This week was the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. I wasn't born when it happened, but of course anyone school-aged and older in 1969 can tell you exactly where they watched it and what they felt. But whatever electric thrill an average American felt, for the astronauts, it was that times 1000. And that's the paradox of transcendent experiences - when something is too great for words, how do you begin to tell about it?
The cover story in TIME Magazine told the story not only of the Apollo 11 astronauts, but of everyone who ever made an Apollo mission - just 24 in all - noting that their lives after space were not unlike what happens to any celebrity who's exhausted their 15 minutes of fame. Only for an astronaut, there was never really a chance that fame would be revived, at least not in the sphere of space. Another celebrity can get a book deal, a reality TV series, a movie role. But once you've been to the moon? There's really no topping that. The commander of Apollo 15, Dave Scott, told Time that when he returned from the moon, his neighbors threw him a barbecue. But being there didn't feel quite right: "I thought, 'What am I doing here?'"
Did Paul feel the same way, after he was given his vision of heaven that he describes in 2 Corinthians 12? Did Moses, after he spoke with God? The Bible says he had to wear a veil after those encounters because the rest of the Israelites were afraid to come near him. Yet the veil concealed what was really happening: the glory of Moses' face was actually fading. And 2 Corinthians 3 goes on to tell us that Moses' ministry (that is, the law) brought death - yet it brought so much glory; "how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness!"
This business of radiant faces and fading glory has rich implications for ministry. First of all, the Old Testament should never be taught divorced from the New. The Old Testament alone is not the good news. In fact, Romans assures us that, standing alone, it is bad news! No one becomes righteous by observing the law - so only the assurance that "a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known" (3:21) begins to change things for us. The Law brings death, but the Spirit brings life. We are fooling ourselves if we think that by delivering kids the Law - even in entertaining or memorable ways - it will make them joyful subjects of the King. Yet it's easy to fall into this, by extracting some "do" principle from every Bible story we teach. Christianity is a religion of doing, of action - sometimes. But sometimes it's a religion of being. Sometimes it's a religion of encounter, of wonder, of experience. Sometimes we just get to receive.
Secondly, Moses first encountered God and then was a witness to the encounter. The experience was authentic and so profound, Moses didn't have to practice change, he was changed. He didn't do witness, he was the witness. I wonder if one reason American Christians are so lukewarm about sharing their faith is that we've reduced faith to its cognitive component and sharing it to an apologetic exercise; but that stops short of its fullness. "Sharing our faith" should be like telling about the time we climbed Mt. Everest, or skydived for the first time, or survived a plane crash. No kid is going to get excited to tell his friend about the Law of God. But what if they've actually encountered God? That could be a different story.
A third observation stems from the second: if we're going to be effective in transmitting the faith (read: a vibrant relationship, not just a set of propositions or rules), then we ourselves must get and stay immersed in our own encountering. I made that word up, but the tense is deliberate. I've seen too many kids listen to too many adults deliver testimonies of how they met the Lord ten or more years ago and be totally nonplussed. Kids live in the now, and where and how God is acting now should be more a part of our testimony anyhow.
Fourth and finally, however, we should be mindful that words will never do God justice. Books on theology are always doomed to fail: either they will be too short and too underwhelming that they don't do justice to all that God is, or they will be hopelessly complex in an attempt to nail down every characteristic and agency of God - putting God in a box, but missing. There has to be room for wonder and mystery and a humble acknowledgement of what we don't know. Our teaching should never leave Jesus in the past, but always invite kids to meet him in the present. Did the Israelites meet God through Moses? No, they saw God's glory reflected on his face. That itself was an invitation to repent, to obey, to enter a relationship with God through faith.
This is why Christianity cannot be inherited, nor can it be taught, exactly. In fact, so much great teaching doesn't break new ground as much as it puts into words what the hearer has experienced or is experiencing. We give kids words like "holiness" and "forgiveness" and "salvation" and "eternity" so that they can have language to attach to spiritual reality. Ultimately, we want kids to regard God as not just "bigger than" the Superbowl, or a fireworks show, or the ocean, or all the money in the world, but in fact "different from" all of those things, in a class of his own. We should strive to attach such reverence to spiritual things that when kids enter into them, they experience something other-worldly, and the rest of the world seems strange and ordinary. Maybe then, like the astronauts who visited the moon, they'd be compelled to return to it again and again.
Info, articles, and thoughts for parents of kids at North Coast Calvary Chapel.
