To Parents

1 Timothy 4:8 “For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.”

Did those statistics I posted last week shock you?  40% of high school students have experienced hopelessness.  20% have considered suicide.  Additionally 16% have made a plan to commit suicide, 9% have attempted it. https://www.cdc.gov/healthy-youth/mental-health/index.html 

There are myriads of ways you can bring your children up, things you can emphasize as important.  Education, sports, arts, work, travel, time with friends.  All of these are activities that make life better.  But all have the potential to become religions and gods. Even having friends can become a pursuit of popularity.  

Between the stress of high school, social media and these pervasive pressures to have our children doing something productive, it’s a wonder those figures above aren’t higher.  

As I’ve been thinking about this, I came across this old Calvin and Hobbes.  You could add “ministers and priests” to the list of people ending up in prison.  Maybe that is a big part of the reason church attendance is down, looking not just at the hypocrisy of Christians, but the evil committed by church leaders.  Or maybe church isn’t fun or exciting.  Maybe it's the division and judgment.  Maybe you doubt how much of the Bible is true.  Or all of these.

In this blog, I’ve looked at the important ways that following Jesus is True.  There are many today who claim Moses or Jesus never existed, saying, “There is no evidence here!”  But if you look in the wrong place at the wrong time, of course you’re not going to find what you’re looking for.  If you look in the right place, you will find plenty of historical and scientific evidence for every provable story in the Bible:  Creation, Noah, Moses, the Kingdoms of Israel / Judah, Jesus and the apostles.  As well, the scientifically proven benefits of offering forgiveness and seeking it; the power of self-sacrificial love to turn enemies into friends; and most importantly, the power of the Holy Spirit to change your life.

Where else will your children learn about the importance of love, forgiveness, justice and mercy?  Turning the other cheek, walking a second mile, the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son (Prodigal God).  Humility.  Where else will they hear that God made each one of them and died to save them?  That they matter.  Their lives matter.  

If you are a parent, I hope you will (re)consider church.  If you know parents of young children, I hope you might share this posting with them.  As we looked at last week, 43% of Protestants and 50% of Catholics attend church rarely or never.  And now close to 30% of the US identifies as having no particular religion, but 8% of the US is Atheist, so 22% believes there is, or may be a God (Church Attendance Has Declined in Most U.S. Religious Groups).  In the Confirmation classes I teach, many of the children have come to church even less often than their parents.  If your child has perfect attendance in Confirmation, I’ll get about 26 hours to show him or her the power of God’s Love. 

All those other pursuits are fine.  CS Lewis wrote, “Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.”  If you really want your children to understand the power of God’s Love, you are going to have to go to church yourself, pursue God and his love and forgiveness every day and let your children see you doing it.   This will not, of course, guarantee you or your child will be all good. Trials and challenges are part of life. But as Paul wrote to the Romans (5:3-5), "we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us."