No More Than Three Generations

By Chen Yao-bin

There is a saying among Western Christians: "God has children, but no grandchildren." They mean that it is hard to pass one's faith on to the third generation. The Mission also published an article that pointed out a common trend in Chinese and Western Christian families, that zeal in serving the Lord diminishes over succeeding generations with the fourth generation completely abandoning what little Christian faith they may have left.

Is it possible to improve on or change this trend?

Let the younger generation experience for themselves

I am a fourth-generation believer. My ancestors lived in Guangdong, China. My great-grandfather was the first believer in his village. At that time, nobody else in the village believed in Jesus and everyone treated my great-grandfather harshly. They insisted that since believing in Jesus he no longer belonged, and they kicked him out of the village.

My great-grandfather had to go to the city to make a living. With help from the church he established both his family and career and eventually became one of the rich men of the city. His children and grandchildren were all able to receive higher education.

Several years ago I went back to China to visit the villages where my ancestors used to live. Life there was still extremely hard. I realized that the Lord had really been good to my great-grandfather in giving him the opportunity to migrate to the city and had blessed him and his descendants.

If we can find a way to allow our younger generation to experience the Lord's blessings for themselves, then I believe we are helping to strengthen their faith in the Lord.

Understand the generation gap

When talking with the younger generation about daily life or religious faith, first-generation Chinese living here should not be so much teaching as sharing. The main reason is that there is a huge difference in spirituality between first-generation immigrants and their children who have grown up under Western culture.

A simple example : in Chinese Bible study groups, leaders typically play the role of teachers, even when they encourage participants to express their opinions. The effectiveness of this kind of Bible study largely depends on how much the group members understand the material prepared by the leaders.

This is not how it is with the Westernized young people. Their Bible studies feature free participation from all the group members. The leader's role is merely to ensure order in the Bible study. Leaders are not teachers, nor do they try to make their own opinions the conclusion of the discussion.

I am a conservative person and I often follow the traditional Chinese way of leading a Bible study. Actually, the real teacher in the Bible study is the Holy Spirit. We must trust the Spirit to work in His own unique way, based on the need of each individual participant. We have no reason to believe that the method we feel most comfortable with is necessarily the best way.

Similarly, we must respect one another with regard to our own ways of worship and religious expression, which have less to do with spirituality and more to do with lifestyle.

It is not easy for westernized young people to understand traditional Chinese culture and Chinese reasoning. It is a real challenge then for us to help the younger generation establish their religious faith.

Let it be part of their life

Today's kids are very independent and from a young age they question the authority of their parents. For this reason, traditional disciplinary methodologies are no longer effective. We must provide guidance to help our children to form their own ways of serving and worshipping the Lord, so that their Christian faith takes root naturally within them and becomes part of their life.

For example, if we insist that nothing more is important than Sunday worship and that only spiritual activities are more important than any others, then we are helping our young people to lay a solid religious foundation. Of course we need to do this when they are still very young, or it becomes very difficult.

Unfortunately we too often focus on other activities like academic grades, swimming, dancing, Chinese classes and birthday parties. I remember an incident when my son was a student at a Christian junior high school and parents were invited to meet with the teachers. Since there were many more parents than teachers, each parent could only meet with teachers of two subjects.. I chose the Bible class teacher, because I believed that Bible was the most important subject of all. When I met with the teacher that evening, he told me that he was surprised I had chosen him because no other parents had.

Today, religious education for our younger generation is largely ignored. I heard from a TV news report one year that in the past twenty years or so the number of people participating in Easter activities had fallen from 40% to 20%. I believe this is largely due to their Christian parents and their examples.

Learn the appropriate way

While helping our younger generation establish their religious life, we must be able to distinguish between issues of cultural background and issues of fundamental belief. Issues of fundamental belief, must be resolved early. If the issues are to do with cultural background, we still need to take them seriously so that they will not fall into temptation. In Acts 15, the Jerusalem conference passed a resolution that gentile believers were not required to undergo circumcision. This is a great example of older more mature Christians not playing tough with younger believers.

When I was young, the older believers used to criticize me for being "an intellectual believer", meaning I focused too much on intellectualism. According to them, faith required the heart rather than the brain. But back then it was the age of modernism and this required an intellectual approach to all issues. So I found it hard to agree with them. It was not until I had dozens of years of life experience behind me that I began to understand faith from the heart.

Today, we are in the post-modern age when intellectualism has lost much of its attraction. The new generation growing up at this time have their unique way of expressing themselves. We must have patience and must give them time to experience their own faith.

Heavily influenced by our traditional culture, we often carry with us the arrogance of seniority. We tend to forget that we are under God's grace just as they are. The Lord Jesus warns us that the one who is arrogant will be last. So we must keep reminding ourselves that we as seniors do not necessarily enjoy spiritual seniority.

One example is in the expression of worship. As the older generation we need to learn to be tactful. For example, if we are wanting to remind young folk of the solemnity of worship, we should try to explain to them why we think this way. We must not make them feel that we are criticizing them; rather we can point out to them that a serious attitude is more important than rituals and expressions.

Another example has to do with materialism, as this is often a focus of discussion. Youngsters who have grown up in the age of materialistic abundance usually have a hard time understanding our traditional viewpoint regarding materialism. If we try to explain to them why we do not like wastefulness, we can secure more of their understanding and trust.

The above are just a few examples about raising children and helping them to become established in their faith. Actually, there is very little we can do by ourselves. We must rely on the Lord Jesus and let Him direct our next generation so that they will not fall to the temptations of the evil one.

God grants us freedom of thinking and freedom of choice. When young people who grow up in Christian families are ready to make their own religious choice, very often the deciding factors are the testimonies of the faith and actions of their parents and their understanding of Biblical truth.

The author has been a professor in an Australian university. He is now involved in academic research.