A few months ago an acquaintance told my Sunday School class about a father taking his daughter on a trust walk. The basic concept is that the father is to guide his blindfolded daughter up a tree-lined mountain path along with other father-daughter teams. The father gives his daughter this statement "I am here to guide you, only listen to me" - The father is to start out with his hands on the daughter's shoulders and giving reassuring advice until a facilitator motions for the father to remove his hands, and then later to stop speaking until asked for advice by the daughter. All along the trail the blindfolded daughter is harassed by a man with a tree branch who makes her think her father is leading her into a tree, and she is given false instructions by a man who contradicts her father. The idea of the exercise seems to be to teach the daughter to trust her father to lead her down the right path in life. It is interesting that the father takes his hands off his daughter at one point on the trail, and then he becomes silent unless asked for advice later down the path. This is so much like a good father letting his daughter grow up. I have warned my children that I will gradually step back from being their guide, and simply be an advisor.
The idea sounds neat, but I don't see myself doing this exercise with my girls. Instead of teaching my daughter to trust me to guide them, I am doing my best to get rid of any blindfolds they may be wearing so that they are not dependant on this flawed man and can find a good path themselves. My father had a similar approach in raising his children. He has some very strong beliefs about what is true, but he feels that, rather than indoctrinating us into a certain viewpoint, he should give us the tools to find the truth so that what we believe becomes our belief rather than simply a parroting of his and Mom's beliefs. His plan seems to be a risky one. By opening the door to personal investigation rather than blind trust my parents ran the risk that their children would be led away from the truth, but in reality children will do what they want anyway. I do not mean that Dad and Mom taught us that truth is relative, but instead they taught that any honest pursuit of truth would lead to the road that they walked. I was not taught that questioning my faith was sinful, but my father struggled through his doubts and taught us the truth in an effort to help us find what he learned and save us the trouble of dealing with doubt.
If you have followed my blog for any amount of time you know I chose the hard way. Until I was twenty-five I lazily took my father's faith as my own, but then I came to realize that I instinctively didn't get it. Ever since then I have tried to argue myself into belief, but I have discovered it is difficult to do this. How did I get here? It has been suggested that I must have been hurt by my parents pretty badly to have rejected what they believe, but the fact is that I came to this situation on my own. When I approached my father early on about my doubts he expressed his belief that the only way to see the truth about God was to accept the presupposition that God is real and His Bible is true, but he has always made it clear that he loves me and accepts me no matter what I believe.
In a sense, my pride forced me onto this road. I want to be right for the sake of being right. I have been told by many that people like me choose to step away from their faith because they refuse to give up some sin. I am not morally perfect, but my pride was the sin that led me down this path. I saw Christians politicalizing Christianity in areas such as abortion, and the meaning of Christmas, and I wanted to have a faith that was more important than some reason to rally against a government in political meetings. I got the feeling that these issues were created to give a certain group influence over the nation by polarizing Christians. I find it interesting that abortion gave room to the "battle for Christmas" (with the hate for secularization of the nation) which gave room to the battle over gay rights, which gave room to the battle over the Islamification of America. I have watched Christians add anger to anger until there is no room for love. I think these are non-issues created to keep Christians politically involved. Now we have a Christian movement against a "communist" or "socialist" sitting confessed Christian president in favor of a Mormon candidate who has historically acted in a similar way to our current president.
In my proud way I wanted to rise above all this, and be a true loving follower of Christ. As I looked at my Bible to learn a more excellent way I found that the Scriptures can be ambiguous, and even contradictory. I wanted God's Word to be clear and in self-agreement, but it really isn't. I found that many of our main theological ideas were actually inferred from Scripture while seeming contradictory passages were ignored or explained away. The more I studied the Bible, the more I have come to feel that the book is more likely the result of various cultures trying to come to grips with their current situation. This is why the scientific concepts presented in the Bible are reflective of the primitive ideas held at that time. We now know the earth is not flat, is not the center of the universe, and was not made in six days less than ten thousand years ago, but those ideas made sense a few hundred years ago. As we understand the fetal development of the brain we now know that the brain is where sexual identity is developed despite what the body seems to indicate, and it is not sinfully deviant to have different sexual orientation than one appears that they should have no matter what the writers of Leviticus or the Apostle Paul thought.
So what do I use to guide my children? I have chosen to raise them in the conservative Evangelical Christian culture (sticking to what I know) while constantly insisting my children to approach their beliefs honestly. Whether they agree or disagree with me I play devil's advocate to force them to justify, in simplistic ways, what they believe. I want them to know that while truth is not relative, our ability to see it is often obscured by our desire to identify with a certain culture. So now my children roll their eyes (respectfully) when I start to discuss the pagan reasons to celebrate Christmas or the fact that God is not pro-life, and when I ask them why they believe something. I want to walk next to my children discussing the path as we continue to grow together not a guide to force them to my flawed level of enlightenment. They will hear my voice in their heads like I hear my father every day- "why did you choose that?" They will disagree with me, but they will know why!
