Why I will teach my children my Christian faith

Last updated on: March 2, 2017 at 10:54 am by Jeremy Neill

Why I will teach my children my Christian faith 2017-03-02T10:54:24-06:00 Jeremy Neill

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Speaking personally, my intent is to share my Christian faith with large numbers of my neighbors in the course of my life. I see doing so as being the natural outflowing of the spiritual exercises that I undertake in my devotional life. I plan also to train up my children in the Christian faith. My children will be raised as Christians because the Christian faith is the best I can give them as a parent. There is a cartoon out there that I ran across recently that shows two mothers walking beside each other, both pushing their toddlers in strollers. I wish I could post it here, but can’t because of copyright reasons.

Cathedral at christmas in Varna, Bulgaria, by Dian1981, Wikimedia Commons

At any rate, one mother says proudly to the other that she’s decided not to share her religious faith with her child because when he grows up she wants him to be able to make his own worldview decisions. The other responds, without missing a beat, that she’s decided not to speak English to her child, because when he grows up she wants him to be able to make his own decisions about which language he wants to speak. I love this cartoon because I think that it captures a deep spiritual truth. It captures the idea that religious faith is something that is so complicated, so rich, and so much a part of who we are as human beings that it is necessary that we impart it to our children from the beginning of their lives.

The Christian faith is like learning a language in that it is so rich and so complicated that it takes years for us to master. In its absence our lives would be incredibly shriveled and diminished, just as they would be shriveled and diminished by our inability to speak a language. And arguably, religious truth is like a human language in that you have to be taught it from a young age in order in later years to be able to enjoy it in all of its varied richness. Perhaps its truths must be absorbed from the beginning of our lives or else there may come a point in our lives at which it is no longer possible for us to be able to master its essentials.

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