Who Owns Your Faith?
January 25, 2008
By Ron and Karen Schwartz
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Of all the apostles, perhaps Peter gives us the best insight into how Jesus sought to develop faith in His disciples. It was Peter who believed that Jesus was the Christ and proclaimed, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matthew 16:16).” It was Peter who walked on water and who boldly proclaimed the gospel message on the day of Pentecost, resulting in the salvation of thousands. We should consider the technique Jesus employed as we determine how to properly raise our children in faith and how to develop faith within our own communities of believers where we fellowship.
What was Jesus’ secret? How did He develop faith amongst His disciples?
Jesus used adversity – in particular, literal storms – to build the faith of his disciples. James 1:2-3 tells us to “consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.” Peter echoed this idea when he wrote, “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith — of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire — may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed (1 Peter 1:6-8).” And who better than Peter would know?
What Does It Mean to “Own” Your Faith?
The First Storm
Luke 8:22-25 NIV
22 One day Jesus said to his disciples, "Let's go over to the other side of the lake." So they got into a boat and set out. 23 As they sailed, he fell asleep. A squall came down on the lake, so that the boat was being swamped, and they were in great danger.
24 The disciples went and woke him, saying, "Master, Master, we're going to drown!"
He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. 25 "Where is your faith?" he asked his disciples.
In fear and amazement they asked one another, "Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him."
In this account, Jesus sent His disciples into a storm. Since Jesus was traveling with them, the disciples probably were not too concerned when they saw the approaching storm. They had learned to trust in Jesus’ faith. They knew that they would be safe with Him. But as the storm grew in intensity, and they were threatened with the real possibility of death, they began to doubt. Doubt not in their faith but in their Lord’s care. They did not necessarily believe that He would die in the storm but that His inconsideration or inaction could result in at least some of them dying. We hear this echoed in their words: “Master, carest thou not that we perish (Mark 4:39 KJV)?”
Jesus did care but for more than just their safety. Jesus cared about the development of their faith. He cared enough to step back and allow them the opportunity to fail in the face of mounting adversity. They were never in any real danger because Jesus was with them.
Jesus went through this first storm with them. He was present, He could have acted, He could have saved them, but instead He waited. He waited for them to realize that they had no faith of their own and for the inception of faith to occur. When we consider this account, we can easily see that the disciples had no faith of their own at this point. The disciples could see it, too. It is only when one sees their lack of faith that faith can be planted. And that is exactly what happened.
Following the storm, Jesus asked His disciples, "Where is your faith?" The question was rhetorical, designed to expose their complete lack of faith. Up until this storm, the disciples had not needed to exercise faith because Jesus had faith for them. But He did not want His disciples living in the shadow of His faith forever. His failure to take action was not a result of His lack of concern but a result of His allowing them the opportunity to find their own faith. Isaiah 7:9 tells us, “If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all.” Jesus knew that they could not go on forever living in the shadow of His faith, but at some point, they would need to find their own faith. Therefore, to build their faith, Jesus allowed them to weather the storm.
We believe that the storm came as no surprise to Jesus. He was probably aware of the approaching storm when He instructed His disciples to cross the sea. When Jesus saw the storm approaching, He did not view it as a hardship but as an opportunity. It was a means to help His disciples grow their faith, and that is why He went to sleep. It would give them the opportunity to face the storm by themselves but not really alone.
As parents, we should learn from the example of Christ. We must come to see the temptations and adversities that come against our children as opportunities to develop their faith. Authoritarian parents view storms with fear and dread. They see only the threat that the world presents rather than the opportunities for growth. As a result, they become over-protective and controlling, and they force their children to live in their shadow.
Parents must recognize that there will come a day when their children will face the storms of life alone and have to make their own decisions regarding their faith. We must remember that Jesus allowed His disciples to face their first storm with Him still in the boat. Like Jesus and His disciples, wouldn’t it be better if our children began to make decisions and respond to the storms while we are still an influence around them?
