Archive for November, 2011

Where do I leave off and does God begin? Or: Six Degrees of Tim Tebow

Sitting under a tarp during a rainstorm we three counselors were killing time while our campers were doing their own best to make the most of a down day.  We were on a weeklong climbing trip and at our base camp so there were no indoor activities to fill the time or an alternate destination to slog to.

I think the conversation was within the context of preparing an evening talk for the campers that would connect with both climbing and faith.  One of the counselors was apparently on the trip more for his climbing interest and ability than his faith in that he exhibited a basic indifference to spiritual things.  In spite of growing up in the church and having attended a Christian private high school, he, at this point in his life, seemed to have neatly compartmentalized church and religion well removed from his vocation and other interests.  I was somehow cast as the “most likely to be overzealous” of the three of us so when we started discussing how our faith impacts our climbing, he thought he had fully anticipated my response.

“What does your faith in Christ mean to you as a climber?”

“Well- it’ is just part of who I am and what I do, and if that helps me relate to God and to others in some way I otherwise would not be able to, that’s what it means.”

In “Chariots of Fire”, Eric Liddell says, “When I run, I feel his pleasure”.  Well- he was a world-class runner and I was no world-class climber.  If God was at work in my climbing, he didn’t seem to be giving it much attention.  Frankly, I don’t think God’s focus is on making us great climbers, runners or successful in other ventures.  I think his focus is on working in us to transform us to be more Christ-like.  If being Christ-like leads us to be more diligent and good stewards of our abilities, then we can be confident that we are performing “as unto Christ”.

There was a movie a while back called “Touching the Void” about a climber who survived an incredible ordeal in which he fell into a crevasse and was presumed dead, but crawled to safety over several days.   When asked whether he encountered God during his ordeal, he responded that he had no spiritual epiphany or yearning- there was nothing.  I don’t think he had a need to lie, so I’ll presume that he was truthful.  People do function without an awareness of God.  I won’t assert that they are unaided by God since Christ is declared as the active sustainer of all creation.

As Christians, we acknowledge Christ’s involvement in our entire life.  It betrays a theological naïveté to suggest that there is a point at which God takes a situation we are incapable of handling adequately on our own.  I also have no doubt that there are individuals who do not acknowledge Christ who have accomplishments I will never achieve or have triumphed over some incredible predicament.  The non-Christian has been the unwitting beneficiary of God’s general grace, the Christian can respond in gratitude to his maker and sustainer.

Maybe that’s what underlies the polarizing affect Tim Tebow has on the football world.

(I’ll admit the extent of my knowledge about Tebow consists of a few headlines and articles on Yahoo sports or in Sports Illustrated, and endless segments of Sports Center- And I have no idea how he interprets Gods role in his sports success)

He doesn’t have the right mechanics, he has colossal miscues coupled with a determination to drive for success with whatever skills he has- and he appears to respond both the scorn and praise with humility and recognition of God as his sufficiency.  Tim may or may not develop into an NFL superstar- whether he does or not should not change his testifying to God’s work in his life, which includes who he is as a football player.  The media and the church are much more comfortable giving the microphone to those who are at the top and will tolerate whatever one-liners they throw in about God’s involvement.  Rather than an emerging story of success against all odds or a player personnel selection soon to be revealed as a wasted selection which has delayed Denver’s rebuilding, Tim’s story is about not being ”ashamed of the gospel”- or thinking that God is needs us to be at the top to establish his own credibility.

Somehow I managed to start out climbing and end up talking about a football player, skipping twenty-five years in the transition.   I hope I kept it connected.

2011
11/23
CATEGORY
Spiritual Formation
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School Choice

When I was growing up, my family figured there were three choices for schooling: public, private and parochial.  For us, that meant there was only one choice.  By the time my eldest was old enough for school there were a few more.  So whereas virtually every kid I knew in church, Christian clubs or camp went to public school, my children would grow up with a mix of Christian friends in public school, Christian school, charter school, private school and home school.

We bought our first home back in the 80s when the Fed was wringing inflation out of the economy with 8-10% mortgage interest rates.  Areas of the city that had been starting to show signs of age were becoming gentrified as new homeowners were trying to stake out a real estate claim and affordability was capped by the size of the payments required.  The local elementary school was considered better than most so we figured we should be able guide our kids through the system.

