Upbringing and Tradition: A Reflection by Rev. Klaas Hendrikse

Gasthuiskerk Zierikzee (picture source)

As some readers of this blog will know, the Dutch “atheist” pastor, Klaas Hendrikse (1947-2018) had a powerful influence on me (see HERE and HERE and HERE) at an important time in my own ministry. Without his example to keep in mind, and especially him saying that, “For me, God is not a being, but a word for what can happen between people” (God is voor mij niet een wezen, maar een woord voor wat er tussen mensen kan gebeuren), I truly doubt I would have been able to remain in the professional ministry beyond 2013/2014. For this alone I will always remain hugely grateful to him. 

Anyway, this morning, for some reason (probably Easter related), I found myself thinking about Hendrikse once again which led me to stumble across a Sunday reflection given by him on 6th August 2017 on the subject of “Upbringing and Tradition.” At the time he was already ill, and less than a year later, on 26th June 2018, he died. I am grateful that, in this age of powerful translation tools, texts such as this one are now accessible to me in ways that were simply not possible back in 2017/18. After having read it once via Google Translate, I have spent the morning bouncing the Dutch text back and forth between DeepL, ChatGPT, Deepseek and various dictionaries, to produce the following draft translation. The layout of the text is as you will find it in the orginal. Naturally, I do not doubt that it can be massively improved upon (Dutch readers please be in touch of you wish), but I’m confident (enough) that this is faithful (enough) to Hendrikse’s general spirit and intention to risk, with gratitude to his memory, publishing it here.

Upbringing and Tradition: A Reflection by Rev. Klaas Hendrikse
The original Dutch text can be read at this link

Below is the full text of the introduction and reflection as it was delivered on Sunday, 6 August 2017, by Rev. Klaas Hendrikse in the Gasthuiskerk in Zierikzee. Rev. Klaas Hendrikse had been ill for some time and died on 26 June 2018 at the age of 70.

Introduction

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child,

I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.

Now that I am an adult, I have left behind all childish things.”

That’s a very brief summary of a very long journey.

What happened in between? Do you remember?

Let me give it a try:

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child,”

in other words: what others heard me say back then,

I had picked up from what others had said.

“Now that I am an adult, I have left behind all childish things,”

in other words: what others hear me say now

comes from me—spoken from my own experience.

What happened in between? Do you remember?

Yes, bits and pieces. But mostly not—you’ve forgotten a lot,

and surely repressed a few things too.

It probably looks rather muddled when you glance back.

Just take a look back at God, for example.

Do you remember how and when God entered your life?

No—the divine foundation was already being laid when you were still in nappies.

God was walking with you before you could walk.

That is to say: in the form of your parents.

But your religious memories came later,

when others entered the scene:

the teacher at school with the Bible stories, with or without explanation,
 classmates, 

grandma—who, sometimes to the embarrassment or dismay of your parents,

declared religious theories

from which your parents had precisely wished to shield you.

Your parents, of course, remained the most important ones—

not just as carers or examples,

but also because they were the ones

from whom you had to separate yourself.

That was the next stage:

to find your own place in new circles,

to let go of old ideas and adopt new ones.

And that probably didn’t happen effortlessly.

Your image of yourself, of the people around you—your parents, God—

all of it had to go through a sieve, some kind of iconoclasm.

It’s been a while now,

so you can look back with a bit more detachment.

Now, think about your earliest image of God.

It probably looked a lot like Saint Nicholas, or Father Christmas.

Now compare it to your image today.

Is it still the same? No, it’s different.

But how has it changed?

You probably can’t say straightaway.

No, but you should be able to—after all, it’s your own transformation.

That’s true:

your development—your coming of age—is of course unique.

You did it your way.

But you weren’t alone. You didn’t grow up on an island.

Most of us grew up in the second half of the 20th century.

A lot changed during that time, also in matters of religion,

and you and I were shaped by it.

Churches have emptied, and those who remain are under fire:

“Do you still believe in God?”

As if something’s wrong with you.

Most people have long since left

and now shape their lives on their own terms,

without much regard for institutions.

Almost no one cares anymore

about the pronouncements of pope or synod,

but recent research shows that

more than half of the people who never set foot in church

still consider themselves believers.

