Now, which version do you want to cultivate in your kids?
I think this is a crucial question, and also a scary one. Does your kid want to meet Jesus, to spend time with him, and to become like him? Or is their experience of him, like so many other things in kid-life, the experience of having to be with him?
The Worst Advice I Ever Gave
When I was a high school teacher, I had a student who wouldn't do homework. So we scheduled a parent conference. In the conference, the boy sat sullen as his dad pleaded with him to get his grade up and finish high school. Then I chimed in with what I thought was brilliant insight: There are all kinds of things in life we don't want to do, I told him, but we just do them because we have to.
My message could not have been more clear: yeah, history is boring and irrelevant, but he should work hard at it anyhow - just because, Needless to say, this failed to turn around his motivation! He had already made up his mind that history was boring, and except for WWII, which interested him, his grade remained in the cellar the whole year.
We often speak of education in this way, that it's something we do in spite of ourselves: Yeah, it's boring, but you just have to gut it out. Whether or not you believe that's true when it comes to multiplication tables or lists of spelling words or dates of Civil War battles isn't really the point. The point is, can we afford to have kids believe that "gutting it out" is what they ought to do when it comes to God?
If it's not free, it's not faith
We can't force kids to love God, or even be interested in him. Kids don't have to. Unlike so many other choices in their lives that are made and managed for them, this one is uniquely theirs. Once we come to grips with that, it changes what we must do. Rather than compel, we invite. Compliance isn't the end goal; affirmative response is.
And what happens when you grant kids freedom? It's messy. Sometimes they make choices we don't like. Sometimes they do it wrong. Sometimes their expressions of faith aren't as pure or precise as we would like. Sometimes they rebel or refuse.
Come to think of it - it's exactly what God experiences with us. In his love for us, he grants us great freedom, and sometimes - often - we make wrong choices. We say the wrong things. We don't honor God. What is God up to in doing this?
The easy thing would be for God, being God, to say, "OK now, people of the world, here's what I want each of you to say and to do. And I want you to obey with smiles on your faces and to never stop saying how much you love me." And of course, God does command obedience. In Deuteronomy 11:1 for instance he says, "Love the Lord your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always." But the obedience he commands is a piece of the covenant, and a covenant is a shared commitment between us and God, that presumes a relationship because God loves us and we love God!
New Testament commands to obey express this more fully:
- "If you love me, keep my commands" (Jesus, John 14:15)
- "Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching" (Jesus, John 14:23)
- "You are my friends if you do what I command" (Jesus, John 15:14)
- "And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands" (2 John 1:6)
When a Christian obeys, it's a willing response to God's love. God's love is what sent Jesus to the cross. Not my obedience. Not your spotless behavior record. Only God's love, which leaves us free - free from sin, and free to love him back - or not. Biblical obedience is a choice.
Room for Grace and Growth
And it would be easy for us, being us, to script out exactly how we want kids to say and think and act and feel, because these marks of behavior give at least the appearance that kids are being Christianized. But then we remember that kids don't have to, and it makes us vulnerable, because the opposite of being controlling and prescriptive is to allow freedom and, well, freedom is messy.
But that's just the thing. In the mess, kids can experience grace. In the mess, we can teach kids by example that God's love for them - just like our love for them - isn't conditioned on perfect performance. In the mess, we give kids the freedom to be themselves.
Last year, in a Creation lesson with a group of kindergarteners and first graders, we talked about how God created all of nature from nothing. A troubled look came across one boy's face, and he raised his hand and asked, "Does that mean God created earthquakes?" Contrast that with a story my friend tells about being a child and reflecting on a mural of Noah's flood that was painted in his church's children's ministry space. "Brother Al," he asked, "when all the water went away, weren't there a bunch of dead bodies everywhere?" My friend's innocent and thoughtful question was answered this way: "We don't need to ask questions like that."
I want to do ministry in a place where kids feel free to ask if God created earthquakes. But to do that, they have to feel free. Not constrained. Not like they're expected to play a role.
The Biggest Decision
The final reason it's so important to allow kids freedom when it comes to religion is a matter of training. Every Christian parent hopes their kid will make the big Decision - to entrust their life to Christ. But how can we expect kids to make a decision of that magnitude if they're completely inexperienced at making decisions when it comes to the rest of their lives?
Whenever possible, we should give kids the freedom to make decisions. We should not do things for kids that they can do for themselves. It will take longer and they will sometimes get it wrong; but so what? Let your kids make bad decisions when the outcome doesn't matter much, because it will prepare them to make the kinds of decisions that matter a lot.
A 15-year-old boy once spoke wise words when he said, "I think of it this way - it's like becoming a Christian is one decision for Jesus; but living as a Christian is a million decisions for Jesus." Not only are we training kids to make a life-impacting decision to entrust their lives to Christ, we should also be equipping them for those million, daily decisions to for Jesus. That kind of responsibility doesn't spring from following orders. It grows out of habits of heart and mind and the will to follow Jesus.
No, we can't force kids to follow him. We can, but the result isn't Christianity. It's some robotic servitude that the Bible knows nothing of. Instead, let's teach kids how to handle freedom, by loosening the reins and granting them some freedom. It's the same thing that God grants to us, and it's his way of training.