Maybe I had a bit of a romantic view of the public elementary school as the great melting pot of humanity.  It is one of the few situations in life in which you would not choose with whom you would associate.  You were seemingly randomly selected for a class and then seated in alphabetical order with a shuffling of the room assignments at the beginning of each year.  Other than breakouts for reading, we were all locked in the same room for nine months of the year, the smart ones and lazy ones, the populars and off-beats, the bullies and the clowns, and the kid that stayed back from the prior year who was still in reading group C.

By the time you hit high school, you could build some space by self selecting for honors courses, sports, clubs, etc. and you would soon be an adult, able to chose your workplace, your church and which neighbors you would greet.

What I hadn’t yet understood was that many of my interactions outside of work would be built around my children.  Planning schedules, play dates, special events and just pickups and drop offs would create shared experiences that would connect me to the parents of my kids’ classmates.  In the same way that I grew to have more in common with those parents and other families who were in the public school cycle, there was a remoteness growing with those who made other choices.

Within our church, the home school parents were sharing curriculum tips and arranging field trips and the Christian school parents were pulling volunteer duty in the classes and as hall monitors.  The public school parents could be split into those who saw the educators as threats to be combated with clandestine prayer groups and those who were looking for ways to be involved to promote the welfare of the students and school.

Although we tried to check ourselves for any hints of superiority or judgmentalism, I expect some seeped through – if I felt it from others, they probably felt it from me.  Among our peers, it was as if each parent felt an obligation to justify their schooling decision as being the best.  Updates on kids would include the obligatory endorsement and exclamation of how they were thriving in their environment in ways that couldn’t be imagined in another setting.  What I wanted to communicate was that our choices and experiences may provide some insight into benefits and pitfalls of the public school experience but were not an assessment that it was the right choice for them and their child.

As school age approached for our first born, we were not keen on homeschooling.  Janet had read some Edith Schaeffer book in which she extoled the model of the home as a sanctuary.  The dual role of parent and instructor as well as the lack of separation between home and school seemed to mix things up a little too much to fit that model.  Plus, a few years later, we heard an interview on a Christian radio program in which the “expert” stated, “If you child obeys on command, they are a good candidate for home schooling.”  That line gave us some assurance that we likely avoided a colossal mistake by not attempting that route- somehow none of our kids picked up that gene (maybe it wasn’t modeled to them).

Both parents and children experienced our share of challenges and rewards.  We were convinced that our son’s kindergarten teacher smoked a few too many funny cigarettes in her younger days.  She was more into socialization and discovery than drilling the alphabet and numbers and was butchering the pronunciation of our last name for the first three months.  His buddies at school were an African American kid down the street from us and another massive boy who came from a poorer home and loved coming over to play with our son and his toys.  We eventually moved to the burbs where the majority of the boys were medicated with Ritalin and no one walked to school- mom drove or you took the bus.

Our middle child seemed to have two years of fifth grade and two of seventh.  She bounced to Florida and had to reread “Roll of Thunder hear my Cry” during her 6ixth grade class and returned to upstate NY to find that they would tackle Johnny “Tremain” which she went through last year in FL.

On our move to California, we put our youngest in a Christian school for one year, not knowing what to expect, and then moved her back into the public system.  One thing consistent between parents and real estate agents- they are all proud of their schools.

The toughest transition for all three was between sophomore and junior year of high school when they started hanging around at home on Friday and Saturday nights.  It seemed that with the mobility came the alcohol so childhood friends became “daytime friends”.

Did we do what was best for our kids?  I know we wanted to- but “best” isn’t just a choice.  It is a commitment to a long haul- of experiencing the ups and downs together, evaluating and reevaluating decisions together, talking and praying through the latest disappointment or challenge together.  I hope our kids understood that no matter what, we were in their corner and we were trusting God to take our choices actions and redeem them.

2011
11/18
CATEGORY
Childhood
High School
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Children’s Christian Ed

“These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.  Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.  Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.  Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”

From this snippet of scripture flows a host of divergent dogma on how to accomplish the task of what used to be called Christian Education but now seems to be going through either an identity crisis or a marketing makeover.

