Church Issues

A Bag Full of Wet Tribbles

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A couple weeks back SF Gate columnist Mark Morford wrote an op/ed piece called “American Kids, Dumber than Dirt” in which he quotes a longtime teacher friend as saying that kids today are stupid to the point of verging on inert:

It’s gotten so bad that, as my friend nears retirement, he says he is very seriously considering moving out of the country so as to escape what he sees will be the surefire collapse of functioning American society in the next handful of years due to the absolutely irrefutable destruction, the shocking — and nearly hopeless — dumb-ification of the American brain. It is just that bad.

I know that I’m perpetually saddened (yet oddly amused) by what people don’t know. And that’s not in some kind of snobbish way. Watching a high school graduate grossly mis-tally a simple three item receipt from a restaurant makes me wonder how such a lapse can exist.

You long-time readers know that I have a degree in Christian Education and know all the educational theorists. You know that I homeschooled up until this fall. You also know my child is in public school right now. You know that I believe that no educational system is perfect.

But as much handwringing goes on today about education, I keep returning to one inescapable truth:

Kids are only as smart as their parents are.

The apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree, and in most cases today, a lot closer to the trunk than some would like. A classroom (and a home?) full of dunces...But when it comes right down to it, smart parents have smart kids—no matter what kind of education (public, private, or homeschooled) their children receive—because the parents themselves value education and pursue it in their own lives.

If the parents of a child are about as sharp as a bag of wet tribbles, then how can we expect the child to exceed the parent? That rarely, if ever, happens.

We expect most homeschoolers to be winners of spelling and geography bees, but look at the parents in those cases. They’re engineers, scientists, academics—the national brain trust, in other words. The only way they’re going to turn out a dim bulb is if they give birth to a brain-damaged kid. And even then, that’s going to be the brightest brain-damaged child of the lot.

But even when it comes to homsechooling, the weak link in the chain is the parent. A parent with smarts that rate a 6 on a scale of 10 is probably not going to teach their kids to a level 8 or higher. Why? Because that parent will be uncomfortable exceeding his or her own knowledge. This leads to what is known as the law of diminishing returns.

Parents are never going to feel adequate to teach their kids to the limits of their parental smarts—ever. That truth wipes out most distinctions of public, private, and homeschool. As much as a we’ve castigated public schooling, smart parents who put their kids in public school are not going to turn around when that kid is eighteen and find a numbskull. This truth works in the opposite, as well. If parents can barely tally three lines on a restaurant bill, why should we expect their children to? Yet we’re perpetually astonished by the seeming ignorance of youth today.

“But Dan,” you say, “isn’t your blog about the Church in America? How does this fit with your theme?”

If we wonder why the youth of today can’t theologize their way out of a damp paper bag, we have to look at the parents.

Christian parents suffer from a few maladies that make them inadequate to the task of teaching their children about the Lord:

  1. They’ve been told that they are inadequate for the job… – This same instructor superiority afflicts parents in all types of learning environments. The educational elites turned up their noses at the bourgeois attempts of parents to teach their own children and slapped their knuckles with a mighty big ruler in the process. And just as it afflicts the public and private school systems, it afflicts Christian education.
  2. …so as a result, parents have abandoned their role in education – This is not only the parents’ fault for being weak-willed and lazy in their children’s Christian education, but also the willingness of most church people to treat the educational staff at their churches like divine oracles who can do no wrong. Worse, those so-called oracles believe the hype and even fan it into flame. That’s got to stop, on all counts.
  3. We’ve made the Faith either too complex or too rudimentary. – It seems we can’t find the balance. We either make the faith into an intellectual exercise of splitting infralapsarian and amyraldian hairs (or whatever esoteric argument floats your ark) or we make it a brain-dead exercise in being nice to people. Well, shame on us—all of us. So parents think they either have to possess a seminary degree or else they think they can skate because there’s nothing to “this Christianity thing.” Either mentality jumps the educational tracks.

So how do we get parents into the right mindset and smarts-set to do this important job?

