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A Story about Honesty & How to Model Responsible Behavior to Your Children

“How do you save

someone from themselves?

You can’t.

You can love them,

you can help them,

you can provide for them,

but you can’t save them.”

Those are sort of discouraging words. There is a limit to what we can do for someone who is intent on heading a wrong direction with their life. I wrote those words on a tablet a couple of years ago. I don’t know why I wrote them or who I was thinking about at the time. I surmise it was to do with a young person who is not coming up to speed in some way. Looking at the words, I think I would add one more line; at some point, a person must become responsible for their own life.

On a talk show this week, I was listening to a discussion about young people and how they are today in comparison to a couple of decades ago. The host was interviewing a counselor in the college-university system. She said that she has been in the business for twenty-five years. She said that young people are much farther behind than young people were twenty years ago. She went on to say, college freshman today are much less prepared for school (and life) and there are reasons for this. Many of them have not failed because their parents have been making sure everything goes right for them. Intervening when there is an uncomfortable issue. Parents have been cleaning up the messes rather than giving their children the experiences of handling their own problems and the responsibility that comes with meeting the expectation. They haven’t had to face the consequences of their poor choices because of their parents’ willingness to step in and fix things on their behalf.

To be honest, I’ve been guilty of this at times. I have also practiced tough love on a couple of occasions because I knew I had to.

The discussion was about parents learning to allow their children to fail for the child’s own personal growth, and the need for adults to teach their children and young people how to become responsible for themselves. A parent’s role includes cheering their child on, by showing them that they are encouraging their personal growth–“This is great! Good job! See what you learned!” Responsibilities are something a parent expects and has a follow-through plan to help make it happen. Parents were encouraged to work on two areas at a time with each of their children. When those skills are acquired, they go on to the next two skills. They have a reasonable progression, a list, of areas they want their child to know and do before they leave home for college. They don’t overwhelm by having too many expectations at one time.

Intentional parenting is involved. It is like old-fashioned horse sense with kindness mixed in for good measure.

It all sounds good (one of the speakers has four children and has raised thirteen foster children and seemed to know what he was talking about). But, but, but. But, alas, sometimes it is pretty tough to make it all work out well. The goal, to prepare our children for life and to become responsible adults, is a good one, and there are ways to aim at it. As a parent of five, I can attest that the effort involved in solid parenting is much more difficult than it appears. It has its discouraging moments and it has its difficult challenges. It also has its rewards and its celebrations. Achievements are often the result of consistent learning of right behaviors, and also learning from failure when it happens, too.

There are times you must step back and let your child face the consequences for their actions. For example, I remember walking my oldest child back to the store to pay for some caps he took from a five and dime. I found him smashing the caps with a rock on the front stoop. He was in kindergarten or first grade. It was a life lesson. He was shy and it was painful for both of us. I had him speak to the male clerk, who was a tall man. Later on, this son of mine developed a penchant for finding lost items. The first thing he found was in the park when he was in first grade. It was a state-of-the-art, gold, extra-fancy with a long blade, pocket knife. It was a beauty. I wanted him to keep it, that’s a natural impulse, but it wasn’t his to keep. I knew I had a responsibility to teach him to do the right thing and that we don’t keep what isn’t ours in the first place. We turned the pocket knife in to the park personnel.

From then on, Son 1 would find all sorts of things, two bicycles on two different occasions, a white purse with $60 in it while in 8th grade and riding his bike out in the country, a Guess watch at an Oregon campground, many, many cell phones and so forth. Every single one he turned in to the proper authorities. Only the Guess watch was sent back to him 6 months later. I knew he was honest as the day is long the day I mistakenly carried a coiled hose out of a farm store without paying for it, when my son, realizing what I had done, grabbed the hose and immediately went back inside the store to pay for it. He was in high school at the time. Interesting, isn’t it?

Do all the good you can and the best you can. But then you have to let go and let them face their own choices. I believe it is essential to do this, or we end up with adult children who never grow up because they’ve never had to.

 

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Christianity at Odds in a “Post-Truth” World

The viewpoint of the world towards historical tenants of Christian faith is rapidly changing in its beliefs. Anger is rising. Anger toward Christian belief with its commonly held core fundamentals and values is exploding in a variety of forms. On social media, the anger is rampant and venomous. Not only that, but Christians are raging at other Christians. You don’t have to look far to see this social trend. People are very connected to their feelings and opinions.

I spent the evening reading a variety of comments directed against Christians and Christianity. Writers said comments like, the teaching of original sin is abusive. The Nones are quite vocal and take Christians to the task. They have strong feelings and opinions. Some rage against Christian beliefs. Sad to say, some Christians rage back. A quiet, reasoned approach is disregarded or attacked. People do not want reason or explanations. Ugliness is surfacing. All stripes are delivering their hateful vendettas. In the mix are Christians-turned-atheists, former evangelists, former pastors, former theologians, and former home-schooled adults with claims of being victims in their childhoods when raised in conservative, religious homes. They are celebrating their freedom. Sometimes I wonder what that freedom looks like, yet they are excited and pumped by their new, religion-free lives.