I’ve already frustrated some of you by not quoting the reference.  As I was trained as a kid, you say the reference before and after the verse if you want to get full credit in earning points toward your camp scholarship or the star for verse memorization (the hat trick was verse memorized, Bible in hand and lesson done).

I was pretty good at the scripture memory thing.  I also had the books of the Bible down, which came in handy during “Sword Drills”.  I don’t think my kids ever participated in one of those, but they were a staple component of the Sunday school at my church.  In the sword drill, a scripture reference was called out and who ever could find it and stand to read it first got a point for their team.  Honing your ability to quickly draw and deploy your “sword”- as Ephesians 6 calls the Word of God”, was essential to upcoming battles with the world or the Devil or just a pastor who couldn’t develop a thirty minute sermon without hopping all over the Bible.

My formal education consisted of regular Sunday school, Sunday morning sermons, often Sunday evening sermons, and an occasional prayer meeting.  One Good Friday, my brother and I accompanied my Dad to a service in downtown Newark to listen to seven sermons on the seven last words of Christ.  I remember that the church was dark, it was a beautiful sunny day outside, and the stairwell in the parking garage below Branch Brook Park smelled like urine.  We also got compliments on our matching red blazers from some of the ladies who attended.

Occasionally, my folks would get on a kick of having family devotions during dinner.  If it was before the meal, we kids were pretty anxious to get to the eating.  When my mom would spring a hymn on us that added another 5 minutes to the wait.  During one season, mom included readings from an etiquette book.  I learned that I should spoon my soup away from me and that there is something called a finger bowl.

One of the biggest reinforcements of spiritual growth was my experience at summer camp.  We would go for a week a year, to a Christian Service Brigade camp in upstate New York where you would have your own devotions, and group Bible study each day.  I’d usually return home inspired to have my own devotions and be kinder to my younger brother for at least a week or two.  There is more to say about that in the future.

Anyway, when we got involved in church as a couple, my wife and I were full of ideas and expectations about how children grew in Christ and fit into the life of the church.  We also heard a lot of ideas from others.  One pastor pleaded that he could not communicate to both a junior high mind and an adult in the same message (guess he wasn’t aware of the findings on the adult male attention span); one couple filled us in that we would discover we would not want our children fidgeting beside us during the service and would be glad for the provision of children’s church to whisk our kids away during the worship hour; those who were more achievement oriented wanted to see results, such as verses memorized and historical timelines recounted.

We wanted our kids to know God and to see that their own parents saw their relationship with God as central to their life.  Although Janet was able to more naturally weave faith into conversations with the kids about decisions and life’s events, we were together in our commitment.  Evening family devotions were not going to work for us.  Everyone had a different schedule and palate so we sat around the table only a few times a week and the prayer was more of a starting gun than a pause before food and conversation.  For a while, we had a small group in which we got together as with kids included in every other session.  We did skits, family verses, and praise songs together.  Sometimes our kids sat with us in the worship service, sometimes they went to children’s church, sometimes we just had to bail and head outside. Our family went to a Walk Through the Bible seminar once.  That was a bust- for the older two it was probably the equivalent of my Good Friday service experience.  The highlight for them was lunch at the local KFC.  Our youngest picked up the most.  She was in the session for the 4-5 year olds and had a great learning time.  During their high school years I would go to the bagel shop one day a week with each of my kids.  My son would allow me three questions before my quota was up and we would eat in silence- so if I wasted one asking about whether he was ready for his tests, I only had two left.  My daughters were more conversational, but they didn’t put up with any monologue exhortations either.  Janet had better luck during her after school or lunchtime debriefs.

Well, our youngest is twenty so we’re through the childhood stage- it’s gratifying when you daughter calls up and asks for you to pick out a devotional for her, since you’ve supplied them faithfully over the years.  Sorry we can’t present a winning formula- one thing we’re convinced of is that there are already enough people promoting their formula.  We only know that we need to be in Christ and point our family to him as well.

2011
11/07
CATEGORY
Childhood
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