Please...Let Kids Be Kids!

Allow me to preface what you’re about to read by acknowledging there are most certainly exceptions to what I’m about to say. However, most of the time, and in most situations, this is relevant and true. Let’s proceed.

Kids need to run. They need to get dirty, fall down, get cut and bruised, and cry a little. And figure out that life kicks your butt sometimes. We get up and get over it.

Kids need to fight and get mad and learn to forgive and get past it. They need to learn to be stronger and tougher and bigger than anyone else’s words. So they don’t become bitter adults.

Kids — many if not most of them — are weird and awkward. Acne and puberty and hormones and immaturity are a strong enough cocktail to inebriate even the toughest adolescent.

Kids need to laugh with their friends and at themselves. They need to laugh so hard that it makes them sick. They need to have memories of laughing and not even be able to remember what they were laughing at or about.

Kids needs to be flexible and resilient. But you only become flexible by being bent. You only gain resilience through adversity.

Kids used to know and do and be and experience these things.

Something has changed. The question is: WHAT?

Your kid — just about every kid, for that matter — under the age of 13 (or maybe 15 or even 17 or 18) is still as pliable as a ball of Silly Putty. Mentally, physically, emotionally, they are like lumps of wet clay on a potters wheel. Every day, being influenced and impressed and molded into the person God created them to be. If we’ll allow it.

If you understand, accept, and believe that, then please consider this:

Just because a little boy wants to play with a doll or watch Snow White doesn’t mean he needs or wants to be a girl.

Just because a little girl hates dresses and wants to wrestle and have short hair doesn’t mean she wants or needs to be a boy.

Just because your daughter can’t stay focused or pay attention in her kindergarten class doesn’t mean she has ADHD.

Just because a child shows signs of lacking social skills or displaying extreme intelligence or obsessing over certain things doesn’t mean they’re on the spectrum.

Just because your eight-year-old son can hit a baseball really good doesn’t mean he’s the next Freddie Freeman or Derek Jeter. Or that he might not eventually grow to also like basketball or chess. Or wind up hating baseball.

What's the point? What am I trying to get across here?

We have become so quick to label, diagnose, and pigeon-hole our kids today, that by the time they reach the age of 10, many of them are confined to an imaginary box of predetermined limitations, alterations, and choices that no child is prepared for or ready to face or to make for himself.

It’s OK to let your kid be awkward for a while. I know you want to fix everything for them — I completely understand — but those trials and tribulations and hurts are actually going to grow them and shape them into the human God intended. If you’ll allow it.

I know you’ve probably heard the story about the girl who saw the butterfly struggling to get out of the cocoon. In her eyes, the butterfly was suffering. So she decided to help it. She just made a little cut in the cocoon so the butterfly could get out easier, not understanding that the struggle to get out of the cocoon is actually what strengthens the butterfly’s wings so that he can endure flying on his own.

The struggle is where the strength comes from.

But no one wants to let kids struggle anymore.

If you don't let them go through struggles, you're preparing them to crumble.

If you won't allow them to hurt, they'll never figure out how to heal.

And if you make all their choices for them, they won't become them. They'll become another you. 

The fact of the matter is, most 6-year olds who play travel baseball or take gymnastics 5 days a week or practice piano 4 hours a day or say they want to be a different gender are not doing or saying or being who they want to be. They're doing, saying, and being who you want them to be.

I know many people will consider that an unpopular opinion. It's not. It's actually an unpopular fact.

Please don't make the mistake of robbing your child of being a child.

Please don't attempt to live out your unfulfilled dreams or propagate your worldview through your child.

Please don't diagnose them with a disorder before you're willing to see if what you're actually witnessing are the effects of their face in a screen, their mind paralyzed by electronic addiction, or even their emotional intelligence and social skills stymied by living vicariously online more than being forced into healthy interaction with other human beings.

Please don't try to fix every problem or rescue them from every struggle. The struggle is where the strength comes from. Don't rip them out of the cocoon before they're ready. They won't be able to endure the turbulence.

Please teach them, love them, nurture them, disciple them, train them, and prepare them to step out into this world. But while you're doing it...please, let kids be kids!

