At work today I was preparing one of the TV programs, Anderson Cooper, for air and the topic caught my attention.  Anderson was speaking to over protective parents.  These parents out of fear or a desire for control would never let their children do anything on their own.  A parenting “expert” shared how what these parents were doing is incredibly damaging.  Not only were they killing the confidence of their children but they were also robbing them of a fulfilling, enjoyable, and memorable childhood.  She shared with those parents, “Remember what it was like riding your bike to the store by yourself or the first time you took the bus alone, the tremendous feeling you had because of what you had accomplished.  You were growing up. It is the desire in every child to grow up.”  Then she reminded the parents, “We raise our children to release them.”

As I watched that program I was struck by the fact that this problem is ramped in the church.  And when I say the church, I mean the actual body of Christ, not the building with a cross on top.  There are a lot of people in charge but very, very few spiritual parents.  See, healthy parents (healthy in function) understand that their role is a temporary one.  It is their purpose to prepare their children to stand on their own and be healthy, confident, and secure functioning adults.  But what has tragically happened in the church is that many who are called to be parents have twisted up the natural order of things so that they are supported by their children and therefore thrive on their dependence.  There is not only the lack of desire to release people, but an outright battle against it.

It reminds me of a single mother I know who over protected her son his entire life.  Now the boy is a man and what once was viewed as a mother simply loving her child now is downright freaky as her 21 year old son sits on the sofa playing video games all day.  He has no job, isn’t going to school, doesn’t lift a finger around the house, all the while his mother brags about how smart he is and every month names a different career he wants to follow.  The truth is, she has no desire for him to grow up because she has failed to understand her purpose in his life and thinks he exists for her emotional fulfillment. 

This is exactly what many leaders in the church have done with God’s people.  We have people who sit in chairs week after week playing spiritual video games talking about their dreams for the future all the while they couldn’t stand on their own two feet if they tried.  I’m convinced that this is one of the reasons why Father has been calling so many people away from organized, systematic gatherings.  He is releasing people and saying, “Look son/daughter, it’s time to grow up.  You need to know how to live out there in the real world.  It’s time you learned to lean on me alone.”  And He has been teaching us how to walk out this relationship with Him in our daily lives free from childish dependence.  But it is Father’s heart that true spiritual parents would rise up with his heart to connect people with Him, help them to stand on their own two feet and then get out of the way.  A healthy child will love his parents forever, but he certainly will not need them forever.  Thank God for those who truly are spiritual parents!  They are diamonds and pillars in the church.

Raise them up and release them.

Loren Rosser

My family has a tradition that on Christmas Eve we always watch A Christmas Carol, the TNT version starring Patrick Stewart (Star Trek’s Jean-Luc Picard).  I’ve always enjoyed that one the best because Stewart avoids reducing Scrooge to a caricature but plays him as a believable hard-nosed businessman.  As I watched the movie this year something occurred to me.  Charles Dickens really was a prophet in his day.  He spoke up for the poor and those who were oppressed and confronted the apathy and callousness of the people in his day.  The thing that I found interesting was that in his story A Christmas Carol Dickens didn’t assert the need for a new form of government or new laws that needed to be enacted to help the poor and oppressed, rather Dickens addressed the issue as being a problem of the heart.  He revealed through his character Scrooge that the reason the poor and needy were neglected and oppressed was because of the hardness of heart that existed in individuals.  He revealed that the solution was a change of heart.  

As I watched the movie I was saddened by the fact that tradition had done to this powerful story what tradition often does best; it stole its potency.  So just as fiercely religious people can stare at the Pharisees and fail to see that they are looking at themselves, so we can also look at A Christmas Carol and fail to feel the piercing point of that story.  I am absolutely amazed at how that story is so applicable to our time.  As protestors occupy Wall Street and people bemoan the greed of corporations Charles Dickens story speaks to both the business people and the protestors.  It’s rather obvious how he speaks to the corporations.  Dickens pin-points the callousness of treating people like objects and not being concerned with their personal welfare while hording money entirely to one’s self.  He reveals that to whom much is given much is required.  I couldn’t help but think how the recent Black Friday sales being rammed into Thanksgiving requiring employees to neglect their families on a major family centered holiday in order to make their employers richer and to allow impatient shoppers more time to accumulate more possessions was the exact kind of greed and callousness Dickens was addressing.  The rich CEOs and board members sat at home enjoying their turkey dinners with their friends and families while their employees worked the holiday away so their employers pocket books could be fattened even more.  (And ironically on many of their store shelves sits copies of books and DVDs of A Christmas Carol.)  Dickens looks employers square in the eyes and says, “As an employer you have a responsibility to treat your employees right.  They don’t just exist for your benefit, you also exist for theirs.”

Dickens story also speaks to the protestors because it reveals the problem of greed is not a problem that can be solved by the government, by enacting more laws, or even by revolution.  Greed is a heart issue and can only be solved through changed hearts.  To take from the rich to give to the poor really is no cure at all because all one is doing is substituting one evil for another.  Covetousness is then replacing greed…which is also a heart problem.

The heart of A Christmas Carol is not political, it’s relational.  It’s to love those around you.  Love your family, love those you work with, mend those relationships that are broken, care enough about those around you to know what is going on in their lives and reach out and help if you are able.  The problem with Scrooge wasn’t that he didn’t care about all the ills in society, it was that he didn’t care about the people that were ALREADY IN HIS LIFE.  That’s also how religion excuses us from walking in love.  It always looks over the people that are right in front of us- those ordinary people who are already in our day to day lives – in our quest to “make a difference.”

Loren