Words from WW Blog

It was a simple conversation that my wife was having with a fifth-grade boy who was watching his brother’s soccer game. When she asked him what middle school he would go to next year, he said that his dad was going to send him to the school where he could have the best soccer experience. It caught my wife by surprise.

In our old traditional ways, we had become accustomed to parents choosing a school or, better yet, a community on the basis of how good the education would be. You know…math, reading, science! However, things have changed. Many parents have changed. Families have changed. Priorities have changed.

Quite honestly, kids are reflections of their parents, and their parents’ priorities. The cynicism Dad has toward life is filtering down into the next family generation. In like manner, the time and energy the parents put into the leisure activities of life are also finding their way into the next generation.

Parents communicate what is important by showing up at every athletic contest, but never at a parent-teacher conference. They show their true colors by keeping track of their seventh-grade son’s football stats, but being disinterested in checking whether he has any missing assignments in any of his classes. They send clear signals of where their priorities lie, when they plead for grace for their daughter whose grades have made her ineligible to play the next week of volleyball matches.

Truth be told, there are many parents who do not believe that education is the vital element for a purpose-filled and productive life. They have been sucked into the lie that colleges will be more interested in their son’s jump shot and their daughter’s spike than their ability to solve a math equation or write a well-thought-out essay.

And so, the ripple effects are middle school kids disinterested in their education and absorbed in the peripherals. Teachers and school administrators get blamed in the media and by their elected officials for test scores that have dipped, but the blame that gets heaped on them is not as great as their frustration trying to teach students who have gotten the impression at home that it’s not important enough to learn.

In writing these words, I recognize that there are a multitude of parents who take seriously their children’s education and have their priorities in order. Their understanding of what their child will need to be successful in life is clear, and they are committed to staying on the course to make it happen.

Sometimes it’s the 20% or even 10% who are unbalanced that leave a sour taste in one’s mouth for the state of our youth and their mentors. We can blame it on the pandemic isolation that has happened, climate change, the price of gas, housing costs, social media, or any of ten thousand other things, but the building wave of troublesome trends has been going on for a while.

Meanwhile, there are more situations of kids basing their lives on being able to “Bend it like Beckham” instead of adding things together that make sense.

“Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die;  and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)

All of us have been fooled from time to time. After all, it’s the highlight of April Fool’s Day for someone to put one over on us, or vice-versa. “Gullible” is a word that some people get labeled with, a chuckle attached to it whenever it is said. And, we can’t contain our laughter when we hear the latest “Blonde Joke.”

Honestly though, we live in a mixed-up age of gullibility and cynicism. There are numerous throngs of people who will believe in the most ludicrous conspiracy theories, but doubt that the world is round. Millions of people buy lottery tickets believing that they will be the mega-million…or billion dollar winner, but are suspicious that any random act of kindness has some catch attached to it.

And what about churches? Thousands of churches in our country have changed their names because of the stereotypes that people have placed on certain denominations. First Baptist Churches have become community churches or simply “First Church”, because a large part of our population envisions a Baptist as being someone who is legalistic in their view of how they relate to God (“Don’t smoke, drink, or chew, or go with girls that do!”).

And yet, in the past (and the present) there are also people who are firm believers in the prosperity gospel that many of the tele-evangelists promoted (“Send me a $100 seed of faith and see how God will multiply it in your life.”) It was kinda the Christian version of a Vegas roulette wheel.

Gullible and cynical.

In our extremely-polarized culture, advocates of one view or the other seek to believe that their side is always right and the other side is always…insane! A closer analysis shows that one side is more focused on convincing people how ludicrous the ideas of the other side are than they are communicating their own ideas. A popular opinion may be more dependent of creatively conveying how unpopular the opposing idea is. Instead of firm in one’s convictions, there’s a displeasure about the opposite view.

I’m sure that followers of Jesus were seen by many as being gullible, led astray by a new false prophet that has come out of Nazareth. Others who felt threatened by Him were cynical to a T. They said things like, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” and “He dines with tax collectors and prostitutes!” There was a real smear campaign about Jesus. He threatened the establishment and the understanding of how God related to His people.

In a time when good news was needed, the gospel arrived. People had been oppressed, stressed, taxed, pushed down, marginalized and minimized, and told what they were to believe and how to believe it. And then Jesus brought good news. The hesitation to believe was understandable. If one of the poor believed in Him and then Jesus was discovered to be a fraud, what would the person have to fall back upon? If he followed Jesus to a dead end, what hope could he still have for his life?

Those in power thought getting rid of Jesus would bring things back to normal, back to how they wanted it to be, but things would never go back to the way they were, even after they crucified Him. For once the gullible that believed in the gospel, found out that their faith was valid and their messiah was the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

In a culture that believes in the idiotic and scoffs at the obvious, the story of Jesus and His purpose hasn’t changed. It is still the good news of the grace of God. If I’m a fool, I’d prefer being a fool for Christ.

Hebrews 4:14 “Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.”

Emphasizing Jesus seems to be a disappearing item. Recently, Porsche, the producer of some too-high-priced autos, erased the image of Christo Rei (Christ the King) part of the way through the promotional video the company was making to celebrate 60 years of its 911 model. After a backlash came as a result of the disappearance, Porsche took the original ad off of YouTube.

The promo had shown a red Porsche 911 speeding past the famous statue of Jesus standing with outstretched arms, except Jesus had been erased from the picture and only the statue’s pedestal could be seen.

The statue, which was completed in the 1950s in Lisbon, is a representative of Portugal’s thankfulness for being saved from the horrors of World War II. Porsche was quick to apologize, hinting that it was an oversight. Yet, why would the maker of a luxury car film its promotional video with a statute in the background that is known worldwide, and then erase the essence of the statue?

Perhaps it was thinking that Jesus might overshadow the new, limited edition, Porsche 911 S/T model, which will have less than 2000 units made and will cost just under $300,000. Maybe a marketing genius figured out that the consumer’s attention might be more on the outstretched arms of the Prince of Peace than the Porsche.

Before Porsche could take the promotional film off of YouTube, one X (Twitter) user saved the video. As of a few days ago, it had six million views. Missing Jesus was noticed.

Some commentators at this point might go to the secularization of our culture or the dominance of modern-day paganism, but that’s not my intent or aim. What I find is that Jesus causes an uncomfortableness when brought into areas of our lives that aren’t seen as being religious. Our culture compartmentalizes spiritual concepts, as if they are just one room in a house whose door is kept shut, until we need something out of it.

Therefore, Jesus gets erased from many of our life scenes. He’s back on His pedestal at certain events, but absent from the picture in others. The image of a Savior with outstretched arms to take all people in is too much for many folk, evidently many of those who drive $300,000 red sports cars.