Difference that a Year Makes

I am halfway through this year's Summer Ministry Team and that is sad to say. I am currently in the chapel of the camp I grew up going to as a kid and am sitting here in a moment of quiet. The others have gone to bed and I could see why. Junior camp frequently leaves me sick at the end of it and it can be a long week. The kids are so young and you are essentially their temporary surrogate parent. I had a challenging kid in my cabin who eventually found a way to fit in with the others, I had another who would wake up in the night, (on some nights, several times) and just panic about where he was and I would have to scramble before he woke the others to take him outside and calm him down.

I had other kids who I knew had no respect for my authority. To be fair, they thumbed their nose at any authority, but it was aggravating to know they came from nice lives and they didn't even realize what they had.

It was one of the most challenging weeks at camp I've had in a few years, partially because I think that I have a hard time knowing how to deal with wildcard kids that are dealing with some sort of social or developmental issue who operate outside the typical rule of thumb. Generally, if you have a solid system thought out to bring a sense of structure to a group, the kids actually prefer to follow the system and you can have fun with them while still maintaining leadership despite being a surrogate parent. However, the wildcard kids tend to upset the whole cart unless you devote all your time to the one kid and that is difficult when you have ten others to worry about.

I'll interject to point out that the week was still great. I had a ton of fun with the kids, doing puppet sketches, being a fake eastern European bad guy singing the national anthem to the glorious nation of Davisamistan, doing commentary for the nukem games at the volleyball court, doing a pretty good Neil Young impersonation singing "Whip My Hair", and pretending I was morphed into a monster and being saved by the work of the kids. A lot of laughs had.

The biggest difference for me this year than last is the state of mind that I am in. This year has involved a lot of working out the faith I believe in. Last summer, I had just come out of one of the darkest points in my life and I had an energy that spurred me to push hard and lived out of inspiration. This year, I am fueled more by a sense of purpose. That I realize how well designed I am for a ministry like this.

However, the challenge to me has come out of this growth. As I had cabin devotional times with the kids, we had questions from our speaker who was fantastic and engaging, I had issues with theological stance. Not that he was vastly out of tune with Christianity and saying unorthodox statements. Rather it was the opposite. He was very orthodox. His theology and eschatology that he presented was traditional evangelical conservative Christian. The brand I grew up with. I should point out that this was not the crazy extreme seen in the movie "Jesus Camp" but a very sincere and hopeful presentation. He was not the one out of place here. It was me.

As I looked at some of the questions that were suggested in being asked, I knew what the answers were supposed to be and I realized that I believed little of it in the same way the speaker did. What was more difficult was the questions from the kids about what heaven and hell is like, or what about evolution, or what about natural disasters. I knew what the answers were supposed to be and that I did not agree with any of it. I didn't know how to suggest that there are many thoughts about those things and that even Christians disagree about them without confusing them too much. At this age, the kids see the world in very much black and white and to try to give them the huge explanation of my many years of wrestling with those questions would be difficult.

That's not what bothered me. What bothered me was that the Christian homes that these kids came from are just as black and white in their explanations about God, the world, and the end of it all. That they had a child-like understanding of these things and that even thinking deeper about those things is pretty much unnecessary and potentially dangerous to faith was hard.

How do I say that I believe that there is a strong chance that people may have evolved and that I am perfectly okay with that and that does not change the power of the story of Christ? How do I say that I don't particularly think the afterlife is not the point of being a Christian and that I am comfortable with there being no afterlife at all? How do I tell them that I don't believe that the reason natural disasters happen is because of human sin that broke the world on a fundamental level?

It reminded me of a conversation I had a couple of months ago with another who grew up in a similar tradition and had wound up disagreeing with much of the traditional understanding of Christianity. After discussing many things in regards to what we believe, she asked me the simple question, "At what point does all of this stops being Christian and is in fact something different?"

I could see what she was getting at. But I still believe in the story of Christ and that it is the example that we should follow if we are to find the Way, the Truth and the Life. I just see it differently.

My issue is, how do I stand up for it?

"You, who are on the road, must have a code that you can live by.
And so become yourself because the past is just a goodbye.
Teach your children well, their father's hell did slowly go by
And feed them on your dreams, the one they picked, the one you're known by."
- "Teach Your Children" from the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young album "Deja Vu"