Parental Guidance Suggested

Today was "youth Sunday" at the Church I visited. More about that later...

When I got up this morning, I found myself thinking of my grandmother who was "raised a Methodist" and was always determined to "die a Methodist" as well (her reaction to the rest of our family joining the Southern Baptist church in town when the local Methodist church closed). Perhaps I thought of her because I planned to visit another church this morning, my Episcopal church having moved services to the evening so that the vicar and vestry could attend Diocesan Council downstate. I chuckled a bit while thinking that perhaps she should have been Presbyterian instead, since she certainly believed in predestination. However, her version of predestination didn't have much to do with God's foreknowledge but had everything to do with her own determination and will. She was determined that we grandchildren were destined for the future she planned, at least as far as she had energy to make it happen. My brother was to take over the farm, my sister was to be an artist, and I was to be the church musician. In the last, she had the assistance of my Great-Aunt Georgia to reinforce her will. My Aunt Georgia was the church organist/choir director and my Grandma Grace the church pianist. As far as they were concerned (and that settled it!) it was my destiny to take over for them as the local church organist and pianist and choir director, and they started me in lessons when I was just 6 years old. Although I felt I had very little choice in the matter, I learned to love the music and was happy with my fate. Unfortunately, Aunt Georgia died only a few months after my first lessons with her, but my Grandma did live to hear me sing and play both piano and organ in our hometown church. My sister also became an artist, so Grandma managed to live to see predestination confirmed for at least 2 of her grandchildren. (I do not, however, admit to any organ playing skills at all--I did it once just to please her, but I never got the hang of playing with my feet, or of pushing and pulling knobs while simultaneously trying to play the keyboard!)

I had a wonderfully rich Christian upbringing. Our home and our church were full of Bible stories, hymns, Christian books and study guides, and testimonies of faithful people. Life was a succession of worship services, Sunday School, youth group, vacation Bible school, and twice yearly revivals (especially after we became Southern Baptists!). I had read the whole Bible through by the time I was in my early teens, and knew the Old Testament stories and the stories of the Gospels through and through. My parents clearly believed that early church education was essential and made sure that we children were exposed to as much as we could absorb, but without ever forcing us to go or insisting that we believe.

I could wish, however, that they had spoken to us more about what they believed, how they believed it, what parts they struggled with, and how they integrated it all into their lives. I look back now on what I believed then, who I listened to, what I accepted without question, and I find much of it very troubling. I was not very discriminating, and I had very little guidance to help me navigate the very many conflicting claims on "God's truth."

Which brings me back to "youth Sunday" at this church I visited; I could not help but wonder whether anyone was guiding them to think critically about what they accept. The music was young and hip and surprisingly good from a musical standpoint, but the lyrics were troubling. One song had young David thanking Jesus (!) for his defeat over Goliath. Another challenged Christians to take their religion back into the schools as a replacement for the humanism and evolution being taught there. I didn't think this particular church had a reputation of being fundamentalist or teaching compulsion in religion! Parents and church leaders, are you listening to what your children are being taught? Are you asking them what they think? Are you telling them what YOU think?

I cringe at the person I became in my teenage years -- I sang "I wish we'd all been ready" and truly believed that the Rapture was imminent. I preached to all my friends about the coming Armageddon, surely presaged by the formation of the World Council of Churches, who were undoubtedly harboring the Anti-Christ as their leader. (If the Anti-Christ wasn't, in fact, the Roman Pope -- another good contender!) I carried my Bible everywhere and dropped tracts wherever I went that outlined the 4 Spiritual Laws, the formula by which one could step from one side of "the line" to the other and become "saved--that is, not like OTHER people."

I read my first (pretty mild) pornography while on a panel of people trying to persuade schools to censor this kind of stuff from impressionable youth. (My colleagues thought I was older than I was, and I wasn't about to disabuse them. It was the only access I had...) All the time I was publicly decrying exposing our nation's youth to such "filth" I was secretly devouring the examples, our proof texts, in the hopes of learning something about this new and scary world of sexuality, which was otherwise completely taboo to us "good Christian youth." Later, I bought a whole series of books on dating and sexuality from a Christian publisher. They taught complete abstinence until marriage, and insisted that masturbation and even romantic/sexual fantasy were as sinful as actual premarital sex. The books and their advice bent, twisted, folded, and crumpled me into myself, binding me thus tighter than the compressed bales of hay with which we filled the barn for winter fodder, but my parents never asked about what I read or what I was thinking. I was, after all, reading good Christian books from a reputed conservative publisher -- I must be getting the advice I need, right?

I was a typical teenager. It's not easy to talk to a teenager, who by definition knows everything and understands it all so much better than an adult who is, also by definition, over-the-hill and irrelevant. I remember once my dad mentioned some Mormons had moved nearby, and I went into a long tirade about how Mormonism was a cult and dangerous and how good people should beware lest Mormons try to spread their faith any further or try to gain political or economic influence. My dad responded, "Now wait a minute. I though for the most part, Mormons are good people with strong families and a good work ethic?" Of course, I contradicted him at the time, but I also immediately KNEW, the moment he called me on it, that I was being a self-righteous prig spouting a "party line" of stuff I'd been told and never even bothered to investigate. I realized right then that I deserved to be challenged, and I also never forgot the lesson.

I would have benefited from many more such lessons, but I, for the most part, didn't get challenged in my excesses. I wish I had known then -- I wish I knew now -- what they thought of my early fundamentalism, my anti-intellectualism, my exclusivism, my tendency to swallow whole what ever certain charismatic youth leaders or musicians taught. Were they even aware of it, or did they think that Church is generally benign and therefore not really pay any attention to what I was getting out of it? What would they have said if they had known what I was really into? It was so important in our family that we read the Bible, know the stories, sing the hymns -- and they modeled this -- but, I wish I knew more about what difference these things made to my parents and grandparents and family as people. Somehow, I can't quite imagine that they had the same kind of tight, confining, exclusionary faith that I was being taught and was swallowing whole. But, they never said and I never took the chance to ask them about it.

When I was 13, to insist on "dying a Methodist" because you were "born a Methodist" was clearly just stubbornness and resistance to change. Some four decades later I understand much more about what it means to claim a heritage and identity, and to find meaning and strength in choosing a path and sticking to it, even if it is just one path among many. I have my own ideas about what being a Methodist meant to my Grandma because I know what being Christian and Episcopalian mean to me, but I will never know for sure just what she was trying to say. I wish I could ask her. I wish she had at least tried to tell me.