The Minister and the Boy Part 6

Whatever demoralizes the home, degrades the community, and crushes out idealism also d.a.m.ns the souls of little children. It requires no deep investigation of modern society to prove that this is being done, and the guilt of economic injustice and rapacity is measured ultimately in the cost to the human spirit which in every child pleads for life and opportunity, and, alas, too often pleads in vain.

The pre-adolescent and imitative religious life of the boy is fairly communicative, but as soon as the actual struggle of achieving a personal religion sets in under the p.u.b.ertal stress the sphinx itself is not more reticent. The normal boy is indisposed to talk about the affairs of his inner life. Probably they are too chaotic to formulate even to himself. If he is unspoiled he clothes his soul with a spiritual modesty which some of his sentimental elders might well cultivate. If he does break silence it will probably be in terms of the religious cult that has given him nurture. For all of these reasons it is exceedingly difficult to trace with certainty the development of his personal religion.

The indubitable and hopeful fact is that in every normal boy the potent germ of religion is present. Usually in early adolescence it bursts its casings and shoots into consciousness, powerfully affecting the emotions and the will. Certain stages of this process will be in the nature of crisis according to the strength of the opposition encountered in the personal moral struggle, and in opposing social conditions. Nothing but calamity can forestall this progressive moral adjustment to the whole world. To believe otherwise is to indict G.o.d for the purpose of covering our own blunders. In proportion as society prevents or perverts this moral outreach after G.o.d, it pollutes and endangers itself. The atmosphere that kills the lily creates the stench.

In the pa.s.sage of the boy's religious life from the imitative type to the personal and energized form, or, as he experiences conversion, the battle is usually waged about some _concrete moral problem._ His conscience has become sensitive with regard to profanity, lying, impurity, or some particular moral weakness or maladjustment and his struggle centers on that. Being often defeated under the adolescent sense--pressure and confusion, he naturally seeks help, and help from the highest source of virtue. He has secreted somewhere in his heart ulterior ideals of service, but for the time being his chief concern is very properly himself; for if he "loses out" with himself he knows that all other worthy ambitions are annulled.

But a religious culture that keeps him in this self-centered feverish state is pathetically morbid and harmful. It short-circuits the religious life. This is the chief criticism of the devotional type of Christian culture. It seeks to prolong a crisis and often begets insincerity or disgust. The real priest of boyhood will certainly stand near by at this all-important time, but he will always manifest a refined respect for the birth-chamber of the soul. In patient and hopeful sympathy, in friendship that is personal and not professional, knowing that the door of the heart is opened only from within, the true minister, like his Master, waits. He knows, too, that a few words suffice in the great decisions of life, and that the handclasp of manly love speaks volumes. The prime qualification is a friendship that invites and respects confidence and a life that is above criticism.

Another important aid in bringing the boy over the threshold of vital and purposeful religion is the favorable influence of his group or "gang." The disposition to move together which is so p.r.o.nounced in every other field must not be ignored here. The ideal club will be bringing the boy toward the altar of the church and at the right point along the way the minister who is properly intimate with each boy will be a.s.sured in private conference of the good faith and earnest purpose of his prospective church member.

Before receiving boys into active church membership it is well that they be given a course of instruction in a preparatory cla.s.s. Only so can the fundamentals of religion and the duties of church membership be intelligently grasped. The value to the boy is also enhanced when the ceremony of induction is made _formal and impressive_ to a degree that shall not be surpa.s.sed in his entrance into any other organization. By all means the boy should not be neglected after he has been received into the church. Mistakes of this sort are common wherever undue importance attaches to the conversion experience, and the numerical ideal of church success prevails. If the task becomes too great for the pastor let him find a responsible "big brother" for every boy received into the church.

As the critical or skeptical traits of youth develop in later adolescence the intellectual formulas and supports of religion will be overhauled. What the boy has brought over out of the early imitative and memorizing period of life will probably come up for review in later adolescence. If his inherited theology corresponds to experience and verifies itself in the light of the scientific methods of school and college no great difficulty will be experienced. But if it does not square with the youth's set of verifiable facts then there is added to his necessary moral struggle for self-possession and spiritual control the unnecessary and dangerous quest for a new faith, so that he is forced to swap horses in midstream and when the spring freshet is on.

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 G.o.d in these succeeding stages. To preserve his ident.i.ty 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 G.o.d 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 surpa.s.s 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d. He has proof of the constructive power of righteousness, and conversely he learns the destructive power of sin. He finds that the const.i.tuted 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 subst.i.tuted 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 ill.u.s.trating the fact that the boy's initial religious struggle, which necessitates a quest for G.o.d, 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 s.e.x life, and on the other hand the s.e.x 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.

