Hi Chair,
By an odd providence, I'm late getting to this particular thread because I was writing an article on the Christian doctrine of children in the church.
As you are probably know by now, I was raised in a non-Christian family, and attended church very irregularly if at all. Neither of my parents believed the bible to be true, but would have affirmed the idea that there are "some good and possibly helpful things in there" mixed in amongst all the fairy-tales, and that it is important for people to "have morals." These two principles would probably have summed up the religious views of most of the people in the community in which I was raised, including the people who attended the mainline congregations and synagogues on a more regular basis. However, the careful observation that only children are really capable of, quickly persuaded me that regardless of what people
said they believed about the importance of "having morals", it was actually the case that they believed that
other people should have morals, while they themselves should be allowed to affirm that they had morals but generally do whatever seemed right to them at the time. So for instance, almost everyone would have affirmed that adultery was bad, but in actual practice the rule was that adultery was bad, unless that is they were allowed to participate.
In other words, while affirming various non-controversial, non-fundamentalist beliefs about God, Morals, and Religion the general rule was
"everyone did what was right in his own eyes." This was true whether the person in question would have identified themselves as Catholic, a Methodist, a New-Ager, a Buddhist, a Jew, an agnostic and so on. They all generally conformed to the homogenous middle-class "do as I say, not as I do" morals of that particular part of American society, and their kids quickly caught on to how the game was played and outwardly conformed in the same ways themselves. The actual societal situation is described with uncanny accuracy by C.S. Lewis in his
"Pilgrim's Regress" That is not to say that there weren't a few exceptions to the rule on both sides. For instance, I never bothered making much of an attempt at pretending to be good or moral, and just did whatever I wanted to from the word go. That approach has become quite a bit more popular since I was a kid, incidently, especially as the conforming influence of the mainline Christian denominations has continued to wane and the influence of post-modern thought and situational ethics has become more pervasive.
I raise this to set the stage for a few points. Unless they are provided with a viable, consistent, and robust alternative, your children will have a natural tendency to absorb the morals and religious thinking of the surrounding culture. Peer pressure tends to greatly assist in that process. So unless you raise them in a self-consciously counter-cultural manner, you can expect them to absorb the worldview of their peers. In other words, unless they are really immersed in a different point of view at home and are willing to take a lot of guff for being weird, their beliefs will look a lot like the belief system in place at the local middle and high-school, it may change in college as they are immersed in a new and particularly persuasive culture, but chances are there won't be a radical change.
Also, please don't think for a moment that your children are in much danger of becoming evangelical Christians in their youth if you aren't - even if you were to drop them off at the local Evangelical church every Sunday. Both experience, surveys, and even the bible indicate that children learn their religion at home, and the vast majority of children dumped at Sunday School by their non-attending parents go on to be non-religious, non-attenders themselves. They may learn some of the lingo, but very few are converted. Statistically speaking, more are converted as adults than by that approach. Even amongst those converted via involvement in most Christian youth groups (such as Young Life) usually via a response to an emotional appeal, less than 14% join churches in their adult life. More often than not, they were converted to the experience in the youth group not genuine Christianity.
Finally along those lines, what you tell them will be far less influential than what you "show them" as you live in front of them, so faking a faith that doesn't actually captivate your own heart is also usually a monumental failure - they naturally tend to grow up to be like who you
are, not who you
pretend to be.
All that to say that unless you yourselves are marvelously converted Chairboy (and I never give up hope
), you can expect your children to grow up to be religiously a blend of you and the surrounding culture (although most parents are themselves more like the surrounding culture than they appreciate or would care to admit, if you doubt this ask yourself, are you radically different from the inhabitants of the surrounding homes or cubicles at work?). Guys like me (and the majority of the members of my congregation) who became evangelicals later in life are definitely
not the norm.
Here endeth the sociological section. Now for a brief biblical explanation of why the above is the case for the benefit of anyone crazy enough to still be reading at this point. Genuine conversion to Christianity implies a real change of heart, called
regeneration and is something that only the Holy Spirit can effect. It also doesn't happen without means, in other words, it ordinarily accompanies the preaching of the gospel. If the child in question isn't being exposed to the gospel (i.e. and by that the bible means the good news of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, not morality tales) on a regular basis, you probably won't see a conversion take place. They remain in the state in which they entered into this world (Eph. 2:1-3) and adopt any multitude of other worldviews - but usually tend to remain in the one they grew up in. So the proverb
"Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it." works in both directions.
- SEAGOON