"Train up a child in the way he should go. In the end, he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6

Something has changed. The question is: WHAT?

Someone needs to change. The question is: WHO?

The Theological Snobbery of Reformed Gnosticism

I’m learning and discovering that, if you are walking with and growing in Christ, about every 8 to 10 years you will humbly (and often painfully) look back and discover your arrogance and pride. You start looking in the rear view mirror a bit more often.

I am still attempting to salvage and recover much of the damage caused by the legalism that drove my beliefs and (moreover) my teaching early on in my days of ministry. For many of us who grew up in the evangelical church of the 80s and 90s, there was a very hard foundation of fundamentalism laid underneath us. What you believed did not matter nearly as much as what you wore, what you drank (or that you didn’t drink), what you watched or listen to, or who you ran with. To put it another way: your faith was much less important than your fruit. But now, in keeping with the common and consistent cultural pattern of 20 to 30 years cycles, I am now seeing a swing of the pendulum to the opposite side. Allow me to explain.

Over the last five years or so, we have seen a drastic shift in our culture toward the tendency to write people off. We’ve even named the tendency.  It’s labeled Cancel Culture. It thinks like this:

If someone disagrees with me or believes something different than I do on any level, my ears are now closed to their voice. If we don’t agree about everything, then we can’t agree about anything.

That’s essentially the mindset. How I see this impacting and influencing many Christians and the church is most visible in the younger generation — the “twenty-something’s”. There is now a mindset or worldview that says: I’m not really concerned with how you act, what you drink or eat, what you wear, or who you run with. I only care about what you say you believe. I’m not concerned with your fruit, just your faith. And if I don’t agree with you on every level, then my ears are closed. Our conversation is over. You’ve lost any opportunity or ability to sharpen me; you can only distract or dull my faith. Cancel Culture has made its way into the church.

If you believe something different about baptism, then we’re not going to break bread.

If your interpretation of spiritual gifts is different than mine, then I’m not interested in the bond of the Spirit.

There is an arrogance of belief that I’ve apparently figured out some things — I’ve gained a knowledge — that you’ve either missed, ignored or rejected. It’s a modern-day, Reformed version of Gnosticism. As another pastor put it in a conversation the other day: it feels like “theological snobbery.”

Do you grasp the impossibility of true and deeper knowledge of God leading to prideful disdain for others?

I am praying for the Lord to ignite a supernatural fire of repentance that burns this spirit to the ground.

Are you open to this?

If you’re 25-ish, you know everything.

Not really, but you feel like you do. You think you do. I sure did. And you wonder how so many others around you  are so ignorant. How do they even manage to even tie their shoes? And then…you get a little older.

If you’re 35-ish, you start realizing you don’t know everything. You even start to wonder if you were possibly wrong about 1 or 2 things. (Only 1 or 2, though.) You begin entertaining the idea that you could still learn a thing or two. And then…you get a little older. And a little wiser.

If you’re 45-ish, you now very likely — through the sorrow and suffering life brings — have been crushed by the Lord into a fine powder, taken into his hands, spit upon, and begun to be molded and shaped into an unrecognizable shadow of yourself. You know you don’t know everything. In fact, there is way more you still have to learn than you have to lecture.

YOU still have more to learn than you have to lecture.

Young friend: the world is not as black and white as you see it right now. I promise.

Let me be clear: There are eternal truths that do not change. The Word of God stands. The Lord does not waver or falter. The Son of God, Jesus Christ, died for our sin, rose again and defeated death, and is coming again to make all things new. His Spirit has come to live within us and affirm that we belong to him. Some things do not change.

I’m not saying that what you believe about baptism, the rapture, the Lord’s Supper, spiritual gifts, deacons, tithing, or any other theological tenet necessarily needs to change. But what must change is your tendency to write everyone off that doesn’t think or believe what you believe. What must change - what must grow in each of us - is our propensity to listen before we lecture.

”For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.“ ‭‭Romans‬ ‭12‬:‭3‬

”But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.“ James‬ ‭4‬:‭6‬-‭7‬

”Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus...“ Philippians‬ ‭2‬:‭3‬-‭5‬