Striking Out

The Religious Journey of Teenage Boys

Donald Capps

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781610973007
  9781498213752
• eBook ISBN:
  9781621891987
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Whatever religion may have meant to the boy when he was younger, in the teenage years it takes the form of a personal journey or quest. This journey is related to other aspects of his life and is integral to how he experiences himself and others. The title of this volume--Striking Out--has the connotation of the beginning of a journey that will take the boy in new directions, but it also suggests the baseball metaphor of a batter being called out on strikes. The first sense is positive; the second is negative. Together, they express the anticipatory and hopeful nature of the venture, but also the possibility that the undertaking may evoke feelings of fear, frustration, and failure. By focusing on real-life examples of teenage boys (both historical and contemporary), the book presents five typical manifestations of a boy's vulnerabilities as he sets forth on the journey: the stumbler, the struggler, the straggler, the straddler, and the stranger. It explores the ways in which these vulnerabilities may contribute in positive ways to his personal growth and his religious maturity. Throughout this book Gordon W. Allport's classic text The Individual and His Religion draws attention to the claim that a boy's religious sentiment may play a decisive role in the integration of his personality despite its inevitable disparities and uncertainties, and the real-life examples are presented as evidence that this religious sentiment provides direction and clarity of vision as the boy looks toward the future.

1

The Stumbler

As we saw in the introduction, there are several ways a teenage boy may be a Stumbler. One is to trip or miss his step in walking or running, or to walk in an unsteady or awkward manner. A second is to speak, act, or proceed in a confused, blundering manner. A third is to fall into sin or error. A fourth is to discover something by chance, for example, to stumble onto an important clue or insight. In this chapter we will meet teenage boys who have these experiences of stumbling.

A Father’s Advice to His Teenage Son

To set the stage for these accounts, and to underscore the fact that we are concerned here with the religious journey of teenage boys, I suggest that we consider a biblical text that relates to the theme of stumbling. The book of Proverbs is especially appropriate because much of it is presented as a father’s advice to his maturing son. It is easy to imagine that these words of fatherly advice were spoken to the son as he was leaving home, for in the first chapter, the father says, “Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and reject not your mother’s teaching” (1:8). Then he introduces the journey metaphor and tells his son not to consent to the enticement of thieves who ambush passersby and steal their goods. The father says, “My son, do not walk in the way with them, hold back your foot from their paths” (1:15).

Once he has introduced the metaphor of the journey, the father introduces the image of stumbling. He tells his son to “keep sound wisdom and discretion” and not to let them escape from his sight for “then you will walk on your way securely and your foot will not stumble” (3:21–23). Later, the father asks (or pleads with?) his son to hear his instructions and to “be attentive, that you may gain insight” (4:1), and says that he is telling his son these things so that “the years of your life may be many,” for “I have taught you the way of wisdom. I have led you in the paths of uprightness. When you walk your step will not be hampered; and if you run, you will not stumble” (4:10–12).

He issues another word of caution against walking in the way of evil men, men who cannot go to sleep at night “unless they have made someone stumble” (4:16), then observes that it is not all that difficult to distinguish the path of righteousness from the path of wickedness because the path of righteousness “is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day” while the way of the wicked “is like deep darkness; they do not know over what they stumble” (4:18–19). Of course, one can stumble during the day when it is light, but one is far more likely to stumble at night when it is dark.

The father concludes these instructions to his son—who is about to strike out on his own—by advising him:

Let your eyes look directly forward,

and your gaze be straight before you.

Take heed to the path of your feet,

then all your ways will be sure.

Do not swerve to the right or to the left;

turn your foot away from evil. (4:25–26)

The implication is that evil lurks in the bushes alongside the pathway, for this is where those who are up to no good hide and ambush those who are journeying from home to their intended destination. These evil men will be attempting to entice him, a young man just starting out, to join them; so if he keeps his eyes on the pathway ahead he will not see them and they will not be able to catch his gaze. This also implies that the eyes have a direct effect on the feet—if the eyes turn one way or the other, the feet are likely to turn as well, and stumbling may result.

Much of what the father has to say here is cautionary, especially in its emphasis on avoiding the evil men whom the son is likely to encounter as he leaves home and strikes out on his journey. But the words also include a strong note of promise, namely, that if the son follows his father’s advice, the years of his life will be many. As we know from the genealogies in the Bible (for example, Gen 5:3–32 and 11:10–32), a very high premium was placed on living a long life. In effect, a long life was a sign of God’s favor. But there was also the belief that a long life has intrinsic value because it enables one to do more good. For example, “A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children” (Prov 13:22). There is much greater likelihood of his doing this if he is actually around to witness the birth of his children’s children. But this is just one of the many ways in which a longer life affords more opportunities to do good things for others.

