Milk
Those of you who have seen my Facebook statuses lately will know that I discovered Justin Bieber yesterday. He made me smirk. (Until I found out he's 15, and not 12. Then I was just confused.) This 'middleschool' kid is flirting with 16- or 17-year-old girls an inch taller than him. It’s kind of creepy. I'm not going to be making a big deal out of how weird that is, because that's gotten worn out, and it’s not actually particularly weird in the first place. It's just that he got me thinking about middleschool. Middleschool is a funny time. Everyone's hormones and such have kicked in, they don’t think like kids and they don’t want to be kids, but no one's much more than a decade old, either... No one has any idea how to cope with it. Objectively considering everything that goes on in middleschool, it all seems rather atrocious, though I myself have only been out of middleschool for 2 years or so. Though I disagreed with their lifestyles, it never seemed strange to me as an 11- or 12-year-old that some of my peers were obviously sluts or stoners or the like (I was at a public school in sixth grade), because I accepted there were lots of different types of people and all of them had their issues. I’ve forgotten about this for a few years. Though it's certainly applicable to humanity as a whole, specifically emphasizing this truth on middlschool gave me a whole different prompt for thought: Every middlschooler has their issues. As it's been awhile since I've attempted to think about my own middlschool career objectively (that is, questioning my own worldview, my own past and my connections to it, as I did in the blog on Pocahontianism, I got out the old journals and notes and piles of memorabilia. My eye fell on the white rubber bracelet I always wear on my left wrist, on which the phrase “I am here” is engraved, as I began to read.
So, I suppose I'm simply continuing where I left off on my last self-worldview-assessment.
In June 2006, when I was twelve years old, I went off to one of those week-long Junior High Summer Camp things. They tend to have those pithy little phrases for the speakers to use as a platform to speak from: this one was themed "This Is Me." I won't go into detail about the week itself, as its impact is what I'm focusing on here. So, what was the result? A conversion experience. I’ve always said that June 2006 changed my life. Once again, consider where I was coming from: nominally Christian, though certainly a non-believer regarding personal faith. It was a great camp for me as a 12-year-old. It was the first time I had ever really thought to connect the spiritual world with Christianity. First real prayer. First real communion. I learned a lot, but it was because I had a lot to learn. It was quite a Godsend; I've always marveled that that week came when it did. To pull the everything-happens-for-a-reason card, had that camp been held just couple weeks earlier or a couple weeks later, I would have missed it and my entire life would be different.
But I'm certain I would experience the same camp with a great deal of discomfort now. Those camps are always somewhat rigged into dragging kids into Christianity through 'spiritual highs.' I was one of the few cases in which it "worked," though. I'm a great example of the reason Christendom does things like that. For all the hundreds of kids to whom it seems to mean absolutely nothing, there are a couple that walk away changed.
In any case, in addition to the weeklong theme, "This Is Me," each day that week had a catchphrase of its own: "I AM GRACE," "I AM LOVE," "I AM HOPE," things like that. On Thursday, it was "I AM HERE." They handed out these bracelets, glow-in-the-dark ones, with the theme on it. This was huge to me. To think, that even as everyone else is giving up on me, the god of the Universe is always present all around me. It's as if he's standing right by my side! I recall a guy speaking on Matthew 18:20 that night. Think about it, guys, all around you, in the air you're breathing, in everything you're touching, that's God's presence. This is what he’s always been trying to tell us: I AM HERE. Wow. What an amazing thing to remember!
No. That is the wrong way to think about it.
Granted, it's extremely difficult to make theology understandable and applicable to a room full of 12-year-olds, many of whom hardly understand the Gospel, when you’ve only got an hour. But I've found that it's a much larger group than just Jr High kids that think like this.
Hebrews 5:12 [NLT] says:
Throughout my seventh, and eighth, and even ninth grade years, I clung to the aforementioned idea (and the bracelet, it being a physical reminder of this idea) religiously. It was a particularly lonely time for me (as I suppose it is for many, if not most, middleschoolers). I desperately wanted a perfect friend right there beside me. Right here. Hmm, God’s convenient. When I felt like I had no one else, it was particularly important to me that God would be physically present with me. But sometimes I couldn't feel him. What do I do when I can't feel God anymore (when my imagination no longer pulls me through)?! I am no one to judge whether other people feel God's presence or not, but I can assure you all that I have had my fair share of working myself into an emotional frenzy and making myself feel God’s presence around me. This caused me such a great deal of extremely melodramatic, emotional, completely unnecessary pain. I managed to disguise it as spiritual growth. But it's no more than plebeian idiocy, once again.