  1. We emphasize the importance of the work—and our willingness to help. It seems to me that part of the problem of Christian education today stems from either asking for the world of parents or asking nothing at all. We need to find a solid middle ground. But more than that, churches need to understand that they must partner with parents to ensure the next generation gets some theological smarts. Not by being condescending. Not by dumping all the load on parents. Not by pointing a rifle at anyone’s head. But by walking alongside parents and helping them learn how to teach their own kids. (I’ve long contended this should be the primary role of the youth minister!) The Christian education conducted by the church should always be viewed as a gap-filler, not as the primary source of education. That’s the parents’ job.
  2. We teach the parents what they need to know. As I’ve noted, kids will only be as smart as the parents. If the parents can’t grasp the atonement or what it means to die to self, there’s not a chance their kids will. If the parents won’t talk about those topics outside church (where the greatest growth occurs), their kids won’t hear it. Churches, this is your core emphasis in Christian Ed: Instilling a solid Christian worldview and theology in your adults, particularly those adults with children.
  3. We set attainable educational goals. Every child the age of seven should know why it was necessary for Jesus to come. That should be right on their lips if asked. Littler ones should at least know who Jesus is. A solid Christian curriculum should not only repeat the basics at every age level, but also add onto the previous age level. There’s no reason our teens can’t be asked the differences between the different views on the atonement. Or to explain covenant theology. Or to be able to stand up and expound a rational pneumatology. (In my Lutheran catechism, I got a one hour grilling on theology in a private session with the pastor and youth leader.) But to get there, set appropriate, attainable goals.
  4. We work to counter culture. Our society is in the brink of disaster with our busyness. Sadly, modern Evangelicalism contributes to our harried schedules by adding more and more things we MUST do that, in the end, aren’t necessary. Educating the next generation about the Lord is about as necessary as it gets. Getting your kid into a time-intensive soccer program that will score them a spot in an Ivy League college DOES NOT MATTER ETERNALLY. Yet this is what too many Christian parents want. A recent Barna poll, one of the most disturbing I ever saw, showed that Evangelical parents thought getting their kids into elite colleges outweighed whether those same kids knew Jesus Christ or not. God help us! We have to start demolishing these strongholds that entrap us if we’re to be a vital Church.
  5. We stop the school choice derangement syndrome. Homeschooling parents must desist in their schismatic, judgmental, and outright wicked accusations against non-homeschooling parents. This is not just an issue of “secular” education. If we wish to utterly negate the truths of the Gospel in front of our children and nullify Christlikeness in them, then by all means, let all sides on the school choice issue treat each other like vermin. That’ll teach the little ones the right people to hate and for the correct reasons. We all know that’s why Jesus came, right?

So yeah, it IS all about the parents. If we want smart kids, we better make smart parents. And there’s no better time to start on that path than today.

The Loss of Imagination

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Ever drive by one of the new breed of churches and think, It’s just a big, ugly box ?

Ever wonder why what passes for Christian art in most Christian bookstores is only a step or two removed from velvet paintings of Elvis?

Ever wonder where the great contemporary Christian literature vanished to?

I think about that last one a lot. As a writer, I struggle with the dearth of avenues for Christian fiction that veers outside the mainstream. I recently wrote a story called “Killing Lilith” that deals with the crushing load of sexual guilt that many men carry. Not only does that story suffer from being brutally frank, but it’s a short story, a form of fiction that lies in a coma in secular realms, and has been dead, buried, and its grave trampled in Christian ones.

If you struggle with fasting, write short fiction for the Christian market. Just be wary of the tendency to starve to death. 😉

I hate to see loss of imagination triumph in the Church. I meet too many Christians who long ago relegated creativity to the devil. It saddens me to no end to encounter dull, lifeless children from Christian homes who have had the imagination beaten out of them, who if asked, “Tell me a story,” can’t dream up one. Somehow we’ve gone overboard in rooting out “vain imaginings” and removing any and all things that stem from our “deceitful hearts,” never questioning whether we have to throw our minds out altogether or if our imaginings and hearts can be redeemed.

So in our purges, I wonder if we’ve left Christianity a shell of what it’s supposed to be.

What should we think when God demands the finest craftsmen for His OT tabernacle and temples? That He asks that the lampstands around His altar be crafted in the likeness of almond branches and their blossoms? Or that He chooses men to write down His inspired words of Truth in a wealth of styles?

I can think of few things more appalling than ugly churches. I mean, if we’re going to spend millions on building a church building (and there’s an ethical question for you), what could be worse than spending all those millions on something that’s ugly as sin, an edifice glorifying mediocrity? Whatever happened to building that building to the glory of God and making it look like something honoring a supreme and majestic Lord?

And why so much bad art in Christian circles? It’s okay if Thelma Lou Posey makes a cross-stitch of the ubiquitous “Footprints” poem and sells it as a church auction, Fridtjof Schroder - 'The Pieta' - 1961but God forbid if some trained Christian artist creates a challenging oil painting and asks for support.

