“Faith and the Well-being of Children”
October 18, 2009
Across the country this weekend congregations of many faiths are participating in the National Observance of Children’s Sabbath. This event, organized by the Children’s Defense Fund, seeks to lift up the care and concern that people of faith have for children and to encourage our commitment to develop the kind of society that better nurtures and protects children, especially those who are poor, excluded, and vulnerable.
It is somewhat ironic that our celebration this year falls on the same day as the annual “Run for the Schools”—Iowa City’s big fundraiser for educational programs. This means that many of our children and youth—as well as parents, teachers, and others in this congregation involved with them—are not with us this morning.
While we don’t have children singing or youth helping to lead our worship this morning, I do want to reflect for a few minutes about faith and the well-being of children.
Someone gave me this box a while ago. You might not be able to read it from where you’re sitting. The words on it ask: “What would a kid’s life be like without faith?”
It’s a good question. And I put the box up on a shelf so that as both a parent and a pastor I could see it while I work.
As it turns out, new research suggests that when we ask, “What would a kid’s life be like without faith?” the answer is “About as empty as this box.”
The Commission on Children at Risk is a panel of leading children’s doctors, research scientists, and youth service professionals. They released a report on strategies to reduce the currently high numbers of children in the United Stated who are suffering from emotional and behavioral problems such as depression, anxiety, attention deficit, conduct disorders, and thoughts of suicide. The Commission based its recommendations on recent scientific findings suggesting that children are biologically “hardwired” for enduring attachments to other people and for moral and spiritual meaning.
The best way to ensure the healthy development of children? Meet their needs for relationships that last and for moral and spiritual meaning.
The Commission is calling on people to strengthen what it calls “authoritative communities” as the best strategy for improving children’s lives. Now that phrase might be a little jarring to some, especially to members of this congregation. Keep in mind, however, that these are not “authoritarian” but “authoritative” communities. Authoritative communities do not tell others what to do. They are groups of people who are committed to one another over time and who exhibit and are able to pass on what it means to be a good person. These groups provide the types of connectedness our children increasingly lack.
At our best, that describes who we are, doesn’t it? And would we want to be anything other than our best?
This report is of significance for those of us at Congregational UCC because it tells us two things:
First: What we’ve been doing here is important. By developing a strong and vibrant ministry to children and youth and their families, we help foster their well-being. By being an intentionally intergenerational congregation that includes young people in our worship and work we are contributing to the health not only of our congregation but also of our city and our nation.
And second: We need to take this calling to heart. Now more than ever we have good reason to be an active community of faith. The health of a new generation depends on this.
There is mounting scientific evidence suggesting that children are hardwired to connect in two basic ways: they need close attachments to other people, beginning with their mothers, fathers, and other relatives; they also need close attachments with a broader community.
Humans also seem to be born with a built-in capacity and drive to ask the ultimate questions about life: Why am I here? What is the purpose of my life? How should I live? What happens when I die? This distinctive human pursuit has been closely connected to spiritual seeking and experience and to religious belief and practice.
What kind of communities do children and youth need?
· Places that include children and youth and treat them as ends in themselves.
· Places that are warm and nurturing, that establish clear boundaries and limits.
· Places that are multi-generational.
· Places that encourage spiritual and religious development.
· Places that reflect and transmit a shared understanding of what it means to be a good person.
· Places that are oriented toward the equal dignity of all persons and to the principle of love of neighbor.
Think about that? Don’t those qualities describe the kind of community that we want to be at as a church?
This has something to say to those of us who are parents—something about what’s important in a world of competing demands.
When Anne Lamott’s son was 14 she wrote: “My son hates church, but I make him go anyway. It’s good to do uncomfortable things—it’s weight training for life.”
She said that her son’s friends would often come along with them to church, adding, “They don’t hate church, because no one is making them go.”
Why did she make her son go to church?
“Because I want him to,” she wrote. “These are bewildering, drastic times we live in, and a little spiritual guidance never killed anyone. I make him go because the youth-group leaders know things that I don’t. They know what teenagers are looking for, and need—they need adults who have stayed alive and vital, adults they won’t mind growing up to be. They are terrified that growing up means you become the anxious, overworked adults who surround them. They want guides, a certain kind of adult who knows how to act like an adult but with a kid’s heart.”
Well, that’s it, isn’t it? The community matters and it matters to the kids here and it matters for a lifetime.
Lamott concluded: “I think there are worse things for kids than to have to spend time with people who love God; teenagers who do not go to church are also adored by God, but they don’t get to meet some of the people who love God back. Learning to love back is the hardest part of being alive.”
It’s a struggle to bring kids to church on a Sunday morning. It always has been. But many of you did it again today—and I applaud you. You’re giving your children something essential for their lives, something they won’t find in other places. They might not always know it, but this hour, these people are gifts for them.
So this is important not only for parents but for everyone here. Our involvement with this congregation is not simply about what we get—in fact it’s not much about what we get at all. It is about what we are giving. And we are giving children and youth the chance to spend some time with people who “love God back.”
That’s why we need to listen carefully when James urges: “Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness and born of wisdom…Where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.”
The children and youth here are watching and listening. They are watching how we worship. They are watching how we treat each other after worship. They are watching how we give. They are watching how we respond to the pain and suffering in the world.
They are watching and they want—they need—to see your good life, to see your works done with gentleness born of wisdom.
This is a high calling, one that is worth our greatest effort. We’ve got a lot to spend our time and energy on and the rewards will be great.
We are called back again to humble and honest conversation with one another and to showing our good lives.
And in the light of what we know about churches and young people, ought we not ask what is good for them—what we will do to increase their health and joy and love and well-being?
We’ll never get it perfectly. That is the good news from James. Remember? We all make many mistakes. And so we can set judgement aside and live in God’s grace instead. Yes, throughout this letter filled with a call to show our faith in works is an underlying sense that all we do is made possible by the grace of God.
And so James concludes a little later on: “Draw near to God and God will draw near to you.”
I don’t know about you, but I could sure use God a little closer to my life—and I guess it wouldn’t hurt to have my life closer to God. I mean, after all, what would a kid’s life be like without faith? And all of us, each one of us—we are all children of God.