To put it in terms of today’s topic:

people no longer believe like children—they have become adults.

Reflection

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child,

I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.

Now that I am an adult, I have left behind all childish things.”

Yes, but how did that happen?

Let’s start with the present moment—

with you sitting here, let’s say: you and your image of God.

Actually, that’s not quite the right way to put it:

It’s often said—by me too sometimes—

that everyone has a “God-image” of some sort,

but I don’t think that’s quite right.

Try it for yourself:

Try to summarise your image of God in one sentence—in under a minute.

It probably won’t work.

I do sometimes ask people about their image of God.

But not whilst standing up.

And preferably not in company.

Because the answer to that question is not a single sentence—

it’s a story, usually a long one,

with not one, but several images appearing.

And those images, to put it mildly,

often don’t get along very well with one another.

We’re here in a liberal congregation.

So we are, broadly speaking, liberal in some sense or other.

But who has always been liberal?

There are people here who, as they say, come from a liberal background—

and

people who became liberal later,

who converted, as it were, to liberalism.

What’s the difference?

If we keep things rather general, we might sketch it like this:

Those from liberal backgrounds aren’t burdened with old images of a stern God

watching over their shoulder,

keeping score,

and waiting to present the bill someday.

Those who became liberal later

had to deal with that God along the way,

and have more or less left Him behind.

But I don’t think that’s quite right.

Let me suggest this: no one is born a liberal.

Or maybe you are,

but that liberalism is washed away with the very first drop of water.

What I just called a “background” is, in proper terms, “tradition.”

People from liberal backgrounds stand in a liberal tradition.

What they were once taught about God comes from stories—

from parents, grandmothers, grandfathers, teachers, aunts, and so on.

And they didn’t come up with it themselves either.

In other words: all of them got to know God through tradition.

And if it was a private or family tradition, fine.

But beyond that, it’s a slippery term.

There are quite a few movements that claim

to be “based on the Judeo-Christian tradition.”

The faithful are expected to understand what’s meant by that—

but what’s often forgotten

is that there is no single Christian tradition.

Christianity is more like a big container

filled with conflicting images, practices, and symbols,

from which anyone can choose as they like.

And that’s exactly what liberals have always done—

and still do: dip into the barrel for themselves.

Which makes it hard for a liberal to claim

to “stand in a tradition”—

especially on behalf of others, or in the collective “we” form.

Still, it does happen—people speak of the “liberal tradition”

or of “liberal faith heritage,”

and I won’t say anything unkind about that,

except this: as a liberal, you can’t claim to be “rooted in”

some tradition

without putting quotation marks around your own words.

Or perhaps, even better, a question mark, because:

the more tradition,

the less room for interpretation—

for seeking and finding meaning for oneself.

And that’s precisely what we call “liberal,” isn’t it?

Right—just a detour.

Even liberals stray sometimes.

Parents

In the psychology of religion, it’s more or less a generally accepted view

that the foundation of a person’s image of God—

or better: their trust in God—

is already laid in the cradle.

The underlying assumption is that religion arises in the relationship with one’s parents:

that parents, in a sense, are the first divine figures for a child,

forerunners of the God with whom the child may or may not form a relationship later.

What happens within the parent-child relationship

matters for later relationships—with people and with God.

In other words:

the love and sense of security from the beginning

provide the building blocks for later trust in God.

And the opposite also holds true:

those who are mistrustful, who cannot open their heart,

are unlikely to connect with the phrase “God is love.”

So this trusting or mistrusting begins, as it were,

in your earliest experiences.

Jump (back) to today.


You’ve now lived a significant part of your life.

At some point along the way, you became an adult.

But when?

Was there a moment—a day—when you could say:

“Yesterday I wasn’t, but today I’m an adult”?

No. It’s like the transition from day to night:

there’s no single moment you can point to and say,

“Now the day has ended and the night has begun.”

A beautiful image—because it also illustrates

that there wasn’t one single moment when you left certain images of God behind.

That kind of change doesn’t happen overnight—

for some, it takes many sleepless nights.

We said just now that, for a small child,

mother and father were the first divine figures:

Mum can do everything, and Dad can do everything.

That changed, naturally—you realised it wasn’t so:

Mums and Dads are ordinary people, fallible and fragile like everyone else.

