The Gospel and Your Teen
"An open mind is like an open mouth," G.K. Chesterton once said.
"It is intended to close on something solid." Chesterton, the voluminous
British journalist, believed in both open minds and open mouths — as
evidenced by his physical and literary girth. Without an open mind one
will never learn to think, and without an open mouth, one will never
learn to eat. Chesterton's point was that we must learn when to open
both mind and mouth, and when to clamp them shut on something certain.
To
follow with this metaphor, parents can be tempted toforce feed their
children intellectually. After all, the outside world is carnal,
secular, hostile to faith, and filled with a host of other cognitive
Boogie Monsters that our children should be sheltered from entirely. Why
teach them to think when it is so much easier to simply tell them what
to believe? I'm going to argue that the goal of teaching is thinking. We
are to teach our children to know the gospel in a way that enables them
to think critically about the world they live in.
The Apostle
John once said that his greatest joy was to know that his children
walked in truth. This is surely the supreme ambition, or at least it
should be, for every Christian parent. But secular challenges will come
and we carry within us a nagging hunch that our teenagers will face them
head on in ways that we can hardly imagine. Every God-fearing,
Bible-believing, church-attending parent wants equipped progeny who are
prepared to "understand their times," not unlike the sons of Issachar
(see 1 Chronicles 12:32).
I'd like to offer three broad attitudes
parents should develop about the gospel that can serve as boundaries for
how they instruct their children in the fear and admonition of the
Lord.
1. The Gospel is True.
The warm glow of vanilla
candles, the calming baritone of Bing Crosby, and a tall glass of cold
eggnog are a "few of my favorite things" at Christmas time. The list
would almost be complete if you added the flickering and crackling of a
blazing fireplace and the original black and white version of Frank
Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. These are all fine holiday traditions
observed in our home every December, but not a single one of them have
any bearing on the fundamental meaning of the Incarnation.
The
reason for sharing my seasonal nostalgia is because many teens grow up
thinking that the ornamental features attached to belief in Christ are
themselves of gospel significance. This is not to say there is anything
wrong with preferences, cultural values, and personal opinions, but such
things should never be confused with the gospel itself. Even if you
removed both tinsel and tree from our home, we would still believe in
and celebrate the birth of Christ.
The reason we are Christians is
because Christianity is true. It is not because it is good for our
family, though it is, nor because it brings great meaning to our lives,
which it does. The fact that it is grounded in events that actually
happened in human history is the only reason anyone should ever build
their lives on the audacious claims of Jesus.
C.S. Lewis offers a
helpful outline of this in Mere Christianity: "The great difficulty is
to get modern audiences to realize that you are preaching Christianity
solely and simply because you happen to think it true; they always
suppose you are preaching it because you like it or think it good for
society or something of that sort."
2. The Gospel is Powerful.
The
Apostle Paul said the reason he is not ashamed of the gospel is because
it is the power of God unto salvation (see Romans 1:16). It is though
Paul is saying that no atheistic agenda, no secular strategy, no
cultural clatter can ever muffle the saving power of God revealed in
Jesus Christ. The gospel is the unstoppable and unrelenting redemptive
work of God in the unfolding drama of human history. It alone can
convince the skeptic and convert the sinner.
Being concerned about
secular opposition isn't wrong, but an attitude of paranoia and fear
is. Because the gospel is the very power of God, parents should not
treat it like a family heirloom made of glass. It is not fragile. It is
an uncontainable force. As Charles Spurgeon once remarked, "Who ever
heard of defending a lion? Just turn it loose; it will defend itself."
The gospel is, in this sense, the king of the intellectual jungle.
Parents need not fear: the gospel will prevail. Just turn it loose.
3. The Gospel is Absolute.
The
late Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer once said that secular
humanists have their feet firmly planted in midair. The values they hold
are not adequately supported by their ultimate beliefs about reality.
Schaeffer's point was that the gospel exclusively provides an objective
basis for human flourishing. Every other worldview must, at some point,
borrow capital from the Christian treasury in order to sustain an
optimistic outlook. Few are willing to endure the conclusions of
meaninglessness.
It doesn't take a Ph.D. in philosophy to see how
alternative worldviews end in despair. It is impossible to find
objective meaning in a universe devoid of a personal and loving Creator.
Sure, humans can seek to generate meaning for themselves, or even
reduce truth to individual perspective, yet absolute meaning is still
unattainable apart from the gospel. As C.S. Lewis once commented, "God
can't give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it isn't
there. There's no such thing."
The gospel is the best, and only,
idea worth clamping our minds shut on. While we want our children to be
inquisitive, we don't want them to, as Chesterton said, "Be so
openminded that their brains fall out." But the truth is we cannot
shield our children from all falsehood and deception. This is why we
must teach them to understand the gospel and to use gospel-discernment
in evaluating contrary truth claims.
The gospel is true, powerful,
and absolute. It provides an exclusive basis for the lives we wish to
lead. It should not be packed away and protected from the "cold, dark
world" only to be taken out once a year to be celebrated in isolation
from our regular routines. It must be the center of our lives.
We
can teach our children to memorize Scripture and even regurgitate Sunday
School stories, but at some point we need to teach them to, as one
scholar said, be able to hold the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in
the other, and properly interpret them both. And if we want our
children to do this, we had better begin doing it ourselves.
The
bitter reality is that many students, and (let's make it personal) many
children, perhaps — God forbid — our children, will seek a foundation in
life apart from Christ. We who understand the veracity and power of the
gospel know this can only end in despair. If there were a patented
method with a money-back guarantee for ensuring that our children will
walk in truth, I would offer it gladly.
Yet, Scripture offers us
no other source for hope than the gospel itself. And we need no other
foundation. I'm reminded of the answer Peter gave when Jesus asked him
if he would leave like so many others had done, "Lord, who will we go
to? You have the words of eternal life" (John 6:68).
Our task, as
parents, is to glorify God by demonstrating to our children how Christ
alone can steady our hearts, sustain our lives, and satisfy our souls.
And while we seek to fulfill our responsibilities as parents, we hold
fast to the general principle taught in Proverbs that if we train them
in the way they should go, when they are old, they will not depart from
it (Proverbs 22:6). That is certainly a promise worth sinking our teeth
into.
This article is courtesy of Parenting Teens Magazine.
Dr. Dan DeWitt is the dean of Boyce
College, the undergraduate school of The Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary. He is a coffee snob, a C.S. Lewis enthusiast, and a consummate
amateur. He and his wife April reside in Louisville, Ky., with their
three sons (and one on the way). Dan posts regularly on his blog
theolatte.com.
A young college student from Grace University will not be given her degree this year, even though she earned it.
But
it didn’t stop there. Not only did they expel Danielle, refusing to
allow he to finish her degree, they are also billing her for the final
semester of tuition at Grace University–the semester which she was not
allowed to complete.
I have been a U2 fan for nearly 25 years, although the more recent albums have not really been my favorite…. but whatever.
My
almost 5-year-old son recoiled from his sandwich. With passion in his
voice and fire in his blue eyes, he bellowed, "This isn't what you like,
Mama! This is what Daddy eats." My last hope for another mayonnaise
devotee in our family was dashed. But there in the ashes of my defeat a
more important lesson arose.
Our
culture has shifted. In our parents' generations, neighbors knew one
another. They kept an eye on one other's kids. They stood in the yard
and talked long into summer evenings. They banded together when an
illness or other crises touched one of them. Today, many parents arrive
home after a long commute, push the garage door button, and effectively
shut out the world. Kids aren't playing as much together around the
neighborhood, partly due to safety reasons and partly because of heavy
extracurricular activity schedules.