The flaw in this pattern of thinking returns to the concept I was exploring in Timelines. God is not simply a spiritual constant running the length of the Timeline and bookending each side of eternity... He is like a single point encompassing the entirety of the Timeline. Omnipresent, or simultaneous, as I've said before. He never changes. God is never more present or less present than he has ever been, and he isn’t present in any one place more than another. If we can "feel his presence" somewhere at some camp in a “mountaintop experience,” we must be able to "feel his presence" just as much in the middle of Math class a month later. God contains time within himself. Yes, of course God is present with us, I don’t argue that. It’s just that it’s easy to get stuck in the rut the limits of that thought pattern makes. It’s not that "HE IS HERE," it's that he is, he simply IS. There's a very good reason his name is "I AM." (Reason.)
When the believer thinks, "God is here with me right now," he tends to look for evidence. The evidence in his heart. (I recently heard someone speak of God's voice as "the conviction in one's heart." I couldn’t entirely decide whether it frightened or disgusted or confused me very much. Perhaps it was all of the above.) Yes, there is a lot of evidence around us to prompt that feeling. Look at your hands. Look at your face. Just think, you have the ability to doubt! Think of his promises, think of the scriptures. But these things are what must be used as milk, to teach the 'baby Christian' that he is actually out there, or to strengthen the grown Christian’s bones. If these thoughts are used as the sole source of sustenance for the already-believer, this is what I believe happens: he’s hardly able to grow, becoming a scrawny, wiry, 50 lb little man, crippled and malnourished and weak. Sure, he's alive, which is arguably better off than dead (Revelation 3:16), but he's so fragile that a little kid or a gust of wind could knock him over. (The 'little kid' may represent any random, pretty unlearned member of some different religious belief, the 'gust of wind' ordinary hardship in his life.) Sure, in America the little kids tend to respect your privacy and it's normally nice and sunny, but just because we can get away with being malnourished doesn't mean we should. Ought.
Once the individual has come to believe that the story of Christianity is Truth, he must begin to view his life objectively. He must begin to understand and apply the reality that God's presence is not dependant on his mood, his state of mind, how deep he’s buried himself in sin, the amount of pain he’s going through, the quality of his life, etc. I believe God's presence is something to understand, first and foremost, and this understanding will follow to prompt feeling. Not the other way around. It is when the Christian begins to feel God's presence with raw Emotion that he goes on spiritual highs, that he goes on spiritual lows, that he begins to doubt, that he grows fickle, that he crashes. It is when the Christian understands God with Emotion alone that his happiness determines whether God is good or has sufficient grace. It’s when the Christian walks into pain without an objective view of reality that “God is mad at me,” or “God is punishing me,” or “God hates me” and “I hate God back.”
If the Christian can truly understand and internalize that God has already spent his entire life loving on him and realize that the story must have darkness to have stars (but that’s for a different post), I believe about half of his potential doubts about God are eliminated. If the Christian can bring his understanding past the limited truth that “God is here,” so many questions become unnecessary. Perhaps if middleschoolers were introduced to these concepts the first time, those questions would be unnecessary in the first place... Or, I believe they would’ve been for me.
So, I suppose I'm simply continuing where I left off on my last self-worldview-assessment.
In June 2006, when I was twelve years old, I went off to one of those week-long Junior High Summer Camp things. They tend to have those pithy little phrases for the speakers to use as a platform to speak from: this one was themed "This Is Me." I won't go into detail about the week itself, as its impact is what I'm focusing on here. So, what was the result? A conversion experience. I’ve always said that June 2006 changed my life. Once again, consider where I was coming from: nominally Christian, though certainly a non-believer regarding personal faith. It was a great camp for me as a 12-year-old. It was the first time I had ever really thought to connect the spiritual world with Christianity. First real prayer. First real communion. I learned a lot, but it was because I had a lot to learn. It was quite a Godsend; I've always marveled that that week came when it did. To pull the everything-happens-for-a-reason card, had that camp been held just couple weeks earlier or a couple weeks later, I would have missed it and my entire life would be different.
But I'm certain I would experience the same camp with a great deal of discomfort now. Those camps are always somewhat rigged into dragging kids into Christianity through 'spiritual highs.' I was one of the few cases in which it "worked," though. I'm a great example of the reason Christendom does things like that. For all the hundreds of kids to whom it seems to mean absolutely nothing, there are a couple that walk away changed.
