Handing Down the Faith

I’ve been reading the book Handing Down the Faith: How Parents Pass Their Religion on to the Next Generation. It’s essentially how parents of all faiths seek to teach their children about their religion. It’s the how and why they do it. The why struck me. They asked parents why they passed down their faith and this is the conclusion they came to:

Parents are responsible for preparing their children for the challenging journey of life, during which they will hopefully become their best possible selves and live happy, good lives. Religion provides crucial help for navigating life’s journey successfully, including moral guidance, emotional support, and a secure home base. So parents should equip their children with knowledge of their religion by routinely modeling its practices, values, and ethics, which children will then hopefully absorb and embrace for themselves…The purpose of living is to lead a happy and good life, in the dual sense of both having life go well (enjoying success and happiness) and living life rightly (doing what is morally right). A good life is one in which self-directed individuals are happy, live ethically, work hard, enjoy family and friends, and help other people.  

While this composite answer includes all religions, I think it reveals a problem for us. We have forgotten our why. The purpose of handing down our faith is not to live happy lives, be good people, or even provide emotional support. The reason we hand down our faith is because of the work of Christ in our hearts. It is because we believe in the truth of his death, burial, and resurrection and want to share that with the world, including our kids. 

We are far too easily satisfied. If our kids go to the right schools, have suitable careers, get married, and have kids then that’s enough for us. Listen, that is a somewhat compelling vision if the only hope you have is in the here and now. But what if those things are taken away? What about life after this?

Make Jesus Beautiful

Knowing Jesus means knowing the beauty of what he has done in us and for us. Think about where God has saved you from and what he saved you to. Think about where and what you could or would be without his merciful intervention. 

In the same way, we can’t help but tell about a good restaurant we should want to do the same about Jesus, especially to our children. But all the data shows, we’re not doing that. The faith we’re handing down is largely rules-based with the intent of producing “good people.” 

Hot take: you don’t need to be a Christian to be a good person by the world’s standards. Telling people, including our kids, that they need Jesus to be good people isn’t going to cut it; especially in a world where they constantly see otherwise. Some of the nicest, kindest, most generous people I know want nothing to do with Jesus.

We need to tell our children about Jesus apart from themselves. That means we need to share a vision of our faith that isn’t “me” centered. We don’t pursue Jesus to be an additive to make our lives better. Instead, we point to Philippians 2 and the beautiful act of humility displayed by Jesus in laying his life down for ours. In a world where we can’t stand to be slightly inconvenienced by others, Jesus gave his life. 

Who Disciples Your Kid?

I saw a great quote the other day that said “disciple your kids or the internet will.” The same is true for us. We are all being formed by something. There’s a funny little anecdote about an American child who developed a British accent because she watched too much Peppa Pig. While this is cute on the surface, deeper questions exist about the type of investment being made into her. 

I spent a lot of time answering questions about things students heard on TikTok and adults saw on Youtube. I notice the way Christians respond to things on social media and how little “but God said” is involved. 

Pay attention to your thoughts and attitudes, the way you feel about things. What has informed that opinion? When thinking through tough issues, how long is it before you get to the Bible? When I talk to students they don’t even consider the Word of God as something they should look at to figure out how to think about the various issues of life. 

Because the primary goal of the American parent is to raise good kids, faith has simply become an accessory to life. It’s important but not ultimate. It can take a back seat to sports, instruments, clubs, and academic achievement. Therefore it’s not our lifeblood, just an accessory we throw on before walking out the door. 

This leads us to the place we find ourselves in right now: discipleship by the internet. Most people who grow up in church don’t fully abandon it as they get older. These days what we do is scour the internet and find our favorite pastors and Christian content creators to help us develop a “personal theology.” An a la carte style of Christianity whose priority is making us feel good and comfortable and not really about who Jesus is and what he has done. 

Of course, we were warned this would happen. 2 Timothy 4:3: For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, will multiply teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear what they want to hear. This has left us with a whole generation of quasi-Christians who have a god that believes everything they do and never disagrees with them. 

But this didn't come out of the blue. They were raised by a generation of people who as they got older, took a more a la carte approach to Christianity and thus modeled that as the way to follow Jesus. 

This isn’t a “younger” generation thing. The numbers show that every generation goes through this. I guess we think, on some level, we outgrow the Gospel. Or we stop seeing Jesus as beautiful and move him into the accessory category. This could be why the epistles constantly remind their hearers to remember the message that saved them. 

Last year, I wrote a fair bit about recapturing our old zeal. That may never happen again but how do we keep ourselves from sliding into this a la carte faith? 

This is Why

We do what we do because of who Jesus is and what he has done for our lives. Not the material needs that are met, the eternal ones. Sin has caused a gap between the Father and us that we could never bridge ourselves. Jesus did that. 

We follow Jesus because we sincerely believe he is not a liar. We take the many “I AM” statements in the book of John seriously. We believe, there is no other way by which we can live the fullest versions of our lives. 

I am not trying to indoctrinate my kids with some antiquated way of thinking. I am trying to show them the Jesus that grabbed ahold of me and changed my life. The Jesus that made me new. Whether they are good kids or caught up in the worst possible sins, the need for a savior still exists. Jesus is that savior.

This is why we hand down the faith.