Should Southern Baptists Use Creeds?

The Southern Baptist Convention is a confessional network of autonomous local congregations who have generally clustered around mutual affirmation of the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 as a minimum statement of theological belief that permits cooperation, though there are churches that are in cooperation with the SBC (based on CP giving) that do not affirm the BF&M 2000. Many Southern Baptists are clear that they see the Baptist Faith and Message as a confession, which loosely binds, rather than a creed, that more clearly delineates and binds. Thus, affirmation of the BF&M is not required for churches or pastors to affiliate with the SBC.

The BF&M is a helpful document for this particular moment, because it defines the currently debated boundaries of SBC cooperation. It has limitations in two directions: (1) It largely assumes the earlier theological formulations that define orthodoxy, and which are outlined in the ecumenical creeds and other official products of ecumenical councils. (2) Language changes, which means that certain phrases can be filled with new meaning or disputed in their meaning, so that future clarification will be warranted. In other words, there will come a time that the BF&M will need to be revised to ensure it properly delineates the doctrinal categories of the SBC of that present moment.

One way that we can lengthen the time between needed revisions to the BF&M is to do more work in teaching orthodox doctrine through historical formulations, particularly building on the ecumenical creeds.

The use of creeds in worship gatherings and teaching ministries in SBC churches rubs some members the wrong way. Earlier generations, in particular, have built their identity on being “confessional” not “credal” due to the concept of individual soul liberty. There is value in that objection, but I believe that there is warrant to increase our use of creeds in our congregations without diminishing the role of the conscience in arriving at conclusions through careful of study of Scripture.

Within the context of learning and teaching theology, the creeds that were affirmed by the ecumenical councils are faithful summaries of the Christian faith. They do not supplant the careful study of Scripture, but they certainly provide guardrails that can help keep us from drifting into error. As I understand them, the creeds are some of the ways that we connect to the tradition of faithful Christians and prevent our own culture’s assumptions from overrunning the message of Scripture. This makes them invaluable in this time when information from unlimited sources threatens to overrun our churches.

Basis for Didactic Use of Creeds

The presence and use of creeds within SBC life is growing. In my opinion, that is generally a good thing for at least four reasons.

First, recognizing faithful affirmation of statements of faith (like creeds and confessions) as basics of Christian belief connects us to our Baptist heritage.

As Chuck Kelley, Richard Land, and Albert Mohler wrote in the introduction to the LifeWay study on the Baptist Faith and Message in 2007,

“Baptist churches and associations of churches have adopted statements of belief to teach, defend, and perpetuate the faith ‘that was delivered to the saints once for all’ (Jude 3). These statements, most commonly known as confessions of faith, are intended to clarify and publish the most basic beliefs that frame our faith, our witness, and our worship. In the beginning years of the organized Baptist movement, these statements were often intended to demonstrate that Baptists were fully orthodox as Christian believers. Later, such statements were used to establish identity, confront false teaching, and instruct Christians in the faith.” (The Baptist Faith and Message, 5)

Southern Baptists hold the BF&M to be a document that frames our corporate identity, but as noted, that identity is also within the orthodox tradition. The orthodox tradition has been defined, historically, as including acceptance of (though not dogmatically so) the historical creeds of the church. And, though we tend to describe our confession as a voluntary document, that has not been entirely consistent with the Baptist tradition broadly, or the Southern Baptist tradition more narrowly.

As Chute, Finn, and Haykin (all historians and professors in and from an SBC context) note:

“For at least the past century, some Baptists have adopted a negative posture toward confessions. They suggest that any prescriptive use of confession is ‘creedalism,’ or the elevation of a merely human standard above Scripture and an infringement on individual liberty of conscience. While this view is popular in some circles, it reflects a misunderstanding of Baptist history. As Timothy George argues, ‘The idea that voluntary conscientious adherence to an explicit doctrinal standard is somehow foreign to the Baptist tradition is a peculiar notion not borne out by careful examination of our heritage.’” (The Baptist Story, 327)

By affirming the BF&M 2000 as the defining confession of our cooperative network of churches, we are essentially treating it as a creed. As B. H. Carrol asserts: “There was never a man in the world without a creed. A creed is what you believe. What is a confession? It is a declaration of what you believe.”

In practice, the BF&M 2000 functions as a creed. It is minimalistic (e.g., it holds open diverse eschatological possibilities, multiple arrangements of church government, and a host of other secondary and tertiary documents). However, it is sufficient for a significant body of baptistic Christians to gather around and cooperate within without excessively binding the conscience of anyone.

