My parents were staunch fundamentalists. Well, my mom is. My dad was. He’s dead now, but that’s another post.

Staunch fundamentalists… though that term, “fundamentalist”, was not in my vocabulary at a younger age. Identities are forged in relationship, and I didn’t have any meaningful relationships with people who were not fundamentalist for the larger part of my formative years. Strict Christianity was the air I breathed.

I took it as a given for awhile that, as Proverbs says, “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.” (Pro. 22:6, NIV*) Even some atheists will dismiss the Christianity I hold to because I grew up in a Christian household. But, as Proverbs is with most of its maxims, it’s largely true without being totally true. Little Timmy, for example, can’t shake the alcoholism he inherited from his dad, but he does shake his fist at him.

All to say, three out of four of us children did not remain fundamentalist. My older brother went off in the direction of maybe a vague liberal Christian spirituality, if that – certainly nothing resembling what we grew up with. My sister just older than me and I became Catholic, which to our parents might as well have been a complete repudiation of Jesus himself. My other sister is the only one who kept the faith, but her own children are not all walking in “the way they should go” either, from her perspective.

Knowing this history, when I look at my own children, I grow a little unsteady. I want to give them as winsome a vision of my Catholic faith as I can. I want to make it clear to them that the abuses of the Catholic Church do not represent her spirit. Heck, that my abuses do not represent her spirit. I want them to feel the joy I felt at having found a home in her bosom. I want them to be enraptured by her ritual and beauty, all emanating from the presence of Christ at the center of every Mass.

But I fear that the faith I am showing them looks about as boring and mundane as growing grass. The grass is vibrantly alive, but still, it is in the end “just grass.”

The tempting remedy in this scenario is to make Catholicism look “cool,” but I sense this to be a losing battle. Stryper, God bless them, were really cool in the 80’s, but I don’t know how you build a long-lasting faith on hairspray and spandex. Hippie music was really groovy when it got introduced into the liturgy after Vatican II, but the luster has dimmed quite a lot. Setting that aside, honestly, however good my intentions are in passing on the faith, I can’t imagine that I am as good or better a parent as my mom or sister.

So what is the answer? I don’t know. Does anybody? Is that what this post is supposed to be? “3 Knock-Out Tools to Make Sure Your Children Burn Bright for Jesus!” I could write that, but I wouldn’t be telling the truth.

What I’m trying to do, and that really badly, is build in my children a growth mentality: God loves you. God is not waiting to punish you. When you fail, you can always find forgiveness. Don’t forget that your faith matters. We love you. God loves you. God loves you. Please ignore us when we give you the impression he doesn’t.

I don’t know what they will decide in the end. If they match the trajectory of religious statistics in the United States today, they will hold on to this faith only with a good amount of sweat, blood, and tears.

But if their memories of their upbringing are of parents who loved them, a faith that spoke of a benevolent God in a benevolent universe, and the importance of choosing what is right even when it is difficult, then perhaps I will be able to say I was not a failure as a father. Maybe the inheritance they receive will be squandered, but at least I will be able to say I handed it down.

(Pic generated by AI at Midjourney)

*Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.