Sheltering: an allegory

*(This is an allegory, which is an extended metaphor that represents concepts and ideas.  Read into it whatever you will.)*

When we are young, we must be protected from the world in which we live.  There are too many things that can harm a defenseless child.  As we get older, our parents and those around us that love us try to give us tools and skills to be able to survive.  Some of those are actual fundamental skills:  walking, talking, and the like.  Others are subjective skills:  morals, values, judgment, etc.  Still others are functional skills:  social interaction, interpretation of actions, dealing with different points of view, critical thinking, etc.  Because, as we all know, at some point this child is going to be old enough that they will have to be able to function in the world on their own.

How we get those children to that point is up for debate.  But before they are ready, we give them some form of shelter to varying degrees as they grow up.

The ideas to get them ready are varied and diverse.  The methods come from all over the place.  Some believe in uniformity for learning, and others emphasize individuality.  All of them have some aspects of truth and/or success.  Most people have significant opinions about how it gets done.  Some are so strong that arguments ensue when their beliefs are questioned.  I believe these strong beliefs mean two things.  One, that these people truly care about the children in these systems.  Two, if one’s ideas are “wrong”, then they have been essentially not doing right by their children.

At some point, however, the sheltering needs to be pulled away.   Mentally, emotionally, ideologically, spiritually, and of course physically we shelter our children until such time as the skills to survive should be in place.  Otherwise, the children become ill-prepared to take on the struggles and hardships that the world inflicts upon us.  As someone who works with children in various situations, I recognise when children aren’t well-prepared and are lacking skills or coping mechanisms to have success.

I was one of those kids who was well-prepared for many things, but I was sheltered in various ways, especially in dealing with the ramifications of my own actions.  Also, the consequences of my life choices were headed off in many respects far past the time when they should have counted against me.  With authority, I recognise when someone is given a pass on some issue in their lives.  When children are young, if they don’t learn that lesson early, the lesson takes on a larger and larger consequence the older they get.

Parents love their children, so they often want to protect them from things that scare them about this world.  That’s why so many home school their children.  I applaud anyone taking that much of an interest in their kids’ education.  It offers a parent the ability to teach the children a value structure that matches their core beliefs as a family.  It’s a great crucible for some parents/teachers to be able to give  their children an education and give them some of the other skills that we all desperately need in life while being to reasonably keep some issues that kids deal with far too quickly in today’s society.  It’s a great shelter to have for children, one that if used correctly provides an invaluable experience for children to become who they are supposed to be.

A question:  when should that shelter be pulled back so that children have to deal with a world that doesn’t necessarily treat people like homeschooling?

Different expectations, different voices, different influences.  Different experiences.  As someone who works with a youth group, I want each of my kids to be able to withstand, to quote Shakespeare, “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” that is found far too often in the real world.  I want their faiths to be unshakeable, and sometimes (actually every time) to achieve that, we need to be shaken and challenged.  Shakespeare says that there are two ways of dealing with hardship:  accepting difficulty and toughing it out, or attempting to overcome the hardship, and solve the issue which makes life easier.  I want for them to be able to say what they know to be true because they know it.  I want them to know that they can figure things out on their own, without help.  I want for them to overcome obstacles and to be able to meet challenges head-on.

However, we as authority figures in our kids’ lives often want to keep them from suffering anything that can be avoided.  We want to protect them from things that we know hurt them.

Parent birds throw their kids out of the nest at some point, and if they don’t fly, they crash and die.  That doesn’t sound like a great idea to me, but keeping the bird in the nest for the next 15 years doesn’t make sense either.  People that don’t home school often see their children deal with extreme adult issues really early in their lives.  It’s more like crashing and burning.  If I had children of my own, I would be seriously torn about what I would want to do.  Because going through life teaches us things that learning from words never can.  Living is a great classroom.  Experiences are great lessons, if guided by someone who cares to get the very best from their children.

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*(I don’t believe the following about everyone, it’s an observation.)*

Our churches, bible studies, youth groups, and whatnot often do the same thing.  We shelter people from living life, without preparing people to deal with real consequences of faith, or the lack thereof.  We can be so focused on learning that we never apply what we’re learning.  Then we end up with people who aren’t prepared when the world challenges us with “whys and hows”.  Just because this is how we do it, isn’t an informed answer.  Or, we can be so involved in protecting ourselves from ideology and philosophy from outside our faith that we couldn’t have an intelligent discussion about what makes Christ different and significant to someone else.  It creates a “we’re right and you’re wrong” adversarial mentality, and encourages people to put labels upon outside influences without actually being able to engage them as people.  Funny still, is that we can become so insulated that we really don’t ever have deep contact with someone outside of our own faith or point of view.  We aren’t ever challenged by the world, nor do we ever challenge with world with the truth that we have.

 If we keep people from being challenged with things, and basically say to them that they don’t have to deal with difficulty or struggling, then we do them a grave disservice.  Sometimes, we have to have hard questions, and struggle to find the answers.  Like in education, if we constantly lower the bar and don’t challenge them to learn, they can end up impotent and ill-prepared to survive in the world.  Like in dealing with faith, to not prepare people to be able to meet the world knowing what we believe but also why and how it’s relevant… we become impotent and ill-prepared to serve the world.

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The best form of shelter is the ability to withstand or adapt to anything that the world throws at you,
not be isolated from anything that the world throws at you.

