CHILDREN AND THE GOSPEL

Notes from a keynote address to a Conference of Principals of Christian Schools by Rowland Croucher.

August 2000

RECAP

First, to recap our theme ‘What is the Gospel?’ yesterday (when the conferees attempted to summarise what they thought the ‘Gospel’ was in 50 words or less). We agreed that the Gospel, or Good News, starts with God, and is about God’s love and redemption of human beings – indeed the whole cosmos – through Jesus Christ. We agreed that God’s way of loving and redeeming is to meet us where we are (as Jesus did, and still does, through us). However, God is more, much more, than ‘what I need’ (God invites our repentance and obedience). Humans are made in God’s image and loved by God, but they have chosen to rebel, so they are also sinners. As Jesus taught, God accepts us before we change, loves us into repenting, and that is to be our method of evangelizing today. Evangelism best (only?) takes place in the context of a relationship. Billy Graham has often noted that the vast majority of those who make a ‘decision for Christ’ at his crusades were ‘cultivated’ in a friendship with a Christian beforehand.

AN EXERCISE

Think back to your childhood/adolescence. What happened to encourage to become a follower of Jesus – or discouraged you?

NOW, CONSIDER:

# ‘It takes a village to raise a child.’ – Hilary Clinton.

# Early-born children have a higher average intelligence than later-born children (Victor Callan, ‘Choices about Children’). Firstborns tend to be higher achievers, and have higher self-esteem: they get more attention and praise, are talked to more and punished more, get more stimulation and affection than later-born children (Belsky et. al. ‘Child development’, 1984).

# 250 million children aged five to 14 are working, 120 million in hazardous tasks. HIV/AIDS has made 8.2 million children orphans. 40 million children live on the streets worldwide; 20 million children are refugees. (Editorial, The Australian, December 24, 1999).

# 90% of children in Russian orphanages have one or both parents living. Many are abandoned because of minor birth defects (Time, February 8, 1999, p. 12).

# India has 500,000 child prostitutes

# In the 1990s wars killed two million children and left six million seriously injured or permanently disabled (UNICEF)

# A survey conducted in a large middle class church two years ago found that none of those present who were over 50 talked about homosexuality when they were teenagers. But all the teenagers there knew a homosexual person and all of them talked about it with their friends. Here’s a question for ethics discussion: Is a child better off in a nunclear family where there is violence, or with two loving adult homosexuals or lesbians?

# A survey (Children for Christ) taken in 1953 found that 35% of Australian children were being reached through Sunday Schools and Scripture in schools. In 1983 the figure was less than 2%.

# A Connecticut study found that 60% of boys and 90% of girls who are arrested have histories of neglect and abuse.

# The cot death rate for western infants is 2 to 3 % for every 1,000. According to a report in a 1985 edition of ‘Lancet’ in Hong Kong the rate was less than one twentieth that figure. Probable reason: many more children sleep with parents or others in the same bed and are constantly being jostled. (I remember interviewing anthropologist Margaret Mead for a radio program as she commented that Western young people had far less respect for their elders than the Chinese, because, for one thing, Chinese children are not trapped in childhood prisons – bassinet, cot, playpen, then television – but are most commonly on adult’s laps!

# ‘Never have children, only grandchildren.’ – Gore Vidal. ‘It was no wonder that people were so horrible when they started life as children.’ – Kingsley Amis

THE RELIGIOUS FORMATION OF JESUS

There are three events in the early life of Jesus which give us a clue about how he came to know God as Father in a special way. He was born to a very devout couple, as the story of his parents taking him to be circumcised shows. Then there was the occasion of his interaction in the temple with the elders: those VIPs stopped running the universe to give their time and attention to a 12-year-old (very few 12 year olds in our culture have that privilege!). Then at his baptism he heard a voice from heaven, saying in effect: ‘I love you, my son!’ Every child needs to hear that from his father!

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Shalom!

Rowland Croucher