It is a serious mistake when parents refuse to allow their children opportunities to find their own faith. They use the excuse that their children cannot be trusted. But the longer they wait to allow their children the opportunity to fail, to make right decisions or wrong ones, to find their own faith, the harder it will be for them to ever find it. Children who grow up in this type of authoritarian home are rarely allowed opportunities to face any storms until it too late. Their ability to make their own decisions is prevented until they leave home, and then their parents are no longer around to help them with their decisions (if they even would still welcome their help). They are weak and helpless, or they are rebellious and willful.
We must also remember that, as our children grow, the size of the storms they face will also grow. It would be better to allow them to develop faith by facing smaller storms in our presence so that when they grow to adulthood and face the truly devastating storms, they will have the faith to do so.
Parents can inadvertently destroy the faith of their children by over-protecting them from adversity, the adversity that is necessary for the development of their faith. Additionally, parents can impede the development of faith in their children by owning their children’s faith. How do they do this? They own their children’s faith when they prevent them from making their own decisions regarding it.
We continually see well-meaning parents place unreasonable limits and controls upon their teenage and young adult children. Usually they do this because they do not trust the decisions their growing children will make. When parents continue to force even their older children into strict obedience to their own law, their older children never learn to become accountable to God. Whether a child is raised in an authoritarian environment that forces strict control and discipline upon the child, or in a pseudo-religious church environment with no real spiritual depth, the child will never develop his “own” faith. As these children grow into teenagers and young adults and begin to show strong predisposition toward sin, their parents respond by trying to force more control upon their children, but by then, it is too late. The more they try to manipulate or to force control, the more the child resists and rebels. The control, manipulation, and restraints that parents exert upon their children are all because they want to continue owning their child’s faith themselves. At some point in time, the child will simply say (through attitude and action), “Enough is enough! You will own my faith no longer!”
The Second Storm
Matthew 14:22-31 NIV
22 Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. 23 After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, 24 but the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.
25 During the fourth watch of the night Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. 26 When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. "It's a ghost," they said, and cried out in fear.
27 But Jesus immediately said to them: "Take courage! It is I. Don't be afraid."
28 "Lord, if it's you," Peter replied, "tell me to come to you on the water."
29 "Come," he said.
Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. 30 But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, "Lord, save me!"
31 Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. "You of little faith," he said, "why did you doubt?"
In this account, Jesus once again sends His disciples into the face of a storm, but this time He sends them without being in the boat with them. In the first storm, the disciples had at least the comfort of knowing that Jesus was in the boat with them, but in this storm, He arrived in the midst of the storm and stood just out of reach. He stood in what seemed to be the one calm place in the whole storm, but reaching that calm place where Jesus stood would require faith - the kind of faith we find in Peter when he stepped out into the storm. In order to reach Jesus, Peter had to first find his faith. He had to face the storm rather than run from it. He had to see the opportunity the storm offered instead of the fear it caused.
The storm that could very well have destroyed Peter was used by Jesus to grow his faith. Jesus understood that storms can be instruments to build faith as well as hammers of destruction. It all depends on the skill of the master. At the time of the storm, Peter had no idea that faith was being created in his heart. It was not until he was forced to make a decision - forced to face a real storm - that he found he had faith to walk on water.
Like the disciples, when our children live in the shadow of our faith, they have no need to exercise their own. We are like Jesus to them: we are with them in the boat. We decide how they should dress, what they can do, what they can watch, and who they can have as friends. They make very few decisions regarding their faith, because as long as we are making these decisions for them, they have no faith of their own. So they grow up living in the shadow of our faith. However, at some point, they will leave home and come out from under the shadow of our faith, and if they have never found their own faith, how will they stand?
You can control your children through an authoritarian hand of discipline and maintain such control from the time they are young, but if you continue to do so as they grow older, you will own their faith and prevent them from developing faith of their own. The longer you wait to give them more and more freedom, the stronger they will resist. If you wait too long, they will eventually rebel against you and take it for their own. It would be better to allow them to make small decisions regarding their faith while they are young, and then continue to give them more and more liberty as they grow and mature. If you do not see them maturing, it is only because you have not given them opportunities to grow by allowing them to make mistakes and learn from them.
