I have come to understand that people who are raised in the Christian faith can have a grave disadvantage in their spiritual walk. I know this because there are all too many people who were ‘cradle Christians’ who have almost no idea, and certainly no passion, for the thing they allege to believe.
They say things like, ‘of course I’m a Christian. All our family have attended this church for years, and my great grandfather was the pastor, you know!’ Simultaneously, they will sabotage pastors they don’t like, turn their backs in anger on fellow parishoners, behave quite monstrously towards friends, family and strangers, but all of it done safe in the knowledge that they themselves are undeniably ‘good Christian men,’ or ‘nice Christian ladies.’
Growing up as a cradle Christian myself, the temptation to believe oneself holy was remarkably hard to resist. Especially for someone like me, whose grandparents were those sort of solid, church-going, revival attending stalwarts of their churches. More so as the son of a pastor. ‘Well of course I’m a Christian.’
It took a recognition of my own sins and failures to know that none of that mattered. Only the grace, sacrifice and mercy of Christ mattered. And once I saw that, well everything changed. I believe I was a believer from an early age. But I didn’t know what that meant for far too long.
There is no doubt that a faith ‘from birth,’ a lovely swaddling in things Christian, can be magnificent. It can mean one’s parents are serious about their commitment to teaching their children the faith. It can expose a child to scripture and prayer and to the the love that the grand metaphor of marriage is meant to be for those whose parents are still together. (And make no mistake, many a single parent has taught the faith with incredible power.)
It certainly can mean that at least from a moral standpoint, good lessons are taught and largely absorbed…if sometimes ignored. But I’ve come to see morality as a gift to enhance our thriving rather than a boundary to make us bored and boring. So, to grow up in an environment of morality is a great gift. It is a cozy room in which to sleep as the soul grows to adulthood.
Ultimately, however, the soothing white walls of what I’m calling our ‘natal faith’ are too often deceptive and anesthetic to the soul. They cause us to live in a kind of spiritual numbness if we, or our parents or pastors or youth directors aren’t careful.
We want our children in safe places. We want them behind soothing walls. But those walls, those walls of our childhood upbringing in Christianity can make us complacent. They were painted by our ancestors and parents, they are often all we know. They make us fall comfortably asleep. ‘These white walls, this old faith of mine’ lull us into the the belief that because we always lived in their confines we need nothing more.
I think, however, to find the true faith is to come in one day and find a Rembrandt, a Picasso, a Monet hanging in the middle of those dull, sleepy, comfortable walls. Or perhaps to find Michealangelos’s Pieta propped in the corner of our room, the broken Mary holding the broken body of her son.
Choose your artist, but to truly find the faith as one raised in it almost necessitates that we be shaken out of complacency and come see in a new and shattering way that there is much, much more than those old, dull walls.
Maybe it is to wake up and instead of those walls to see a view of the universe, something from Hubble or another eye into the vastness. Or to step into a portal through our dull walls and understand with breathtaking, weeping clarity what happened when Jesus walked the earth and what he did, and still does for us even as we hide behind the sleepy personal faith without challenge, without repentence or transformation, that was the background of our lives for all too long.
These white walls of our spiritual nursery serve their purposes. But if we are never shocked out of their safety, then we are the poorer. And in too many cases, I fear that those who spend lifetimes drinking their spiritual milk in their spiritual nurseries may never really know the Christ they allege to follow.
Pity. Behind the walls there is such glory…