See also the preview for this
review.
Instead of writing a full review of Along the Way, here
are my notes.
--
Along the Way notes
The authors of Along the Way are:
Ch. 1 -- Ron Bruner and Dana Pemberton
Ch. 2 -- Ron Bruner
Ch. 3 -- Steven Bonner
Ch. 4 -- Ron Bruner
Ch. 5 -- Samjung Kang-Hamilton
Ch. 6 -- Samjung Kang-Hamilton
Ch. 7 -- Holly Catterton Allen
Ch. 8 -- Nathan Pickard
Ch. 9 -- Jeff W. Childers
Ch. 10 -- Jeff W. Childers
Ch. 11 -- Ryan Maloney
Ch. 12 -- Dana Kennamer Pemberton
Ch. 13 -- Suzetta Nutt
Ch. 14 -- Shannon Rains
Ch. 15 -- Dana Kennamer Pemberton
--
Finished chapter 1.
--
Finished chapter 2.
--
Chapter two talks about the history of the Stone-Campbell Movement's
"theology of children". Infant baptism is rejected as unbiblical, while
an equally unbiblical "age of accountability" is added to explain how it
is that unbaptized children who die do not go to hell (having not yet
attained a certain age at which they are morally developed enough to be
accountable). Those views are familiar to me from having grown up in a
Church of Christ. One which is unfamiliar is a logical corrolary
(although maybe not a necessary one) that [unbaptized] children are not
part of the kingdom of God. Also, there are newer views which seem
somewhat consonant with what I grew up with, that children are on a faith
journey.
Baptism is important for salvation in the Churches of Christ -- it's
essential. It may be essential for salvation in MSLN as well, or it may
not be. (Because it may be, it is important.) It makes sense for it to
be seen as a weighty thing connected to salvation, and thus a
significant rite of passage for young people (or anyone). However, [in
MSLN], children who die unbaptized are not (from that) destined to lose their
salvation. So it makes sense to see them as being in relationship with
God, in a sense in good standing with God (thus on a faith journey, and
part of the kingdom of God).
That chapter didn't discuss child evangelism. Maybe the book will
discuss it later. In case it does not, I will discuss it now.
How should adults evangelize children, given MSLN? I'm not completely
sure, but my instinct at this point is to say that adults should
practice "urgent libertarian holiness", desiring that their children be
saved (come into a relationship with God that persists to the point that
they are 100% holy) but not force them to see that in any way. Don't do
anything manipulative or dishonest in teaching your children about God.
Better to simply be as saved as you want them to be, and in that way
anti-tempt them. But the spirit with which you relate to them (and
anyone or else) should be urgent, and desirous of their salvation.
However, one aspect of salvation in MSLN is coming to love doing good,
which spills over into good behavior. Should an MSLN-believing parent
refrain from enforcing good behavior, since it might coerce the love of
good, which is part of salvation? Unfortunately, a certain amount of
coercion or coercion-adjacent behavior may be needed, not for the
child's salvation, but because good behavior is necessary for children
to succeed socially, or for the child to be responsible enough to take
care of him- or herself, or for some other significant practical reason.
These are things that enable children to make the most of their life on
earth.
Children need to learn to love doing what is right for its own sake, not
because it's socially rewarded or pragmatic. This is part of loving
things the way God does. But that lesson has to be learned later in
life, I guess.
[Maybe to some extent it can be learned in childhood, even if you can't
always intentionally set up the circumstances where they have effective
freedom of choice between better and worse, or can't guide children to
make exactly the right choice. There's a reality that is best learned
in wild places, and children can enter into some of the wild places.]
If you want to raise your children in the faith in a libertarian way,
perhaps you are safe if you simply speak the truth, intending only to
speak it, and not to enforce it or make it be heard or understood.
Children can be exposed to much more truth in this way than if they are
forced to engage with it or make a decision based on it. For instance,
reading the Bible aloud to children [with no expectation of a response
or even that the children necessarily listen to any given part] exposes
them to much more truth than is age-appropriate or necessary for them --
but some of them may benefit from parts a parent couldn't have predicted
were beneficial (the child might be ready for them sooner than the parent
realizes). Children have a way of filtering out things they are not ready
to hear. Pushing children to hear things might work, but be controlling
or too forceful.
I will say that I was raised by a basically libertarian parenting with
respect to faith. So it is an obvious thing for me to reach for as I
try to think of things to recommend (and, I am biased toward it).
However, I can say that I see the benefits of it. Libertarian, or
libertarian-leaning parenting (in my experience) can have its downsides,
for instance in preparing a person to deal with responsiblity or the
social world. But, in my experience, it encourages a person to develop
their own faith and their own relationship with God. I suppose those
upsides and downsides are what I would expect from a disestablished
thing.
--
I can hear a pro-child evangelism person saying something like: It's
important that we evangelize children in some other way than neutrally
presenting the truth and being saved ourselves, because, even if it is
the case that we persuade them to follow God for fake reasons, or out of
some kind of social obligation, or for pragmatic reasons, or in some way
other than that they love God for who he is -- though all this may sound
less than really good, and require some kind of correction later in
life, what's important is to keep them out of even worse things:
temporal (drugs, gangs, premarital sex, dropping out of school) or
spiritual (other religions, worldviews, simply not having a part of
their brain that naturally responds to the word "God").
I can see some merit to those objections. Maybe it is the case, as with
other things in life, that the lesser of two evils is better than the
greater, and if those are your only two options, you should choose the
lesser. But, I think that if it is at all possible to address the
spiritual dangers of not evangelizing children by evangelizing them with
simply presenting the truth and being saved ourselves (or perhaps
something else that goes with that approach), that should be the way to
go. It should be something that child evangelists think about, as a
possible alternative to more manipulative or fake approaches.
I talk about anti-temptation. Is anti-temptation simply the temptation
to do what is right or to love God? Like with Buber (who claims
something like that we don't relate to God the same way we relate to an
idol, and so we can't simply replace the object of relating or worship
with God, without changing the character of it), so anti-temptation is of
a different character than temptation. Temptation is about addicting
and forcing, and also about taking power over someone else's mind.
Temptation is about knowing someone's nature and predicting them. So
anti-temptation is not about exerting psychological power on people, and
not about figuring them out, knowing their psychological vulnerabilities
better than they do.
Perhaps it is the case that a somewhat "tempting" child evangelism is
more effective in the short run, creating a first approximation of love
of God which is necessarily immature, because children are immature.
Then, when children grow older, that first approximation can be
corrected.
Does it get corrected? Or do people go through life with a basically
immature relationship to God? How do you explain to a 30 year old that
their relationship to God and life in general is immature? What about a
50 year old? There comes an age at which we feel like we are mature,
and just like children, come to be unable to comprehend certain
sentences, such as "you are a functioning, perhaps even psychologically
healthy and well-adjusted adult, but you are deeply spiritually
immature".