As yet there is little consensus of opinion as to the best way of keeping him pure. Parents, educators, and religious leaders, however, are showing increased concern over this difficult problem, and there is good ground to believe that prudery and indifference must gradually give place to frank and intelligent consideration of this vital and difficult subject.

It must be granted, however, that it is as impossible as it is undesirable to keep the boy ignorant. His own natural curiosity, together with his school and street experience, are fatal to such a Fool's Paradise. Moreover, the general att.i.tude of suppression and secrecy rather stimulates curiosity, and often amounts to the plain implication that everything that has to do with the perpetuation of our species is of necessity evil and shameful. This "conspiracy of silence"

makes against true virtue. Religious instruction, based upon the confession of the repentant David, "Behold, I was begotten in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me," has helped to perpetuate a sinister att.i.tude toward this whole question--an att.i.tude not without some foundation in the moral history of man.

It has also been convenient and consistent, in support of the doctrine of man's depravity, to exploit this dark view so as to make him a fit subject for redemption. Somehow, the traditional "Fall" and procreation have been so a.s.sociated in religious thinking that it has been practically impossible for the religious mind to entertain any favorable consideration of the physical conditions of human genesis. Very naturally that which is under the ban, being the seat of human sin, the bond that binds each generation to fallen Adamic nature, must take its place as surrept.i.tious and evil--and never positively within the sanctioned and ordained agencies of G.o.d.

Does such an att.i.tude contribute to man's highest good and to the strength and scope of religious control? Is it better to alienate and outlaw so important a phase of human existence or to bring it into intelligent accord with the divine will? Is it not conceivable that in this field, as in every other that is normal to human life, there will be a gain to humanity, and to the value of religion as a helper of mankind, by a frank attempt to bring the whole life to the dignifying conception of a reasonable service to one's Maker?

Granting that such an attempt is desirable, we come face to face with the necessity of imparting such information as will make the boy's way of duty plain, and will elevate the subject to a place of purity and religious worth. In this process of instruction, which is nothing less than a sacred responsibility, the most common fault of the parent, physician, teacher, and pastor is that of delay. By the time a boy is eight years of age, he should have been informed as to his residence within and his birth from his mother, and this in such a way as wonderfully to deepen his love for her, and to beget in him a respect for all women to the end of his life.

It is well that the mother should first inform him in that spirit of utmost confidence which shall preclude his indiscriminate talk with other people upon this subject. He should know, too, that further information will be given as he needs it, and that he can trust his parents to be frank and true with him in this as in everything else. By all means let the mother tell the story and not some unfortunately vicious or polluted companion. There are three reasons at least for informing him thus early in life. One is that sufficient curiosity has usually developed by this time, another is that the first information should come from a pure source, and a third is that this instruction should antic.i.p.ate s.e.x consciousness and the indecent language and suggestions of school and street.

In the same spirit will the father impart to the boy a little later the fact of the original residence within himself of the seed from which the boy grew. By the father's reverent treatment of the subject in the hour of a boy's confidence, and in response to his just curiosity, he may hallow forever the boy's conception of the marriage relation and emphasize the vast amount of tenderness and regard that is due every mother. For the boy to feel sure that he has been told the truth by his father, and to realize that his father regards these facts in an honorable and clean way, will rob a thousand indecent stories of their damage.

It belongs to the father to redeem the boy's idea of human procreation from obscenity, and, under right conditions, to have this process regarded by his boy as the most wonderful responsibility that falls to man. Sometime before the boy has reached thirteen, the father will have explained to him the facts and temptations of the p.u.b.escent period. The crime of allowing boys in middle and later adolescence to worry themselves sick over normal nocturnal emissions, and often to fall into the hands of the quack, or of the advocate of illicit intercourse, lies at the door of the negligent father.

The enervating results of self-abuse, the loss of manliness and self-respect, and the possible damage to future offspring will have weight in safeguarding the boy who has already been fortified by a high and just conception of the procreative power which is to be his.

Moreover, in the severe battle that is waged for self-control, the boy should be given every aid of proper hygiene in clothing, sleeping conditions, baths, exercise, diet, and social intercourse. Plenty of exercise but not thorough exhaustion, good athletic ideals, a spare diet at night, good hours, and freedom from evil suggestion, entertainments, or reading; his time and attention healthfully occupied--these precautions, in addition to enlightenment as above indicated, will, if there are no conditions calling for minor surgery, go a long way toward preserving the boy's integrity under the temptations incident to s.e.x life. It is to be feared that many boys have been wronged by the failure of parents and physicians to have some slight operation--either circ.u.mcision or its equivalent--performed in the early days of infancy.

