Tonight I went to the Sunday School Christmas program at church. It was pretty typical - Mary, Joseph, shepherds, wise man, and even a King Herod. When I was growing up our church never did these things, and I sort of wonder what the point is. Somewhere between the star falling off its post and the shepherd accidentally nailing baby Jesus in the head with his staff, I looked around and noticed all the adults (including me) were chuckling. It wasn't malicious, but so what? We just sat there, smugly enjoying the unintentional humor of it. I guess there's something to getting the kids involved and making them feel important. But it's reducing the story to a cliche joke. Thinking about it kind of makes me feel dirty.
But then kids in the church have always posed questions for me. If they don't want to be there can/should parents make them go? Should the church pound home the gospel to little kids (like it does) if it's only going to develop a simplistic faith that never grows up? And then how do we help that faith mature as the kid does, so by the time she or he hits the big questions in life they have more than the trite Sunday School answers? The more I think about it, the more I realize kids are hard. You should have to pass some sort of intelligence test before you can have one...
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"Humility, that low, sweet root, From which all heavenly virtues shoot" - Thomas More
1 comment:
Figuring out where kids belong in the church (and what the church should do for them) is really difficult. I've got opinions because of who my parents are. But, you know, we all manage to grow up, and some manage to develop mature faiths in spite of sunday school. My dad thinks (and I agree with him) that if you focus on stories and not morals with kids that will give them more things that will come in handy as they get older. And in that sense, doing a christmas pageant helps them learn the shape of the story by doing something. So it's not so bad. But entertainment at kid's expense is rarely really a laughing matter.
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