In any case, in addition to the weeklong theme, "This Is Me," each day that week had a catchphrase of its own: "I AM GRACE," "I AM LOVE," "I AM HOPE," things like that. On Thursday, it was "I AM HERE." They handed out these bracelets, glow-in-the-dark ones, with the theme on it. This was huge to me. To think, that even as everyone else is giving up on me, the god of the Universe is always present all around me. It's as if he's standing right by my side! I recall a guy speaking on Matthew 18:20 that night. Think about it, guys, all around you, in the air you're breathing, in everything you're touching, that's God's presence. This is what he’s always been trying to tell us: I AM HERE. Wow. What an amazing thing to remember!
No. That is the wrong way to think about it.
Granted, it's extremely difficult to make theology understandable and applicable to a room full of 12-year-olds, many of whom hardly understand the Gospel, when you’ve only got an hour. But I've found that it's a much larger group than just Jr High kids that think like this.
Hebrews 5:12 [NLT] says:
You have been believers so long now ... [Yet] you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food.Like much of the Junior High Summer Camp experience, the concepts that are introduced are great for the extremely lost or extremely confused, for those that need to be “taught at square one" (as the same passage words it in the MSG translation). But if one has had any semblance of a relationship with Christ or has spent any substantial length of time learning, I believe most of the simple metaphors and lovely sayings and things speakers use end up doing nothing but hindering the believer’s growth. Sort of like baby's milk.
Throughout my seventh, and eighth, and even ninth grade years, I clung to the aforementioned idea (and the bracelet, it being a physical reminder of this idea) religiously. It was a particularly lonely time for me (as I suppose it is for many, if not most, middleschoolers). I desperately wanted a perfect friend right there beside me. Right here. Hmm, God’s convenient. When I felt like I had no one else, it was particularly important to me that God would be physically present with me. But sometimes I couldn't feel him. What do I do when I can't feel God anymore (when my imagination no longer pulls me through)?! I am no one to judge whether other people feel God's presence or not, but I can assure you all that I have had my fair share of working myself into an emotional frenzy and making myself feel God’s presence around me. This caused me such a great deal of extremely melodramatic, emotional, completely unnecessary pain. I managed to disguise it as spiritual growth. But it's no more than plebeian idiocy, once again.
The flaw in this pattern of thinking returns to the concept I was exploring in Timelines. God is not simply a spiritual constant running the length of the Timeline and bookending each side of eternity... He is like a single point encompassing the entirety of the Timeline. Omnipresent, or simultaneous, as I've said before. He never changes. God is never more present or less present than he has ever been, and he isn’t present in any one place more than another. If we can "feel his presence" somewhere at some camp in a “mountaintop experience,” we must be able to "feel his presence" just as much in the middle of Math class a month later. God contains time within himself. Yes, of course God is present with us, I don’t argue that. It’s just that it’s easy to get stuck in the rut the limits of that thought pattern makes. It’s not that "HE IS HERE," it's that he is, he simply IS. There's a very good reason his name is "I AM." (Reason.)
When the believer thinks, "God is here with me right now," he tends to look for evidence. The evidence in his heart. (I recently heard someone speak of God's voice as "the conviction in one's heart." I couldn’t entirely decide whether it frightened or disgusted or confused me very much. Perhaps it was all of the above.) Yes, there is a lot of evidence around us to prompt that feeling. Look at your hands. Look at your face. Just think, you have the ability to doubt! Think of his promises, think of the scriptures. But these things are what must be used as milk, to teach the 'baby Christian' that he is actually out there, or to strengthen the grown Christian’s bones. If these thoughts are used as the sole source of sustenance for the already-believer, this is what I believe happens: he’s hardly able to grow, becoming a scrawny, wiry, 50 lb little man, crippled and malnourished and weak. Sure, he's alive, which is arguably better off than dead (Revelation 3:16), but he's so fragile that a little kid or a gust of wind could knock him over. (The 'little kid' may represent any random, pretty unlearned member of some different religious belief, the 'gust of wind' ordinary hardship in his life.) Sure, in America the little kids tend to respect your privacy and it's normally nice and sunny, but just because we can get away with being malnourished doesn't mean we should. Ought.
