What Are We To Do?
“Make your ways known to me, Lord; teach me your paths”          - Psalm 25.4
“This is why I speak to the crowds in parables: although they see, they don’t really see;
 and although    they hear, they don’t really hear or understand.”  - Matthew 13.13

    Recently I engaged in conversation with a young person who is terribly confused and feels lost. Childhood and youth were spent in the Church, yet this young person left the Church during his college years. He shared several places in Christianity where he was struggling to believe and embrace that faith practice. In the course of our conversation he said something that simply made my heart hurt. He’d never really read the Bible for himself. He relied on what authority figures told him was there. What really caused him to walk away was simple. All the years of hearing, “no!” and not the stories that would help form one’s own understanding of faith, meant rules and no Grace.

    I wanted to weep. You see, the Bible is just full of what Christians are to do; what God’s people are to practice in their lives. Christian education is more than simply learning what one is told. It is about using our intellect to draw out meaning and ways to apply that meaning in our own lives. We often believe that the task of education in the Church is to teach “morality”. Yes. That is one component. However, each of us must understand the “whys” of those moral teachings, if we are to successfully practice them in our lives. The stories we read are the best way to learn life lessons that we can apply always in our own lives. All ancient cultures taught through stories. Stories are the best way for us to remember a teaching!

    That’s why, in our faith formation classes for children, especially, we teach the stories from the Bible. Children begin their understanding by hearing those stories and being encouraged to think about and share what they heard in them. What lesson was learned by the people in that story? What lesson might we learn from that story? As we grow, in wisdom and understanding, we are encouraged in our faith formation, young teens through adults, to continue to revisit those stories. Is there anything new we hadn’t seen before? Do we still understand that story in the same way? How does the story both entertain AND inform? This is where “Faith Formation” is at its best. Helping people at all ages to “form” their beliefs and begin to live into them. Not to stay in the story as they heard it while children. Not to give staid answers to timeless questions, but to encourage us to think and discern for ourselves. We can explore those stories as people who have had life experiences that might mirror or augment the stories they have been told and learned.

    We can tell a child multiple times what to do and not do. They probably won’t remember and they certainly won’t really connect it with their own lives. We can tell a story and they remember. We can help to draw out their “aha” moment, and they will remember. Educators can continue to draw out understandings that shape and reshape those “aha” moments. Faith Formation at and for all ages is vital to our understanding and embracing our faith. Being in a class with fellow seekers and students, being in worship with others, those are ways to keep our faith alive and effective. It’s not about simply learning “morality”. It’s about, as we are seeing today in so many ways, how that “morality” impacts our lives and the lives of others because of us. Faith formation is for all of God’s children. “Tell me the stories of Jesus…one of his heralds yes I would sing. Loudest hosannas, Jesus is King!”  Forming and shaping faith. It’s a joyful task for all of us to encourage one another to do.

    If you are confused as to what you believe about God? You aren't alone. If you aren't even sure whether you believe in God? You are not alone. If you are struggling to make sense of all the "Jesus" talk and teachings? You are not alone. Seek answers. Seek companions. Find someone who doesn't profess to have all of the answers, so that together you may take the journey of faith forming. Know this. Whatever we may choose to believe; whatever we may choose to call "God", we are not alone. There is no one who truly knows all about "God". The "Holy One" is a mystery. "The Breath of the Universe" is sometimes felt, yet never fully known. The "Source of All, the One in Whom We Live and Move and Have our Being"remains unseen and yet available. Scientists, researchers of all there is to seek and find, help us to understand that there is still so very much in the universe - all of creation and all universes - that we don't yet know. That doesn't mean "I AM" isn't there. It just means that the scavenger hunt that humanity has undertaken keeps leading us onward. Every time, EVERY TIME, that someone believes they have "solved" the puzzle? Someone else comes along and says, "Yes, but what if...? That is when the Universe smiles, beckons, and cheers as we head off again!