“The church today should be getting ready and talking about the issues of tomorrow and not the issues of 20 or 30 years ago, because the church is going to be squeezed in a wringer. If we found it tough in these last few years, what are we going to do when faced with the real changes that are ahead?… One of the greatest injustices we do to our young people is to ask them to be conservative. Christianity is not conservative but revolutionary. To be conservative today is to miss the whole point, for conservatism means standing in the flow of the status quo and the status quo no longer belongs to us… If we want to be fair we must teach the young to be revolutionaries, revolutionaries against the status quo”
Francis Schaeffer (1981)
I think Schaeffer was very much on the money for his time, but I think we are only now coming to grips with what he said. Whatever the case we cannot encourage our young people to be safe, conservative, non risk taking ‘Flanders’ type Christians. We must ask more of them than that…
One difficulty I find with this is just how much our [American] culture punishes parents allowing their children to be risk takers. I not only struggle with allowing my kids to take risks (the protective parent vs. wanting them to learn to take risks), but I also struggle with not wanting to get arrested when they get hurt, and I’m blamed. That’s a little succinct, but I think most people understand. Frustrating.
Mind you, that doesn’t mean I’m not trying to teach my children to pursue risks and being revolutionaries for Christ, but I’m just saying it’s a difficult thing to do.