Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Child Ownership Fail (Nice Car!)


Once upon a time, a father bought his one and only newborn daughter a shiny new car. Cars were his passion. And since she was his only child, he wanted her to share his zeal for automobiles. He knew that she wouldn’t be driving it for some time, but he wanted her to be exposed to it from the very first week of her life. He was determined to have her to take ownership and drive it when the time came, but in the meantime he would keep it clean and ready for the day she would take it over.

From the time she was able to read, she didn’t go to regular schools; he took her to schools where they taught her all about cars. She took classes on driving, traffic laws, safety, and car maintenance. By the time she was twelve years old, she had memorized the interstate system, nationwide. She could take apart a transmission, replace the worn parts, and put it all back together again. And she could tell you everything there was to know about Henry Ford and the history of auto manufacturing in the United States.

When she turned 16, her school sponsors took her to Japan and South Korea to help her understand the durability and reliability of the well-made cars there. The next year they took her to Germany and all over Europe to meet the engineers and to see the great automobile plants of such legendary cars as Mercedes, BMW, Rolls Royce, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bugatti, and several others you have never heard of.

In all this time, Dad kept the car clean and ready, but she had never driven it once.

On the morning of her eighteenth birthday, the day finally arrived. She had spent her whole life preparing for this day. She knew everything there was to know about cars. Today, she would get to drive one for the first time. After breakfast, her dad handed her the keys and said, “Now you are ready.”

Perhaps you can anticipate what is about to happen. Before she got out of town, she was killed in a tragic auto accident. She had studied her whole life, but she had never once been given the opportunity to drive. She knew everything about cars, but she had never been behind the wheel.

This is the story of the American church and its children. We have given them knowledge, instruction, and pizza by the ton, but we have not let them get behind the wheel. We have failed our kids by withholding ownership of the gospel. Instead we have kept it clean and shiny for them and just out of reach. Instead of handing them the keys as early as possible and sitting next to them for the wild ride, we have kept the keys in our pocket.

We have tried so hard to keep them in the insulated church bubble and isolated from the real world, because we feared they might fail. We just couldn’t let them doubt or question or find their own answers. That was too dangerous. We can’t bring ourselves to let them go there; not on our watch. And by refusing to let them fail, we have also kept them from taking faith deep into their souls.

And here’s some real irony. If they did fail in spite of our efforts, we did not know what to do with them. We did not know how to show them love, forgiveness, and compassion without making it appear that we condone their actions. God will gladly take them back, but we won’t. Our church culture doesn’t allow it.

So instead of admitting that the failure of the best people in the scriptures as well as in real life is as common as rain, we have to pretend to be appalled and disappointed. And if they are leaders in the group, instead of finding ways to restore them and make them examples of God’s forgiveness and love, we make them examples of shame and humility, and we set them aside to show the other kids where sin will get you.

Thirdly, we have failed our kids by withholding the keys to ownership of the faith entrusted to us. And in so doing we can predict the car wreck that inevitably comes when they finally come face-to-face with the real world.

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