Once the individual has come to believe that the story of Christianity is Truth, he must begin to view his life objectively. He must begin to understand and apply the reality that God's presence is not dependant on his mood, his state of mind, how deep he’s buried himself in sin, the amount of pain he’s going through, the quality of his life, etc. I believe God's presence is something to understand, first and foremost, and this understanding will follow to prompt feeling. Not the other way around. It is when the Christian begins to feel God's presence with raw Emotion that he goes on spiritual highs, that he goes on spiritual lows, that he begins to doubt, that he grows fickle, that he crashes. It is when the Christian understands God with Emotion alone that his happiness determines whether God is good or has sufficient grace. It’s when the Christian walks into pain without an objective view of reality that “God is mad at me,” or “God is punishing me,” or “God hates me” and “I hate God back.”
If the Christian can truly understand and internalize that God has already spent his entire life loving on him and realize that the story must have darkness to have stars (but that’s for a different post), I believe about half of his potential doubts about God are eliminated. If the Christian can bring his understanding past the limited truth that “God is here,” so many questions become unnecessary. Perhaps if middleschoolers were introduced to these concepts the first time, those questions would be unnecessary in the first place... Or, I believe they would’ve been for me.
Those limited truths and bits like that can be necessary and I don't think it entirely fair to pick on them that way (for example, "...if middleschoolers were introduced to these concepts *the first time*..."). Reason being, as new baby Christians you can only give them one sip at a time. Why do you think that students take theology classes in high school instead of sunday school? It's for the same reason that those speeches to middle-schoolers only show part of the whole truth. It's not to lie or hide truth, it's to allow the listener to just *begin* grasping the truth; to get a handle on a much larger idea by staring with something small.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the presentation of the idea of "I am here" is quite defensible because even though it is a limited truth, it is emphasizing something that a lot of people miss. Even people who get the "I Am" may miss the implication of I Am HERE. People will easily begin to see God as this far-off entity that scathingly peers down at us over the edge of a cloud. He "IS" in that image of him, but it misses something about him, too.
And for the purposes of a speech, it allows the speaker to focus on on aspect of that I Am and speak about a specific topic.
1 Corinthians 3:2 says, "I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it." My point was not to argue that complex theological topics should be introduced to middleschoolers. In fact, I myself said, "the concepts that are introduced are great for the extremely lost or extremely confused, for those that need to be taught 'at square one,'" so it's not that I believe the idea that God is with us is a bad thing to teach in and of itself. It's to speak about that topic in a way that it hinders the listeners' future understanding that is the problem. Speaking on the topic in a way that the kids' theological understanding begins to develop in a way that larger concepts don't fit when they're ready for them.
ReplyDeleteThe point of the blog was to point out that it's not the milk that is unhealthy, but *only* milk. Milk when used as sustinance for "grown" Christians. I don't blame anyone for this, as it's no one in particular's fault, but the reason I was taught in this way and subsequently unable to see any kind of broader picture of God for years after I first believed is because the "grown Christians" were thinking in the same "milky" way and leading us down the same limited path they were on. Sure, every speaker has their limitations, we're only human. But I believe that this is an idea that Christians should be weaned off of fairly quickly.
Who are you? Do I know you?
Hm...I see, and understand that it can be a problem. However I think that part of the issue could be in the listeners as well. Two people might hear the same speech, but one might have trouble fitting the larger picture into that later, whilst another might easily see how it fits in. But I suppose that is a different issue; your point is made.
ReplyDeleteYes, you know me. You have many names for me but I thought I'd just add another to the list...one that *doesn't* start with "m." Even the nicknames that don't have anything to do with my real name start with "m." Like "Mom."
This can be and often is very easily aggravated by the speaker.
ReplyDeleteHow curious- yes, I think I might know you.
Thanks for this post. I would expand my reaction further, but right now, I'm less than coherent.
ReplyDeleteYou say, "I'm a great example of the reason Christendom does things like that. For all the hundreds of kids to whom it seems to mean absolutely nothing, there are a couple that walk away changed." I could not more fully agree with this statement. I hear people say it all the time--camp is just there to create a spiritual "high", camp conversions don't mean anything in the long-term--and I believe it, mostly. But I always protest (quietly, in my head), "But what about me?" I believe I "became a Christian" (sorry for the buzzword) through a Christian conference. I went to church, took communion, volunteered in the church body before then, but it was because of the conference that something truly changed in me. I wonder, "If camp conversions aren't real, then what was it that I experienced?" (Please don't put us off on a debate on the nature of experience, the result will either be me being demolished or me being extremely confused, or both.)
I guess what I'm trying to say in my quasi-lucid state is that I'm glad that someone else understands what a "real" "camp conversion" is, and thank you for encouraging me in this way.
--A