Nurturing our children’s inborn spirituality
“All children people are born artists, the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up,” said Sir Ken Robinson, a creativity expert, quoting Picasso in a recent lecture. In his funny, yet disturbing, lecture, Sir Ken emphasized how we have “educated people out of their creative capacities.” While his finger was pointing at traditional education, I was wondering how all of us, as educators of the church’s youth, can keep from unintentionally doing the same.
Children certainly have an incredible capacity for perceiving, inviting and sharing God’s love in ways which seem utterly remarkable and even foreign to us adults. They are born spiritual. And yet, looking at college populations today, more and more young people are atheist or agnostic. Have they been “educated out” of their spirituality?
To illustrate, I’ve met more than one high school student who has little faith in or understanding of the Bible and seriously doubts God’s existence. And yet when I watch them in community at camp, and ask them about their spiritual experiences, they are anything but atheist. They embody the love and commitment of Christ, and they feel something moving deeply through the fabric of the universe.
The problem with schools, says Sir Ken, is that they are modeled on universities, which are modeled on professors, who model their lives around facts and analysis. As a result, dance and a myriad of other creative endeavors, which are neither factual nor analytical, are not considered valuable academically. Do we fall into the same trap by defining Christianity solely by the facts of our creed to the exclusion of intuitive and creative experiences of faith that resonate with the youth?
I think many youth associate being a Christian with the facts of Christianity they learned in Sunday school, just as we associate education with the facts of math we learned as a child. When the pictures of God in a throne in heaven stop meshing with their world view, Christianity as a whole stops meshing, too. The challenge then, is to help youth find God acting in their lives, help them express their faith creatively, and, most importantly, teach them to associate things other than Sunday school images of God with the heart of Christianity.
In places like youth groups and Camp Cross, youth experience many moments of spiritual depth in everything from loving friendships, arts and meditation, to swimming, mission work and political activism. Unfortunately, many don’t associate these with being Christian, just as we don’t associate the joy of dancing with school. Someone who excels at dancing but not math fails in school. What a loss if someone who excels at friendships, political activism, or punk rock, but isn’t comfortable yet with the Bible, considers themselves a failure at Christianity.
When we teach that a youth’s unique talents and interests are a place to encounter Christ, we will be teaching them a Christian spirituality that will encourage their creativity, fill a deficiency in their modern education, and cultivate a Christianity that’s deeper, more expressive and longer lasting. Just as it shouldn’t be a challenge to remain an artist, let’s not unintentionally make it a challenge for our youth to remain Christian.
