Spiritual education
"As long as you eat our food and sleep in our beds, you go to Sunday School." That was the rule that got me in the car on Sunday mornings, and as a teenager I made my parents remind me of this more than once. As a result, I brought a certain air of unresponsiveness to the class that probably caused more than one Sunday School teacher to say an extra prayer before or during those sessions.
Thank goodness for those prayers—and for those of my parents. That spiritual education established a frame of reference that I could turn to when I found that "going it alone"—that is, trying life without a spiritual framework—wasn't working. Actually, it was more than a frame of reference. Because of the spiritual education I received at home and at church, I had an inherent sense that God was, in the words of the Bible, "a very present help in trouble." It just took a while to have enough troubles to get me to the point of finding out if that was really true. But when that time came, I found that the groundwork which had been put in place while I was growing up was sufficient to cause me to seek God's help.
It's never too early to share with children what we have learned to be more significant than all else: an understanding of God, a knowledge of His law, a love for Christ Jesus, a sense of our true being as God's image and likeness, a recognition of the omnipotence of good. Such sharing may be as simple as singing hymns to an infant during the 2 a.m. feeding, or helping a young child learn how to pray and to live by the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes. It may be as challenging as making our own lives a testimony to the value of spirituality, or trusting a teenager to God's care when he or she isn't home by 2 a.m.
As we start the process of spiritual education, we discover there is some competition. Janey or George goes to school for thirty hours each week, followed by ten to twenty hours of athletics, band, Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts, and lessons. Add to this thirty-five hours of television (this is below the national average), a couple of hours at the mall, some hours for homework, and sixty-five hours for eating and sleeping. Often, what seems to be left is an hour a week for Sunday School and pockets of time for studying the Bible Lesson each day. During the week, young people learn a lot and are exposed to a lot of things that parents would just as soon they weren't. And for many parents this is a source of concern, for it would claim to undo all the good accomplished at home.
For the parent or grandparent who is dismayed, there is some significant reassurance. The proportions of time mentioned above refer to bulk, not to actual power or influence. For example, an electric breadmaker takes one and one eighth cups of water, three cups of flour, a pinch of salt, three tablespoons of sugar, and one packet of yeast—a little less than a teaspoon. But it is the yeast that does the most important work: it's that teaspoon of yeast that causes the whole thing to rise, and the result is awful if the yeast is left out.
Each moment that is given to help a child understand something of God, and to cultivate honesty, unselfishness, kindness, patience, and order, brings to that life the yeast of true spirituality. In the schoolroom, among their friends, in the street, they will hear about child abuse, divorce, AIDS, drugs, infidelity, drinking, shoplifting, pregnancy, smoking, running away, and who knows what else. They will encounter very different value systems. Children will see homelessness, their friends carrying knives or guns, news reports of war and famine, cheating in their classroom. So it's very important that we remember which is the yeast and which is the dough in their life experience. And it's essential that we put in the yeast. Our regular study of the Bible and of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy provides us with the answers and guidance all these kinds of issues require.
In a sermon delivered in 1888, Mrs. Eddy made a point that is as true and reassuring now as it was then: "Like the leaven that a certain woman hid in three measures of meal, the Science of God and the spiritual idea, named in this century Christian Science, is leavening the lump of human thought, until the whole shall be leavened and all materialism disappear. This action of the divine energy, even if not acknowledged, has come to be seen as diffusing richest blessings" (Miscellaneous Writings). What parent or grandparent would withhold the leaven of spiritual education, which diffuses "richest blessings"?
As a teacher, Christ Jesus did as much by example as by words. And this is an important guide to parents today. We know from experience that little is more destructive or disillusioning than hypocrisy. Also, young people readily know if a teacher or parent is merely feeding them the party line; they have noticed the difference between a parrot and a human being. But if we are growing spiritually ourselves, and are giving spiritual education primacy in our own lives, and through this are finding answers to the myriad challenges of human experience, we will be able to share what we are learning and to prove it also.
My best Sunday School teachers were active in the practice of Christian Science. One was training to be a chaplain; the other was a Christian Science practitioner. They came to class overflowing with discoveries from their own demonstration of Christ, Truth, that week. A parent has the daily opportunity to share those things that have made his or her own heart burn within, those ideas that Mind imparts which leaven the whole of human experience. At times, these ideas may not be welcomed by our children, but, silently or audibly, we need to persist in providing the best spiritual education we can, trusting God, because if you leave the yeast out of the recipe, the result is a sorry thing indeed.
Richard C. Bergenheim
PROVERBS I have taught thee in the way of wisdom; I have led thee in right paths. When thou goest, thy steps shall not be straitened; and when thou runnest, thou shalt not stumble.
