Rob Witham

I was born in the choir loft as the old saying goes. My father is a pastor as is his father before him. I was in church on my first Sunday after being born and was dedicated and raised in church. Growing up I attended Sunday School, Sunday morning services, Sunday evening services, Wednesday evening services. As a teenager I also attended weekly youth group meetings. When there were special missions conferences, stewardship conferences or revival meetings I was there. I attended Christian schools for almost all of my education and attended mandatory chapel services every week. Several years after graduating from high school I enrolled in Bible college eventually earning a BA in Theology. I share part of my story to illustrate that I know what it means to “grow up Christian”. I know that there are many others who share my upbringing and know what it means to be “raised Christian”.

My concern, and the focus of this article, is that I seem to be encountering a growing number of people who believe that their spiritual state is satisfactory because they grew up in a religious environment. It seems there is a pervasive belief that if we grew up in church then we are “okay” with God somehow. How do we get to this point?

One of the great ironies of the way we do church (and Christianity) today is that we have managed to fill the pews with unbelievers who are quite convinced of their spirituality - based on the simple criteria that they grew up in church, prayed “the sinner’s prayer” somewhere along the way, and were subsequently baptized and joined the church. The fact that “the sinner’s prayer” is nowhere found in Scripture does not seem to cause any concern, nor does the fact that baptism and church membership are nowhere equated with salvation (consider the classic example of the thief on the cross next to Jesus).

I believe this is at least a two-fold problem. I will only give them brief treatment here and will save the detailed comments for other articles. I believe the two problems lie in a sketchy understanding of salvation and in a misguided concept of child rearing.

Most Christian parents I have encountered pin all their hopes of a child’s success in the world on a misunderstanding of Proverbs 22.6 - “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. (WEB)” Parents have been taught to pull this little gem out from the context it was written in and use it as the ultimate insurance policy against teen or adult children making poor choices. That interpretation is a misuse of this text. The Proverbs offer us an absolute wealth of wisdom we would all do well to pay more attention to. Sadly, most parents quoting that Proverb would be hard pressed to quote more than a handful of other Proverbs. Proverbs 22.6 has gained wide acceptance among parents because we like the misuse that has been applied to it. Frankly, many of the Proverbs would make any average American Christian more than a little uncomfortable. Solomon’s wisdom flies in the face of our modern American lifestyle.

The problem with interpreting Proverbs 22.6 as a guarantee against your child going astray or leaving the faith is that the writer was not offering an absolute guarantee. The Proverbs are not offered in that way. The Proverbs provide good, sound wisdom. Follow that wisdom and you will be blessed; ignore that wisdom at your own peril. The writer is not promising there will never be an exception to the rule. Consider some of the other Proverbs and see what I mean. They are not intended to have a perfect predictive success; but in a general sense they are fairly predictive. We learn about debt, sexual immorality, deception and many other things from the Proverbs and we learn where those vices will take us. The Proverbs offer us a good guideline to child rearing - usually your children will follow in the path you raised them up in. However, this does not in any way eliminate individual choice! Children have minds of their own and they grow into adults with minds of their own.

A great example of this concept is found in an article just published in the San Francisco Chronicle on September 17, 2006. Vicki Haddock wrote an interesting political piece from which the following is excerpted: 80% of “people with a party preference grow up to vote the way their parents voted.” She continues, “In fact, while many people experience a rejection of their parents’ politics in very early adulthood, virtually nothing is more predictive of your political ideology than that of your parents - it’s more of a determining factor than income, education or any other societal yardstick.” (link here) This is based on a study by secular sociologists who are not trying to prove the validity of the Bible; yet we find that the study does just that. Solomon told us thousands of years ago that children would tend to follow in their parents worldview and ideology, did he not? Or as one of my Bible college professors used to frequently say, “Styles are learned in families of origin.”

What I have seen happen too often is for parents to continue clinging to their misinterpreted Proverb long after it is evident their child does not have any type of genuine faith. Much of the modern church is still experiencing such a knee-jerk reaction to ‘lose your salvation’ theology that people who do question their salvation are reminded of the time the “prayed the prayer” and assured of their salvation. We so quickly forget Paul’s admonition to “Test your own selves, whether you are in the faith. Test your own selves. Or don’t you know as to your own selves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you are disqualified” (2 Corinthians 13.5). Paul writes this in the context of dealing with those who are within the church but living in sin. Paul advises that he will deal with them when he arrives in Corinth and then admonishes them to test themselves to see if they genuinely are Christians. Would that more people were encouraged in a similar manner. I fear that Christians do more to interfere with the work of the Holy Spirit than the devil sometimes. There are occasions where a professing believer ought to have serious concerns about their salvation - concerns that may have been brought by the Holy Spirit!

The second underlying problem with those who grow up in a Christian environment not having a real faith of their own is found in a poor understanding of salvation. If you doubt that statement just ask your favorite teacher or spiritual leader to explain the Gospel to you in one or two sentences. Take note of the keywords and key phrases that are used to describe the Gospel message and then search the Scriptures for them using your favorite Bible search tool. More often than not the words we use to describe and explain salvation and the Gospel message are not Biblical words at all. In fact, most Christians would be hard pressed to explain the Gospel without using certain buzz words and concepts that are alien to the Scriptures. The bottom line is that the average churchgoer can only repeat back the keywords they have heard their pastor and church leaders use. Too many churchgoers have never bothered to study the Scriptures for themselves to determine the truth of what they are told.

This mindset of assuming you are one of God’s children based on your heritage is not new though. John the Baptizer ripped apart the religious elite of his day telling them not to trust their heritage. Jesus made similar statements. The Apostle Paul summed it all up so well in Romans that it must be considered here. Romans 2-3 exactly addresses this matter. In Romans 2.17-18 Paul writes “Indeed you bear the name of a Jew, and rest on the law, and glory in God, and know his will, and approve the things that are excellent….” Modern Christians are so quick to discount much of the Scriptures as being interesting history of how someone else screwed up but we like to think that we would not do the same (seems like Jesus mentioned this too at one point). This text is actually highly relevant to our discussion. Paul notes how his readers bear the name of a Jew and rest on the law - in other words, they were resting on their heritage to assure their standing with God! Does that idea sound familiar? Paul spends the rest of chapter 2 tearing down everything his religious readers might have been relying on. Nothing in their heritage would justify them before God. Paul then launches a question (recorded in chapter 3.1): “Then what advantage does the Jew have? Or what is the profit of circumcision?” Or if we paraphrase for a moment to make this applicable to the average reader today, “Then what advantage is there to growing up in a Christian home? Or what is the profit of a lifetime of religious education and culture?” Oh, but the answer is so sweet, “Much in every way! Because first of all, they were entrusted with the oracles of God.” To the true believer, to the individual who makes a personal commitment to follow Jesus and forsake the world, we gain much in advantage in every way due to our religious heritage! Glory be to God for all advantages I enjoy for having been raised in church by parents who followed God! But that advantage is only an advantage to me if I make a decision to follow Jesus myself. All of that religious upbringing is useless to me if I choose not to follow Jesus myself. It is all loss.

Too often we communicate the idea that a person can just “pray the sinner’s prayer”, continue to live as the pagans around them and be assured of their salvation. Those who grew up in Christian homes add to the equation some measure of security as they try to coast by on their parents faith. The sad reality is that, just like the Jews Paul was writing to, those of us that grew up in Christian homes and in church can fake it very well. We know what to say and when to say it to convince those around us that we have it all together but inside we may remain full of corruption. We can easily become like the people Jesus described as whitewashed tombs - we look good on the outside but inside are full of dead men’s bones.