Books on the subject are not best for the boy. They tend to make him morbid and often stimulate the evil which they seek to cure. Nor is it wise, prior to the age of fifteen, to open up the loathsome side of the subject, concerning the diseases that are the outcome of the social evil. After that age, talks by a reputable physician, pointing out the terrible results to oneself, his wife, and his descendants, may be fitting and helpful. The minister should make frequent use of the physician in having him address on different occasions the fathers and the mothers of the boys. To hold such meetings in the church building is an altogether worthy use of the inst.i.tution.

In cases where parent and physician have failed to do their duty, and the pastor is on proper terms of friendship with the boy, it becomes his duty to tell the boy plainly and purely a few of the important things which he ought to know in order to avoid moral shipwreck.

If credence is to be given to the startling reports of immorality in high schools, based, as is commonly claimed, upon ignorance, then the time has certainly come for plain speech, and the boys and girls should be gathered together in separate companies for instruction in s.e.x hygiene and morality. Any education which makes no deliberate attempt to conserve human happiness and social welfare in this important respect is inadequate and culpable. The testimony that comes from juvenile courts, girls' rescue homes, and boys' reformatories const.i.tutes a grave indictment of society for its neglect to impart proper information.

It is part of the minister's task to work for a better day in this as in every phase of moral achievement. Next to the physician he best knows the mental and physical suffering, the moral defeat, and the awful injustice to women and children whom the libertine pollutes with incurable diseases. If he is a true pastor, he will strive to keep the boys pure through expert instruction to parents, through personal advice, through wholesome activity and recreation, through courses on s.e.xual hygiene in the public schools, through war on indecency in billboard, dance, and theater, through absolute chast.i.ty of speech, and, in general, through an ideal of life and service which shall lift the boys' ambitions out of the low and unhealthy levels of sense gratification. To put the spiritual nature in control is his high and sacred opportunity.

The importance of the minister's part in this struggle for the body and soul of youth is based upon the fact that in this critical encounter there is no aid that is comparable with religion. Thousands of honest, serious-minded men frankly confess that in modern conditions they see little hope of this battle being won without religion as a sanction of right conduct. The boy needs G.o.d, a G.o.d to whom he can pray in the hour of temptation. He needs to regard his life with all its powers as G.o.d's investment, which he must not squander or pervert.

Here, as everywhere else in boy-life, the loyalty appeal, which, as nothing else, will keep him true to mother and father, to society, and to G.o.d, stands the religious leader in good stead. Upon honor he will not violate the confidence of his parents, and the trust imposed in him by his Maker. Upon honor he will deport himself toward the opposite s.e.x as he would wish other boys to regard his own sister; and the religious teacher has it within his power, if he will keep in touch with boys, to create and preserve an ideal of manly chivalry that will effectively withstand both the insidious temptations of secret sin and the bolder inducements of social vice.

This can never be done by the formal work of the pulpit alone. Nothing but the influence of a pure, strong man, mediated in part through the parents of the boy, supported by scientific facts, and operating directly on the boy's life, through the mighty medium of a personal friendship, can perform this saving ministry. If there were nothing more to be gained through intimate acquaintance with boys than thus fortifying them in this one inevitable and prolonged struggle, it would warrant all the energy and time consumed in the minister's attempt to enter into the hallowed friendship and frank admiration of the boys of his parish.

For such reasons it is important that the implications of discipleship be made very plain to the boy, and this in terms of specific conduct in the home, at school, on the playground, at work, and in all the usual social relations. Without this, there may be fatal inconsistencies in the boy's conduct, not because he is essentially vicious, but because he has been unable to interpret high-sounding sermons and biblical ideals in terms of commonplace duty. If the evangelical message encourages, condones, or permits this divorce, it becomes an instrument of incalculable harm. Boys must be held to a high and reasonable standard of personal duty and group endeavor.

From this point of view the weakest feature of the church boys' club is its tendency to overlook specific work for others. The serious-minded leader will not be altogether satisfied in merely holding boys together for a "good time," wholesome as that may be. The service ideal must be incorporated in the activities of the club. The nascent altruism of the boy should receive impetus and direction and the members should engage in united and intelligent social service. Give the boy a worthy job; give him a hard job; give him a job that calls for team work; and give him help and appreciation in the doing of it.

