Lord, Get Me Out Of The Way

Kids seem to ask profound questions at such random times.

And every time there’s a window to discuss spiritual things, I feel like I blow it.

Instead of relaxing and letting their faith take shape, I let fear get in the way. I scramble for the “right” answer (the very thing I’m trying to teach them not to do) instead of letting the discovery unfold naturally.

Yesterday, Lela was sitting at the table having a snack while I was unloading the dishwasher, and she said, “Most people are Christians, right?”

I know she is only six and I don’t need to overcomplicate things, but I don’t want to sentence my kids to black and white answers.  I couldn’t give a simple “Yes” or “No” for fear that I would be encouraging the dividing lines that people love to create. The last thing I want to do is have her looking at the world with an “I’m right/you’re wrong; I’m in/you’re out; I know God/you do not” attitude.

I should have just said “I don’t know” but that seemed cowardly and my ego won the moment.

You can see how quickly (and absurdly) my mind played through this as I searched for an appropriate six-year-old answer. (Yes, I’m really this crazy, and you can pray for my family.)

So, Lela asked, “Most people are Christians, right?”

With the intention of keeping it simple, I proceeded to overcomplicate it, and said, “Well, not MOST people. The thing is, we don’t know how people feel in their hearts. Being a Christian is more than just believing God exists. Most people would probably say they believe in God, but that is different than trusting God. A person can believe an airplane can fly but still be unwilling to get on board, so that person will never know what it’s like to fly. That’s how it is with some people – they believe God exists, but they never experience Him because they don’t trust Him — they never get on board. You and Luke and Carlie have opened your hearts to God and said you want to trust Him, so you just have to love people the way that God loves you and let God take care of their hearts. It’s not up to us to understand who is really a Christian and who is not. We just need to share God’s love with everyone. “

Lela’s reaction to my nuanced approach was, “Okay, I already knew all that. So, a lot of people are Christians, but there are also a lot of bad people too?”

Ugh! Now I made a mess.

I was trying to teach her to reserve judgment, to say, “I don’t know” and leave it in God’s hands. But instead, I just made her think there were a lot of bad people in the world. Awesome.

I know she needs “structure” at this point in her young mind, so I guess I should just let her world take shape in black and white for a while. The ”gray zone” is so hard to understand, even as an adult. But she is already seeing Christians as “good people” and non-Christians as “bad people.” And I totally get this because her six-year-old heart cannot imagine anyone choosing to be bad if they know God’s love.

How do I tell her that Christians are a total mess and they can be “bad people” too?

How do I tell her that an atheist might be kinder than a Christian?

How do I tell her that being a Christian does not make us bullet-proof or sin-proof or failure-proof?

For now, I don’t need to tell her any of that. I want her to love God and assume the best about people, even if that means assuming they are Christians. In time, she will figure out all the other stuff (After all, she has a front row seat to see what it means to be a “flawed Christian” as she watches her Mama muddle through life).

So my “nuanced” answer totally backfired.

Many Christian parents worry their kids will be too “worldly.” But I also worry that mine will be too “religious.” Here’s a perfect example: I let the kids watch all kinds of secular stuff (including Barbie – God help me) and I’m a fan of a lot of Christian programming, but a friend gave us a DVD called “Bibleman” and I only let the kids watch one episode before I went on a rant about how we are not supposed to treat the world like our enemies and we are supposed to love people and not go around quoting scripture AT them. Ahem . . . maybe I overreacted. “Bibleman” probably isn’t as bad as I perceived – it just brought up all my fears that my kids might somehow become angry, Bible-thumping fundamentalists. Regardless, since “Bibleman” makes Mommy act like a heathen, I think we’ll keep it at a safe distance.

And the hard truth for me to grasp is that no matter what I tell my kids or live out in front of them, they will have to decide for themselves what they believe. It’s easy for them to embrace the faith we are teaching them now, but when they are teenagers and young adults, they will not (and should not) accept a hand-me-down faith. This has the potential of being an amazing time for Keith and me as our kids go deeper in their faith, and it also has the potential of being a terrifying time, if the kids decide to scrap everything we have taught them and start over. They might reward us for all our efforts by dating an atheist or an Independent Baptist.

But I do know, if their faith is healthy, they will go through stages, just like we have (and will continue to go through) – stages where they need easy answers and specific definitions in order to give them stability and a healthy ego; stages where they will begin to be skeptical and wrestle with everything we have taught them; stages where their ego is challenged and life becomes uncomfortable as they embrace mystery and let go of certainty; stages of great joy and great darkness and stages where all those things are happening simultaneously.

It’s their journey and I just want to give them a safe place to land. I want to give them a few deep roots so they can grow lots of branches and, hopefully, bear lots of fruit as they explore the spiritual horizon.

This morning I asked Lela’s question back to her. “Most people are Christians, right?”

She said, “I think so.” (Whew! I didn’t poison her optimistic heart.)

And when I asked her why, she said that most the people she knows are kind and good.

Right now she believes God is good, so if people are good, then they must know God. She intellectually knows you can’t “earn” salvation by being good, but she isn’t making those distinctions right now, and that’s okay.

Turns out, I don’t have to worry about Lela creating dividing lines between Christians and non-Christians because she naturally sees Christ in everyone.

All of my flailing about was unwarranted. I assumed kids would gravitate toward fundamentalism unless we intervene. But maybe it’s the opposite – maybe kids gravitate toward love unless we intervene.

My prayer this morning was, “Lord, get me out of the way. Take away my fears and let me rest in Your love.”

Sometimes I think kids have far more to teach us than we have to teach them.

All my children teach me things, every day. Lela is just the most verbal and expressive, so I end up writing about her more often. Our little Lela . . . who teaches me to dance at inappropriate times (actually, she might have learned that one from me):

who teaches me to make friends wherever we go,

who teaches me to the play in the rain,

. . also teaches me about God’s love.

OR . . . maybe we’re raising a Universalist.

Oh well. I’m just going to embrace her optimism. I believe Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, but I also believe Jesus has ways that are so far beyond our understanding. Lela’s six-year-old mind is probably closer to the truth than my forty-two-year-old mind.

“Most people in the world are Christians, right?”

In hindsight, the better answer would have been, “I don’t know if most people love God, but I do know that God loves all people and He wants us to love them too.”

Maybe I won’t blow it next time.

Lord, get me out of the way.