Spending all of last week with Malachi, Director of Prophetic Ministries, (listen to my sermon from December 9 if you don’t know why I’m calling him that) really got me thinking. I’m going to warn you: I’m about to get on my soapbox.
I remembered how a few years ago I was at a large museum that had a little town inside of it to show you what it might have looked like in a frontier town in the Old West. The group I was with looked inside the train depot, the jail, the doctor’s office, and then the school house. On the blackboard was the Pledge of Allegiance.
Someone at the museum hadn’t done their research because even if we assume the frontier town represented a settlement after 1892 when the pledge was composed, the pledge as it was written on the blackboard was still an anachronism because it included the phrase “under God.” As many of you know, the phrase “under God” was not a part of the pledge for the first sixty-two years of its existence. A grassroots campaign to add “under God” to the pledge started in Illinois after World War II and the addition wasn’t passed into law until 1954 during the presidency of Dwight Eisenhower, who was a Presbyterian by the way.
That little history tidbit isn’t really the point, however. The point is that someone who was with me, someone I had known for decades, said to me, “That’s when everything went downhill, when they took God out of the schools.” I understood what this person was saying, but I had a little trouble swallowing it coming from this person. While only God can know the heart of a person, I knew that this person had not stepped foot in a church in at least fifteen years, never read the Bible, didn’t raise their own kids in the church or with any recognition of God, had no prayer life, did no charitable service of any kind, and didn’t even say grace before meals. I turned to the person and said, “I can’t really speak to that since there’s never been prayer in any of my schools since I’ve been alive, but I think the bigger problem is that we’ve taken God out of our own families.”
We’re willing to blame anyone and everyone besides ourselves for the deterioration of Christian faith and values. My friend, who was surprised that I (a pastor!) didn’t agree with the statement about the schools, blamed it completely on the schools, which really means the courts that have made rulings are at fault, which in turn means that the government the courts serve are at fault. Others will say that it is the liberal pro-violence, pro-sex media that is to blame. While I do think that we’ve allowed our entertainment industry to produce massive amounts of filth, really we’re the ones who are at fault for consuming it. They wouldn’t make shows, movies, books, and music like that if nobody bought them.
Others blame our communities for putting children’s sports and public school activities on Sundays and at other times that used to be reserved for worship, prayer, and rest. My question in response to this one is: “Who’s forcing you to participate?” The answer is no one. What would happen if Christian families “went on strike?” Could athletics in our community survive if all the Christian families refused to participate until Sundays and Wednesday evenings were reclaimed? I doubt it, but we just continue to acquiesce passively. Maybe we should form a Fellowship of Christian Parents in Fayette County that will serve like a Christian families union that can put pressure on the schools and leagues in town. We aren't going to participate until it is changed. Even if that didn’t work, and a coach wouldn’t let a kid play on the team because they’d miss some practices or some games because of worship, eventually we have to set our priorities in ways that reflect our Christian faith. The ministerial association doesn't have any pull here. Everybody expects us to be opposed to anything that conflicts with Sundays. That's our job. It has to be parents who take a stand. I promise you, if you take a stand the ministerial association will be there with you to support you but we can't do it for you.
You all know me. I played baseball for twelve years, I’m a huge baseball fan, and Wyatt and I play in the backyard whenever the weather is nice. But what is more important—playing baseball or worshipping God? Oftentimes the parents of my youth at my former church would complain in ways like, “I’m so mad at that cheer coach for requiring a practice on Sunday. This is out of control! But what’re you going to do?” Then they would shrug in resignation. “That’s just the way the world is these days,” they’d say. Let me ask this: if the coach scheduled practice for 2 am would we allow our kids to go? No, I don't think so. We'd say, "2 am is time for sleeping. My kid won't be there." So why can't we say, "9:00 am until 11:30 am on Sunday is for Bible study and worship. My kid won't be there."