Probably it does get corrected in some cases, and not in others.
Some people believe in child immaturity more than is warranted. I first
attended a public school that mostly had low-income students, up to
grade 5. The school was a charter school with some history, and it had
things like Orff-Schulwerk (or Orff-Schulwerk inspired) music education
and "families" (a weekly class with the same teacher over the whole
elementary school education, with students of different grade levels in
each "families" class). So it had some affinity with Waldorf education
or things like that. There was (perhaps therefore) a kind of generosity
and respect from the teachers.
Low-income students have to go on to deal with life in a real way.
Teachers who see children with generosity and respect treat (treated)
those children as though they were significant and to be expected to be
mature. They couldn't afford to be immature.
I remember some of the students in a grade higher than mine were more
mature than me, and I still somehow expect them to be more mature than
me, and always so. Even maybe those 5th graders [at that age] that I
knew when I was in 4th grade [they are somehow still more mature than
me now] -- there are dimensions to maturity that some children
possess but which adults sometimes do not.
But then I graduated and started attending an elementary school that
went to the 6th grade, part of a private Christian school system that I
attended until 12th grade. At my previous school, it was like we were
seen as having our roots in the future as full adults. But at my new
school, it was like we were seen as having our roots in some innocent,
cute past -- when we were five years old, perhaps. This may have been
exacerbated by the teacher I had, who perhaps was inclined to look down
on us and infantilize us, in a way that other teachers at the school may
not have been. I (and a number of my classmates) did not like her, and
going to 7th grade, with many teachers, was a breath of fresh air.
But though none of the other teachers were as intensely anti-maturity as
her, it seemed like even the more "real" or serious ones either could
not see the possibility of a Christian school that carried on the
maturity of my public school, or could but were stuck in the environment
they were in, which was more powerful than them.
Certainly class had something to do with it, comparing expectations one
would have for low-income people versus middle-class as most of the
private school students were. I don't want to say that secular
schooling is really better for people's maturity than Christian
schooling, although I do think my particular secular elementary school
was better than my Christian education. (I think secular schooling
could fail to really communicate the need for maturity to their
students, even though the teachers would well be aware of that need -- a
problem of too much despair, perhaps, rather than of too little facing
"reality" / dark things.) But I think that perhaps an emphasis on "you
are a child of God" makes you think "I need to be a child; I need to be
a child my whole life; I need to be childlike my whole life; it is
better for me to have the sins of childhood my whole life than the sins
of adulthood" and to have a sense that someone will take care of you --
God, but you don't really believe in God for yourself necessarily, so if
you don't, then the church, or some other human or group of humans.
Then, church leadership becomes unhappy that their "children" don't
become "adults" like them and help them work. So the church leadership
overworks and takes too much control. (A pattern I have seen, which
again, is from my particular experience, but which might apply
elsewhere.)
[Teaching Children to
Care, I would say, would have fit fairly well in my public
elementary school -- perhaps some of the teachers were aware of it,
even.]
--
Perhaps adulthood is overrated, and we should honor childhood? I think
there are two different paths to honoring childhood. One is the way of
my public school, which honored how it could be that 10-year-olds could
have their roots in the future, in capability, responsibility and
respect and respectworthiness. Childhood can be mature, can be 100%
childhood and 100% mature, and calling out the maturity of childhood
honors childhood.
Another way to honor childhood is to say that the things in it which are
precious, cute, immature, antithetical to capable, responsible
adulthood, are to be valued, are in fact worthy of respect, though, when
adults practice them, they usually are not fully respectful. We honor
children by saying that it is their radical difference from adulthood
that is to be honored, not their similarities with adults, the maturity
that they can share with (some) adults.
--
One understandable fear that might justify protecting immaturity is to
protect children from abusive "taskmasters". It's not good to hate
children in their immaturity. Better to respect them for having, in
fact, their roots in their future, though their behaviors happen to have
something to do with being 5 or 10 years old.
--
Ch. 3
The author says (p. 41)
--Since our children are children of God, we should so weave them
into the life of the church that they cannot ever recall life without
Christ.--
This sounds somewhat dangerous to me. It's like being in water your
whole life so you never deeply understand wetness. In fact, this sounds
somewhat like my upbringing. I had a shallow faith, that was only
redeemed by seriously confronting atheism. That shallow faith
(including a shallow love and trust of God) was not sufficient to save
me. Imagining a future where other obvious life challenges are done
away with through civilizational development, where can we find that
deepening work? Maybe by not steeping our children in our faith, so
that they can see it in an alien way, for themselves.
Another danger is that "Christ" is a word that often means "Jesus as we
understand him". To be raised in Christianity that is so totalizing, it
may be that some never seriously question "Jesus as we understand him".
But to have had a non-Christian life enables us to see "Jesus as we
understand him" and not-"Jesus as we understand him". This helps us to
look for "Jesus as he is". We will end up with a new "Jesus as we
understand him" which searches for "Jesus as he is". I might believe it
if told that the author of this section is in favor of searching for
"Jesus as he is", and might try to pursue that or talk about it around
younger people. But, a church that is too good at making a comfortable,
complete mental environment (intellectually comfortable even if not so
in other ways), reduces the likelihood that the church as a whole will
spontaneously generate the openness to change that may be necessary if
their "Jesus as they understand him" is bad. Or, taking all churches in
the church universal, if the church universal is always really good at
integrating people into its own environments, if the church needs
reform, there may not be enough reformers.
--
The author talks a lot about children being the spiritual teachers of
adults. I like this thought, generally.
I think that an adult can easily filter out the immaturity of children
and disregard [it] in terms of its instructive value, and instead focus on
the ways that children are mature, more so, or differently, than adults.
Likewise, adolescents and young adults are similar to children in that
respect.
"Maturity as we understand it" is shaped by secular thinking (like by
academic psychology, or mental health), and also by the ways that we are
damaged and recover as we live. Secular thinking can have some wisdom
but is not totally reliable and can invalidate belief in and trust of
God. The ways that we are damaged and heal may be like the ways that we
lose a limb but now the pain has gone away from healing -- better that
we hadn't lost the limb in the first place, and better that it grow back
than that we make our "adult" state the standard for "the way things
should be".
When we change our minds, we think we have done so toward a better
truth, and often that is so. But we can also change our minds due to
something like (or literally?) brain damage, and life with its traumas
and grinding sameness and ongoingness does something to us that it
hasn't yet done to those sufficiently younger than us.
In other words, wisdom is the natural gift of older people, but some
wisdom is bad wisdom. Children may accept good wisdom more readily than
adults, for lacking the damage acquired by adults.
