Isn’t it weird to think that theology has often gotten in the way of people having a real and personal relationship with Jesus? I think back to my own religious education… The muck and confusion about being asked to understand and accept Church doctrine: “begotten not made”, “consubstantiation”, “the Immaculate Conception”, “the Assumption”, the Holy Trinity and all the rest? These are very intricate, somewhat academic, and detailed things to grok. Teaching these concepts to kids and asking that they accept them at face value is like asking them to do Partial Differential Equations before they’ve learned arithmetic.
Instead, the focus for kids (up through young adulthood) should be on what Jesus taught and who he became on this earth. We should teach kids that they are truly divine beings and precious unto themselves. They need to know that they have un-erodable value and that Spirit’s guidance is available to them at all times. We should instruct and nurture their spirits, rather than starting with the mind and heaping on lists of “don’t dos” and the various classifications of sin. And maybe even we should give them the experience of Jesus (serving the poor, siding with outcasts, experiencing rejection for his truth) to make him and his life more intimate and real, hence enabling deeper connection to him.
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Liz Stinson