revealing

I did not write the following, but I really liked it, and you should read it, because it's so true.


Tim seemed to be a reasonably mature, stable teenager as he prepared to go off for his first year of college. He always looked clean and neat, he was polite, and he did well enough in his high school studies to be accepted by a good university.

It was a real shock to see the contrast between the boy who left in August and the boy who came home for Christmas vacation after the first semester. His once-neat, medium-length hair had become long, dirty, and shapeless. He had gained 25 pounds. He wore a dirty, smelly T-shirt and jeans, both checkered with holes. His tennis shoes were rotting away, and their pungent smell preceded him into a room. Tim's mother was also less than thrilled to discover that he had brought home with him a large laundry bag full of clothes, towels, and sheets for her to wash--none of which gave any evience of having been laundered since he had left the previous summer! Tim's father, on the other hand, contemplated the fact that his son, who had always gotten A's and B's through public shool, had managed at college to achieve one C and three D's, and had avoided an F only by dropping a course before the final exam.

What had happened to Tim? Are these the usual results of a young man going off to college? If so, you might conclude, let's not send our children there. But we had better take a closer look at the facts before we draw a hasty conclusion. in partiular, we need to examine what Tim seemed to be BEFORE leaving for the university.
I mentioned that Tim had seemed to be a reasonably mature 18-year-old, but on closer examination that appearance turned out to be artificial. He always did look neat and clean, but that was because his mother did his laundry and insisted that he wear clean clothes, and his father supervised his haircut and style. The polite manners that he displayed turned out to be the result of a lot of nagging and dire threats from Mom and Dad. His acceptable grades in high school were generated because his parents strictly enforced curfew rules, demanded to see daily work, and promised money and privileges for A's and B's.

In short, what looked like qualities of maturity and character in Tim were in reality a mere facade that was propped up by Mom and Dad. He really had very little character of his own, and that was proven by what happened when Mom and Dad were taken out of the picture: Tim immediately collapsed into a fat blob of immaturity. Without Mom to do his laundry, it didn't get done. Without Dad to make him do his studies, Tim didn't do them. Without anyone telling him when to go to bed, Tim stayed up to all hours, went to late-night fast-food restaurants, and slept through his morning classes. When he came home for Christmas vacation, he exhibited the fruit of four months of undisciplined, unrestrained, immature living.

Did college make him that way? Absolutely not! All going alway to college did was to reveal the lack of character in Tim that was already there by removing his artificial props called parents. In other words, freedom did not make Tim immature; it revealed the immaturity in him that already existed.

[...]

The ultimate practical proof that the law is useless to prduce Christ's life--the fruit of the Spirit--can be seen when it is abruptly removed from the teaching of Christ living in and through you. You'll sometimes see Chrsitians reacting to their newfound "freedom" much like Tim did when he finally escaped from Mom and Dad: They go wild. Then the accusation comes, "See what happes when you don't keep people under the law? They go out and live like the devil. That's what the teaching on freedom produces!"

No! That's what keeping people under the law produces--a total lack of Christian maturity. Taking them out from under the law merely reveals the lack of character in them that already existed. The teaching of God's grace does not make people spiritually immature any more than going away to college made Tim immature.

Bob George, Growing in Grace (Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House Publishers, 1991), 161-163, 165-166.