In the spirit of the Reformational principal, sola Scriptura, we hold Scripture as the final authority over all faith and practice over the BF&M or any other human declaration. (If the BF&M is the frame of our beliefs, Scripture provides the portrait that the frame outlines.) This practice is consistent with the declaration on the SBC’s webpage that we are “all within the framework of historic biblical orthodoxy,” which statement seems to presume some non-scriptural standard outside of the BF&M that we can be judged by. That is to say, the BF&M necessarily assumes a broader stream of orthodoxy of which the SBC is a part. Using historical creeds like the Nicene Creed supports the BF&M rather than denigrates it by putting it in its context.

Second, evangelical churches (broadly defined) are bleeding young people that are searching for a faith that is rooted deeply in the past. I have seen multiple young Baptists drift into Roman Catholicism because they feel it has deeper roots in history. This is a practical concern, but one that has a theological solution.

While mistaken in their belief that the Roman Catholics are the real church with the deeper tradition, the impetus of those leaving Baptist churches and other evangelical churches is logical as we anticipate the growing cultural storm. In light of growing pressure to affirm counter-scriptural trends in culture, using a statement of faith adopted in the year 2000 is a much less robust shield than in a faith that is described as rooted in the confession of a man who knew Jesus in 33 AD. Churches serve their people well when they help them

Based on this reasoning, I use the historical creeds of the church to teach my children and I share them with Christians in Baptist churches because it connects us to the great cloud of witness that has gone before us. When I read the Apostle’s creed, I am reading the confession that Augustine affirmed, as have millions of faithful Christians in the interim. When I recite the creed, I am joining in a doxological practice that missionaries, martyrs, and ministers have shared for generations.

There is strength in the continuity we can share with those that have come before us. The creeds help us to understand that continuity. Given the ravages of the ecumenical movement of the mid-20th century, I understand reservations toward that sort of universal confession, but I believe it will be important in the coming years. The Nicene Creed is not enough, because it doesn’t take into account theological errors raised since it was authored, which is why the BF&M 2000 is an important document. Connecting people to the historic creeds is a way of showing theological continuity of our present confession with the ancient faith that we believe we are properly representing.

Third, the development of the creeds helps us understand the boundaries of Christian orthodoxy. Within the church, pastors and other leaders should be teaching the basis of our doctrinal belief, because it is vitally important to building a robust doctrinal foundation in a post-modern world.

As Dorothy L. Sayers wrote, with characteristic wit,

“Teacher and preachers never, I think, make it sufficiently clear that dogmas are not a set of arbitrary regulations invented a priori by a committee of theologians enjoying a bout of all-in dialectical wrestling. Most of them were hammered out under pressure of urgent practical necessity to provide an answer to heresy. And heresy is, as I have tried to show, largely the expression of opinion of the untutored average man, trying to grapple with the problems of the universe, trying to grapple with the problems of the universe at the point where they begin to interfere with daily life and thought.” (“Creed or Chaos,” in The Whimsical Christian, 41)

I think Sayers is right. Especially as an ethicist, I believe that we have to understand doctrine in light of the context in which it was expressed (not invented). By rooting our faith, which is founded on Scripture, in the Christian tradition through its connection with the historic creeds, we combat the error that Sayers identified in the 1940s in the rapidly secularizing British culture. To build an ethics that will weather the storms of this life and a faith that will not be carried away, we need to show people that our contemporary orthodoxy is a historical orthodoxy, which was drawn from Scripture in light of particular theological errors that continue to resurface.

Exposing people to ancient creeds that connect faith today to the doctrines delineated more than a millennia ago strengthens the faith of contemporary saints, even as it helps rule out of bounds some doctrinal innovations being promoted by ignorant and malicious teachers in our age. People need to know what good looks like to be able to recognize and avoid bad theology.

Fourth, studying and making people aware of the historical Christian creeds helps prevent the error of believing we can have “no creed but the Bible.”

I am sympathetic to those who try to live by the “no creed but the Bible” statement, but the good intent behind it can lead to significant error because it assumes that we can, without falling into error, read Scripture rightly. For example, “no creed but the Bible” is the essential belief of the Campbellite movement, which has led to their affirmation (in many cases) of baptismal regeneration. When diced in a particular way, Scripture can be seen to support that doctrine, though I believe it to be clearly inconsistent with the holistic message of Scripture.

