In expressing concern over liberalized approaches to sex education, some evangelicals have suggested that perhaps too much sex information too soon in life could be as damaging to the child as too little too late. When one looks at the churches’ catastrophically high dropout rate among teenagers, he cannot help wondering if perhaps the same danger exists with religious education.
Between the ages of twelve and twenty, approximately two-thirds of Protestant Christianity’s sons and daughters decide to leave their churches. Although many will return in later years, most of them will be permanent dropouts from the organized church. Could it be that one of the reasons is the punitive and painfully negative image of God and the Church unintentionally communicated to the young people in their earlier years?
Centuries ago Solomon observed, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6). The symbolic Hebrew language used in this passage pictures a mother cow helping her newborn calf survive by licking the calf’s lips with milk, thereby creating in the calf a taste for milk. The obvious implication is that if one is to help a child to have a healthy appreciation of spiritual matters when he is older, it is necessary to create in him a taste for spiritual things when he is young. One wonders what the early religious impressions must have been for these young people who drop out of church.
Does the teen-ager decide all of a sudden to leave his church? Probably not. It is more likely a gradual process. Perhaps he has gradually overcome his fear of his parents and now dares to say to them what he would like to have said when he was younger, “I don’t like to go to church and I’m not going anymore.” Perhaps also he has felt a widening discrepancy between the church’s message and his needs.
In my counseling practice, about 85 per cent of my patients are from evangelical backgrounds. Early in the counseling relationship I attempt to find out how the person is relating his faith to his life situation. A key question for determining whether his faith is contributing to his problem or helping him overcome it is simply, “As a child, how did you picture God in your mind?” The vast majority report early images of God as a punisher rather than as a rewarder.
Jesus was careful about the impressions of the Kingdom he left in the minds of children. He took time to lift them up in his arms and bless them. He rebuked his disciples for mistakenly assuming that his crowded schedule had no room for children. “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not,” Jesus said, “for of such is the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:14).
As a whole, the institutional church has never shared Christ’s view of the Kingdom importance of children. Church is an adult institution. The average church service holds little or no interest for children. Pastors who try to make parts of public services meaningful to children often meet with adult resistance.
To make matters more frustrating for youngsters in church, the limits of their attention span are ignored. Sitting still for an adult service of the usual length places impossible physiological demands upon a child. Yet if he becomes restless and objects, he is likely to be verbally or physically reprimanded on the spot. The adult who takes a child out of the sanctuary usually does so not to relieve him of boredom or frustration but to discipline him.
Pediatricians have learned that babies and small children associate the pain and threat of shots with the doctor’s white coat. This association affects the child’s later attitude toward the doctor, and many pediatricians have stopped wearing the white coat for that reason. Children may also associate the medicinal odor of the doctor’s office with the pain they have previously suffered there. Because of painful experiences, most children dislike the doctor’s office.
A child is just as capable of associating pleasure and pain with his trips to a church building. Could it be that an accumulation of church experiences through infancy and childhood predisposes a person’s eventual choice to stay in the church or leave?
In addition to being subjected to unreasonable physical demands, infants and young children who are made to sit through adult church services are often overwhelmed by the verbal content. Although the rewarding nature of God and angels can be appropriately expressed to pre-school and early elementary children, sermons about the endtime often create in children’s minds an image of God as a punisher and not a rewarder.
Children under twelve usually cannot cope with eschatological truths; their minds seriously distort them. And these distorted ideas may well be frightening.
One woman told me of this preschool memory. Her parents took her to a church where much was said about Bible prophecy. They were farmers, so they had to work together to protect crops ready for harvest from threatening weather. One day a sudden turn in the weather made it necessary for the parents to waken the older children before daylight in order to get the necessary field work done before time for school. The two smallest children were left sleeping in the house. The parents intended to be back from the field before the little tots woke up, but the work took longer than expected.
When they awoke and couldn’t find their parents or brothers and sisters, the little ones were terrified. They searched the house and farm buildings and were taking the lid off the well when the rest of the family returned. This experience, frightening for any child, was especially terrifying for the little girl who in later life related the incident to me, for she concluded that Jesus had come, the rapture of the Church had taken place, and she and her tiny brother were the only ones in the family left behind.
Most ministers give little thought to how what they say might be distorted in the minds of children in the sanctuary. Sunday-school teachers are generally more aware of the physical and mental limitations of the child; but many of them, too, need to give more attention to the kinds of memories their teaching and classroom management are creating.
Secular educators have seen the need for research to help teachers recognize levels of readiness as they introduce children to literature and mathematics. As a result, a lot is known about how the child acquires his reading and math skills. But the Church has done little to determine levels of readiness for learning spiritual truth. Research of this type is greatly needed.
Could we increase the spiritual survival rate of our children by communicating God to them in ways that are more appropriate to their developing thought processes?—RICHARD D. DOBBINS, pastor, Evangel Temple, Akron, Ohio.