Along the Way notes
Ch. 4
The author mentions Deuteronomy 6:20-22 which talks about children
asking the meaning of the observance of the Mosaic Law. Children ask
questions about all kinds of things. So parents (and sometimes others)
have to give some kind of answer.
I feel like at this point, I'm reaching the limits of my experience,
because I don't spend much time around children, do not have any of my
own. So maybe I won't say how it is that parents should explain MSLN to
their children, because I don't know and don't trust myself to guess. I
guess you can always try to tell your children the truth, without
intending that they convert to your religion (in keeping with what I've
written already in these notes). But I don't know how to do that.
Along the Way notes
Ch. 5
p. 65
--As J. J. Dillon has put it, children are "deep thinkers and feelers
who wrestle with life's mysteries and hunger for meaning and value by
which to live their lives." [source for Dillon quote: "The Spiritual
Child: Appreciating Children's Transformative Effects on Adults,"
Encounter 13 (2000): 4]--
Do we find ourselves encountering adults who are "deep feelers and
thinkers who wrestle with life's mysteries and hunger for meaning and
value by which to live their lives"? Do we take them seriously? The
framing of "wrestle with life's mysteries" makes it sound like the
profound truths are things that if you try to engage with them, the best
you can manage is to "wrestle" with them, and they will always remain
"mysteries". In other words, you will naively think there are useful
answers to those questions, but in fact there are not, and you will
struggle uselessly to understand them. This might prove you to be a
"good person" or a "deep person", but also from another perspective, a
"stupid person" or a "naive person". We can afford to be patronizing to
children (although that may not be the author of this chapter's, or
Dillon's, intended meaning), by praising them for thinking and feeling
deeply (uselessly), for being noble humans with sensitive spirits, but
adults have "reality" to deal with -- tasks to do, things to maintain.
Children may be among their things to maintain, and maybe spending time
in their deep thinking / feeling, meaning-seeking world is good for our
children, so that their hearts can be validated until they are old
enough to not need meaning, and instead perform tasks and fit in to a
social environment, like a functional adult.
But, as Dillon's article title and quote may together suggest, maybe
children can have a transformative effect on adults by showing the
adults that deep-thinking-and-feeling, meaning-seeking side. Do we see
parents, once presented by that side, feeling something stir in them,
their own childhood coming to them to be integrated with their
adulthood, and the adults then becoming deep-thinking, deep-feeling
meaning-seekers? Or do the adults instead feel a sense of "being
humbled" and honor their children, while not fundamentally adopting
their children's values? Are their children an image of God that they
"worship" rather than "obey", or rather than grasping by sharing the
same heart? Maybe the outcome depends on the specific parents in
question.
Framing the truth as a "profound mystery" is supposed to humble us, but
then it becomes useless since we can't understand it. But what if the
truth really makes perfect sense, is just as profound as ever, and
therefore motivates us to behave (perhaps radically) differently?
Children may be looking for the non-mysterious truth, that's what we
call "wrestling with mystery".
--
Overall, I like the sensibility of this chapter / author better than the
previous ones, (a note to those who might only want to read part of this
book).
The chapter ends (p. 76) with:
--Along the way, we adults can also grow, for the best way to learn is
to teach, and the best way to be loved is to love.--
--
Ch. 6
The author (same as last chapter) talks about techniques of prayer with
children.
It's possible that adult-initiated prayers push prayer into a child's
mind (same with other religious experiences), but that this could be a
bad thing in the long run. For one, this makes prayer a social thing.
Social things have a fleshly compellingness (peer pressure, desire to
please authority figures, perhaps other social instincts). Maybe the
child doesn't deeply want to pray, and will learn to go through the
motions on many levels but not deeply love and trust God for him- or
herself.
Also, any experience can become obsessing and burn a person out if it is
repeated too often. This was my experience with church services, the
inciting event for me quitting going to church. As a child, I felt
like, for religious reasons, I needed to fully engage with every prayer
and every song that was part of my environment. Eventually, the
corrosiveness of those prayers and songs (as experiences, as social
obligations) broke my ability to tolerate them. Praying or singing (or
the like) in a home might be seen as a magic spell to bring God into a
family, but the magic can work far too well, at least for people like
me.
(Spells are often cast out of anxiety.)
--
Finished ch. 6.
--
Ch. 7
--
Finished Ch. 7
--
Ch. 8
--
This chapter is about how unbiblical theological presuppositions are
why Churches of Christ don't let children take communion.
I am not sure about the biblical warrant for excluding children, but
I do think it's good to have some exclusive elements to church, which
say "you are not there yet, you need to change before you're really
a Christian". The author of this chapter seems to want to include
everyone into one body -- one body in which we all belong. But does
that one body belong to God? No, not exactly. It's not just that
"we all sin" or "we all mess up", which are words that will bring
you inclusion and belonging in the social structure of the church,
so unless you are sufficiently theistically minded, you will think
"I'm okay" since what you really track is whether a people group
includes you, not whether you love God with all your being. The
sense of "I'm not there yet", should sober you and drive you, because
there is real danger to remaining where you are in your moral development
and your relationship to God.
The author describes a historical, modern, and near-future vision of
Church of Christ communion. The historical and modern are affected
by individualist and Anselmian (penal substitutionary) ideas. But
the near future one makes communion about entering the Messianic era.
I am not convinced from this chapter that Anselm was totally wrong.
My naive sense, from reading a book on the atonement, is that there
are multiple theories of the atonement, which all make some sense,
but aren't conclusively "the" answer. Maybe from an Anselmian
point of view, we should exclude (children? the unbaptized? the
unconfirmed? those who are not disciples of Jesus?) from communion.
Church wants to include everyone, but the disciples of Jesus are few.
I remember when I was just entering college, I was appraised by two
different older people, one of whom was an individualist Christian,
who casually called me someone "raised in the church", rather than
Christian, the other a church-attending Christian who, after hearing
what I said, said that I wasn't a Christian. But I had gone to church
and identified myself with Christianity... I called myself a Christian --
wasn't I a Christian? What is this label "Christian" and why should
we want it so much? Being a disciple of Jesus is somewhat better
defined -- do you obey Jesus' commands in the Gospels? Do you seriously
aspire to? But "Christian" is something that has been and is defined by
the church, and it's unclear whether it's really about inclusion in
the social body of the church or if it means that you are saved
in the eyes of God, or something else.
It's the church's job (so it seems) to include everyone, but Jesus
says that some follow him, and some don't. Do we prevent people from
really following Jesus by turning them into "Christians"?
A challenge for MSLN Christianity would be to say "church and disciples
are one", at least in that "in our general assembly, our maximally
socially inclusive space, we preach a gospel of you are not there yet
and there is real spiritual danger to that, and graciously, there is
a way for you to get there, obey Jesus". In that way, the identity
of "I really belong to the 'body of Christ' (the church universal,
which we perhaps unjustifiably indentify with corporate churches and
the particular corporate church we attend)" does not smother or
prevent the possibility of motions of sober drivenness toward
complete holiness.