I affirm the sufficiency, authority, and perspicuity of Scripture. At the same time, I also recognize that there are patterns of thought endemic to my age that will tend to lead to into particular errors. Exposing people to historic creeds helps guard against the blindness of our own age.

As C. S. Lewis wrote in his introduction to Athanasius’s On the Incarnation:

“Most of all, perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the educated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.”

Church History in general and the creeds specifically are helpful in preventing us from falling into errors of our own age. Lewis is overly optimistic in believing that we won't fall into the opposite error of unquestioningly believing ancient sources, but his point that evaluating our understanding in light of historic thinkers, particularly when we are dealing with timeless truths, is right on the mark.

There are, I am sure, other reasons that I could list for utilizing the creeds as we study Christian doctrine, but these four provide a solid framework. I am hopeful that the creeds that have bounded orthodoxy for generations continue to grow in their use. It will link together faithful believers across traditions and bolster the faith of the members of our congregations trying to stand firm in our cultural moment.

The Christian Mind of C. S. Lewis

According the Walter Hooper, the man who became the executor of C. S. Lewis’s literary estate, Lewis did not expect to have his books read for long after he died.

That is, of course, the way of it for even many good writers and careful thinkers. During their lives, when they are writing essays and giving lectures, their books sell because they are on trending topics and there are regular reminders that a certain book exists.

People continue to find C. S. Lewis helpful for several reasons. Unlike many academic writers and moralists, Lewis wrote children’s books that are enjoyed by a wide swath of people, both those inside and outside his ideological camp. This means that Lewis’s other works have a fighting chance of being picked up, even if someone wasn’t initially very interested in an essay entitled, “Religion and Rocketry.”

In his intellectual biography of Lewis, McGrath explains Lewis’s ongoing popularity by three reasons:

1.       The continued value of his apologetic work.

2.       His religious appeal.

3.       His use of imagination in defense of the faith.

I think these three are valid, but one needs to go a little further to get at the heart of the reason for the continued sales of the works of C. S. Lewis. Michael Travers noted another reason beyond those offered by McGrath:

In addition to these reasons, there is an underlying reason for Lewis’s ongoing important: he wrote about things of first importance, timeless truths that he thought we needed to hear. In his writings, Lewis taps into the essential human condition in such a way that we catch glimpses of truths we had forgotten or perhaps suppressed, especially in our modern, Post-Enlightenment culture. One of these truths is that everyone is on a journey, hoping for heaven, even when we do not know it or refuse to admit it.

Travers’s explanation gets at the concept of the Christian mind of C. S. Lewis.

Lewis remains fascinating to many Christians at varying levels of education and experience, and across denominational boundaries, primarily because he gets at the heart of what it means at piece to live with the Mind that imagined the universe, set its boundaries, and controls the course of history. The Christian mind provides evidence of the truth of reality and how to live within that truth.

Lewis is one of a number of Christian thinkers who had the Christian mind. In his own time Dorothy L. Sayers and Francis A. Schaeffer had a deep understanding of reality and were able to point people toward it. Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck overlapped with Lewis, but also had the Christian mind. As we look back in Church history, the number grows: Thomas Aquinas and Augustine of Hippo both thought and wrote with the Christian mind.

At a most basic level, the Christian mind is one that recognizes the enduring truth, goodness, and beauty of God. It is therefore drawn perpetually to asking questions about the true, the good, and the beautiful. This is a vision of reality that sees integrity in the universe because God himself, the eternal Three-in-One, is perfectly simple and without division. Comprehending this reality, even to the limited degree possible, entails looking at the wonder of reality outside of our own minds. Truth is discovered by observation, not introspection. The Christian mind is, therefore, one that is more interested in the world around than in itself.

I recently edited a collection of essays in honor of a friend and mentor, Michael Travers. In that volume, eleven authors from different fields of study consider the Christian mind of C. S. Lewis as it was presented in his work and as it applies to other significant topics of interest.

The book contains an essay by Michael Travers on Lewis’s apologetic of hope, which opens the book with a grand view of C. S. Lewis’s vision of the world. There is also a delightful chapter by Michael’s daughter, Elizabeth, on Desire and Love in The Chronicles of Narnia.

Aside from personal connections, there are several essays by well-known Lewis scholars in the book. James Como contributed an essay on C. S. Lewis as a master builder, demonstrating Lewis’s rhetorical genius. There is also a chapter from Leland Ryken who gets at one of Lewis’s sources: John Milton. Ryken’s chapter shows how the Christian mind understands all of life to be a stewardship before the Lord.

