Ok, I'm throwing out a new term - have you ever heard of moralistic therapeutic deism? I hadn't until this week, but these big words came from a 2009 study of 3,000 teenagers. Moralistic therapeutic deism (MTD) is a combination of beliefs defined by Wikipedia as:
A God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.Good people go to heaven when they die.
One way to look at it is simply, "God (and the significant people in my life) will love me if I'm a good person."
I'm pretty sure this way of thinking was paraded in front of me to accept, which I did, at a young age. I know my parents and others at our church would never have wanted me to believe such a thing, but it was part of the culture and certainly part of the parenting ethos. Good kids obeyed and that was pleasing to God...and just about everyone else, too. Good Christians were good people.
But what happens when we aren't good? Or we have questions? Or bad things happen to make our feelings about God sour?
MTD doesn't leave much room for these things (and it doesn't line up with the way Jesus discipled). I read this quote in Woven: Nurturing a Faith Your Kid Doesn't Have to Heal From by Meredith Miller, a book expertly recommended to me by Phil Lewis.
Miller writes:
"I want to be clear as I can: The issue is not the desire for our children to follow God in practical and action and attitude. Not is it a hope that we can guide them to wise choices and away from foolish ones, thereby sparing them some difficult experiences.
The issue is when adults tell kids exactly what fruit should look like in their lives instead of helping them get to know the Spirit who grows the fruit."
Pointing our kids toward the Spirit, instead pointing out how to produce fruit or making sure they are producing what we see as fruit, is much more relationships and, ultimately, about trust-building. Just as we've heard on our Genesis sermon series, most (or all?) of the Biblical characters are not that good and make some pretty bad decisions and certainly doubt God at times. But they are still God's people and they are still in relationship with the Creator. They still had the opportunity trust Him even when they strayed.
Processing this topic is huge. And it's just one of the many topics parents face as we seek to raise children in this decade and introduce them to God in a way they don't have to heal from. I don't have easy answers, but I'm grateful that I don't have to do this alone. We journey together.
So, what might journeying together look like?
Next Sunday, September 24, as part of our 4th Sunday activities, I will have a table where parents can share topics that you'd want to discuss or learn more about. Here are some ideas about what journeying and learning together could look like this school year:
Do you have a topic for a parent roundtable discussion or brown bag lunch in the future?
Do you need parenting resources?
Are there ways you'd like to connect with other parents that we can try?
Books you'd love to discuss together?
Do you want to pray with other parents?
Would you like to be paired with parents of grown children to learn from their wisdom and experience?
Let's see what possible by the Spirit as parents of faith in community, seeking to know the Wisdom Giver and share our experience with our children.
Ephesians 1:17-19
"I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength,"