Kindergarten Faith
We can't stop with what we learned in kindergarten
"All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten," says the author of a best-selling book. Many church members apparently make the same claim about their knowledge of God, the Bible, and the Christian life, but this claim is false. For coping with adult life and doing the ministries that God calls all of us to do, what we learned in kindergarten isn't enough.
Limiting ourselves to what our parents, Sunday School teachers, and other early religious mentors taught us is more comfortable than moving beyond it, however.
For this reason we often forget that no matter how admirable our mentors may have been, they were human. They had shortcomings and blind spots. Besides, our abilities, our experience, our present circumstances, and our calling from God aren't'· exactly like theirs.
Growth involves risk
To grow in faith, just as in other aspects of life, we must evaluate what we've been told, and revise some of it. This means risking the pain that change usually brings. We have to venture into unknown territory and dare to do some things that we fear. In order to grow, we must go beyond our comfort level.
When we refuse to do this, we keep ourselves from developing strong faith. We also drive thinking people away from God and the church.
If we don't grow we miss a lot
We miss having a real relationship with God when we hang on to these kindergarten views about God-
God is an old man who resembles Santa Claus.
Most of us would insist that we don't believe this, but many of our actions say that we do. We use only male words for God.
We assume that if we do what is right God will bring us what we want, and that if we don't he'll bring things we don't want.
God commanded my favorite style of worship.
When people in our churches advocate changes in our worship, we accuse them of letting today's culture have too much influence, but all of our worship practices reflect the cultures in which they arose. Even the worship we read about in the Bible is in styles typical of particular cultures. No single style of worship is God's style.
We miss having real relationships with other people when we hang on to these kindergarten beliefs about being a Christian-
A good Christian is always sweet and nice. This insidious teaching comes in many forms. "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything." "Nice people (meaning real Christians) don't get angry." "Always avoid conflict." "Don't use dirty words." This fake sweetness requires a constant smile and a sugary style of talking. It has traditionally been expected of girls and women, but many people also consider it essential for clergy. It's deadly, and it has nothing to do with real Christianity.
Never think of yourself. This harmful teaching says, in effect, "Don't admit (even to yourself) that you have any ability." It also says "Never attend to your own needs or wants until after you have satisfied all of everyone else's," which really means "Never attend to your own, period." This is another teaching that is emphasized especially for women and clergy. And like some of the other harmful and incorrect messages we've been given, this one is deceptive because it resembles a valid Christian teaching-Jesus' command to deny ourselves and to minister to others. But it ignores what Jesus also said about loving ourselves, and what the Bible says about acknowledging and using our God-given gifts.
Being a Christian requires using special words. We've been taught that using today's everyday language for speaking to God or stating Christian beliefs is not permissible. But we urgently need to use ordinary conversational words to reach today’s people.
Older people always know better than younger ones. My mother stated this as "When you are older you will realize that I am right." In the church we act as if Christians who lived in earlier years knew all there was to know about God. We act as if all long-time members of a local church congregation deserve a larger voice than any newer or younger members. Because we stifle new voices, we miss doing new things that God is calling us to do. We also miss valuable relationships with Christians of different ages.
We miss being nourished by the Bible's message when we refuse to turn loose of these kindergarten beliefs about the Bible-
Christians should worship the Bible. In my kindergarten days Bibles didn't even look like other books. They had black leathery covers, tiny print, and tissue-paper pages with gold edges. This said that no one really expected to read them. Writing in a Bible was definitely forbidden. Fortunately most of us have gotten past this view of the physical book, but many of us still treat the words of our favorite Bible translation with inappropriate reverence. We make the Bible into an idol by revering its words and format instead of its message.
God personally put the Bible into its present form. We refuse to acknowledge the process by which an assortment of fragmentary manuscripts became the Bible as we now know it. We make mistakes like thinking that the Bible's first five books were written by Moses even though they describe his death. We assume that every author whose name is on a book of the Bible took word-for-word dictation direct from God somehow. As a result, we miss a lot of what God is really saying to us through the Bible.
If something isn't stated in the Bible, it isn't from God. This implies that God stopped speaking when the last word of the Bible was put into its present form. It implies that God doesn't communicate with people today, and that all recent insights are worthless. It keeps us from receiving God's current guidance and hearing God's call.
We can't expect the Bible's contents to make sense, and we shouldn't question what we're told about them. Getting past this false teaching at midlife was life-changing for me. For years I had been baffled by Bible stories that preachers and Sunday School teachers so often presented as if their meanings were logical and obvious. They weren't at all obvious to me, but I never heard anyone question them, so I was afraid to.
For about forty years I felt this way about the story of Joseph interpreting Pharaoh' s dreams and deriving the nation's policies from them (Genesis 41). I knew no one who paid attention to dreams, and I certainly didn't know of any government officials who used dreams for setting national policy, yet I never heard anyone question the apparent craziness of this story. When I finally discovered how God actually uses dreams to guide us, it was a crucial factor in my becoming more than the lukewarm, robot-like churchgoer I had been for forty years. Kindergarten faith hadn't been enough.
What difference does it make?
Why worry if what we learned about God and the Bible in our kindergarten days isn't accurate? Sticking with it seems easier and more comfortable than examining and revising it.
One problem with staying at kindergarten level is that it isn't really easy. Trying to keep ourselves convinced of something that doesn't really make sense to us is hard. Trying to banish questions that won't go away but that we're afraid to admit takes a lot of energy. Asking the questions and finding real answers is easier and much more satisfying in the long run.
In addition, when we fail to go beyond kindergarten answers in the church, we drive serious questioners away. Perceptive people who come to our churches and find us deluding ourselves with kindergarten viewpoints aren't likely to stay. Even worse, they're likely to give up on God without ever having seen the real God. What they give up on is the Santa-Claus-like god. They may never discover the difference if we don't make it clear.
When we're long past kindergarten age, it's time to move beyond kindergarten faith.