I wrote a couple weeks ago in my “100 Truths in 30 Years with Christ” post that we need to honor our artists and intellectuals as highly as we do our pastors and preachers. Are we? If we were, what then explains the stifled creativity that inhabits the Christian circle of influence? Why such lowest common denominator art and expression? Shouldn’t we be the ones who foster imagination and the creative spirit?

One of the most underappreciated aspects of us being made in the image of God is that God is a creator at heart. Therefore, so are we.

If we can’t evangelize that truth as much as some of the others we so readily support, we’ll wind up impoverished people. I can’t help but think that if the world saw that Christians led the arts again, they’d be more open to the Gospel.

Yet what would do they think when they encounter a huge multi-million dollar building of cinder block and corrugated metal passing itself off as a church? I know that I don’t immediately think, That’s where life, redemption, and joy happens.

It’s tough to be in the arts and know that few of your tribe value your work enough to pay you to do it. I’m struggling now to know what to do with the short story form, one that I enjoy writing but pays nothing. When I think of God demanding only the finest artisans for His works, I wonder how we got off base.

I wonder.

 

Update…

Additional links from previous Cerulean Sanctum posts on this issue:

Casting a Ballot for the Eternal Kingdom

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Get out and vote—for the Eternal!This year, I have almost no idea what’s going on politically. I know one of the librarians at my local library is up for re-election to the school board. I know there’s some kind of anti-pornography state issue on the ballot. Beyond that, I’m not attuned to the scene.

I used to be a hardcore political junkie. Not anymore. I was already on the disillusioned side when I foolishly thought I could help a worthy candidate win, the only candidate in my nearly 45 years of life that I thought was 100 percent right for office. But as many times as I called his campaign headquarters, no one bothered to even send me a sign for my yard. Needless to say, my candidate got crushed. Demolished. Annihilated. Disintegrated down to the atomic level. He didn’t even leave behind a puff of smoke. Cursed be the fool who dares to speak his name in good company.

You know, that kind of loss.

I missed being able to cast my vote in the 1980 presidential election by a week. I’ve been casting them without fail since. But I don’t look forward to it like I used to.

I don’t talk about politics here at Cerulean Sanctum. Plenty of Christian blogs do. Despite the fact that Christians often love to mobilize on this political issue or that, I’ve learned a few things in my life that I wish weren’t true, but are:

  1. Christians love to get pumped up for politics, yet they’re nearly always disappointed with the ultimate outcome, even when they think they’ve initially won.
  2. You can fight, fight , fight against a perceived sin via politics, but even if the sin loses in the short term, it wins in the long term 90 percent of the time.
  3. It’s amazing how quickly a “Christian” candidate, who talks like Mr. Smith on his way to Washington, winds up compromised.
  4. On the most fundamental levels, today’s Republicans are yesterday’s Democrats, while today’s Democrats are yesterday’s Socialists. I don’t want to think what ten years from now will look like.
  5. It used to be about the power of ideas to shape the future. Now it’s just about money.
  6. When self-interest is all that drives candidates, then our political system no longer works. And it sure seems to me that self-interest is all that drives today’s politicians.
  7. It’s discouraging to think that the last great statesman this country produced may have been Henry Clay. Lincoln may be in that company, too. Still, that’s a long, dry spell with no hope of getting better if the current crop of midgets running for office is any indication.
  8. I wonder what the women who fought for the right to vote would say if they knew that every study done continues to show that women vote largely for the candidate deemed most physically attractive.
  9. It amazes me how congressmen talk about voting their conscience, yet nowadays every vote comes down to party line. Just where are they breeding these conscience clones with their polar-opposite magnetic drifts? And aren’t congressional representatives supposed to represent the will of their constituency rather than their own personal conscience?
  10. The devil’s bought a lot of souls through the political department store.

Politics used to be a big deal for me. Now it barely registers.

I guess, as I see it, the problem comes down to a kingdom issue. Which kingdom am I called to support with the time and skills God has given me? His Kingdom or some other kingdom?

It’s not about loyalty, either, but making the best use of the time we have. I can still be a good citizen of my country. I just don’t have to let my citizenship overwhelm me.

Evangelical Christians float adrift. Plenty of them are disillusioned with politics—and for good reason. It worries me, though, that they won’t drift back to what matters most to God, but will instead tie up to some other dock. Heck, even disillusionment is its own dock. Tie up to that one and any number of unfortunate outcomes may come to pass.

Politics isn’t the answer to our collective ennui in the United States. Getting back to the truths of God through His methods rather than politics is.

As conservative as I am, perhaps I’ve become more interested in conserving the granite-like truths of an eternal City on a Hill than the shadows and fog of an impermanent Capitol Hill.