Irreplaceable

The casualty

So, this was the damage done.  We recently had a hot dog roasting at church.  It was a chilly day and my seven-year old was wearing his best big coat -- a red and black jacket with logos from his favorite team, the Georgia Bulldogs.  Somewhere in the process of roasting a hot dog, he brushed  up against the metal fire pit.  Thus, the melting began.  It burned this whole in the jacket.  As some of the men gathered around and I found out from my wife about the incident, one of them said, "At least it was just a Georgia jacket."  I said, "What do you mean?" thinking that was a knock on our team.  He responded, "And not a kid."  And that's right.  Jackets can be replaced.  Kids can't.  Jackets can be patched up.  Kids can't.

As parents, it's so easy to fall prey to the materialism of our culture without realizing it.  We ascribe value to things that essentially have no value.  1,000 years ago if you burned a hole in the cloth covering you wore as a coat, that was a good reason to make you another one.  People have value.  Things really don't.  Every parent knows this, but we forget it -- easily.

This Christmas, some child is going to break something that was very expensive.  They're going to drop the iPad or iPhone.  They're going to step on the new train set.  He's going to rip a hole in those new jeans playing touch football at Grandma's.  She's going to get glitter-glue all over that new sweater.  They're going to throw a baseball through the new 3D HDTV.  Some kid is going to lose a toy they just got.  It's going to happen in the next three days somewhere.  It might happen to you.  Our temptation is going to be to get furious.  "Don't you know how much that costs?!"  But it can be replaced.  We live in a culture that decided those things are expensive.  But they're not.  You can go right down to the store and buy another one just like it.

Now, responsibility and accountability are important life lessons.  Kids need to be taught to value things and take care of stuff.  Money does not grow on trees, and being responsible for the things that are ours is an important part of growing up.  However, understanding the things on which you cannot put a price tag is a more important lesson.  Technology is a wonderful thing.  Advances in engineering and media have made our lives better, simpler and faster.  But they are just things.  Things that will break. Things that will be repaired.   Things that will be replaced.  I struggle with this at Christmas, when it seems like a competition between parents as to who can get their kids the most valuable toys.  I struggle with the expectations of my children because at a young age they already have an appetite for things the world says are valuable.  I want them to have nice things.  I want them to go crazy when they open a present.  I want them to be proud of and responsible with their things.  But more than anything else, I want them to know that they are valuable.  People are valuable.  People -- not iPads, not HDTVs, not the latest lego set, not designer clothes, not Kindle Fires, not cars, not houses, not even red & black UGA jackets -- are made in the image of God.  We don't believe Jesus died for things.  Jesus died for people because people matter.

Christians & Santa

I can remember when I first heard it.  I was standing in my dorm room in Amsterdam while I was on a mission trip with the college campus ministry with which I was involved.  My roommate on the trip had grown up in a vastly different church world than I had.  He had come from a much more charismatic background.  I had been raised Southern Baptist, so we had both come from fairly conservative traditions.  I was on my way to becoming a United Methodist pastor as well.  But I'd never heard anything like it.  He told me that he would not be teaching his (yet unborn and unconceived) children about Santa Claus.  He said that it would confuse his children and that they might think he was lying to them about Jesus, too.  He said that it was a worldly idea and not what Christmas was about.  He said that right from the get-go he'd let his children know that there was no Santa Claus and that Christmas was about Jesus' birth, not some imaginary fat guy in a red suit.  He proclaimed that it does children a world of damage when parents make children think that a fairy tale is true.  Children will end up thinking Jesus is a fairy tale, too.  Same goes for the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy in his house.  I spent the next hour thanking my Heavenly Father that my roommate was not my dad.

This issue has become particularly poignant for us this year because my two oldest boys (7 and 9) are asking a lot of questions.  They've got friends whispering in their ear about Jolly Ol' St. Nick.  They're saying that some of their friends don't believe in Santa and that they think their parents put the presents out.  When they ask the right question or make the right comment, we'll have a good talk about it.  They're on the fence.  It's a curious time around the McInnis household, and more and more, I hear this conversation popping up among Christians.  And I want to be honest -- I don't get it.

I grew up in a house in which my parents just didn't make a big deal of things.  When an inappropriate scene came across a video, they fast-forwarded the VCR (remember those?!).  We went to parties or tailgates where people drank, a lot, and my parents simply chose not to drink at all instead of avoiding the gatherings.  My youth pastor would play secular music on the church bus and turn it down when a phrase came up that wasn't 'youth group friendly.'  That means he actually knew the songs.  And when I finally learned the truth about Santa and his reindeer... well, it just wasn't that big of a deal (except to the girl I broke the news to in Ms. Moon's 4th grade class.)  In fact, it was mind-boggling to me to realize that my parents had gone to all that trouble all those years to make Christmas special.  And Santa still came long after I'd gone to college.  It was just as special even after I 'knew.'

I never thought Jesus wasn't real because my parents lived Jesus.  We went to church every week, I saw them studying their Sunday School lesson, and saw our tithe check on the corner of the counter every Sunday morning.  Santa was a once a year deal.  It was fun.  I made lists and sent them to Santa because I was a kid.  And kids do fun things.  Kids dress up and say they're Batman.  Kids think they're going to play in the NFL when they're six.  Kids pretend to be princesses.  Kids think Lightnin' McQueen is a real car.

I fear that we have forgotten how to be fun as Christians.  We have an Elf on the Shelf because it's fun, but I remind my children all the time that God is always watching us, and our biggest motivation to behave and make good decisions is to please and honor God.  But for three weeks, the Elf (Russ, in our house) is fun.  Christians have different convictions.  Some people feel really strongly about Santa and anything secular at Christmas.  That's okay.  But I hope those Christians know how to have fun.  I think God smiles at good-natured fun.  Moreover, I think the world looks at us like we're weird and shuts the door on a conversation with us when we can't have fun.  Now, as Christ-Followers, we are weird.  We are ruled by radical hospitality and amazing grace, something strange to the rest of the world.  However, when we call 'everything' that didn't originate from the Church worldly, evil or "secular," outsiders begin to wonder if they can even be our friends.  It just seems to me that it's okay to have fun.  And I think kids like fun, and I think they understand the difference between fun and the Solid Rock upon which we have built our family.