Jared Byas

Love Tenaciously

On Brainwashing Our Kids with Religion*

How do you teach your kids about Jesus but also teach them to think for themselves?

Christians are often accused of brainwashing their kids by atheists. Yet atheists seem to think they have escaped this indictment. But that’s an illusion.

I read an article a few years ago about a summer camp for atheists, an alternative to the religious camps that Christians go to every summer. They interviewed the woman who lectures the campers daily on religious history and she said, “I feel really strongly these kids shouldn’t be indoctrinated.” Many of the campers, who range in age from 8 to 17, “don’t know what they are” yet when it comes to beliefs.”

So what exactly is she doing in her lectures every day? Isn’t teaching the doctrine of “think for yourself,” with its often anti-religious tone, indoctrinating the campers? I am not here to judge. Just say that se can’t help it. “Brainwashing” is inherent in every act of communication from every system of authority.

We will all “brainwash” our kids in some sense. As humans, we are mimetic; we imitate. There is no way around it.

And lately, I have a growing number of friends who feel tricked by Christianity, feeling they were duped into believing that things are black and white when they are often various shades of gray. They still love Jesus but they don’t want to do that to their children. They don’t want to brainwash. A very noble goal.

But in their attempt to protect their children from the deceit of the religious system, they often swing the pendulum the other way by “not indoctrinating” their children. They want their kids to “think for themselves,” and so do not teach them about their own values.

But that’s the nature of kids. They do not have their own values, so they imitate. So “not indocrinating your kids” really means either allowing someone or something else to indoctrinate them (peers, family, or culture in the form of television and advertising) or indoctrinating them with a doctrine of “no doctrine.”

Recognizing this, we have decided to indocrinate our kids with a religion that involves critical thinking and a love of diversity.

Maybe we are making a mistake, but for our family, we have decided that we are Christians and that we will raise our children as Christians. But along with our personal beliefs and the Christian tradition, we will indoctrinate them with a Christian faith that (1) respects religious diversity, (2) respects Christian diversity, and (3) humbly accepts they might be wrong.

First, we teach our children that not all people are Christians. I am not sure why Christians parents don’t often teach their children about other religions. Perhaps it’s out of fear that Christianity won’t be as attractive or perhaps it’s just out of ignorance of other religions. But we want to make it clear to our children that there are religions out there besides Christianity. And we should respect and learn from every belief system. We are Christians because we choose to be and because we believe it’s the truest story, not because everyone who is not a Christian is evil. That is, we want to teach our kids a Christianity that has respect for religious diversity built into it.

Secondly, we teach our children that not all Christians believe the same thing. We want to expose our kids to the beauty of Methodism, Presbyterianism, Evangelicalism and Catholicism. We want to them to learn to appreciate the tradition of the Eastern Orthodox and the innovation of the non-denominational. Most importantly, we want them to love all of their family members in Christ, no matter how different their practices or beliefs may look.  We all worship the same Christ.

Thirdly, we teach our children that our beliefs are always changing. We don’t have all the answers, which is why we need wise people, the Scriptures, and our own relationship with the Spirit of God in our lives to constantly be challenging us, changing us, humbling us. We want to teach them the beauty of reading the Bible carefully, not being afraid either of questions or of the “I don’t know.”

How else do you try to raise critically thinking and respectful Christians who are both firmly rooted in the Christian tradition and yet freely challenge that tradition?

5Love God, your God, with your whole heart: love him with all that’s in you, love him with all you’ve got!  6-9 Write these commandments that I’ve given you today on your hearts. Get them inside of you and then get them inside your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder; inscribe them on the doorposts of your homes and on your city gates.
-Deut 6:5–9, Msg

Christians & Alcohol: Why the Bible is Simple Except When It's Not

There is no doubt that “What the Bible says about alcohol” was my first foray into Evangelical “heresy” (at least in the South). I simply could not reconcile my parents and pastors telling me that all alcohol consumption was sinful with passages that say things like Paul says to Timothy, “23 Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses” (1 Tim 5:23) and passages that show Jesus turning water into wine. In fact, this was “the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him” (John 2:11). Jesus first revealed his glory by providing more alcoholic beverages for the party? Amen and amen.

And that’s when I had my second “screaming match for Jesus” with my mom (I will regret those the rest of my life no doubt). And at 16, I left my parent’s church and began attending a Presbyterian church. By myself.*

But more than just another example of how my tradition prefers rules to wisdom and moderation, this story reveals yet another reality about Evangelicalism: the Bible is simple except when it’s not.

For instance, when I say that perhaps Jonah shouldn’t be read historically, I get hate mail saying that I am corrupting the Bible because it “plainly” reads as a historical account. It’s just so “obvious,” the only reason you would read it otherwise is because you don’t believe in the Bible.

And yet, when I say that the Bible approves of drinking wine because the Bible “plainly” says Timothy should drink some and Jesus “obviously” turned water into it to help out with the party, I am maligned again. I wish someone would just tell me the rules of the game here. What did I do wrong? Doesn’t the Bible plainly say it?

Ah, not so fast. You missed a step. Because in Evangelicalism “plainly” or “obviously” too often simply means “according to the way I was taught to read the Bible and my assumptions about what Christianity is supposed to look like.”