Heath Thomas contributed a chapter correcting C. S. Lewis’s writings on the Psalms of Lament and demonstrating that Lewis appears to have grown in his understanding of lament later in life, particularly in his Letters to Malcolm. Daniel Estes explains the significance of the integration of faith with all of life, something at which Lewis excelled. There are also essays in Lewis’s ethics in That Hideous Strength and The Abolition of Man, his concept of the “Inner Ring,” disinterested love in Screwtape and The Great Divorce, and an essay that puts Lewis and Schaeffer in dialogue on apologetics and epistemology.

In each of the diverse essays attempts to show readers where Lewis was pointing, since Lewis himself viewed his work as less significant than the one to whom he was pointing. This is a book with a heart attuned to both evangelism and doxology, concepts that are deeply intertwined and vitally important to the Christian life.

If you are fan of C. S. Lewis, or looking for an introduction to the wide range of work he did, this volume would be a good place to start.

The Christian Mind of C. S. Lewis: Essays in Honor of Michael Travers

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NOTE: I edited this volume. If you buy a copy, I might get a tiny fragment of the money, which might eventually bring the hourly rate of my efforts up from deeply negative to zero dollars lost per hour. My more significant motivation is that Michael Travers was a dear friend and some of the essays in this volume are just plain good.

Faith, Hope, and Love

The theological virtues are faith, hope, and love. This trio of attributes, drawn from the very pages of Scripture form the rubric of Augustine’s famous On Christian Doctrine. They are the backbone of a hermeneutical method, which is designed to help people read Scripture more faithfully.

In 1 Corinthians 13:13, Paul writes, “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

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What can he mean? If these three virtues describe the goal of the Christian life, then how can one really be greater than the others?

I believe the answer is that the love is the only one of the three virtues that we will still live out in the new heavens and the new earth.

The point could be made from other texts, but there are two places that limit faith and hope to the present life.

Faith

The author of Hebrews writes, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Heb 11:1)

There are a number of important conclusions that could be drawn from Hebrews 11, but one of them is that faith is something for this present life. It’s not that we won’t have conviction in the new heavens and the new earth, it’s that we will see the very object of our faith.

Once we see the glory of God in person in heaven, then we won’t have to rely on faith to sustain us. That which we know is real, but believe will no longer be believed, but known.

That isn’t to say that we don’t have confidence in God’s attributes now, but that the nagging doubts we experience and the obscurity of our understanding will be eliminated when we see Christ face to face. It’s a glorious picture of a wonderful day. But is a day when faith, as we know it now, will be no more.

Hope

In a famous passage discussing the renewal of creation that will come when Christ comes again, Paul writes, “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” (Rom 8:24-25)

Following much the same logic, hope is an important virtue that Christians should work to develop. It isn’t an ultimate virtue, though, because it will pass away. We hope for what we do not see. We hope for Christ’s soon return. We eagerly and confidently expect it, but we do not see or have it. That is hope.

Once creation is renewed, we won’t need to have hope anymore. That is because the very thing we hope for will have happened. Sin will be eliminated. We will be glorified in Christ. God will be glorified in us. Everything will be right in the world.

At that point in the space-time continuum, we won’t need hope anymore. It will be an artifact of our earthly past.

Love

The greatest of the theological virtues is love. Paul tells us that clearly, and the transience of faith and hope help explain the supremacy of love.

There is, however, another explanation. 1 John 4:8 tells us that “God is love.”

Certainly God is more than simply love. However, the identification of God with one of the theological virtues shows us that love is both permanent and supreme among the three theological virtues.

Conclusion

So what does this mean? Are we supposed to focus on love and neglect faith and hope?

That can’t be, since we see that grace comes through faith, which is a gift of God. (Eph 2:8). We are also called to be ready to give a reason for the hope that is within us (1 Peter 3:15).

No, we’re to pursue all three, but the permanence of love helps to remind us that this world isn’t all there is to life. Good theology is important, but someday there won’t be arguments about theology because we’ll get to meet God himself face to face. 

Pursue all three, but understand that God is the perfect embodiment of the one that matters most and will last forever. It’s not our works, it’s his gifting and glory that matters.

Raising Faithful Kids in a Skeptical World

It’s a lot easier to raise a skeptic than a child with a mature faith.

