My favorite question to ask parents is: What is the best thing you have done as a parent? I get lots of good answers and it helps to remember the most important things, get ideas and share experiences, but I heard an answer recently that stopped me in my tracks.
The mom answered that the best thing she had done was to raise her kids in church.
She went on to explain that she had lived a wild life, and that although her kids are now adults making their own choices, they always come back.
I don't think she meant it in a bad way, but it struck me that this is some twisted kind of perversion.
I was studying at a COC univ. when a prof asked what our religious tradition focused on the most out of the 8 tenets of the faith: God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, Church, salvation, the struggle of good and evil, time and eternity... (can't remember the last one). The unanimous declaration was that we focused on Church the most. I remember my version of "witnessing" as a teen was not to tell people about the Lover, but to tell them about church- like somehow if they would just make it through the doors of our building, they would become sanctified. I remember thinking that it was me and the other christians I saw on Sundays at our building trying to convert the rest of the city's population. This was not taught overtly, but somehow this was the message I received.
Prov.22:6 does say: "train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it", but our rock is the Lover (God, Jesus and Holy Spirit- and there are three parts, not just two), not religion, or a system, structure or weekly ritual.
I do think it's essential for my children to know and interact with other followers of the Lover. I am only a very small part of a much larger picture, the body. I wouldn't want them to only see a tendon- or worse, an ingrown toenail. But so many times it's like we've decapitated Christ, the head, with all our stale forms. He's out loving and caring for people while we (and I mean me too) squabble over stupid, stupid issues.
"You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life"- John 5:39-40- The Lover's pointed remarks to the religious people of his day. I don't think it would be a stretch to translate it into our day as follows:
You unfailingly attend meetings, because you think that by attending, by placing membership, by being a part of THE (ie. your version of the) "church" you possess eternal life... yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
How many times has this been the state of my heart? And do we care so much about LIVING in Him, about KNOWING Him, about the taking up our cross and following him, sacrificially, giving up all we have for Him? or am I just looking for some cheap fire insurance? A free entrance into heaven card?
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