The "Messianic kingdom" means something to the author -- I suppose
not an Anselmian or individualist thing. I think for him it has
something to do with being the people who do God's work in the world.
(The people who call people to repent so that Jesus' blood of atonement
can cover them? Seemingly not. The people who call people to repent
to the point of having the heart of God -- i.e. completely turning
against sin and being willing to go to the literal cross, putting
God ahead of even their own lives? That might sound better to him,
but I'm not sure in practice that's what he has in mind. It's
possible he really means "feed people physical food" or "help
people with the same psychological problems a secular therapist
would" and things in that category.)
In any case, the Messianic kingdom sounds good to me, for some
meaning of "Messianic kingdom", and I can agree that probably that
is part of the meaning of the Lord's Supper.
The author ends the chapter like this (p. 124):
--The theological trajectories we inherited for the Lord's Supper
are being challenged and transformed. So, what would happen if
the table we gather around on Sunday morning lost its boundary
markers and altar theology, and instead, became an enactment of
the Messianic era? What would happen if we welcomed our children
to a table that empowered them to shape their lives by the
story of Jesus? What would happen if our children saw a table
without boundaries? Would it then not lead our children to
be bearers of the Messianic kingdom? Would our children not
be living out the story of Jesus?--
I am not too optimistic about the power of official rituals to
shape deep commitment, at least, not without the children, themselves,
apart form anyone else ("individualistically", perhaps), taking on
the identity of disciple of Jesus, relating to God by themselves, for
themselves. This is part of the story of Jesus, who was an individual.
Official things are things which a social group institutes by its
own authority whether its members agree to it in every moment or not.
Perhaps sometimes it is the case that all members agree to one
official institution at one point in time, by taking a vote. But
after that, there is no essential guarantee that an official statement
made by a group is really affirmed by everyone in it. So the official
thing provides a face for everyone without them necessarily really
being the rest of the person behind the face. Official things help
create a sense of "we are a social body", which can have some benefits.
But they are also dangerous because they enable people to wear a face
that is not theirs, and to see the face that is not theirs when they
look in a mirror.
(Looking back, I agree with the two people who thought I wasn't
necessarily a Christian when I was a freshman in college.)
Why did Jesus institute the Lord's Supper? I haven't done a thorough
study of this. But clearly at least he did institute a ritual.
How often did he intend us to take the Lord's Supper? Some churches
practice it once a week, but others only once a year. Some takings
of the Lord's Supper can be meaningful, in the sense of being
communicative of something deep. I think I have experienced
that twice in my life. Those two, or at least one of them, was
sacramental -- not because a priest (or magisterium) said so, or
because it was some kind of dry objective fact in which I had faith,
but because of my own relationship with God in the spiritual world at
that particular time in my life, I knew that that particular experience
was a kind of communicative vision. I do not assume that my weekly
takings of communion back when I went to church had any special power
or significance, any more than if I said Christian words without really
meaning them. Maybe we should only take communion a few times in our
lives, or only when moved to personally. Then, it should not be offered
regularly, but should be sought out.
I could see a small group of people spontaneously (and non-coercively)
seeking out the Lord's Supper, such that all of them really did want
to do it. But the larger the group, the more official that institution
becomes, and the more likely a significant portion of people are just
along for the ride. "Power is a broken relationship" if some people
can affect many people without the many (or individuals in the many)
being able to affect them back. "Coercion", "force", and this kind
of "power" are all the same, or are significantly similar. If you do
things in a large group, you tend to have a few people, or a majority,
making decisions for every individual. If you don't feel moved to
take communion at the time and setting, and in the manner, decided by
some impenetrable "leadership" or "church majority", you can take it
or leave it. Maybe the most expedient thing to do is to turn part
of yourself off and make a meaningless action at the expected time.
Humility says that you change yourself to fit other people (maybe...
but why don't other people humbly change themselves to allow you
to not have to fit them when that's not necessary?) If humility
says that you change yourself to fit other people, then you could
easily go from being real and a misfit, to being fake but outwardly
compliant. (Perhaps there is a humility to undergoing the rigors
and isolation that come from obeying God, who sometimes is the one
who tells you who you are in opposition to your social setting.)
--
Ch. 9
This chapter is about baptism, with a connection to how to approach
children's baptism. It's the first of two chapters on the subject.
So far, I agree with the author about some things, perhaps many.
For instance, the old view of baptism in the Churches of Christ
was much like other conservative Protestants -- in that, there
was a view that there is a life of sin, some decisive conversion
with some kind of act, and then a state of being saved. So
baptism happened to be the completion of the decisive conversion
in the Churches of Christ, unlike saying the "sinner's prayer"
or something like that in other groups. This old view is sort of
what I was raised under, and it didn't exactly make sense. I
certainly lacked an important element of salvation when I was
growing up, but I also possessed an important element of it.
I couldn't easily repent of my whole-souled alienation from God,
but that meant I couldn't easily "repent to" a whole-souled
identification with God. I now understand that my lack of a
whole-souled identification with God is enough to keep me out
of heaven (and threatens to keep, I assume, the author of this
chapter out of heaven, along with any other church person --
in that sense, nobody is saved). I think I agree with some
of this chapter's author's emphases on holiness, but I am
not sure he understands that holiness is life-or-death.
I think there are two kinds of people: those who effectively
enough see that it is possible (or probable, or certain) that
there is something life or death about life and that we don't
necessarily know what it is or are in right relationship with
that truth, but must come to know (or have come to know) it, or
the way to it; and those who do not effectively enough see that.
I got the feeling after reading this chapter that the author
is not a "life-or-death" type person. Conservative Protestants,
perhaps, or conservative Americans, tend to be that more so.
The secular people who are responsible for life and death
issues tend to be more so. I think that if I were a conservative
Protestant, or a serious-minded secular person, I would not
trust the author of this chapter, because he seems to not
understand or even be cleverly avoiding the issue of life or
death.
I do agree with the author that my naive reading of the New
Testament (or maybe the Bible as a whole) does not leave me
with the sense that sins or atonement for sins are "the"
issue. I have learned (to my chagrin, I guess) that my own
writing can have an emphasis that obscures the facts that
it presents. (I wrote a book that presents Christian words,
but I fear that its emphasis is really on left-leaning,
existentialist-leaning, humanism -- not sufficiently theistic
humanism, thus effectively secular humanism -- which was
not my intention.)
Even if the emphasis of the scriptures is on something
other than life or death, for someone concerned with life or
death, do its words say "don't worry about life-or-death"?