So, basically, the Bible is simple except when it’s not. When it condemns things I have been taught to condemn, it is simple. But when it condones things I was taught to condemn, it’s not so simple . . . even though there is a perfectly “simple” 12–step theory for how to get around the simple reading. In this instance, there is the “The Bible uses the same word ‘wine’ to talk about fermented (wine) and unfermented (grape juice) drinks” theory, which depends upon an either circular or complicated argument for when you go with wine or when you go with grape juice.** Or there is the “wine is much stronger now than in Jesus’ day” argument. Maybe these are good arguments, maybe they are bad arguments. But neither of them seem like simple arguments. Nor do they do justice to the “plain” reading of the Bible.

They seem more to be justifying theories to support our already concluded assumptions. Basically, the Bible can’t say that so let’s find a reason why not. And, of course, alcohol is not the only area we use this strategy. We use it anytime the “plain” reading goes against our “plain” social mores or “common sense” views about what the Bible is and what’s in it. And you might be shocked to find out how often we employ this double-standard.

But the reality is that the Bible is not simple. It’s not common sense. But you already knew that. As I said in my previous post, that’s why we hire pastors to teach us what the Bible “really means” and professors to teach at our Bible colleges to tell our teenage children what the Bible “really means.” If it were that simple, we would simply stop paying them for their redundancy. But because we don’t, I have a sneaking suspicion that we already know that the Bible takes more than common sense to understand.

And if so, we should recognize that anytime we want to dismiss another’s opinion about the Bible simply because it goes against what we have been taught, we should make sure we are basing such a judgment on more than just whether or not it passes the “plain” reading criteria. Because remember, when it comes to reading the Bible, words like “plain,” “simple,” and “common sense” might just be keeping you from understanding the very book you rightly love.

*That is certainly not the only, or perhaps even primary, reason I ended up worshiping with the Presbyterians. My first screaming match with mom was over predestination. But it was more dramatic and made my point better to say it the way I did. But it didn’t really stick. I ended up going to Liberty University, the Southern Baptist capital of the world (which I loved by the way). But then I went to a Presbyterian-ish seminary. I have a complicated past . . .

**Why would you have grape juice to celebrate a wedding? Lame.

Liberty University in a nutshell

If you went to Liberty, this will most likely be hilarious. If you didn’t, it might still be funny but only in the same way that sometimes you laugh at jokes that you think should be funny but then get really embarassed when someone asks you why you’re laughing and you don’t have a good answer.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ffJK9GhZ40&hl=en]

Jim Wallis On the Poor

Yesterday I went downtown to the Free Library of Philadelphia to hear Jim Wallis speak about his new book called The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America. To be honest, I actually wasn’t looking forward to it all that much. I didn’t know anything about Wallis or the books he’d written. But after hearing him, an evangelical Christian who teaches on faith and politics at Harvard on occasion, speak in politically neutral but passionately religious language about how it is up to us to bring revolution in the areas of poverty and other social justice issues, I was hooked.

He told a story about he a conversation he had had with Bono of U2 about the text of Luke 4:18, the first public appearance of Jesus in the synagogue. The text says this:
The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Wallis didn’t mention this but it is interesting that where Matthew has in his Beatitudes “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” Luke simply has, “Blessed are the poor.”

Wallis’s point? If it’s not good news to the poor (the oppressed, the forgotten), then it’s not the good news of Jesus Christ. I think evangelicals are finally grasping the significance of that statement. It seems like “those liberals” were onto something after all.

Communal Sex Lives?

About a month ago I read an amazing book called Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity, and it was a real eye-opener. There are many things to admire about this non-traditional approach to sex, but one thing in particular has really caused me to question a lot of my assumptions about the community’s role in our sex lives. There is even a chapter called Communal Sex: Or, Why Your Neighbor Has Any Business Asking You What You Did Last Night. Here is an exerpt from that chapter:

“…the Bible tells us to intrude – or rather, the Bible tells us that talking to one another about what is really going on in our lives is in fact not an intrusion at all, because what’s going on in my life is already your concern; by dint of the baptism that made me your sister, my joys are your joys and my crises are your crises. We are called to speak to one another lovingly, to be sure, and with edifying, rather than gossipy or hurtful, goals. But we are called nonetheless to transform seemingly private matters into communal matters…[Sociologist Wendell] Berry claims that “the disintegration of community” began when we started treating marital sex as a wholly private matter, when we severed the connections that link marriages to households and neighborhoods and communities” (56-7).

It is curious the many things we take for granted and assume in the ways we think. For most of history, even up until the 20th century, marital sex wasn’t just between a husband and wife. How could it be when the majority of the populations lived (and still do in 3rd world countries) in one-room houses or huts? Your kids knew when you had sex. Your kids heard when you had sex…Scary thought?

In any case, my point is that we are to live in community because we are the body of Christ. What affects one part of the body affects the whole, whether we confess it or not. And our sex life is just one of those areas that we should be able to share about if need be, it just happens to be one of the hardest. But in the end we are free. We are free to be open and free to share because our worth isn’t based on what we can hide from people about our sin and our humanity, but is based on a love by a God who already knows it and loves us anyway. Yet sometimes I think we value people’s opinion but not God’s. It’s okay if God knows, but not so and so. Hmmm, interesting. But, as always, I am open for correction, rebuke, wagging fingers, etc.

“The best thing that could ever happen to any one of us is that all our sins would be broadcast on the 5 o’ clock news.” – Derek Webb