Life as a Teenage Super Christian: Part One

In his fabulous book "Blue Like Jazz" Don Miller recounts a life event that he credits with one of his spiritual awakenings. As a young boy he squanders his Christmas spending money on his own pleasures, which leaves him very little with which to purchase a gift for his mom. He ends up giving her something he can afford, as opposed to something she would like. His mom is appropriately grateful, but his own sense of guilt is smothering. He tells the reader that this is one moment where he realized that he could not be a moral person and live only to please himself. More specifically, there were people populating his young life who deserved to be loved. And his failure to do so caused those people spiritual harm. His description of this realization is both heartbreaking and illuminating. In my own life I had a strikingly similar Christmas experience and awareness. I may flesh it out in detail at a later time. But for now, it should suffice to tell you that I and my siblings had a joint event with my mom that left a lasting impression on me. It changed the whole synergy of Christmas gift giving and influences me today. It was a good thing although the event itself and it's memory are pretty painful. I am thankful for it and I can see many areas of my life where the event influenced who I am, how I think, and what I do.

One area in which it influenced me was in my approach to friendships. The intersection of my Christmas experience and the importance of friendship occurred when I was a senior in high school. Some religious background will be in order: I grew up never knowing what it was like not to go to church. From my earliest memories Sunday church was just a normal part of the game. In the course of those years between infancy and my senior year of high school I observed so many different things about church life and its people.

One of the most consistent things I saw was how people were willing to sacrifice themselves or those close to them in order to remain "faithful" to the church. In my narrow recollection, pastors seemed to be the worst about this. There is a reason that people say preacher's kids are the worst, because in my experience they are. Not bad people, mind you. But certainly not good religious people. Almost categorically this was a response to massive inattention from their parents. It's the old "even bad attention is attention"syndrome that many ignored children will adopt. There seemed to be a large disparity between the call to a "godly life" demonstrated by church volunteerism and the emotional wasteland of my PK peers. In my own parents I had seen a different example that saw them stick with some of our family friends through thick and thin times. Times which even included some of our friends taking up positions against the organized church they had previously served in. Instead of casting them aside or losing touch with them by being too busy with church, my parents stayed connected with these lovely, imperfect people. It was a lasting example.

(to be continued)