Within Christian religious groups there also is a growing schism. Bible principles are morphing according to various interpretations (and by societal cultural shifts). Current views on morality and alternate life styles are dividing the church into two distinct camps. I read with interest the debate going on in the Catholic church about these things, especially with Pope Francis in the lead. I see a similar dynamic in Protestant churches. Many Christians have distanced themselves from the teachings related to the cross. Where is Christ in all of this? Much blood has been spilt because of the cross. Those who died as martyrs understood the importance of the cross.

What can we make of all the anger and labeling? We must look at the context. Social media makes it easier to vehemently attack others whose views differ from our own. It is easier to use strong rhetoric because of the anonymity factor…they don’t know the people they are attacking. People are more in-tune to their feelings and emotions and less in-tune to logic and truth. There is anger and there is resentment flying around like objects in a whirlwind, not caring whom it insults or whom it bashes. What is feeding this insanity?

As a Christian, I want to figure it out so there can be a correction, like a re-set button, a renewed vision for the work of God in a post-truth (2016, word of the year) world.

Some fault lies with a weakened sense of Christian identity. Christianity has failed to exhibit its relevancy by projecting a false image rather than a true Christ-following image. Not that the church can be truly relevant, because Christ said we are strangers in the world, but the church can be genuine, which has an understanding that says, the world is to be cared about, and that Christians are in the world but not of the world. Some of the error was through teaching religious form rather than substance. Form without substance is an empty shell…there is nothing in it.

For many, even in the church, science has been elevated into a position of being the known truth in conceptual awareness. It provides an explanation for life without a need or room for God’s holy, transforming, and spiritually rich, intervention. From a Christian perspective, science is able to prove the existence of God through intelligent design. Skeptics are less open to considering life from this perspective.

Our human self has a need for purpose and meaning. Religious or non-religious belief is a vehicle through which we form our meaningful connection to the universe. Purpose and meaning are derived from a greater sense of value, which finds its bearing in what is real and true. This is where we begin to search for a bigger understanding. It is also where we separate apart into several different tracks. It all centers around our reason for living. Truth is the cornerstone from which the foundation is built. If one believes the bible as the one, true Truth, it will provide a moral, holy and righteous way for living life. To those who believe this way, truth is an absolute. If one doesn’t, or rejects this way of thinking, another belief is believed as true and right.

The thing with genuine truth is that it cannot mutate. Truth consists of unchanging properties. For example, a lie will always be a lie even if you call it the truth. A lie cannot become not a lie, no matter how much you want to believe otherwise. Truth is not experiential or changeable in that there either is a God or there is not a God despite yours or my opinion about the matter. If God is real, it changes the conversation. If He is not real, then truth can be shaped into atheistic or agnostic belief and science accepted as its core belief. There is no moral compass when science is on the throne. All things become relative, not intrinsically right or wrong (which is still theoretical since an innate sense of fairness and right behavior will always rectify this belief.) Truth, which becomes relative, simply, cannot be truth. Truth is always true and cannot be altered.

I read the arguments on both sides of the belief spectrum. I love God so very much that it hurts me to see Him abused again by humans through curses, rejection and condemning language. Yet, I do comprehend what the Nones, the non-faithed, are saying in a big picture way. The church has given them lots of material to work with. These people do not see anything in most Christians or in Christianity that resonates with them. They see its inconsistencies and its failure to love as Christ loved. They don’t see enough of turning the other cheek or living like Christ lived…strong and true. Faith today, to some, seems irrelevant and unattractive, simplistic and out-of-touch, ignorant and unbelievable.

Christ would be a source of conflicted views if He were to walk with us today. He would challenge the church of its duplicity and mediocrity, and He would love the unlovely. He would hang out at Starbucks talking with Millenials, and He wouldn’t be intimidated or ashamed. He would understand the arguments and speak to them in ways that could be heard (by meeting their personal needs). Young people would respect Him, though many would disagree with His teachings.

I make no apology for my faith in Christ. But I cringe at the arrogance, pride, and words of condemnation found in the church. We need more people like Mother Teresa. She was real and relevant. I do want to say there are some faith communities who serve with tender hearts and a right spirit.

In a city near where I live, is a church that is salt and light in their community. They’re amazing, and I am in awe. They have adopted their community and put boots on the ground by getting out and loving them. They’ve hauled junk to the dump, cleaned litter, maintained homes for those kicking substances or the homeless. They’ve run day camps for the children, have a gym open for teens to keep them off the streets, and they offer food and clothing for those in need. They are first responders when there is a need. It is a poor community, and scary. But the mission is greater than their fear.

Like their example, it would be a good thing if those who call themselves Christian would begin walking like Jesus walked and less like the world walks, or, on the other hand, less like the Pharisees walked. Lives centered on Christ could reboot the church into becoming salt and light as it ministers to a spiritually-bereft hungry-for-meaning world.

I wish I could remove all the threads of anger and the common misconceptions that fuel lack of civility and social bashing in the name of religious belief or non-belief, but I can’t. But this I can do. I can be loving, kind and Christ-like to all including those who speak ill of me and my beliefs and those who say they are my enemies. I can be more like Christ and become less self-centered. That’s doing it God’s way.