On Scandrette’s Soul Graphitti which I am just getting around to completing beside the pool this week.“As I think about it now, there is more than a little irony in the fact that we sat passively in a regal sanctuary listening to messages based on the adventures of a homeless bearded prophet who wondered the cities and countryside caring for the poor and healing the sick and inviting people to follow his example.”
Next he compares a sentimental approach to faith and cynical one:
Sentimental ‘folk’ religion: Jesus often functions as a ghost or lucky charm.
“In some Christian traditions, children are hurried along to embrace Jesus as personal saviour without the space for genuine curiosity... People raised in such practices are often robbed of a genuine inquisitiveness about Jesus-because they know too much too soon.”
A cynical approach to religion: Jesus is the “warmongering Christmas tree icon of America, a fairytale god only believed in by the simple, uneducated, or politically conservative.”
“Although they prided themselves on being open minded, my classmates were nevertheless blinded by the intolerance of inbred cynicism.”
Lots to chew on here: hurrying kids in ‘personal salvation’ and out of a genuine wonder is something I see us still doing in some ways (even with programs like VBS – gulp!).
Default cynicism can be equally as preventive in discovering the real essence of the Gospel.
2 comments:
I think I mostly agree with what you and Scandrette are saying here. There is one part that sort of gets me though...
"... People raised in such practices are often robbed of a genuine inquisitiveness about Jesus-because they know too much too soon.”
I am not sure if this is being said or if I am reading into it too much, but isn't it true that you can't know too much about God. It think that it is the perception that you know everything about God that is the problem...and that you have "arrived" once you have gained "personal salvation."
Early salvation is not the problem, but ruining a child's sense of wonder and trying to remove the mystery of God by providing pre-packaged pat answers is.
"Early salvation is not the problem, but ruining a child's sense of wonder and trying to remove the mystery of God by providing pre-packaged pat answers is."
I think this is what Scandrette is actually saying. Out of context like it is I can see how it reads too strongly.
I guess I wonder if we move kids to make a decision with the consequences of heaven and hell in the balance - it does not leave them much room for the kind of curious investigation that really helps them to internalize and decision they might make about Christ.
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