The Minister and the Boy: A Handbook for Churchmen Engaged in Boys' Work

by Allan Hoben

Possibly this reorganization involved in the adolescent flux and reflection cannot be altogether avoided, but with proper care much could be done to lessen its dangers and to preserve a substantial continuity of religious experience from childhood through youth and to the end of life. It is a help not to have to be introduced to an altogether new God in these succeeding stages. To preserve his identity enriches and safeguards the life.

The imagination and wonder instinct of the child, his use of "natural religion," his confirmation in habits of prayer, reverence, and worship, his acquisition of choice religious literature by memorizing--can these interests be properly cared for without putting upon him a theological yoke which will subsequently involve pain and perhaps apostasy?

It is undoubtedly easier to point out the desirability of furnishing childhood with the materials of a time-proof religion than to provide such an instrument. And it is less difficult to criticize the indiscriminate use of the Bible in instructing the young than to set forth the type of education in religion which will satisfy alike the mental requirements of childhood and youth. What course should be followed with the pre-adolescent boy in order that the youth may be not less but more religious?

In offering any suggestion in this direction it should be borne in mind that natural religion or the religion of nature makes a strong appeal to the child. He readily believes in the presence of God in animate nature with all its wonder and beauty. Creatorship and the expression of the divine will in the normal processes are taken for granted. The orderly world is to him proof of mind and method; and perhaps the first mistake in the average religious teaching is the departure from this broad basis of faith to what is termed "revealed religion" and is at the same time the religion of miracle. The introduction of miracle as a basis of faith amounts to sowing the seeds of adolescent skepticism.

The child should be taught to deal with Jewish folk-lore as with that of any other people. While the incomparable religious value of the biblical literature should be used to the full, the Bible as a book should not be given artificial ranking. Nor should any belief contrary to his reason be imposed as an obligation. But the ever-open possibility of things that surpass present human comprehension should be preserved, and the sense of wonder which the scientist may ever have should be carefully nurtured. If the teacher violates the child's right to absolute honesty here let him not bemoan nor condemn the skepticism of later years.

The child can also believe in the presence of God in his own moral discernment. He can be taught to obey his sense of "ought" and to enjoy thereby, from very early years, a rich measure of harmony. Through such experience he discovers to himself the joy of being at one with God. He has proof of the constructive power of righteousness, and conversely he learns the destructive power of sin. He finds that the constituted order is essentially moral and that the duty of all alike is to conform to that fact.

He can easily comprehend also the struggle of the better self to rule over the worse self. The battle of the rational and spiritual to gain supremacy over the instinctive and animalistic is known to him. To be master of himself and to exercise a control that is more and more spiritual, to get the better of things and circumstances, to reduce his world to obedience to his gradually enlightened will--that is his task. In this he proves, under right guidance, the supremacy of the spiritual and may be encouraged to project it into a hope of personal immortality.

Very early, too, he gets some proof of the fact of human solidarity; especially so if he has brothers and sisters. The social character of good and the anti-social character of bad conduct is demonstrated day in and day out in the family. And enlargement of the concentric circles that bound his life only demonstrates over and over again the social nature of goodness. On this basis sufficient inspiration for personal righteousness and altruism is afforded by the world's need of just these things. Every normal child responds to the appeal of living to make the world better. Children always "want to help."

Apart from every speculative question the child accepts the ethical leadership of Jesus. And he should understand that discipleship consists in conduct that conforms to His spirit. To make the test creedal is not only contrary to the intensely pragmatic character of childhood but inimical to the resistless spirit of inquiry and speculation which breaks out in reflective youth. Childhood needs a religion of deeds. If a religion of dogma and detached sentiment is substituted the youth may some day awake to the fact that he can throw the whole thing overboard and experience a relief rather than a loss. If from his earliest experience in the home he has lived under the wholesome influence of applied rather than speculative Christianity, he will be spared much of the danger incident to theological reconstruction.

In emphasizing this point of applied Christianity, and as illustrating the fact that the boy's initial religious struggle, which necessitates a quest for God, centers about concrete temptations, it may be in place to make mention of a problem which lies very close to personal religion and social welfare. On the one hand the very altruism which is exalted and glorified in religion has its physical basis in the sex life, and on the other hand the sex life, unless it be guarded by religious control, ever threatens to devastate all the higher values of the soul. Hence the problem of the boy's personal purity has profound religious significance.