"inasmuch as parents have children in Zion, or in any of her stakes which are organized, that teach them not to understand the doctrine of repentance, faith in Christ the Son of the living God, and of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the hands, when eight years old, the sin be upon the heads of the parents."
The theory of moral agency predicts that all of God's children who have advanced to their mortal test will choose the wrong, that this mortal space will therefore be full of sin and its consequences, itself being part of the test conditions, and that there will be a range of the acceptance of the saving doctrines, even among those who have the advantage of learning them from birth in a home filled with the Spirit and excellent models of Christ-like living. Loving families which take seriously the responsibility to teach moral principles, and instill faith in the Redeemer early give their children the best chance of retaining that faith, but since we are all agents unto ourselves, the most pious, most effective, and most thorough teachings within the family are never sufficient to induce individual testimony. Those have to be earned personally. The best parents, therefore, have an uphill climb to indoctrinate their children while young enough. They can do everything right, and still have children whose free will is simply to reject the Savior and His Church, or simply fail to take up their responsibility to find out for themselves what is true and right and eternally worthwhile.
But indoctrination is what's required. It is a full immersion in the demonstration of being all-in for the Lord that is necessary. Faith is built on work, and while the youngest can't comprehend the full meaning of the commitment the Lord asks, they can and must be taught to build the habits of faith that insure the best chance at internalizing the truth.
Someone I knew whose relationship with the church was itself tenuous felt that it was unfair to bring children to church every Sunday, get them involved in church-centered peer group activities, and hold family devotional time, or even lead daily family prayers. They are young. That's manipulative, isn't it? Why not wait until they're old enough to understand intellectually what's going on, and what their choices are. Then they can make a free choice in full light of their moral and intellectual faculties.
I get where he's coming from, but it's wrong-headed and betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what faith is. Faith is hard. It takes effort to build. By delaying the introduction of the principles, and the building up of the muscles of faith until the child has the intellectual capacity to judge the consequences for themselves, you've ensured that they are too weak to see faith as anything but the hard and inconvenient choice. You've brought the child to the starting line of a marathon before their first 3k. You've plunked the child down at a test on integral calculus without their first lessons in geometry or arithmetic. You've crippled their capacity for understanding delayed gratification and for orienting their aims toward higher goals than themselves when you tell them they don't have to choose until they are "old enough to know", because knowing the benefits of being 100% committed to something in order to compare apples to apples requires that they have some experience being 100% committed to something--even when they don't feel like it, even when they don't "want to", even when peers or temptations, or mistakes make it hard. In order for the choice to actually be fair, they have to have been insiders long enough to have a sense of the long-term benefits on the inside.
And actually, indoctrination is happening whether you do it or not. The question isn't if, it's who. If you're not indoctrinating your kids, you're leaving it to someone else--someone more worldly. Someone less inclined to show your child that putting down a temporary pleasure now to work on something worthwhile is a noble sacrifice, one that prepares you for service, for growth, and for taking on the burdens of life when life gets hard.
So take your window and use it to the max. Christ has absorbed the consequences for all mistakes before age eight. Why that age? Not because 8-year-olds are fully cognizant of all the pros and cons of covenanting with Christ. But maybe because that is roughly the age they begin to develop their own moral skills--where they BEGIN to become accountable, and therefore where a wrong choice MAY be imputed to their guilt. Does this mean the parents are fully off the hook at baptism time? Nope. Children still need moral training, probably even long into what we consider adulthood. There's no scriptural date that defines an age or other sign of when the process of becoming accountable completes, only when it begins. In fact, there's a case to be made that even the most intelligent, most morally upright, and most in tune adults still have no fair warning about the nature of the eternal consequences of any of their decisions--we simply have no clue what eternal guilt or blessing feel like. It devolves to poetry to even attempt some explanation of the rewards or punishments of God. We can know with a surety that our choices are good when they are, because of their direction, not out of a rational comprehension of what it takes to obtain X eternal outcome. This life has a veil. We must make our choices in faith, without full knowledge.
So what are the key basics we need to build personal testimony on and instill personal faith-enhancing habits around? Long before the 13 Articles of Faith were published, this passage lists them: personal faith in Christ (subordinating all acts to the belief that He saves), repentance (allowing Him to change our penitent hearts for the better), baptism (submission to an authorized ritual symbolizing the start of covenantal belonging with Christ), and the Gift of the Holy Ghost (acceptance of His direction as ordained through His authorized representatives). Don't stop reading, though. Other key principles beyond this verse include: prayer; walking in His ways, or obedience to His commandments and observance of His prescribed rituals, Sabbath observance in particular; and continual expenditure of energy for the benefit of others.
Notice that the Sabbath observance and the labor on the other days are messages not just for pre-baptismal children, but for all the inhabitants of Zion. Notice that Zion is a society composed of covenant makers and keepers, of individuals of strength and conviction who spend their energy for the benefit of all--family first, but then beyond as efforts yield profits. Notice that this passage contains the first references to "stakes" of Zion--a line-crossing new distinction in the Church which will more and more come to remove false hope for a single centralized territory as Zion's main definition, and will instead anchor in the minds of the Saints that wherever the Church is firmly established, Zion societies can result. Stakes--or local iterations of Zion--are not yet a concept the Lord has fully revealed and described at this point, and yet the allusion to them is part and parcel of the surrounding thinking on missionary work, parental roles, and the administration of temporal affairs by Bishops. As parents teach their children to walk in God's ways, their families resemble and strengthen Zion. As missionaries serve and teach those past the "starting" age of accountability to take on Christ's covenants, new individuals and families join and add their strength to Zion. As high priests act in the office of bishop, exercising their keys of the spiritual judgment and temporal welfare of Zion, its material and spiritual strength expands. Its stakes strengthen. Its tent is metaphorically stretching to cover its inhabitants more firmly, more protectively, more fully with Christ as the center pole supporting the entire structure.
Families, stakes of Zion, covenants are all pulling those of every age toward their eventual accountability before Christ whose coverage on judgment day will enable only those who have accepted Him to escape the Father's justice. I pray that He will say to you and I: well done, thou good and faithful servant.
No comments:
Post a Comment