. And women. And children. For a very simple experiment in promoting the spiritual lives of kids.

As one who works with children and families in a Christian context, I have an interest in promoting Bible literacy. I believe in the power of the Bible to shape people, and I wish more people would read it and I wish more people would understand it. To that end, we've offered a "Stumped by the Bible" class this spring (which is being re-tooled for rollout again in the Fall), taken time in our class to show off new Bible products, written about those products in this space, and searched high and low for the most appropriate translation we could find at a reasonable cost. (What we found was The Illustrated New Testament, a gem of a Bible, available from www.biblesplus.com.) We get kids to open the Bible every weekend, we teach from it, and we send home discussion pages with at least one question that is directly related to the meaning and application of a verse or passage.

I know firsthand how the Bible can spur spiritual growth. Yet as much as I believe in personal Bible study, I know most Christians don't read it - and that certainly goes for kids, too. It's too hard, too boring, takes too much time, or found to be not impactful. Some kids are reading from adult translations. Many just don't know where to read. And, their reading skills are still developing. They get grace for the fact that they can't readily interpret texts that are 2,000+ years old.

As I wrestled with, and continue to wrestle with, the question of how to make our kids Bible-literate, I happened to attend the seminar by Marcia Bunge at Bethel Seminary in San Diego, where she presented 10 best practices for promoting spiritual development in children. First on the list: Reading and discussing the Bible and interpretations of it with children.

Could it really be that simple? Can we really launch kids on a path of Bible understanding, Bible reverence, and Bible living just by taking the time to read it to them, out loud, regularly? Parents will sometimes ask for recommendations of devotional books to use, or that their pre-teen son or daughter might have for themselves. What if the answer is, simply, "The Bible", read out loud over and over again?

So I'm looking for a few good men, women, and children, to take a 30-day challenge. The assignment is to endeavor to read aloud from the Bible to your children every day for a month. I want to know if it's practical. If it's workable. If it's palatable to kids. And you have to discuss, as Bunge said, meanings and interpretations with kids. By "discuss" it means that you distinctly don't bring an outline or notes to the devotion time - that's a sermon. Discussion is collaborative. To discuss "interpretations" is to acknowledge that the Bible has a rich history of varying interpretations, and that fact doesn't cheapen God's word in any way, but only reflects the fact that people have thought seriously about it for a good long time and serious thinkers have raised questions without definitive answers. You need to get comfortable in that territory of what we don't know because it's exactly those things that make the Bible intriguing and worth thinking about. One of the tragedies of Sunday school is the way we answer every question so neatly and perfectly, oh-so-carefully tying up every loose end, so that the mystery of God is extinguished. God is not simple, but wonderfully complex. Whenever I hear a kid preface a question with, "There's something I don't get about God…" or "I've been thinking about that…" I know they're developing some depth of understanding. I love that.

What would you read? That's up to you. Obviously anyone who takes this on will want to complete the 30 days, so there will be some trial and error with which books and passages you choose. Proverbs is simple. So is James. Romans is harder. Gospels are great, and don't always lend themselves to common-sense interpretation. Or, try some OT history - Kings and Chronicles. But whatever you choose, the goal is to create an uninterrupted time that happens regularly. (The amount of time you read each day will vary based on the age of your kids, and other factors.)

The only other requirement is that you keep a journal, which we'll give you, that records what happened each day, and then that you write a summary reflecting on the experience at the end of the 30 days.

Now, an important, and necessary, distinction. My desire is to promote living in the Book, not by the Book. When we live in the Book, we recognize our own place in God's story. We see the Bible as history, yes, but also as a story that continues to this day - the story of God's interaction with mankind. We see there stories of faith and yes, virtue, but the Bible is not primarily a collection of moral tales. But there are plenty of characters we wouldn't want to emulate, and the story is richer for them, despite their moral lapses. The tendency is to use the Bible with children only as a tool of character formation, leading to kids' perceptions that it's a catalog of do's and don'ts. The old cannard that "Bible" stands for "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth" is cute, but not helpful to kids. Living by the Book breeds legalism. Living in the Book reminds us why we're alive.

Let's see what this does. School's getting out soon, summer looms on the horizon, life is busy...which makes this a perfect time to try. Martin Luther once said of prayer that when he felt like he was too busy to spend an hour in devotion he immediately set aside what he had to do and spent two hours. Just the act of reading the Bible together could be as beneficial and transformative to your family as the content covered during that time.

Interested? Intrigued? Willing to try it? (Incidentally, it is impossible to fail at this, because even if you only manage to read 1 day out of 30, that will tell us something.) E-mail me and let me know you're on board, and I'll send you the journal. I'm looking for at least 10 families to try this, and evaluate after 30 days. You're invited to see what happens.