At the other extreme are those Christian parents who place few controls and limits on their children, and raise them in a pseudo-Christian or religious environment. These children are most often raised in a church environment (that is, they go to church every week at least once), not necessarily a Christian environment (where Jesus is a part of everyday life). They see Christianity as form and religion, nothing of substance. Children like this are raised to “practice church,” and they never come to an understanding of what faith is all about. They misconstrue faith and religion, and as a result, they grow up to act as those around them do with no real faith behind their actions. They become fake, whether the people around them are also fake or not. It’s not enough to give children space and freedom. They must be raised in a spiritual, nonreligious environment that is amicable to the development of faith. You cannot raise them in the pretense of religion and expect that they will grow in faith.
Instead, let’s learn from the example of Jesus. When Jesus sent His disciples into the second storm, He immediately went up the mountain to pray. He understood that through His actions He could not create the faith that they would need for the storm. They would need the Spirit of God. Like Jesus, we as parents must be willing to give our children liberty, even liberty that could destroy them. And like Jesus, we must be in prayer – all night, if necessary – for our children as they face the storms. Then we must show ourselves available to them.
When Peter saw Jesus, he recognized that Jesus could help him and called to Him for help. Children who are raised in authoritarian homes do not see their parents as a source of help. They view their parents as another kind of storm – and rightfully so. Authoritarian parents are an endless storm from which children long to escape. They present no meaningful help. We as parents must find the right balance between protection and over-protection. If we home school, how will we find ways to allow our children to face adversity in friendships? If we protect them completely from media like video games, TV, and other forms of entertainment, how will they ever learn to face temptation on their own? The answer is not found in a complete lack of protection (like public education) or in taking an “anything goes” attitude toward their entertainment activities. The answer is found in a slowly developing model which allows them to mature spiritually in their accountability to God as they mature physically and emotionally.
Peter faced two storms and grew considerably in His faith. But Peter had yet another storm that He would need to face. It was a storm that he would face all alone.
The Third Storm
Luke 22:31-34
31 "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat.
32 But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers."
33 But he replied, "Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death."
34 Jesus answered, "I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me."
Matthew 26:69-75
69 Now Peter was sitting out in the courtyard, and a servant girl came to him. "You also were with Jesus of Galilee," she said.
70 But he denied it before them all. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said.
71 Then he went out to the gateway, where another girl saw him and said to the people there, "This fellow was with Jesus of Nazareth."
72 He denied it again, with an oath: "I don't know the man!"
73 After a little while, those standing there went up to Peter and said, "Surely you are one of them, for your accent gives you away."
74 Then he began to call down curses on himself and he swore to them, "I don't know the man!" Immediately a rooster crowed.
75 Then Peter remembered the word Jesus had spoken: "Before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times." And he went outside and wept bitterly.
Eventually, our children will face their storms alone. Like Peter, there will be no one around to know whether they give into temptation and sin. Will they have the conviction and faith enough to be bothered by it and realize that God saw their failure? Will their “personal failure” be enough to cause them to repent?
In authoritarian homes, sin is all about getting caught. Children don’t need to repent unless they have been caught. It is only then that they care. We must raise our children so that they understand and believe that their accountability is to God. It matters not whether we, their parents, learn of their sin. It matters to God. As long as punishment for sin comes only from us, the parents, then how will they ever learn accountability from God?
What do we mean by this?
Authoritarian parents often respond to a breech in rules by punishing their children, which usually includes banning them from certain activities in which they failed. But how can they learn to overcome in these activities if we don’t allow them to face them? How can they learn accountability to God if it is only us they fear? Some authoritarian parents believe that they are building accountability between their children and God by forcing them to repent to God when they catch them in failure. This does not build accountability but humiliation. True accountability must be voluntary. It cannot be mandated. So how do we get our children there?