This is not a statement about behavior, but about true fidelity. That is, faithfulness that includes both a profession of faith and a solid foundation for that faith.

It is much easier to teach a child to poke holes in the ideas of others than to hold fast to cogent, explanatory truths.

As a result, there is a constant temptation to build buttresses of truth around our kids without exposing them to challenges to the faith. This is good when they are young, because it prevents confusion. It is a dangerous thing over time because it builds a false sense of confidence.

The Place for Honest Doubt

Comprehensive, absolute certainty is a dangerous thing. There is little doubt about that.

Being entirely certain about every detail of one’s own understanding of Scripture, the veracity of the traditions of one’s youth, and the methodology appropriate to determining truth can lead to pain and difficulty over time. Much of that is unnecessary.

There is a fundamental difference between holding a position with absolute certainty and holding it in faithful confidence.

This is because being faithful does not require abandoning the intellectual task of asking questions and considering alternatives. Issues such as the proper mode of baptism, the right style of worship, the way the salvation is explained are all points where legitimate questioning is warranted. After all, a lot of faithful people in the history of the Church have stood on each side of those questions.

Photo used by CC license: Hans Splinter, Parenting, http://ow.ly/10gV84

But there is a place for asking even more significant and sensitive questions. Is there a God? Certainly, a fool says in his heart there is no God (Ps 14:1). However, this doesn’t mean that kids shouldn’t ask the big questions and honestly pursue truthful answers. Helping kids ask those in a space where they have the emotional and spiritual resources to struggle through the mire of doubt is important.

It’s also much easier to teach fideistic adherence to dogma than to teach kids to think through doctrine rightly.

In the end, fideism presents an anemic form of Christianity that skeptics can punch holes through with ease. Then, when faced with intelligent, cogent challenges to their faith, an untried faith system will fall apart.

Always Another Question

As I said, it is easier to raise a skeptic than a faithful child.

Much of contemporary culture trains children to expect a higher degree of certainty and a greater volume of proof for questions of religious significance than anything else. For example, people choose their presidential candidates without knowing everything about them and whether everything in the candidate’s worldview meshes. People take jobs without knowing in gross detail every possible work responsibility, the date of future promotions, and whether the company’s corporate office in Paris might have spent too much on cognac last year. Folks use electricity without understanding where exactly it came from or how it was generated.

In contrast, some critics of religion seem to expect an unassailable record in all of history from the religion itself and also each adherent of the religion. They demand that every possible question be asked and meshed with every other solution offered for all of time. Variety in such responses over history—even to secondary and tertiary questions—is considered evidence that the central truths cannot be true.

Many of these questions are fair to ask and Christians should be prepared to discuss them, even if in general terms. Christians need to be prepared to admit that the history of every religion is tarnished by error and insincerity. Christians need to be willing to communicate that there are some doctrines about which reasonable people can debate.

The reality is that every religion, even Christianity, has open questions about some aspects of it. This is a function of the human conduits of the religion and our finiteness. Every religion has a checkered history with abuses. This is because religions have humans involved and humans tend to be self-centered and imperfect.

This means that for someone looking for objections, there are always additional questions to be asked. If the standard of acceptance for religion is that every question is answered, that standard can never be met. There is always one more question to be asked.

The world is training children to be skeptical, if not agnostic. The Church—especially the parents of children—need to be prepared to help develop a curious, cautious, but not incredulous demeanor in their children.

We need to teach our children to seek the best answer, not the perfect one. We need to demonstrate the power of the gospel to transform and redeem. Once a child understands the reason for the hope within us, they will be better able to ask questions without losing their faith.

We need to teach and demonstrate to our children that the Christian faith has integrity and is founded on the absolute objectivity of God not the absolute certainty of our positions. We can have a high degree of certainty about what we believe without dismissing questions. We can demonstrate confidence in our faith by chasing down answers to difficult questions and admitting when we have more investigation to do.

Retooling Parenting

In some day gone by it may have been possible for kids to pick up enough of a basis for their faith by osmosis. Probably not, though, since the failure to present a credible, cogent faith for generations helps to explain the radical rejection of the trappings of a Christian ethic.

The present culture is one that will not accept Christianity without a great deal of explaining. It also will not allow Christians to live consistently with a robust Christian faith without challenging every inch. We do disservice to our children if we do not equip them and assist them to wrestle with the core doctrines of the Christian faith.

