My neurosis and the effect it has on my ability to sit still in church

Friends of mine who sit behind me in church enjoy a good laugh from time to time at my expense. I am absolutely horrible at hiding irritation and for some reason they find it amusing. The shifting in my seat. Attempts to releasing tension building in my shoulders and neck. I don’t know. I’m not sure I believe them. Apparently, when the wheels in my head start turning, there is an involuntary physical response that follows. What is the source of the irritation? Well I it’s not the discomfort caused by ergonomically deficient church pews (though chairs are a wonderful invention, I’m just saying…). Nor is it the lack of reverence displayed by my not so perfect kids struggling beside me, though they invoke a certain response in their own right. The irritation that I’m referring to here, the one that makes my friends laugh and my wife nervous, wells up in me when I find something disagreeable in the message (or sometimes the messenger, which more often than not happens to be a guest speaker). I’m feeling that right now. No, I’m not in church (but wouldn’t that be great – live venting!), but I’ve been thinking about yesterday’s morning message and a couple of thoughts won’t leave me, so I’ll just let them out here and be done with it. So if you are one of the ones laughing at my discomfort, here is a look into my neurosis. Why can’t I just let comments slide? Why can’t I just shut down my critical part of my mind? I don’t know. But here we go….

It’s not that I disagreed with the message, because I don’t. It was organized, thought out, and the advice sound and well presented. But, as it usually begins, a single point, not necessarily even a central point, got me thinking, and well, once that seed is planted in the neurotically critical grey space in my head, that thought sprouts a shoot, which soon branches, and before you know it, I’ve got something that resembles that obnoxious shrub covering the front of your neighbor’s house growing in my head. Yeah it’s uncomfortable, so don’t laugh. It’s a disease. The context is this. Your teenager’s bedroom. What’s in it? What does it reveal about your teenager? What can you change to protect them and avoid losing them to the world? Once again, I’m not picking apart the sermon. There was a lot of good advice provided, but I’m wondering if it (and I’ll add that this ‘IT’ is typical of the youth programs I grew up with and still see prevalent in youth and adult programs within fundamentalism today)really addresses the core of the problem. The problem is real. Kids growing up in the church don’t tend to stay there. I don’t know the correct percentage, but I’ve heard claims such as 2 out of every 3 children that grew up in the church leave it in early adulthood. Without doing a quick Google check, I wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t a few studies to back up that claim. The comment that got this flake of insanity snowballing in my head was in reference to music. Yep, the portal to hell located in your child’s room known as the radio (my words of sarcasm, not intended to mock the speaker). What I found interesting is that he didn’t even really talk about the dangers of secular music (I assume that he assumed that that one had already been beat to death), but rather offhandedly attacked Christian music (that dreaded CCM!). Surprising not because I haven’t heard the arguments before, but surprising because making this argument in this context assumes that what is tearing your child away from a relationship with God is music about God. That to me is absurd. You may dislike the music. You may find the lyrics shallow . You may find the industry to be a bit of a contradiction. I’ll resonate with you on many of those opinions, but tell me that this is something that I as a parent need to be concerned about? Really? Image worship – yes. An obsession with self gratification –yes. Materialism – yes. Laziness – yes. Pornography and misappropriation of sex – yes. It is scary raising kids in today’s culture. But CCM -- Are you kidding me?

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing for an outright acceptance of all things under the umbrella of CCM. But isn’t that the problem. The outright acceptance or rejection of some thing or some activity on the basis of poorly formed argumentation or anecdotal red herring? As a parent, it may seem good to construct these all encompassing boundaries qualified by lists of yes’s and no’s in order to protect our kids, and don’t misunderstand me, boundaries are necessary, but is it possible that we fail our kids in the end by under emphasizing discernment? Isn’t it possible that not all music written in the last century (and not produced by the Wilds) is bad? Could some movies being put out today by Hollywood actually be edifying? How do we discern what is good and to what is the standard we measure those things against? That is the conversation to be had over and over again. Kids today aren’t dumb. Eventually, they are going to see through the shallowness of our arguments and if we’re not careful, even our faith. Hopefully, they’ll yearn for more, but more likely I’m afraid they’ll look for less. Why are kids leaving their parent’s faith? Maybe it is the influence of the world. We need to have a handle on what our kids are plugged into. But I believe the greater influence is us. What are we communicating about our faith? Is it mere behavior modification? Is it conformation to a standard that may or may not be universal? Is it a futile attempt to make God happy with us so he’ll in turn make us happy (or the reverse, not make God angry so he’ll in turn zap us)? Or is it a yearning to know God more? A humiliation of self sufficiency at the foot of the cross? A transformation of who they are and an unquenchable desire to be everything that God created them to be, nothing else, nothing less? What’s the difference? The Gospel. The Gospel does more than just save us. It keeps us. It motivates us. It makes us. Why then do we sell our children short?  To echo and skewer a line from the Sprint commercials --there is no limit to what Grace can do.  So why would anyone want to limit Grace? 

I know I'm guilty.  You?