Tell Me All Your Thoughts On God

Spirituality is, of course, often a subject of fascination for our kids. It may be difficult to find ways to discuss these issues and keep it on their level, but we do the best we can. It's really cool when they start asking questions about God or heaven or whatever seems to interest them along those lines.

Heidi and I are both very spiritual people and we both grew up in Christian churches - hers was fundamentalist Christian and mine was Baptist - but we're not regularly attending any particular church right now. At some point we both think it might be good to get involved with one again (neither fundamentalist nor Baptist, though) and to expose Anna to more structured spirituality - though in a less rigid way than we were. We want her to learn about diverse points of view and come to her own conclusions because we feel that leads to the most genuine kind of belief and faith.

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Seeing Is Believing?

I came across something yesterday about imparting religious or spiritual beliefs to our kids that really resonated with me.  As many of you know, I follow the blog "Single Dad Laughing" (SDL).  Well, yesterday, he posted an excerpt from his book, The Real Dad Rules, about how to share our beliefs with our kids. His thesis is that you shouldn't teach your kids what to believe - you should teach them how to believe.

I discussed this issue when we were examining Robert Epstein's article about what makes a good parent, and his top 10 areas of parental competency, which included religion. I discussed why I disagreed with that in the post, "Losing My Religion," but I also shared a viewpoint similar to SDL's. If you haven't had a chance to check out that post, please do.

Losing My Religion

Well, we’re finally here: the stickiest subject (for me, anyway) of the ten parental competency areas. Researchers list religious involvement or upbringing as No. 9 on the Top 10 list.

This is a tough subject for me because I often feel caught between my own beliefs and the warped version of them that is sometimes found in what we refer to as “organized religion.”

I should note that I was raised a Baptist. I attended a Baptist school from kindergarten through fifth grade. I attended church from a young age (maybe 6?) until I was 20, and was very involved in choir and Sunday school and youth group.