As we have seen, the father’s instructions focus a great deal on avoiding the evil men who are lurking in the bushes. Later, however, there is a proverb that makes this observation:

He who walks with wise men becomes wise,

but the companion of fools will suffer harm. (13:20)

Here the focus is not on the men who are lurking in the bushes but on one’s traveling companions. These may be persons with whom one begins the journey, or persons whom one meets along the way who, unlike the men lurking in the bushes, are also on a journey. The message here is that one will be better off if one chooses wise rather than foolish traveling companions A sign that one has chosen wise companions is that one becomes wiser oneself. Conversely, a sign that one has chosen foolish companions is that one suffers harm to oneself. The father here seems to know from his own personal experience what he is talking about. After all, appearances can be deceiving, and one may not be able to tell which companions are wise and which are foolish until one has traveled a reasonable distance in their respective company.

Finally, a father’s instructions to his son who is just striking out on his journey would not be complete if it did not say something about the Creator. As we saw in the introduction, the religious quest, from its beginnings to the end of the road, is a solitary one. On the other hand, “a man’s religion is the audacious bid he makes to bind himself to creation and to the Creator.”1 The father in the book of Proverbs has this to say:

A man’s mind plans his way,

but the LORD directs his steps. (16:9)

This way of viewing the relationship between the traveler and the Lord may be a bit surprising, for teenagers are often advised to seek God’s plan for their lives and then to follow it to the best of their ability. The proverb suggests almost the opposite: use your own mind to plan your way—in other words, decide on your destination—and once this has been decided, the Lord will direct your steps. The way you go is up to you and your best judgment, and the Lord’s role is to direct your steps, how you put one foot forward, then another and another.

This may appear to be a rather minor role for the Lord to play. But it actually underscores the importance of the stumbling motif: The Lord knows that stumbling is always a real possibility but is there to help you not to stumble and fall. Another proverb suggests that the Lord is very much involved in the destination as well:

Many are the plans in the mind of a man,

but it is the purpose of the LORD that will be established. (19:21)

Although this proverb may appear to contradict the previous one, this is not necessarily the case, for this proverb focuses on the fact that a person may be mulling over many different and perhaps irreconcilable plans, so the fact that one can rely on the Lord to arrest all of this mental confusion and resolve it in favor of his own purposes can come as a very welcome relief. This, however, is not the same situation as when a person strikes out on a journey toward a certain destination but encounters some rough spots along the way that may cause him to trip or miss his step—the situation, in other words, that concerns us here. For this situation, just knowing that the Lord will be there to direct his steps, and thus to minimize the number of missteps and their resulting harm, can be enormously reassuring. This is especially the case for a teenage boy who knows that the journey is long and the destination itself is uncertain.

Saint Augustine: Stumbling into Sin and Error

If the advice of a father to his son in the Proverbs warrants our attention, we can also learn a lot about stumbling from the very first Christian autobiography, the Confessions of Saint Augustine. In fact, if the father in Proverbs warns his son to avoid the company of thieves, Augustine tells us about what happened to him when he and some boys engaged in an act of theft. In the second chapter of his autobiography he tells about an episode that occurred in his sixteenth year, which he spent in idleness waiting to begin his studies at Carthage where he would take a course of studies intended to prepare him for a career in law.2 His family home was in Thagaste (in northern Africa), but he had been going to school in the nearby town of Madauros, where he studied literature and oratory. But his studies there were interrupted because his father wanted to send him to Carthage instead. So he was called home and spent several months in idleness. This hiatus saved money that would otherwise have been spent on his education in Madauros and also provided time for his father to raise the necessary funds for him to attend the university in Carthage (which was about 275 miles from Thagaste). Augustine notes:

At the time everyone was full of praise for my father because he spent money on his son beyond the means of his estate, when that was necessary to finance an education entailing a long journey. Many citizens of far greater wealth did nothing of the kind for their children. But this same father did not care what character before you I was developing, or how chaste I was so long as I possessed a cultured tongue—though my culture really meant a desert uncultivated by you, God. You are the one true and good lord of your land, which is my heart.3

He tells two stories about what happened during his year of idleness. The first was when he and his father were in the bathhouse and his father “saw that I was showing signs of virility and the stirrings of adolescence,” and was “overjoyed to suppose that he would soon be having grandchildren, and told my mother so.”4 His mother did not share his father’s enthusiasm in this regard. He says, in fact, “she feared the twisted paths along which walk those who turn their backs and not their face towards you.”5 Notice his use of the image of the journey to convey his mother’s fear that his sexual development would lead to trouble. What kind of trouble? “Her concern (and in the secret of my conscience I recall the memory of her admonition delivered with vehement anxiety) was that I should not fall into fornication, and above all that I should not commit adultery with someone else’s wife.”6

He confesses that these warnings “seemed to me womanish advice which I would have blushed to take the least notice of,” but they were in fact God’s own warnings: “I believed you were silent and that it was only she who was speaking, when you were speaking to me through her.”7 Not realizing this,

I went on my way headlong with such blindness that among my peer group I was ashamed not to be equally guilty when I heard them boasting of their sexual exploits. Their pride was the more aggressive, the more debauched their acts were; they derived pleasure not merely from the lust of the act but also from the admiration it evoked. What is more worthy of censure than vice? Yet I went deeper into vice to avoid being despised, and when there was no act ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Stumbler
• Chapter 2: The Struggler
• Chapter 3: The Straggler
• Chapter 4: The Straddler
• Chapter 5: The Stranger
• Epilogue
• Bibliography