Every parent wants the best for their children, and for every Christian parent, that means wanting to tell your children the “good news”. I’m a father of two children, Josiah and Seth, who are nearly 3 and nearly 1 respectively. The problem, that I’m sure other parents struggle with too, is how do you tell such young people about the gospel?
Josiah can’t really follow an “argument” as such. At this age, he can grasp concrete ideas, with only the simplest of logical steps involved (such as DVD=Star Wars=Darth Vader… so bug daddy for the DVD). With someone that young, who thinks that simply, what does the “gospel” look like?
A classical evangelical might start with “Jesus died on the cross for your sins“. In fact, until a few years ago, that’s precisely where I would have started. However, 2 things have made me think twice about it. First, the sentence is actually much more complicated than it appears on the surface. Josiah doesn’t really know what death is, nor the cross, nor what sins are. Each of these concepts would require quite a lot of unpacking before the sentence begins to have any sort of concrete reality for him. Secondly, the sentence is not applied to the heart. There’s been a real groundswell in the last few years among classical evangelicals, reacting to what they see as dry intellectualism within our tradition. The statement that Jesus died for you sins is just an intellectual proposition – how does that intellectual idea actually impact Josiah’s heart?
A solution to this second problem that is often put forward is to appeal to people’s hearts. Researching a paper at college recently on pornography, I read a lot of recently published evangelical books on intimacy and dealing with lust. Almost all of them advocated the same thing – find your true heart’s desire in God, and learn to delight in him. As a pastoral “way in” to the gospel, we might translate this for our toddlers by saying “God is lovely, love him.”
While I agree with the diagnosis – evangelicalism has suffered from an intellectual dryness in my circles – I take issue with the corrective that’s often offered. Replacing outward conformity to the law, and a merely intellectual assent to truth, with love for God is not the gospel. How many times I’ve felt beaten over the head with the statement “You should feel…” when often I honestly don’t feel – I’ve struggled with depression on and off since I was a child! The law requires that I love God. Outward conformity was only ever a false interpretation of the law (at no stage of salvation history did God require anything less than whole person commitment and perfection). So telling my child to love God is not telling them the gospel – it’s telling them the law, which they need to know but in the context of the gospel. But that still leaves the question – how do I tell my toddler the gospel?
Tom Wright’s brand of the New Perspective emphasises that the gospel isn’t all about me and my salvation, actually it’s all about Jesus being made Lord of the universe. An NP version of the gospel for my toddler might be “Jesus is Lord.” The problem with this is it’s not immediately obvious how this gospel is good news for me. Of course it is good news, I’m just saying it’s not immediately obvious how. My toddler requires a lot of explanation about the Jesus who is Lord, he needs to be taught what it means for this Jesus to be Lord – and for the NP, I will even probably need to explain to him what we mean by the word is! So, again, how do I tell my toddler the gospel?
The Federal Vision is a movement of (primarily) North American Presbyterians who’s particular niche theological movement all arose from thinking about precisely this question. My analysis of the Federal Vision is that they have essentially fused a baptist attitude to the sacraments with paedobaptistic practice, and then borrowed a lot of stuff from the New Perspective, Norman Shepherd, and Christian Reconstructionism to fill in the gaps. It’s all packaged in Reformed labels, but much of the content is different (even if some of their critique of contemporary “Reformed” theology did have a point). The FVer, emphasising the continuity between parent and child from what seems to be a sociological perspective, would likely say to their child “God is your God, keep trusting in him, and he’ll stay your God“. The problem is, ultimately, just like the latest evangelical trend to tell people to “love God” more and to “feel passionate” about God, this falls into the same trap… it focuses on the child’s need to respond to God, this time by trusting him. In some FV systems (there is more than one) this becomes practically Arminian, because God’s decree of election is hidden… not only his decision whether or not to elect other people, but even his decision to elect me or not.
So how do I tell my toddler the gospel?
I think that John is summarising the gospel in 1 John 4:10:
In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
The law says “love God”, the gospel says “God loves you”. The Anglican catechism (which I’m supposed to teach to my children before they get confirmed) begins with 3 questions that are all about what God has given me: my identity, my godparents, and my faith. Question 4 then tells me that I am “bound to believe, and to do…” based on the start that they have given me. And the first thing I then do myself, is pray that God will give me grace to continue. In other words: God first loves me. Both temporally, and logically. Both at the beginning, and in the present, and at the end.
The catechism then goes on to explain the creed (God’s work to save me), the law (my response to him), and prayer and the sacraments (the means of God’s grace whereby I am strengthened to respond to him). The catechism ends with a description of the requirements for coming to the Lord’s supper, part of which is:
have a lively faith in God’s mercy through Christ, with a thankful remembrance of his death;
“Faith” is here understood in Calvinistic terms. It is the response of someone who knows that God loves them. Calvin puts it like this (Institutes 3.2.7):
Now we shall possess a right definition of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
Here, then, is how I tell my toddler the gospel: Daddy loves you, but the good news is Jesus loves you even more. Josiah can now fill in the ending himself. I say to him every day “Jos, daddy loves you… but what’s the good news?” And Josiah says “Jesus loves me even more.” And he is visually encouraged by it.
This is applied to the heart, it can be understood immediately without explanation, and it’s concrete (grounded in daddy’s love). What’s more, all sorts of future applications are pregnant in it. When Josiah starts to recognise daddy’s sin, we have a basis for explaining why Jesus is better. When Josiah sins against other people, we have a basis for helping him understand the spiritual significance of sin (God loves those people you hurt). Therefore we have a route in to explaining God’s wrath, that will equip Josiah apologetically in the future (daddy is angry when people hurt Jos because I love Jos; God is angry when we hurt anyone because he loves everyone).
Finally, this is the basis for all pastoral care for my son. I struggle with depression on and off because for various reasons I find it really hard to know deep down that God loves me. Right from the start, wouldn’t it be great to begin dealing with every problem that arises by agreeing with our children: “Well, we know that God loves us, so…”
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