A fairly quick and random thought that I had during a worship service a few weeks ago: Christian education is narcissistic. Well, I guess I should qualify that. The current status and priority that we give to Christian education is narcissistic. When a Christian desires to “go deeper” in their faith or to become “closer to God,” we often point them to a weekly Bible study of sorts that is supposed to be “in-depth.” This could be Sunday school, a Wednesday night study, or a home group. The context doesn’t matter. What bothers me is the assumption that Christian maturity is defined primarily by participating in an event that fits neatly onto your calendar once a week.
When we define Christian maturity simply as studying the scriptures “in-depth” for an hour once a week, we turn Christian maturity into an appallingly easy thing to do. It lasts maybe two hours, we can put it on our calendar, we know exactly when it will happen, and we can feel better about ourselves because we are mature.
Christian maturity is not something that you can schedule. It does not fit neatly onto a calendar; Christian maturity invades your calendar. It invades everything you do. To relegate it to something you can fit into a couple of hours every Tuesday night is short-sighted and deceptive.
Try putting justice, compassion, reconciliation, and forgiveness onto your calendar once a week and see how well that works out. Yeah, it’s not that easy.
No, Christian education is not a bad thing. But it is not equivalent with Christian maturity. We shouldn’t fool ourselves into feeling good about our Christian maturity because we can cram it into a few hours between work and going to bed at night. The call to discipleship is much more pervasive and penetrating than that.
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[...] Try putting justice, compassion, reconciliation, and forgiveness onto your calendar once a week and see how well that works out. Yeah, it’s not that easy. link [...]
Matt- I would argue that the same is true of worship for many people. Many come to worship to grow or to learn, but what about contributing to the community or praising God or experiencing the sacraments.
Good points regarding narcissism. I think the same dynamic is present with parents who send their kids to Sunday School in that I feel many people are sending their kids because “it’s good for them” in the sense that it will make them well rounded or well behaved as opposed to radical Disciples.
Excellent post! Well said!
Dr Cleaver. You sir, are a smart man. We have talked in my Christian life class about the boundary markers, the things that we use to judge whether we are spiritually growing or not. I am so guilty of this. If I read my Bible one day or pray before I go to sleep then I consider it a Good Day in the Good Book. Such a wrong way to think about spirituality. Spirituality is a lifestyle, not an activity. I think one of the greatest problems facing the Church is the tendency to reduce lifestyles to activities (fellowship, worship, love, etc).
However, I think I might just go ahead and put things like justice and compassion on my calender. The idea is too funny not to do it.
Oh fine, I suppose I should note that things like fellowship are reduced to MERE activities.
I suppose that’s more appropriate.
I agree with what you said Matt, to an extent. Sometimes that weekly Bible study is a good place for a new or “new” Christian (meaning one who may have become a believer long ago, but never grown up at all) to start on the journey towards Christian maturity. What we need to do is take those that have gotten into the Word a little deeper and help them live out Christianity in the rest of their lives. To add those qualities you mentioned, justice, compassion, reconciliation, and forgiveness, to the life. But maturity does have to start somewhere and reading God’s insights into what justice and compassion and reconciliation are supposed to look like in our lives is a good thing. We just can’t stop at the Bible studies.
Matt, I do understand your frustration. I am too a pastor working on a church’s Christian Education. But in principle, what you described is not what we usually call the narcissism, I will call what you described as mechanicism which teaches that, like a production line, we can produce Christian maturity in a definite program and schedule.
But you raise a very important issue of narcissism. Instead of finding it in formal Christian Education. We can find narcissism in Christian Spirituality. It was already integrated with North American popular psychology in such a way that Christian Spirituality was reduced to an internalization of the self for the sake of well-being. What they mean the in-depth relationship with God is nothing more than self-seeking of good feeling.
Simon, talk about drudging up an old post. Thanks!
I think that the machanism descriptor is true from the church’s perspective. The church thinks that discipleship is happening since we offer Christian eduction.
But I still that narcissism still holds true on an individual basis. Individuals think that since they are going to a bible study or workshop that they are growing and maturing and feel good about themselves. In reality, that may not be the case.