1 Corinthians 15:14-19
14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. 15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
I firmly believe that many people who struggle with Christianity are in part struggling with their parent’s religiosity. (When I say parents I mean anyone who raised the child.) What I mean is perhaps their parents were inconsistent, Monday through Saturday we behave this way but on Sunday this other way. That is not to imply that parents can or must be perfect the Biblical understanding of human nature even after the New Birth precludes this errant line of thinking. Mainly if children grow up with a form of godliness around the house that denies the power of it to create sinners saved by grace who demonstrate hatred for the sin they love and are afflicted with then this creates a stumbling block. God grant that this does not happen in my home or yours!
Perhaps the parents enforced rules that the Bible did not as a result of conceding to the “authority” vested in the church in which they attended. I grew up in such an environment, however ironically it was my Mother, who was the devotee to the church who taught me and demonstrated to me my way of escape (More on that later.) For instance many of the rules that are followed with upmost zeal are widely accepted by the constituency of most congregations with little plausible Scriptural support. The Bible must become a moldable tool in the hands of the authorities in order to back their suppositions. This can become a major stumbling block for children raised in this setting and may prove to cause them to overreact in the most absurd and dangerous ways when they sniff a little freedom.
Maybe the parents attended a church which preached the Scriptures accurately or had a solid Creed or Confession but for some reason or another went off to one extreme or another. Perhaps their devotion to their peculiarities drew them further from other like minded expressions of Christianity which had different minor doctrinal beliefs which changed the gospel not an iota between the two expressions, just merely how one went about appropriating the grace of God. However instead of seeing the minor differences for what they are the church usually led by a charismatic personality went off the gospel path into a bunny trail of navel gazing. This is undermining to a child who can usually with the child-like unbiased observance see the minor points of disagreement for what they are and become disillusioned. Some expressions of this are seen in the emotional/intellectual division that goes on in many churches. It seems as if in many solid churches the tendency is to produce intellectual Christians who understand all the nuances of the faith yet never seem affected by it. And consequently there are those churches that produce very emotional Christians who have no basis for why they are exerting the emotion in the first place in many instances. Because I believe one of the Bibles main tasks is to keep us consistent and balanced always avoiding extremes is to look in it in whole not in part and see how it corrects our waywardness. The Bible calls for no chaos in the church and yet for zeal in worship with no one manner of prescription for how that zealous worship is to be defined. Astonishingly the Bible, I believe allows a person…wonder of wonders, to be themselves as they worship without causing a scene or chaos or a brother or sister to stumble. That to me sounds exactly like a combination of the emotional and the intellectual one must, if their understanding of the astonishing truth that God sent His Son from heaven to take on flesh and die for sinners to be affected in their emotions. Also the emotional person must contemplate this truth and understand it or else be exerting much in the way of emotional release without a reason.
Alternatively the most heart breaking, in my opinion are those children brought up in good balanced churches which preached Christ correctly but the parents were more in love with being right then being affected by the truth. Parents who wear their “truth” like badges on their shirts rather than allowing truth to affect their thinking and behavior consequently make the particular expression of truth they stood for with great acclaim a foul and unappealing odor in the nostrils of their children. I have heard accounts of people whose parents or guardians raised them with merciless cruelty and sang with gusto of the mercy of God on Sunday. Or who could mercilessly afford no inconvenience in their life for anyone but themselves who would quote the golden rule to give even more stingy selfish behaviors a free pass. Is it no wonder then that children are disillusioned because of the lack of struggle they see, if the parents did have an outburst of stinginess of selfishness and showed no signs of grief and voiced no repentance to God and family is it any wonder children see no value in the platitudes of churchmen?