Like Jesus did, we must repeatedly send our children through the storms while setting ourselves further and further away from them until they eventually face their storms alone as Peter did. Overcoming a storm alone creates the most meaningful of all victories. It creates a personal victory. And it is the personal victory that is the mark of true spiritual maturity.
Every now and then, you will hear about some Christian leader who is caught with a prostitute or embezzling money. Men like this were probably raised in an authoritarian home where they learned that accountability means simply “not getting caught.” They never learned the personal satisfaction that comes from overcoming temptation in private.
However, even when our children fail in their private temptations, as Peter did, a victory is still found in an apparent bitter defeat. The victory is found in the assurance of Christ’s words: “I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back [are converted (KJV)], strengthen your brothers.” Peter failed the test: he backslid. Even so, the faith he found in the storm did not fail: not only did it bring him back to God, but it greatly increased his faith.
One of the most difficult things for parents to do is to allow their children to fail. However, we as parents must be like Jesus and see the big picture. Peter attempted to stand but fell instead, and he fell hard. But through all his failure, he did not lose his faith.
Parents always want to fix things. However, intangibles like sin or a broken relationship with God can only be fixed by God. Jesus knew that Peter was going to fail his test and backslide, but He didn’t run to his aid when he did. Jesus prayed, because the Spirit of God can be moved by our prayers and only the Spirit of God can mend a spiritual heart.
We as parents cannot fix our children when they make bad decisions that affect their relationships with God. We can only get in the way and make matters worse. Jesus did nothing but pray for Peter. Following Peter’s failure, the Spirit of God moved upon him “and he went outside and wept bitterly.” No one knew of his sin. He could have hid it and walked away. But Peter’s faith caused him to recognize his sin, and it was his faith that brought him to repentance. As parents, we must see this as our example to follow and stop trusting in our own ability to fix things. Instead, trust in the Spirit of God.
Often parents disapprove of their teen or young adult child’s lifestyle both before and after they leave home. Unless the child wants our help, any attempt on our part to “help” him fix his life will only make it worse. Children must be allowed to find their own faith and live it out. Is this not what we do as adults? Does it help us when someone wants to inject himself into our lives and wants to fix us? Of course not! We must desire and be willing to change before it can occur. Sometimes parents will reject, even shun, their children who reject the values in which they were raised. This only tells the children that their parents do not truly love them, or that their parents love their “rules” and their “values” more than they love their children.
We must remember that faith is born in adversity, in the storms of life. Often we as parents see them in the storms of life and want to intervene. We question why they are made to suffer, but we must remember that God loves them more than we. It is He who allows them to experience storms so they have the opportunity to grow in their faith in Him. Storms are not a bad thing. They are necessary for faith to grow.
Sometimes when children leave home, they are failing us as parents but they are not failing the Lord. What do we mean by this?
When children fail to follow in the ways in which they were raised after they leave home, parents tend to take it personally. They respond as though their children have rejected them. The parents feel this way because they tend to love their values as much as or more than they love their children, and their children are aware of this. These children live in the shadow of their parents’ love for their own values and they feel cheated. As a result, they take umbrage toward that thing that steals their parents’ love: their values. Their intent is to hurt their parents by making them (the parents) feel the same hurt that they have endured.
It is important to understand that the children do not hate their parents. They don’t strike out against the parents whom they love but against the values that have stolen their parents’ affections and robbed the children of their parent’s love. They strike out at that which has caused them the most harm, that which has cheated them of their parents’ warmth.
Taking It to the Next Level
Now consider all this in respect to a church. The same dynamics at work in the home are at work in the church. For instance, parents often do not see themselves as being at fault in their children’s failures. “I raised them (i.e., forced them) in the ways of the Lord; it is up to God now.” They say this after they have made their children bitter toward everything that has anything to do with God. Like parents, Christian leaders often fail to see this same dynamic at work in their churches as largely attributable to their own actions. For instance, we quite often hear pastors suggest that God is blessing their church when new people come. They also consider it an attack from Satan when people leave. What they are really suggesting is complete lack of accountability. They are really saying that they are never at fault. When good things happen, it is God. When bad things happen, it is the devil. Either way, they are not to blame. Their attitude is the same as many parents: “I did what I was supposed to do. It’s not my fault.”
