I am passionate about the spiritual development of children, and I long to see churches get beyond the existing models of Christian education. We need to do much more than educate; we must disciple our children and set them within the mold so that as they grow, they can expand into an image of Jesus. It would be easy (in fact, it happens in churches today) to let kids who naturally see the world in black and white (Mommy is good; burglars are bad) to continue to put themselves (their presence, thoughts, and actions) and other people (and their presence, thoughts, and actions) into categories. But as we all learn through adolescence and adulthood, not much in the world is black and white. Every parent of older children knows this struggle. You have children who, for the first seven or so years, see nothing but the absolute best in you, no matter what you do. Even if they are really mad at you, you are never wrong. Then, as they move into their eighth, ninth, or tenth grade years, they start to realize that sometimes Mom and Dad aren’t right. Sometimes Mom and Dad don’t have all the answers, and in fact sometimes their solutions are wrong. Is Mom really bad? Is Dad not always right? It’s painful on both sides. Parents become fallen gods; children become jaded.

We need to trust that God will meet us in the gray areas—in the places where burglars are transformed by grace and mommies make mistakes sometimes but hopefully make amends—to be willing to rip off the lens of “this is good, that is bad” and turn our faces to Jesus in these places where he will heal our faith. It is part of the great mystery. The prepackaged categories the church offers do not fit the real world. How can we expect our children to act in love and not fear if we are not portraying grace and redemption when we encounter or exemplify broken people, or when angry, abusive, and belligerent people unwittingly crash our lives? It will happen. We will encounter the argumentative drunk at the ballpark or the cursing parent in the grocery store. Telling our children that these people are bad does not offer them a biblical understanding; it is untrue. We have the chance to explain that shalom was broken in Eden, that Jesus restored shalom within our hearts with his sacrificial love, and that God can bring wholeness again to this broken world. Christine Sine explains the Hebrew understanding of brokenness:

Essentially the Fall unleashed the forces of “anti-shalom” ripping apart the harmony and mutual love of God‘s original creation. It broke God’s shalom relationships and fractured the spirit of togetherness that bound us to God, to each other and to God’s creation. Exploitation, oppression, poverty, death and disease, war and violence, discrimination between male and female and across racial boundaries and the destruction and abuse of creation all gradually invaded our world as a result of the Fall.

If we are raising young Christians to see things as good or bad, if we are making disciples who categorize things as sacred or secular, then we will be inclined to avoid the secular and vilify the bad; this is not the gospel according to Jesus. Could there be any pattern that seems less like the activity of Jesus? Our King did not enter into this fallen world to be a bystander amid brokenness. Just the opposite: he was drawn to it. As you read the Gospels, you would think Jesus aimed his path with GPS precision to the places where brokenness, disease, sickness, and depravity abounded most:

In Jerusalem they came upon a pool by the sheep gate surrounded by five covered porches. In Hebrew, this place is called Bethesda. Crowds of people lined the area, lying around the porches. As they walked among the crowds it became clear that all of these people were disabled in some way; some were blind, lame, paralyzed, or plagued by diseases [and they were waiting for the waters to move. From time to time, a heavenly messenger would come to stir the water in the pool. Whoever reached the water first and got in after it was agitated would be healed of his or her disease.] In the crowd, Jesus noticed one particular man who had been living with his disability for 38 years. He knew this man had been waiting here a long time.

Jesus (to the disabled man): Are you here in this place hoping to be healed?

Disabled Man: Kind sir, I wait, like all of these people, for the waters to stir, but I cannot walk. If I am to be healed in the waters, someone must carry me into the pool. So, the answer to Your question is yes—but I cannot be healed here unless someone will help me. Without a helping hand, someone else beats me to the waters each time it is stirred.

Jesus: Stand up, carry your mat, and walk.

At the moment Jesus uttered these words a healing energy coursed through the man and returned life to his limbs—he stood and walked for the first time in 38 years. But this was the Sabbath Day, and any work, including carrying a mat, was prohibited on this day. (John 5:2–9)

In a cesspool of sickness and disease that all people would rightly avoid, Jesus walks right in and touches the suffering. He comes to us in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets, declaring the need for justice, but he enters the world in an entirely new way. He was not just calling God’s people to change; he was making that change possible. Too often when we hear the word prophet we think of someone who has—or claims to have—supernatural powers. Prophets, we might think, are people who can predict the future, or who have a special connection to the Almighty, that the rest of us should listen to because they are taking cosmic dictation. But Jesus and the Jews of his day understood prophets in a different way. To them the prophets were the people given to the Jewish nation by God to tell them the hard truths, to call them to live in ways that honored God and not the false gods of power, wealth, sex, and security. They would, as Walter Brueggemann says, simultaneously paint us a picture of the world as it is and as it should be.

Excerpted from The Gospel According to Jesus by Chris Seay, by permission of Thomas Nelson, Inc.