May these things never be so for my family or for yours, may we only do those things which make Christ appealing to our children and those around us as well. This is not easy to do undoubtedly one of the most difficult things to fail to see in those whom we have to do on a regular basis is how much better they are then they could be, foibles and all. It is easy to chafe against their rough edges and become disillusioned by them rather than seeing the smooth places in their character. I myself wrestle with this in my own life, and I know that I could do more to illustrate Christ in my life then I do, I become disgruntled at myself instead of Christ. But this is the point here, anyone who has rejected Christ can use your flaws or the flaws of others as their fuel and reason. And if they understood Christianity as well as they should (if they are going to reject it), then they should remember the first thing a person must do is realize what they are…a sinner and this condition does not go away upon repentance but it becomes a war within. If they never see you at war they may not be close enough to you or you may not be warring with your sin. If they do and have and reject Christ at least they have seen a real Christian and know what they are rejecting and may find what they have rejected it for wanting as they survey the landscape about them. The point is ultimately it is the Holy Spirit that opens the heart to Christ, however may He not have to do an end run around our tragic lives to cause repentance in our children but rather that He can illustrate through our lives true abiding Christ followers in weakness being strong in repentance demonstrating the life led by the Spirit.
It is my firm belief that children begin looking for consistency as their foundation, if you say to them that Christianity if the profound truth that God sent His Son to die on the Cross for sinners and gives them His perfect righteousness in exchange for their disobedience. And that the Holy Spirit comes to live inside us to lead us to follow Jesus and to put to death the deeds of the flesh and put on the Lord Jesus Christ and that this is a life-long struggle of accomplishment by God’s grace and failure by our nature and repentance and following after God each time, until we go to be with God in a manner of His choosing at His time. Then the strife with sin will be over and we will walk in sinless perfection. If you express Christianity to them in this way and show no signs of struggle or repentance or asking forgiveness or demonstrating the kind of mercy to them that you declare God has with you, then they will see this and it will be a tragic let down.
Allow me to illustrate, I was brought up in what I regard now to be a heretical expression of Christianity. However my Mother taught me in words and in deeds to regard the Bible, not man as the final authority. As a little child she used to tell me, “If the preacher says one thing and the Bible says another…the Bible is right and the preacher is wrong.” She also illustrated to me her devotion to the Bible by reading it and contemplating it and hiding it in her heart. And when I had my crisis of faith and was convinced of the out and out heresy of the teaching I sat under I had but to turn to only one place, the Bible. Why? Ultimately the Holy Spirit was directing my path but He uses secondary means, meaning my mother’s consistency. Had she taught me devotion to the church or the man of God my decision may have been to forsake Christ and Christianity altogether. Happily my mother now too sees the glory of the Gospel as Jesus as our only hope! Not because her son says so but because she sees it in the Bible!
Finally I think that many people are much stricter with their religion then the Scripture is, for instance the verse at the beginning of this article may seem to have nothing to do with the matter at hand, but there is a method to my madness. In many homes any questions as to whether what is believed is unquestionable, meaning any questions which probe at the nucleus of the faith are challenged immediately with authoritarian assertions which rail against the questioner for daring to touch the sacred with their puny minds. But the Scripture does not behave this way, it even lays out the best way to usurp the faith…find the corpse of Christ! Remember this text was written in a day when that was possible, which suggests this was more than a mere happenstance writing of the Apostle but may have been one of his challenges to those who opposed the faith. If your child should ever ask, “What would have to happen for Christianity to be false?” The answer is not, “NOTHING! Don’t ever let me catch you asking such a foolish question again!” No! A thousand times No! The answer is, “If Jesus was not raised from the dead our faith is absurd and we are of all the people on earth the most to be pitied.” This article is written to me, especially with my darling daughter looming on the horizon. I have found that in my life things become clearer to me as I compile them, if you benefit terrific. So Morgan, if that still is your name after December (and any other blessings from God), if Daddy proves to be inconsistent pray for Him and confront Him with this article. By God’s grace this will be my legacy to you, to be as consistent to you in my faith as my mother was to me in hers and that someday when you contemplate these things you will correct any errors I may have submitted you to and benefit the posterity of our family throughout the generations.
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