The truth is that whether or not Christians come to their church is not a result of the Spirit of God but of their marketing ability. Most large churches and mega churches are little more than social gatherings. Are we to conclude that God is growing these churches? Absolutely not. Church leaders often quote the scripture, “And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved (Acts 2:47),”as support for their belief that God blesses their churches through size or attendance. However, this verse is not talking about drawing Christian from other churches. It was talking about new converts. It was talking about true evangelism. The ability of one church to draw members away from another has nothing to do with God’s blessing. It is all about marketing.
Additionally, many pastors are dumbfounded by congregational turnover. New people will come for a time and then leave. It is a cycle that continues in almost every church in the West. Why is this? Church leaders need to look no further than the dynamics at work in a family.
First, the answer is simpler than you might expect. People leave because this is what they are taught to do. Most church leaders are parents and operate their churches as they do their homes. They respond to people in the same way they respond to their children. Their parents taught them that if they are disobedient and refuse to conform, they will be ignored. Parents in authoritarian homes often have little or nothing to do with their children who leave home and reject their values. Children who are raised in such homes grow up and become church leaders. They remain true to their parents values by ignoring and rejecting people who refuse their (the church leader’s) values. Consequently, people are taught that the way to handle conflict is to leave (or force others to leave).
Secondly, like children who feel robbed of their parent’s affection, church members who feel that the church leaders love their doctrines more than they care about them (the church members), there will be little to keep them. Like children who are starved for the affection of a parent, church members often bounce from church to church trying to find a place where they will be loved more than the doctrine that is taught. If we are to learn anything from the way Jesus taught His disciples, it is that He loved them first and foremost. It is difficult to point to a single example of Him loving a doctrine or a law more than He loved people. In fact, the Pharisees loved to point out the many ways He violated “laws” (like the Sabbath, for instance) because the needs of His people were more important to Him.
Finally, consider denominations like the Amish. The Amish are very authoritarian in their homes, and they run their denomination in the same way. Their homes are their churches in microcosm, and their churches are their homes in macrocosm.
Conclusion
There is no greater privilege given to a child than the right to own their own faith. But for this to happen, parents must be willing to follow the example of Jesus and allow their children to face their own storms. When parents constantly intervene in the midst of the storm, who really owns the faith? The parents. In the macrocosm of a church, the same dynamics are at work. When people are allowed (and encouraged) to sit back and merely fill pews, how can their faith grow and mature? It can’t. Because people are encouraged (through the subservient structure) to sit back, be quiet, and not participate, it is not their faith but that of the church leaders that matures. Like a family in macrocosm, the church members are not allowed to own their own faith.
When parents own their children’s faith in a family, the children grow up and abandon their parent’s values because they were never allowed to discover and internalize these values on themselves. When leaders own the members’ faith in a church, the members become shallow Christians: those who attend but never actually become what the leaders teach. As a result, we can see that it is the fault of Western churches for spawning generations of compromising and apathetic Christians.
Many church leaders believe that because they teach the truth, it is enough. Many parents feel the same way. They fail to realize that unless their children are free to make decisions on their own, their faith will never develop and mature. These parents believe that teaching their children the truth is enough. In a similar manner, church leaders must allow church members to be free to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit if their faith is to mature.
There is no greater treasure than to find your own faith and, through it, overcome adversity. This treasure is especially precious when the adversity is faced in private, and the victory is therefore a private victory.
We cannot fix our children spiritually, and we cannot guarantee that they will overcome temptation. What we can do is pray for them that their faith - which we helped to develop in their lives - will remain strong so that even after they fail, they will return to God as Peter did.
Amen.
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