Are the facts of the worldview presented in scripture such that
we can forget about that, just because it has some language
that doesn't sound directly oriented toward life-or-death,
to the level of bluntness and simplicity (/ oversimplification)
of revivalism? It may be unfortunate that Scripture is written
in such a way that it can be misinterpreted, but the wise will
not forget the truth when they read it. The quiet words, if
taken as seriously as they deserve to be taken, can really
deserve to dominate our understanding of the plentiful, loud words.
(I don't know where that principle of interpretation would take
someone if applied rigorously, but it makes sense to me.)
I believe that children who are not baptized do not go to hell
for that, but instead are resurrected to the Millennium along
with most other people, where they can get baptized if it's
necessary for salvation. I don't think we can rule out that
it is necessary for salvation, as it's (probably?) part of
obedience to God, and total obedience to God is necessary
for salvation. It is dangerous to bias children against baptism
or that they think that it couldn't possibly have anything to do
with salvation, because that could make them resist obeying God --
those are some important things for us to think about in this
life. It is a good thing for children to be baptized
whenever it is really their idea and they basically understand
what it means (at least I don't see an obvious problem with
that and I do see a strong prima facie motivation for it).
--
Ch. 10
--
Finished Ch. 10
--
I thought I should re-read chapter nine to explain some of what I said about
it.
--
p. 126 - 127
--Growing out of a heritage of revivalist preaching, the meaning and
significance of baptism might seem plain and obvious: sinners are baptized
to express their obedience to Christ, to have their sins washed away,
and to become members of the Lord's church. This is good, as far as it
goes. Yet when we turn to the New Testament, we discover that Jesus and
the early Christian writers go much further.--
The question I would have to begin with is: what is most important? Could
it be anything other than keeping people out of hell, so that they can
be with God forever? If you do something like Pascal's wager, you see
that mathematically, eternal life dominates everything else. You might
also think of it like: do people matter? If people really matter, shouldn't
they exist? The thing that makes them not exist (from an annihilationist
standpoint, which I think is probably the Biblical one and the only one
which makes sense philosophically) is hell. So if you love people, if
you really value them, you must keep them out of hell. If they go to hell,
they are lost, and no longer exist. It doesn't matter how nice their lives
were, or how good their religious walk was, unless those things contribute
to keeping them out of hell, so that they can continue to exist, with God.
If this emphasis on people and them existing matters, then if we lose sight
of it, we have been deceived.
Now, I can see how obeying Christ and having a person's sins washed away
could connect to people living, existing, with God, and not dying / being
destroyed. Being a member of the church might have some connection.
The author of ch. 9 wants to add things to these, to flesh out baptism.
Do any of these take away our responsibility to be concerned for the
salvation of people (including children), from the second death; at all,
or especially with respect to the roles of baptism in helping people
be saved?
The author lists the following other interpretations of baptism:
p. 127
--an ordeal of sacrifice and self-denial--
--a sacred womb, a place of spiritual rebirth, where a person goes in
order to see what the kingdom looks like--
--like crossing the Red Sea, a watershed event of liberation that helps
define the identity of the people and their covenant relationship with
God--
--[a place to] leave behind the evil powers that had enslaved them to
drown under the waves--
--the baptistery as a tomb: taken under the water to join Jesus in death,
the baptized person is raised up to live differently--
--baptism is the water floating Noah's boat, saving humankind--
--an adoption ritual, a special venue of operation for the Holy Spirit,
washing and renewing a person by God's grace so that they may become
heirs of the Father, full of hope and the good deeds flowing out of it.
--the baptistery is a place to meet the community of faith and become
part of Jesus' body, as one of its many members; it is a key to
congregational unity and instrumental in helping disciples find their
places in the body--
--the baptistery is a place to change clothes, putting on Jesus, and it
dismantles false distinctions between people by putting everyone on
the same footing before God--
--Baptism connects a person with the Father, Son, and Spirit, opening
a door into the very life of God--
He ends that list with
--And yes -- baptism cleans us, bringing forgiveness of sins--
The effect that his rhetoric has on me is to make me think "Oh, forgiveness
of sins is this little thing over to the side, but look how rich and deep
is this baptism concept! Look at how beautiful, spiritual, and poetic
it really is!" Because, for better or worse, the Bible is often beautiful,
spiritual, and poetic. But... still... what about people ending up in
hell? Isn't that last part (about bringing forgiveness of sins)
completely dominant over everything else, unless they also contribute
to keeping people out of hell? And, if they also contribute to salvation,
isn't it unlikely that they remove the importance of forgiveness,
by adding more things that are also of life and death importance?
I wonder if the author of this chapter has some doctrinal understanding
somewhere that causes him to think that a) there is some other source
of forgiveness of sins, or b) that forgiveness of sins doesn't matter.
Maybe I missed it, reading the chapter the first time.
p. 127 - 128
--How many different ways can we talk about the importance of baptism
and its meaning? The Bible shows how important baptism was to Jesus,
the apostles, and the early church. Underemphasizing baptism is an
answer to many different questions. Yet the questions are not so much
about qualifying for church membership or certifying eternal destiny.
Most of the time, they are not even about how to "get saved." Instead,
they are more about identity, the direction of a person's life, their
place within the community, handling relationships, and cooperating
with the activity of the Father, Son, and Spirit in experiencing
daily transformation of character and behavior.--
The author's rhetoric starts out by reassuring me that baptism is
important (at least, that's its effect on me). Baptism is so important,
its meaning is so rich, that it's mostly not about "getting saved".
He doesn't deny that it's about getting saved. But "getting saved"
(is this identical with people not being destroyed in hell?) is not
that big a deal to him? Perhaps this is only his emphasis, or the
effect of his words on me. Does he deny that baptism can be about
"certifying eternal destiny" when he says that baptism is "not so
much" about that? I wouldn't assume that baptism is the sole
determining factor of salvation, but surely if it washes away sins,
it might be a necessary part of it?
Does the author think that baptism is a life-or-death thing that
must be accomplished before someone can go to heaven, or not?
Does life-or-deathness matter? Does baptism perform a necessary
role in salvation (in some sense removing or forgiving sin)? If
baptism is a life-or-death thing, and life-or-deathness matters,
then it makes a lot of sense to have a revivalist view of baptism.
It makes sense to be anxious about whether your children have
entered the age of accountability and now if they die for some
unforeseen reason, they might be going to hell. It makes sense
to communicate to your children that they are not full members of
the church, because in fact they are not saved and should not
completely feel like they are. Their faith in God may be pure and
innocent, but God is completely holy and every child has sinned.