To love one another and what forgiveness looks like

In the last 6 to 8 months, I have been learning quite a bit about the intersection of love and forgiveness.  In my youth, I was the one who would not think before I said/did something, and I would be the one asking for forgiveness.  My concept of what love looked like was a bit skewed and often hurt more than it should have.  I even lost dear friends due to the fact that the change in my character didn’t happen soon enough.  I almost lost relationships with my whole family from it.  Forgiveness and love isn’t easy.  I am learning it the hard way, and yet, I am grateful that God loves me enough to be willing to not allow me to stay the way that I am.  (today, anyway)

Often, my understanding of something comes from first-hand experience.  The last several months have been really difficult walking through these experiences.  Dealing with a few particular people, I have had my heart broken, both by the conflict that comes about when one has to love and forgive, and the realisation that I am found fallen way short of what Christ calls us to be.

Most of the time, when we hear the phrase “love one another”, it is in reference to how we as Christians (and humanity) are supposed to treat one another.  The idea that to love someone must have an external component isn’t a new one.  We show people we love them in many ways.  So many ways, in fact, that there is even a popular author who wrote several books on the 5 basic types of ways (languages) of love that we receive and give.  The books are widely popular, and effective for people who often don’t think about how their actions/reactions will be perceived by others.

Most of the time, when we talk about forgiveness, we again talk about how we as Christians (and humanity) are supposed to treat one another.  There are many pithy sayings involving forgiving and forgetting, and even one of my favourite quotes from Martin Luther King Jr. is the following… “Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship.”  Forgiveness is often at the root of many maladies that we as a society suffer from, and it’s a significant stumbling block for many people.

How these two concepts mesh is where we tend to get confusing and conflicting information and points of view.  If we take the concept of loving one another from what Jesus says then we get:

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” — John 13:34-35

And, if we take the concept of forgiving one another from what Jesus says then we get:

“If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.” — Luke 17:3-4

Those two, coupled with the comments that God loved us enough to send His son as a sacrifice for our sins, and as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us, make the directive a hard one to really live out.

Yet, the way that society looks at love isn’t really close to the love that Christ has for us.  We’re taught that love is sacrificial.  So, we put aside our wants or feelings for the betterment of someone else.  Forgiveness is often treated the same way.  If you offend me, then I am supposed to forgive you no matter how many times it happens.  Yet, that seems to be a superficial way of doing things, at least according to how God loves us.

In light of how God loves us, we see that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is supposed to be transformational in our lives.  The love expressed isn’t truly love unless it calls someone to recognise that the sacrifice was because of who we are.  Broken, bruised, hurtful, spiteful, manipulative, and even malevolent… Christ’s death on the cross affords us to be able to choose a better way.  The cross makes a brutal and senseless act a choice for us.  We come to our crossroads and are given a choice… take up our cross and follow Him, or keep doing our own thing.  Christ’s love for us is not a happy or warm feeling, it’s a choice to be transformed to be like Him.

Forgiveness in that light means that we don’t only forgive someone the 77 times a day that someone does something wrong to us.  Forgiveness has to be restorative to the relationship but also transformational as well.  It should include within it the recognition of a choice.  The choice to learn a better way… to act, to feel, to behave, to think.  Too often, far too often, we err either on the side of forgiveness that keeps grudges or a tally sheet, or is far too lenient and does not offer the offender the chance to grow and change.  We as people don’t tend to know how to forgive in a transformational way.

After being offended repeatedly, we become less and less able to function without keeping score.   Essentially it’s rebuking without letting it go.  Or, we just chalk behaviour up to “just being so-and-so, it’s how they are” and the person never is confronted enough to change.  The first keeps us from actual forgiveness, and the second keeps someone in their sinful behaviour.

So, what do we do?  Loving someone enough to bear the slings and arrows of someone else’s actions, coupled with being in a relationship enough to be willing to see lasting change is a tough calling.  Most people would either write off someone who constantly is needing forgiveness, or would distance themselves from the person.  God’s calling often is to press deeper in a relationship with them, and be an instrument of change in their lives.  To truly love sacrificially means more than what we’re comfortable with today.  Most people could visualise a situation where they could give their life for another, whether or not they actually would go through with it.  Most people would not put up with someone constantly manipulating, stirring up discord, having to have their way, being so self-absorbed, not considering others’ feelings, offending repeatedly, or many other conflicts that happen everyday.  But, we’re called to be in a relationship where change can happen, through love and support, confrontation and correction.

It’s a difficult line to walk.

The folks that I have been dealing with are stretching me with their behaviour.  It’s truly easy to either write them off as victims of their actions or just stop interacting with them altogether.  It’s more desirable to just call them out, without being willing to stand with them long enough to see them change.  To say, “Here’s what you did wrong, fix it.” addresses the issue without the restorative love behind it.  I get it though, sometimes you cannot take another affront, power play, childish fit, going behind our back, gossiping, hurt-filled moment.  Even though it’s not the physical lashings of a whip upon our backs, our hearts sometimes cannot take another word or action that hurts us.  But Christ’s love was sacrificial, even to a humiliating death on a cross.  His love was transformational, even to give us new life.  His forgiveness was complete, but calling to a change in behaviour, thought, and character.

Our love and forgiveness should be nothing less than that.

For, “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”  — Matthew 25:40

And, “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’”  — Matthew 25:45

A hard word for me for the last several months, and I’m still struggling and learning.

Selah