I don’t buy it that we are slaves to the way the wind is blowing in our culture. The Apostle Paul didn’t buy it either. In Romans 12:2 he writes, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.” When we are transformed by the renewing of our minds we will very often find ourselves at odds with "this world" (read "our culture"). When will we stop blaming everyone around us for setting our priorities? It may be “the pattern of this world” to place Christian worship and fellowship as a lower priority than sports, academics, fundraisers, or a teenager working a part-time job but is it God’s “good, pleasing, and perfect will” to place Christian worship and fellowship as a lower priority than those things? I believe, based upon the Scriptures and the witness of the Church, that the answer for a Christian family must be a resounding “NO.”
Many Christians seem to say, “How could we ever live as Christians in a culture that doesn’t pander to us? I’m sorry, Everett. It just can’t be done.” To that I say, “Open your Bible and read it. Then read the writings of the early Church fathers.” As far as we can tell, Jesus, the apostles, and the early church never lobbied for discipleship in Jesus to be the cultural milieu. To me, it appears that the assumption is that the government and culture will always be either hostile or apathetic toward the gospel. We’ve simply lived in a fairy tale land in the West for centuries, but the fairy tale is ending. The government, the schools, the community organizations, and the sports leagues are not going to hold our hands anymore. We now actually have to grow backbones and live out our faith in ways that swim against the current. This is nothing new. Jesus was rejected and ended up on a cross. The apostles ministered in hostile cultures and all but one ended up being martyred. Read about Irenaeus of Lyons, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, Perpetua and Felicitas of Carthage.
Ignatius of Antioch, on his way to be eaten by wild animals as a spectacle in Rome, wrote, “Christianity is greatest when it is hated by the world.” In other words, Christianity is at its greatest when Christians actually have to make our own decisions instead of having our decisions made for us. True Christian faith only flourishes when we have true convictions and we act on them in ways that are both charitable and unswerving in our commitment to God. Read about Arabic Christians in Palestine or Iraq, or about Christians in China or Indonesia. Paul wrote to the Romans, “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” Our Christian brothers and sisters of past times, as well as in other lands in present times, faced and continue to face, mortal danger for our shared faith and we can’t even be bothered to face not having our kid start on the volleyball team? What are we teaching our kids by acting like this? What we’re teaching them is that everything is more important than worshiping God and being in fellowship with the family of believers. How can we be surprised that they’re leaving the church and never coming back? Why would they care about something that they’ve been taught doesn’t matter even as much as practice for middle school wrestling or bagging groceries at Community Market to earn gas money?
Unlike a lot of my Christian brothers and sisters, I actually don’t think we should have public prayers in government funded schools. Groups of Christian students (or students of other faiths or no faith) should be able to assemble voluntarily in their free time; students must be allowed to read their Bible just as they’d be allowed to read any other book during reading periods or study hall (when their work is done); and a student or teacher must be allowed to pray silently whenever they’re not supposed to be doing something else. I don’t buy it that the problem is our government, our schools, or our culture. I wholeheartedly believe that the problem is Christian parents, which includes me. We’re not fulfilling our biblical responsibilities. We’re not fulfilling the promises we made at our children’s baptisms. We’re not being good examples for our kids. I believe that we parents aren’t getting the job done. George Barna writes, “Everyday the Church is becoming more like the world it allegedly seeks to change.” That is the tragic reality and we have no one to blame but ourselves. We’re being guided around like the groups of little kids I used to see walking around the daycare centers in Norman holding on to a long rope, going wherever they were led.
Don’t get me wrong, sports are of value. Academic success is of value. A part-time job is of value. Raising funds for an organization is of value. These things are of value, but not of enough value to keep us from worshipping God and being in fellowship with the covenant community. It is time for us to stop blaming everybody else and to start living out our convictions. As I read recently, "Do not fear failure. Fear wasting your life suceeding at things that don't matter."
Another great quote comes from the book of Joshua. "Choose this day whom you will serve. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." I ask you to pray for me as a parent that I might live that out and I will pray the same for you.
We really do reap what we sow. When we plant corn, corn grows. When we plant tomatoes, we shouldn't be surprised when tomatoes grow. So if what we sow is kids who think everything else is more important than worship and fellowship with the community of faith then what we will reap is adults who think everything else is more important than worship and fellowship with the community of faith. That is much more of a concern in regard to the future life of our congregation than how much money remains in the investment accounts.
There is so much more to say about the role of parents in setting priorities and passing the faith on to their kids, so this will be continued next week…