It is sometimes difficult to devise and execute a program of this kind because of the limited opportunities of the particular town in which the club exists and the narrow ideals of the church with which the club is affiliated. Yet it is always preferable to enlist the boys in some altruistic enterprise which lies close enough at hand to give it the full weight of reality. Only so can we satisfy the concrete value-judgment of the young matriculant in the great school of applied religion.

This, however, should not be to the exclusion of those vast idealistic movements for human good embodied in world-wide missionary propaganda of a medical, educational, and evangelistic type. Only, taking the boy as he is, it is not best to begin with these, because of their lack of reality to him and because of his inability to partic.i.p.ate except by proxy. It is well that he should extend himself to some faraway need by contributing of his means, but these gifts will get their proper significance and his philanthropic life will preserve its integrity by performing the particular service which to his own immediate knowledge needs to be done.

The proper care and beautifying of the streets and public places in his own community, the collection of literature for prisoners or the inmates of asylums or hospitals near at hand, supplying play equipment, clothing, or any useful thing for unfortunate boys in congested city districts, helping the minister and church in the distribution of printed matter and alms, aiding smaller boys in the organization of their games, helping some indigent widow, giving an entertainment, selling tickets, souvenirs, or any merchantable article which they may properly handle for the purpose of devoting the profits to some immediate charity; making for sale articles in wood, metal, or leather for the same purpose; winning other boys from bad a.s.sociations to the better influences of their own group, helping in the conduct of public worship by song or otherwise, acting as messengers and minute-men for the pastor--something of this sort should engage part of their time and attention in order that they may be drawn into harmony with the spirit of the church.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CASE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SALVATION]

Ordinarily the general administration of the church could be made more effective and the standard activities more attractive if the preacher would keep the boy in mind in constructing and ill.u.s.trating his sermons and would make appeal to the known interests of boyhood; and if music committees would adopt a policy for the development and use of his musical ability instead of stifling and ignoring this valuable religious a.s.set and rendering the boy, so far forth, useless to and estranged from the purposes and activities of the church. In church music the paid quartette alone means the way of least resistance and of least benefit, and it is a harmful device if it means the failure of the church to enlist boys in the rare religious development to be achieved in sacred song and in partic.i.p.ation in public worship. It is to be regretted that hymns suited to boyhood experience are very rare and that so little effort is made to interest and use the boy in the stated worship of the church.

But if these evils were remedied there would still be the problem of the Sunday school which, although generally a worthy inst.i.tution, usually succeeds at the cost of the church-going habit which might otherwise be cultivated in the boy. To make a Sunday-school boy instead of a church boy is a net loss, and with the present Sunday congestion there is little likelihood of securing both of these ends. Probably it will become necessary to transfer what is now Sunday-school work to week-day periods as well as to renovate public worship before a new generation of churchmen can be guaranteed.

In the meantime, loyalty cultivated by a variety of wholesome contacts largely outside of traditional church work must serve to win and retain the boys of today. For loyalty to the minister who serves them readily pa.s.ses over into loyalty to the church which he likewise serves.

Wherever the club is made up predominantly of boys from the church families, it will be well to have an occasional service planned especially for the boys themselves--one which they will attend in a body. Such a Sunday-evening service for boys and young men may be held regularly once a month with good success, and the value of such meetings is often enhanced by short talks from representative Christian laymen.

Demands for service as well as the important questions of personal religion should be dealt with in a manly, straightforward way. Beating about the bush forfeits the boy's respect.

In preaching to boys the minister will appeal frankly to manly and heroic qualities. He will advance no dark premise of their natural estrangement from G.o.d, but will postulate for all a sonship which is at once a divine challenge to the best that is in them and the guaranty that the best is the normal and the G.o.d-intended life. They must qualify for a great campaign under the greatest soul that ever lived. They engage to stand with Him against sin in self and in all the world about, and in proportion as they take on His mission will they realize the necessity of high personal standards and of that help which G.o.d gives to all who are dedicated to the realization of the Kingdom.

The normal boy will not deliberately choose to sponge upon the world. He intends to do the fair thing and to amount to something. He dreams of making his life an actual contribution to the welfare and glory of humanity. When it is put before him rightly he will scorn a selfish misappropriation of his life, and will enter the crusade for the city that hath foundations whose builder and maker is G.o.d. Happy is the minister who has boys that bring their chums to see him for the purpose of enlistment. Happy is the minister whose hand often clasps the outstretched hand of the boy pledging himself to the greatest of all projects--the Kingdom of G.o.d in the earth; to the greatest of all companies--the company of those who in all time have had part in that task; and to the greatest of all captains--Jesus of Nazareth.

CHAPTER IX