But with God, it’s far more complicated.

Just to name one thing:

a God who watches over your shoulder induces fear.

If a child steals a sweet and Mum doesn’t notice—

or pretends not to—

the child feels triumphant, a boost of self-confidence.

That’s healthy. That’s okay.

But if the child doesn’t dare take the sweet

because “God sees everything,”

then something is being suppressed,

and fear takes the place of triumph.

In that situation, the mother often plays a rather dubious role—

as a kind of intermediary.

There are lighter examples too:

When my son was about four,

my sister told him to be careful crossing the road.

He replied, “Don’t worry, Auntie—if I get run over,

the Lord Jesus will make me better again.”

I laughed at the time—but actually I was furious.

He’d only just started nursery school.

What I’m trying to gently introduce here

is the idea that you might do better

not to talk to young children about God.

That might seem—or even be—a rather strong statement,

but I’m not the first to say it, and I’m in good company:

When Socrates was asked (by Glaucon, in the Republic),

“What would you forbid for children?”,

he answered, “To begin with, practically all religious literature.”

His advice was: music and gymnastics.

Today, with our modern educational thinking, we mock that kind of view.

But the Greeks weren’t stupid—and they weren’t overweight, either.

Their advice: not too many words, at least not adult words.

Let children play and grow. They’ll find their way.

And make sure they don’t lose trust in the world around them.

That used to be a widely accepted view.

You can’t pull the wool over children’s eyes

Early Christianity knew only adult catechesis—

you entered instruction only after you had converted.

And that remained the case for a long time:

from the first twelve centuries of church history,

there are no catechism writings for children.

Even the “School with the Bible” (“School met den Bijbel”) came much later.

I have nothing unkind to say about Christian education—

but the phrase “school with the Bible” suggests something

that really ought to be strongly contested:

The Bible is a book for adults, not for children.

The term “Children’s Bible” ought, really, to be banned.

Are you not allowed to read the Bible to children?

You can—because then you are not speaking in your own words.

If you can tell a Bible story to a child the way you would tell a fairy tale—fine.

But the moment you start tinkering with it,

or begin to teach a “lesson” from it,

you’ve already entered dangerous territory.

Or rather: the child has.

Naturally, it’s the convenient way out.

I’ve often read and heard in people’s life stories

that even when their parents weren’t religious, or didn’t do much with faith,

they still sent them to a Christian school.

Why?
“
For their general education.”

Or:

“We live in a Christian culture—they ought to know something about the Bible.”

Is that a truly honest answer?

Or just a bit convenient?

Probably both.

It’s also convenient to outsource the hard questions.

But the questions do come—sooner or later.

And then it matters:

“Mum/Dad/Grandpa/Grandma, do you believe in God? And why (not)?”

Can you prepare for questions like that?

No—you can only be yourself.

And that doesn’t make it any easier.

And yes—you can wonder

what sense it makes to send your children to a Christian school

if you yourself haven’t got a clue.

Just listen:

A boy from a non-religious family is attending a Christian primary school.

After a while, the teacher grows frustrated—
he constantly has to re-explain everything.

Eventually, he decides to visit the boy’s parents.

During the conversation, the exasperated teacher exclaims,

“Your son doesn’t even know that Jesus died for us!”

To which the father replies:

“That’s awful...

we hadn’t even heard he was ill.”

(H. Stufkens, “Een ketterse catechismus” [A Heretical Catechism], p. 88)

You can’t fool children.

If your words don’t match you, they’ll spot it instantly.

Fewer words? Not necessarily—

as long as the words are genuine,

as long as your words match you.

And there are never very many of those.

One last story, from Abel Herzberg

Just a few words—

but maybe they summarise, or even render unnecessary,

all the others:

“I was eight or nine years old. We were sitting at the table when the doorbell rang.

A man came to ask if he could have some money for a train ticket to Antwerp, where he lived.

What happened next was crucial for me—

it shaped my entire life.

That man had once gravely insulted my mother.

My father got up, let the man in, and gave him what he needed.

When he had left, my father said:

‘If a man who once insulted us so deeply

now has to come to us for help,

then God has punished him.

And that is enough.’

If my father had never said anything else in my life,

this alone would have sufficed for my upbringing.”