Maybe that makes God weird and inhumane in our eyes, but perhaps
that seems so to us because we are not holy ourselves and lack
the intuitive sense that sin is unacceptable. Much of what the
author pushes back against comes out of simply being concerned
about the loss of people and thinking that baptism has some
essential role to play in them not being lost, through dealing
with their sin problem.
p. 129
--In short, less preoccupation with the "essentiality of baptism"
and greater study of its essence would be a welcome change, going
a long way towards equipping us to address those practical matters
from a solid foundation.--
The author goes on to a section entitled "The Essence of Baptism".
He says that baptism is about Jesus. With regard to the famous
Acts 2:38 passage, he says that baptism of cleansing for sin was
a normal Jewish thing, but what was really new was the promise
of "the gift of the Holy Spirit" and that all this was centered
"in the name of Jesus". Somehow, as a reader, I feel like just
proved that forgiveness of sins doesn't matter, because of that.
Does this make sense logically? Maybe if we say "Jewish things
are false, irrelevant, something like that, but new, specifically
Christian things are true, relevant, valid, etc." Is that what
the author wants to claim? It might be fitting in a Church of
Christ context to reject Jewish understandings in favor of post-Jewish
ones. Are there ever cases when Jewish religious understandings
are correct, and might this be one of them? Is there any chance
that when Peter said that baptism was for the forgiveness of
sins [or he might have said that when he said "repent and be baptized
for the forgiveness of sins" and we can't rule that out], he might
have been saying what was true and impressed on him by Jesus or
the Spirit to say? I wouldn't take any chances with salvation.
I would go ahead and assume baptism has something essential to
do with washing away sins. If not, fine. [If it turns out it
doesn't, that's fine.]
I remember growing up, I was aware of Baptist responses to Church
of Christ doctrines on baptism. One of them was "if baptism is
necessary for salvation, then why isn't it sufficiently emphasized
such that no one could possibly be uncertain about whether it is
necessary?" My response to that nowadays is, why should we assume
that God is interested in making things that easy for us? Maybe
he's looking for people who really love him and are searching
for ways to follow him, taking responsibility to look through reality
to find ways to follow him, instead of having him feed us the plan
of salvation, requiring less initiative on our part, or perhaps
none at all. But, that has the cruel implication that many of
us will never be saved, because no one taught us to look at reality.
(But I will address why I am not worried about that cruel implication
later.)
I assume that many people are tired of Baptist-Church of Christ
debates -- if they are not still a thing to the intended audience of
this book, then the older readers and writer of the book might
remember those old days without fondness. But, is the issue here
really that "yeah, basically the Baptists are right" or people end
up making a doctrinal move that happens to align them with the
Baptists all along. This may be appropriate, if the Baptists are
right, but it seems like the kind of thing that should talked about
openly.
p. 130
--By his own admission, Jesus was baptized "to fulfill all righteousness".
It was the right thing for him to do. That may surprise some of us
who have traditionally approached baptism strictly as a legal maneuver
by which we deal with our sins, or as the culmination of a conversion
process, since those are two things that Jesus' baptism could not
mean. He needed neither conversion nor forgiveness.--
Maybe baptism is about (at least) two things: obedience, and washing away
sins. Jesus, being clean, was washed, but no sins were removed. Jesus
was obeying God, and if he never got baptized, he would have sinned.
So Jesus was fulfilling righteousness by obeying God, and we have the
same need to obey. In contrast to Jesus, we have sins that need (in
some sense) to be washed away by baptism.
p. 133
--Salvation is a journey and a process. There may be a sense in which
the Lord's salvation is a thing we can possess, or a state
that we enter at a certain crucial point in our walk, but there is also
a deep sense in which "we are being saved," (1 Cor. 1:18). In
other words, we are caught up in an ongoing process of salvation, as
part of a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17)".--
I agree with the author of this chapter that salvation is a journey. I
think growing up in the church is much more of a gradual journey
experience than an intense and clear decision. But I think that for
a conservative Church of Christ person, their concern might be something
like this (I knew some conservative Church of Christ members when I was
in college, and I hope I am remembering their point of view accurately):
"Yes, salvation is a journey. We want to get as far from falling away
from God and losing our salvation as possible. That's a journey. Yes,
we grow to love God more deeply. Also a journey. But superimposed on
that 'journey' metaphor is the concept of 'are your sins washed away?'
and we want to know, have our sins been forgiven? Have our children's
sins been forgiven? If they have reached the age of accountability
and not been baptized, and die, do they go to hell?" Saying that
salvation is a journey doesn't exactly deal with that issue.
He goes on to talk about how salvation is about becoming like Jesus.
I feel like a basic holiness message would not have been too strange
to the conservative Church of Christ people I knew. Still the question
remains, in terms of dealing with past sins, how do we know that those
are dealt with? Do we need to be baptized for them to be washed away?
p. 136
--We [authorial "we"] recognize that all people are (or become) sinners
and need forgiveness. That includes children raised in the church.--
I guess it's possible that some kids haven't sinned yet, but how
would their parents know that? How would the kids know that? The
author acknowledges the possibility of needing forgiveness. So if
people need forgiveness, oughtn't there be some urgency to getting
them baptized, if that is necessary for forgiveness?
Immediately following:
--Nor do we want to downplay the importance of powerful spiritual
experiences in the lives of young people. But to treat those
preparing for baptism as if the only way to get ready is by owning
up to their sinfulness or by having an intense experience of some
kind, is to ignore the fact that different people come to baptism
in different ways.. This was true in the first century as it
is today. The Gentile idol-worshipper who was accustomed to the
immoral life of his pagan culture experienced baptism in a very
different way than the law-abiding Jewess who had been preparing
for the Messiah's coming all her life. Their journeys into the
baptistery to join Jesus were similar in some ways, but very
different in others.--
I guess the implication is that church kids are like the "law-abiding
Jewess", while adult converts are like the "Gentile idol-worshipper"?
Was the law-abiding Jewess sinless? No, probably not. Then probably
the church kids aren't sinless either. Needing forgiveness isn't
about having done really bad things or turning away from God. It's
just about at all having intended something against God or
consciously-enough failed to intend something that would go with
loving God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Anything
less than 100% is sin, and sin leads to death. Being a merely good
person doesn't save you. So they "Jewess", "Gentile", church kid,
and adult convert are all basically in the same situation of needing
forgiveness, perhaps urgently. It's like if you have four people
whose livers are failing, one because of a car accident that damaged
the liver, one because of a congenital defect, one because of years
of drinking, and one from hepatitis C from years of injection drugs --
that's a complicated set of issues some of which may involve it being
somewhat due to the sin of the people involved, but we really can't
judge. It's complicated, and all their life stories are nuanced
and particular. But, is it, or is it not, the case that they need
a liver transplant to keep them from dying soon? In that sense,
they are all the same and should be told basically the same thing.