Parenting will look different in our present age than it has in the past if we are to give our children what they need to live as faithful pilgrims in the world. That isn’t to say that it will look different than what it always should have been. In fact, the external pressure on the Church may be a benefit to our sanctification as it forces us to return to our proper responsibilities.

Passing Along Thick Christianity

Most people try to pass along their beliefs to their children. Even the atheists that claim that all religious education is child abuse are, by virtue of making such a claim, demonstrating a dominant worldview claim that they hope their children will latch onto.

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The rationale for this is simple. If someone actually believes his religion is true in an objective way, then it follows that he will hope his child will also believe that the same religion is true. This is because truth about the world tends to make the world easier to live in.

For the sincere Christian believers, the content of their belief may be passed to their children either as thick belief or as thin belief. Surely there is room on the spectrum between these points for degrees of each, but the ends of the scale are useful to illustrate my point.

What is Thick Christianity?

Thick Christianity is a doctrinally sound, ethically rich, gospel saturated faith. This is not to say that it is overflowing with systematic theology (though it may be), or that every choice made is moral (which it certainly won’t be), or even that conversion will occur in the children. Conversion is the work of the Holy Spirit, thus even when thick Christianity is communicated some children may never be born again. However, children who have been exposed to thick Christianity will be able to explain the content of and rationale for the Christian faith whether they have personally accepted it or not.

I have heard it said, though I no longer remember by whom, that in one generation the gospel is loved and known. In the second it is assumed. In the third it is forgotten and abandoned.

This pattern can be witnessed in the fall of once boldly Christian institutions into a malaise of unbelief within a few short generations. A prime example of this is Oberlin University in Ohio. Once it was a robustly Christian institution, but a search of the website now reveals that the gospel is no longer central to their mission. The same phenomenon can occur in churches and denominations. A congregation that was once vibrantly faithful can so easily fall into cultural Christianity in a few years if the central message of the gospel is assumed for a while. Later it will likely be neglected and changed or forgotten. At that point a church becomes a social club and a university becomes just another non-profit educational establishment. There is still some value for society in these mediating institutions, but the transformational power of the gospel is lost.

Thin Christianity is more subject to this sort of generational attenuation than is thick Christianity because thin Christianity lacks the substance that would sustain it. We should expect this, because early in Scripture we get evidence of the importance of living thickly for the propagation of faithfulness between generations.

In Deuteronomy 6, which is part of Moses’ farewell to the Israelites, he affirms the important theological truth of the oneness of God. (v. 4) Then he commands them, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.” (vv. 5-6) In other words, theological truth must result in right ethical action for the believer. The oneness of God led to worship both through adoration and through action. This is part of living a thick Christianity and not merely being a hearer of the word. (cf. Jas. 1:22)

But there is more to the story. Immediately after this Moses gives another command to his audience, “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” (v. 7)

The significance of verse 7 is not that teaching should be done when sitting, walking, lying down, or rising, but rather that all of life is teaching opportunity for communicating a thick Christianity to our children. Teach them not just the “what” of Christianity, but the “why.” This is what makes a Christianity thick. It is a form of Christianity that is lived, authentic, and grounded in substance. This is the sort of Christianity that has a hope of being sustained across generations.

Ultimately, God does the work of salvation in our children. However, if our Christianity is true, it makes sense to live it in such a way that our religion cannot be reduced to a weekly routine or a set of prohibitions.

What is Thin Christianity?

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Despite what some might expect, a thin Christianity is not necessarily unorthodox. Someone can be a faithful Fundamentalist with (mostly) biblical doctrine and live a thin Christianity before their family. There are many faithful Christians that have the right doctrine, but they often do not know why. In other cases, they do understand the basis of their doctrine, but fail to communicate it effectively to their children.

The difference is the depth of living in Christ. Our kids are with us all the time and they can tell when we’re going through the motions. Thin Christianity may have all the right motions, but it is often missing the most important emotion: joy.

A Call to Live Christianity Thickly

Thankfully, sometimes God takes thin Christianity and uses it to make Christians that live thickly. Grace is a wonderful thing.

But it is a much better thing to pass on a thick Christianity to our children. That way they get the benefit of doing the right things for the right reasons, of being faithful and experiencing the joy of knowing Christ richly, and of being able to reference a heritage of thick Christianity when they live well before their children. And by living well I don’t mean getting everything right, I mean pursuing the joy of the Lord in all things.

This is, I think, what Paul was getting at when he wrote Colossians 3:12-17:

Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.