For a few years now, we’ve begun our family meals with a blessing. We started with “The Lord’s Been Good to Me,” otherwise known in our household as “Johnny Appleseed.” The song’s theology is pretty innocuous. It acknowledges God’s existence and says a basic thank you. Then we introduced “Thank you Father” (to the tune of “Frere Jacque”), which gets a little more personal because it introduces the concept of God as Father. Over the summer, my husband and I were getting bored, so one night we suggested the Doxology. And ever since, our kids have requested what they call “Praise Father,” from the last line: “Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” We mix it up occasionally, but “Praise Father” remains their favorite. Somehow, Penny and William moved us from a vague deism to Trinitarian worship.
In addition to asking God’s blessing on our food, we pray as a family. Our kids have started to add their own requests, which range from Penny wanting to pray for a boy from school who can’t walk, to William asking that we pray for him after he had an unfortunate run in with a pear that tasted yucky. We read “Jesus stories” from a picture Bible. We go to church. And we talk about Mom and Dad having “time alone with God” in the mornings. We hope the way we structure our family time will impact the structure of our children’s lives, that they will grow up with a sense that God is present and active, that God cares about and for their daily needs.
But teaching our children the love of the Lord is more complicated than prayers and Jesus stories. Try explaining why all the people go under water except Noah and his family (Noah shows up in every kids’ Bible, I think because kids like animals). Or try explaining why sometimes we pray for people and they don’t get better. Or why we go to church and many other people we know and love stay home on Sunday mornings. Or that Jesus differs from an imaginary friend or the tooth fairy or a fictional character on television.
Two recent posts on Motherlode, The New York Times parenting blog, caught my attention. “What To Tell Children About God” related the stories of two parents who are agnostic yet find themselves fielding questions about God from their young children. They struggle to answer honestly. I don’t share their angst when it comes to conversation about God’s existence and God’s fundamental love and care for humans, but I resonate with some of the themes brought up in the post. Talking about God is serious business.
“Creating God in Your Parents’ Image” offered a sociological perspective on these issues. It explained that children start to understand prayer as conversation with God (rather than generic wish-making) around age 4, and that their impressions of God are influenced most by their parents. According to author Ashley Merryman, children don’t form a view of God based primarily on what their parents tell them. Rather, children form a view of God based on how their parents treat them. Parents who demonstrate both authority and forgiveness lead to children who assume the same about God. Parents who emphasize punishment imply that God shares those characteristics. (Interestingly, children with largely absent parents don’t assume that God is absent. Rather, they often understand God as their surrogate parent.)
This second post didn’t make me rethink the habits of our family. We will still pray and sing a blessing and read our Jesus stories. But it did make me realize that the way I answer questions is only one piece, and perhaps a small one, of the impact I have on my children’s spiritual formation. The primary image of God in the New Testament is that of a father, and a central truth to the Christian faith is that God comes to us in the form of a human being. We learn God’s love through the Incarnation, through Jesus’ flesh and blood. Doctrine matters, but lived relationships matter more. So it makes sense that children form their impressions of God in large part through their relationships with their earthly parents. It makes sense that the way I love them, the way I attend to them, and the way I discipline them are more significant, at least at this stage in their development, than what I tell them about who God is and how he relates to them.
My role as a parent is to model God’s love—exhibiting grace and teaching truth—to our children. Yet based on Jesus’ admonition in Matthew 18, it is also to learn from my children what it means to have a simple, humble, and earnest faith. Prayers that ask for what I want rather than pretending to be more pious than I am. Blessings that proclaim praise for the Lord even when our non-Christian friends have come over for dinner and I wonder what they’ll think. Reading the Bible in a way that assumes God’s goodness even when I don’t understand.
The questions will continue—from our children and in my own heart. I’m not sure I’ll ever have a satisfactory understanding of the destruction of the earth in the time of Noah. Thankfully, I don’t need to become God for our children. All I need to do is direct them as best I can toward grace and truth, and let them point me toward him in return.