I think maybe the issue with baptism is that it is both about
conversion and about washing away sins (if you believe that's what
it does), and it is less necessary for conversion than for washing
away sins. [I don't understand what motivated this paragraph now.
It might make more sense if you have just read the relevant part of
Along the Way.]
p. 140
--Furthermore, although we would not presume to speak for God,
Scripture does not support an attitude of fear and anxiety
regarding the status of unbaptized children in the church, as if
the ceremony of baptism were necessary to convey magical protection
of our loved ones.--
This is sort of true and sort of not. The background worldview
of the New Testament is that people can be lost to hell, there is
a way to heaven through Jesus, and Jesus commands and institutes
different things which contribute to salvation. I can't think of
any time the NT church says much one way or another about child
salvation or anxiety about that. I'm not sure exactly what the
emphasis of the NT is, but it doesn't have a clear "letter of Paul
where he lays out revivalism verse after verse". So maybe from
a literary perspective, it "feels" like it's really about some
kind of narrative other than life-or-death, are you saved?
(I think it's
perfectly fine for God to institute a ceremony which conveys
magical protection of our loved ones, and fully in keeping with
reality. (Putting a seatbelt on -- is that a magical ceremony?))
--
Now, I do agree with the author that revivalism has its flaws.
For instance, what happens if you slip on the way to the baptistery?
Baptists have it a little easier, because if you intend to follow
God, then there's no tragedy if you die soon after, since you're
going to heaven. But then, what about the "age of accountability"
that seems necessary for those who practice believer's baptism, or,
I would think, equally well for those who say that children are
in need of salvation at some age, even if all they have to
do is something like pray the "sinner's prayer"? Exactly when
does that age of accountability kick in? Can anyone know when
their little ones are safely innocent, or when they have just slipped
over into needing salvation or else they go to hell when they die?
There are some more problems that are faced when we consider the
process of evangelism, given the thought that people need to follow
Jesus to be saved. For instance, what if the youth minister at your
church decided not to take you to the annual regional youth rally?
But that was the year that that one speaker was going to be there,
who uniquely spoke to your sinfulness, who could have brought you
to a state of repentance and conversion? Or what if you are a member
of an uncontacted tribe in the Amazon (and there are still some,
by the way)? Or you lived in the New World before Columbus came?
I don't think that there is no such thing as tragedy, that God
stamps it all out. But I do think that he would not design a system
of life that would cause there to be unforced errors on his part
in bringing people to salvation. Having a world where people
need to hear about Jesus to be saved (so that they can
respond appropriately), but that world is significantly bad at
giving them a chance, and then they go to hell when they die,
does not sound like something God would do, because God is a
self-interested being, and his personal desire is for us to live.
Self-interested beings do rational things.
It's always possible that God is doing something mysterious or
strange that he understands and that we never will, but it's also
possible that we just don't understand the not-too-mysterious
truth. I tend to think that if possible, I should understand
God, because then I will understand his point of view better, and
can love him better that way. If I reach the limit of my understanding,
maybe then there is an insoluble mystery that I have to live with.
But, is that the case here?
I am not an expert on the Bible, and knowing the Bible is the kind
of intellectual work that I am not good at, because I don't retain
and manage bodies of facts very well. But, I did read someone
else's take on the Bible that is very well-researched (although I
can't say that I know for certain that it is absolutely correct,
because I don't have the "chops" to seriously verify it). My
strength is more in philosophy, and I see how it works there, and
that mostly contents me to say that it's true.
The basic idea is that we don't go to heaven or hell when we die,
instead, we rest in the grave, then we are resurrected after Jesus
returns, live on earth a thousand years (the Millennium / Resurrection)
and then when that's up, we either go to heaven or hell. During
those thousand years, we hear about Jesus, and learn. (Some of us
also weep and gnash our teeth, and experience the penalties of
having been wealthy, fake Christians, or whatever -- which are not
the same as hell, and which don't necessarily keep us out of heaven.)
We can't enter heaven unless we are no longer sinners, and the process
of overcoming sin is not trivial, but if we don't procrastinate, we
can make it, it just could be hard and take a long time. It's
possible for us to harden ourselves (similar idea to "falling away")
and thus be incapable of growing to the point of 100% repentance and
being in tune with God, loving him with all of our hearts, souls,
minds, and strength.
So from this point of view, I would say that we should move with
a certain kind of urgency toward obeying God whenever we get the
chance, to ward off the tendency to get into procrastination.
So it makes sense for the child to want to be baptized once they
make the decision, and not wait around very long.
Obviously a child can't repent except under their own will, so
you can't really do anything to make your child come into tune
with God in their hearts, except provide an environment in which
they are provided the good ideas and good examples to choose to follow.
You can apply your will to get them to behave or feel or even think
they believe something, and maybe they will also really believe
that thing to some extent, but maybe they don't and it was just
the strength of your will on them. Sometimes that's okay (like
keeping them from urgent physical harm), but when it comes to
choosing God, to turn away from sin, and toward him, that's 100%
their decision and you can't do any persuading of them any which
way. But again, providing them with good choices is helpful.
What about baptism? Should you apply your will to get your kid
to be baptized? Baptism is a discrete event -- so if your will
overshadows theirs, is that not really a baptism? Maybe not.
So maybe then that's a reason for them to validly need to be
re-baptized, because in some important sense, they didn't mean
it themselves the first time.
If your child dies, that is painful but doesn't have to be tragic,
because they aren't going to hell (except in some exceedingly
unlikely event that they have hardened themselves so young), and
unless you harden yourself, which you are unlikely to do in this
life, you will be resurrected to the next life and you can see
them again (unless there's some unusual reason that you wouldn't).
Does it matter if they are baptized to wash away their sins? I'm
not 100% sure about baptism, but I see that it certainly could be
necessary, and that's good enough for me. I'd do it, if I hadn't
already. If it is necessary to wash away sins, just like how
hearing about Jesus is necessary for salvation, everyone gets a
chance to fill in that gap in the Millennium.
--
Re-read ch. 10 (the follow up to ch. 9).
--
Read ch. 11
--
Started ch. 12.
So far I like the taste of this chapter and author as much as or
more than the other one I liked (ch. 5 and 6) and would also recommend
it to be read. [On finishing the chapter, I still think so.]
--
p. 180
--I recently heard the phrase "What we win them with is what we win
them to."--
This in reference to how when we make children's ministry into a fun
thing (like with talking vegetable videos or making children's
church happen inside a spaceship), we might be making them into
consumers of church, and then years later they won't be able to
be workers in the church.
