Dear Friends,
Sunday School is back in session for my congregation, and we are really off to a rousing start, at least in the first through third grade classroom with this question: “But what if you don’t believe in God?”
To be clear, this question wasn’t asked in the context of salvation or many of the particularly fraught circumstances we tend to conjure up when worrying about the faith of children. In fact, it was asked in a way more closely adjacent to some of the slippery slope arguments those anxious about the state of religion, particularly conservative Christianity, are more likely to ask it. We were talking about how we treat each other, about the 10 Commandments – the 10 Best Ways, as Godly Play phrases it – and about our own “Best Ways” of being together as a community.
“God gives us a set of ways to act towards each other, but those are necessarily the most helpful ways for deciding how to be together in this classroom,” I explained, pulling the red heart-shaped 10 Best Ways box from the shelf – and that’s when the hand went up. “But what if you don’t believe in God?”
How do we treat each other in the absence of faith? These are the questions of growing spiritual maturity and growing savvy about the world. And this is a maturity, this question that could be seen as provocative or “button pushing” in the wrong context, is a matter of great interest right now in the Godly Play community, especially.
Growing Maturity, Growing Complexity
It seemed odd to me, at first, to refer to children who are seven or eight years old as being in “middle childhood,” until I started thinking about the space of an elementary school, the hierarchies those spaces breed, and the was transitions push children through these stages. After all, when I was in kindergarten, two fifth graders were tasked with supervising each class at lunch under the eye of the adult cafeteria monitors. That was the responsibility of late childhood. The way the third graders gather up their younger siblings from Sunday School is similar. They have taken on a new way of being.
In her new book “Godly Play in Middle and Late Childhood,” Godly Play trainer and leader, Episcopal priest, and head of the Center for the Theology of Childhood Cheryl Minor takes us more deeply into this time of life and the challenges involved in teaching children in these age groups. And the reality is, especially in a classroom like mine this past Sunday, one that runs from first through third grade, there will be some children who seem so small and young and others who are growing into a new phase of life. And I’m so glad we’re attending to those changing needs and challenges.
In addition to its practical applications for those of us in the classroom or raising children, I think there’s much to be discovered by thinking about this conversation within the broader scope of Christianity, especially in its early years. Think of the Pauline Epistles, for example – this meme & tweet combo get at the heart of the thing:
Reading Paul’s Epistles is, in many ways, a glimpse into the Church in Middle & Late Childhood. They know just enough to engage with the serious stuff and everyone involved is also an absolute pain in the neck and they seemed determined to make Paul throw up his hands in frustration.
In this week’s Epistle, one from Paul to Timothy, Paul is attempting to outline a truly complex idea:
there is one God;
there is also one mediator between God and humankind,Christ Jesus, himself human,
who gave himself a ransom for all
Here’s the puzzle of the incarnation, says Paul, and we declare it Obviously our print Bibles don’t really give us a sense of how Paul physically framed this idea on the page, but looking at the text as it is given to us, this is something set aside. It isn’t in line with the main text. It’s something special. It is a snippet of a creed set into this missive. This is what we believe, says Paul, but will you declare it?
So much of what happens in the course of teaching children in middle and late childhood about God, and doing so in a secular society, is setting aside the expectation of some easy transference of knowledge, and instead staying open to the things that make us want to yell, a la Paul, “can’t you just be normal for a second?!” It’s taking these challenging queries seriously. It’s confessing what we don’t know.
Modeling uncertainty and complexity makes a life of faith seem so much more tenable to kids making space for themselves beyond the walls of the immediate family. It is telling them, as this week’s Gospel puts it, that no one can serve two masters, but your small acts of earnestness, of striving for belief, matter in a world that asks you to turn your back on God.
"Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much.” This is a powerful place to start. Drop the dishonesty bit for now. How can we be faithful even in the smallest ways? When kids ask the hard questions, the things that are really on their hearts, even when those questions seem blasphemous or impertinent, they are being faithful to the real work of belief. To be faithful in little, to have the faith the size of a mustard seed that moves mountains, begins with the questions.
What hard questions have you been asked lately? What hard questions does your heart want to ask?
May your week be as filled with grace, as with questions.
Peace,
Bird