I wonder to what extent it's worth teaching children at all? Maybe
it's best to leave them to play all throughout their childhoods,
and just pick up Bible teaching that trickles down to them, that
they overhear from people reading the Bible out loud, or that
their peers talk about. Probably this does not sound like a good
idea from the perspective of this book overall, and likely not
from the author of this chapter. But if you take "don't be
consumerist" and take it far enough, do you end up with the
cold and dark side of the truth that even adult church shies away
from? (The numerous ways Satan deceives and attacks us, our weird
and frightening God who must be respected, and/or our weird and
frightening world where God struggles to do good, or the danger
that we are all in from sin, how none of us entirely has our
salvation secure, as some examples.) These topics can only be
really talked about in a serious spirit, or they sound unbelievable.
But can we teach children with such a serious spirit? Perhaps
we can avoid talking about those examples given, if they are
"too much" for children, and certainly adults can sort of give
lip service (or "mind service") to dark realities that they become
intellectually aware of when they are older. But I don't know
that people can become serious enough to really get those realities
such that they can be very effective given them if the climate
of their minds filters them out. And that climate is established
when children are young.
I suppose I was raised in that climate, and have managed to get
out of it. The way I did so was through doggedness, turning back
to the text even when it didn't make sense culturally and thus
experientially to me (I had the filters), and then lots of intense
personal experience which opened up the world of spiritual darkness
to me (the darkness that is present very commonly in people's lives
at various times, but which is somehow usually unseeable). I don't
expect other people to have the same background as me. So, should
we teach children about God, if that roots them in "child-appropriate"
views of the world? Perhaps we could teach them, but not in a
fun, engaging, way, or even as "normal people", going against what
feels to us like "child-appropriate" teaching.
Maybe the way to look at this teaching is like what someone earlier
in the book said: is this "first-approximation" teaching something
that can be revised successfully when children are older? So, is
the "vibe" of a teacher (or of all the adults in the church), such
that children connect with seriousness, sufficient to face spiritual
darkness and death when they get older?
The irony is that children's lived experiences are often closer to
that of "I live in a weird, scary world of spirits and inexplicable
rules of life" than many adults are. Maybe adults are frightened of
children's fears, and keep them from fearing? I think we sometimes
try to protect children from dark realities when they are young.
But darkness is already a part of their lives, so how can they
deal with it? What may be the case is that they are not ready
cognitively to fully understand darkness. But darkness is a part
of their lives and they have to deal with it somehow. We also
try to keep adult realities out of kids' minds. Maybe this has
some use, but kids are already living in the adult world and have
to deal with it. And they have to grow up to become adults someday.
Maybe it would be better if they started preparing for that when
they were young.
A children's teacher could be transparent, and simply be open about
their own experiences (with some discretion, for protecting legitimate
privacy concerns, and for what the children can handle).
--
Finished ch. 12.
--
ch. 13
p. 195 (quoting Stewart and Berryman, Young Children and
Worship, pp. 13 - 14):
--The experience of God is one of mystery, awe and wonder.--
This sentiment is one that I feel like I read more than once
from various authors in this book.
For me, the experience of God is either one of business-like
guidance and support, or if more "heightened" or "special", of
closeness, perhaps empathy and sorrow (me empathizing with him),
and kinship. To some extent this follows from MSLN.
--
Finished ch. 13
--
Ch. 14
This book is about involving children in "the mission of the church".
p. 208
--Children are often moved to action when they encounter pain. They
are kingdom bearers and as such must participate in God's redemptive
work by sharing hope, showing compassion, and proclaiming the gospel.--
(After a description of taking kids to do disaster relief at a site
of a severe tornado.)
Not so much as a comment on this chapter, here's a thought of how I
might talk to children who are moved by the pain of the world.
People are different. In any given day, or year, there are things
that a given person is good at. Some people are good at one thing,
some good at another. Some people love to do certain things and
thus do them a lot, and usually get better at them. Some people
are good at doing things, but don't like doing them, or to work
on them wears them out. If you can work at something you're good
at for many years, that's a good personal fit.
Children are not as good as adults at doing some things, because
they don't have as much practice. Adults, though, aren't as good
as children at learning new things. So when you are a child, you
have an advantage over adults in being able to learn. You can learn
all kinds of things -- all about cartoons, movies, music, toys, games,
etc., but also about how to care about people and how to work. It
is okay to learn about cartoons, movies, music, etc., but if you want
to learn more about caring about people and how to work, that helps
you to help people someday.
Maybe you can try to have a higher paying job someday, and donate the
extra money you make to good charities. Or, you can try to prepare
for a job that directly helps people. People have physical needs (food,
water, shelter, healthcare), psychological needs (the ability to trust,
the ability to protect their mind from bad thoughts), social needs (the
ability to relate well to other people), and spiritual needs (the
ability to love and trust God). You can seek to learn more that will
help you be competent and experienced in any of these areas. Then, you
will be more prepared when you are older to go down life paths that
help a lot of people (and also don't harm too many people as a side
effect).
(I could come up with a long list of professions that fit into meeting
the needs listed in the previous paragraph.)
You may someday choose a career for yourself that focuses on meeting
those needs. You could choose one major in college over another based
on thinking about that. Or if you don't go to college, you could pick
one trade or line of business to invest your time and/or money in, or
another. But, if you find yourself unable to control the way your life
goes as much as you want, you can always work with whatever part of your
life is under your control, and try to use that as effectively as you
can. Maybe you can just focus on becoming a good friend or family
member, because there is also a need for that.
(A long list of non-career ways to help.)
As a child, you may get the opportunity to work in the field that you
feel called to, or to practice doing good in some other way. That's good
training, and does some good. But if not, you can at least read books,
watch videos, etc. that help you prepare, and try to think deeply about
what it would be like to do good.
--
p. 213
--Children often think outside the box of limited resources and time
and encourage the church to engage in opportunities for service that
may have been overlooked.--
This is part of the comparative advantage of children.
(Also mentioned on pp. 213 - 214 are children's abilities to do simple
things (perform gestures or acts of care with simplicity), and by being
children who communicate as an act of care, (my thought:) bearing the
loadedness of "child", which means something to the recipient of care,
a bit of connection with family, innocence, simple caring, etc.)
--
Finished ch. 14
--
Ch. 15
p. 229
--I believe that if we listen to children long enough and carefully
enough, they too will tell us what they need. This kind of listening
requires relationship. As we seek to welcome children, we cannot
simply implement the right programs or find the perfect techniques.
We must know children, and they must know us. Hospitality is a
relational act, not a strategy. When we build trusting and
respectful relationships with children, we may be surprised how
insightful they can be about their own needs.--
(After a discussion of the author's father, who as a physician had
a similar approach to diagnosing patients.)
I wonder if this works even more generally, that a kind of attention
(a listening to and waiting on) reveals the deeper needs, at least
in cultural / psychological / social / political type worlds. And
similarly the requirement that we be in a relationship with the
world we want to diagnose.
--
Finished Ch. 15 / the book overall.
