The most important posture of Christian parenting

This week we invited our friend Ken Kuhn to share a little about parenting and discipleship. Many of you are stepping into parenthood and Keith’s teaching at ​The​ ​Constant Source​ has been a helpful resource for us. Sharing our faith with our kids is one of the most important things we get to do as parents and here is how Keith did this creatively.

Today, we’re going to chat about the things to be thinking about when it comes to introducing kids to faith. Let’s jump into it.

The Tale of Two Board Books

As many new parents experience, there are two things that friends and relatives love buying for babies: clothes and books. To be fair, I get it. When I found out I was going to be a dad, I could barely resist the urge to pick up every onesie sporting a clever catchphrase themed around one of my favorite subjects or hobbies. They are just so cute!

And when it comes to books, every parent seems to have a family favorite that has often proven itself worthy of 1,000+ reads. Speaking as a parent of an 18-month-old who is just starting to hit read counts in the triple digits, I’m very thankful for the curation that other brave souls have done on my behalf, reading dozens if not hundreds of terrible kid books, so I didn’t have to. And yet, some stinkers have still managed to find a place on my little girl’s bookshelf.

Unfortunately, the majority of them would fall into the genre of Christian books. Like mainstream, made-for-radio Christian music, Christian children’s books tend to be cliche, oversimplified, and focus too much on sinfulness. Now, seeing as how we don’t know each other, let me clearly state upfront that I believe that sin separates us from God and that it is because of Jesus Christ’s death on the cross that we can have a relationship with God. BUT, the point I’m trying to make stems from this question, “What is the main thing that we want our little ones to take away from storytime?”

First, while thinking about how our children learn, it is important to remember that everything they can perceive through sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell are all informing their understanding of the world. When we are reading storybooks to our little ones, it might seem obvious, but they are actually learning about the world through what they see and hear from reading time. My little girl hasn’t seen a duck in real life, but she knows from one of our storybooks that it says “Quack” and she thinks that is hilarious.

Similarly, even when kids are young they start to internalize the deeper meaning of things. They learn that “He” is associated with boy and “She” is associated with girl. They learn that some actions are good and some actions are bad. They learn that decisions have consequences and that some things are just the way they are. So, at a high level, part of raising kids is making sure that you are intentionally monitoring their inputs to ensure that you agree with what they are teaching your children. For example, let’s compare these two board books.

As we’ve all been told, we should never judge a book by its cover. BUT, as someone who has read both of these books, I can assure you that the cover is quite representative of what’s inside. Jesus Saves is indeed a retelling of the Gospel, including mention of God; an indictment of one’s sinful nature; Jesus’s birth, death, and resurrection; and an invitation for children to follow Jesus. As I’ve previously stated, I don’t take issue with the theology, however, as someone who has studied children’s development and, maybe even more importantly, is a parent of a little one, the fact that the cover claims this message is “for toddlers” makes me cringe a little bit.

As adults, we can understand the nuance of sinful desires and the fact that God loves us unconditionally, even when we don’t choose to follow Jesus, whether that be generally or in a moment of sinful relapse. However, children can’t. Full stop. Even teenagers struggle with the abstract rationalization that is required to fully grasp the nuance of the Gospel. And so, the simplified nature of the Gospel as presented in a book like this, leads to simplified and often incorrect or harmful internalization.

Ultimately, I don’t want my kids to start their little life internalizing the idea that there is something wrong with them and that love is contingent on their actions.

While Jesus Saves is explicitly Christian, I personally don’t think that it comes close to conveying the love of God nearly as well as Smooch. Just take a look at the tagline “A celebration of the enduring power of love.” I don’t know about you, but when my little girl thinks about God, I want the first thing she thinks about to be God’s enduring, unconditional, neverending, and overwhelming love for her. Full stop. While not explicitly Christian, my wife and I find it much easier to finish a reading of Smooch with, “Just like our love forever links us together, no matter what. God loves you even more, no matter what.” than to try to explain the nuance of the Gospel after reading something like Jesus Saves.

Does our 18-month-old understand who God is yet? Nope. But she is starting to link the words God and love together in a similar way to how she is linking her Mommy and Daddy to the word love. This feels like steps in the right direction.

What about our older kids?

The core concept at play in the previous example is called Associative Learning. In a nutshell, Associative Learning is the principle that ideas and experiences are linked. Our brains don’t learn or remember concepts in a vacuum, instead, we group ideas and experiences together. Then a child is learning that a duck says quack, they are grouping the words with pictures and sounds, but also the feeling. The little giggle that plays across our little girl’s lips when she hears me quack both reinforces the lesson and makes it more likely that when she hears the sound again a smile will appear.

This principle is at play throughout our entire lives and as we get older we make these associations faster and more concretely, for better or worse. For instance, let’s say upon trying out a new restaurant I walk in and find that the interior of the place is a little run down, the food is average, but the staff is incredible and my partner and I have a great conversation. All of these individual experiences come together to inform my feelings about the place. We can’t help but group these things and, as a result, the way we come to understand a thing or form an opinion about it tends to be a combination of feelings, experiences, and ideas. So, for our older kids, whether they are 3rd graders or 16-year-olds, it’s important to remember that as they are learning to form opinions and ideas about things like faith. They are considering not only the lessons they are being taught, but also the environment in which lessons take place, the attitudes of those around them, and maybe most importantly, the teacher and their passion for the subject or the lack thereof.

Intentional Discipleship

As the people who spend the most time with our children, we tend to have the most opportunities to teach them. From the very beginning, as parents and caregivers, we are our kid’s first point of reference for everything and the way we show up in the world shapes the way our kids do too.

This also means that as Christian parents, we are the number one example of what it looks like to be in relationship with God and we have the beautiful opportunity to introduce our kids to the hope, joy, comfort, and love we’ve found in Jesus.

Now, I know the word discipleship can feel exceptionally loaded. Personally, between having heard it used ad nauseum by the church and having it often tied to some amount of guilt for never doing enough while growing up, I’ve had to redefine it for myself and in the process have come to understand how beautiful and simple discipleship is supposed to be.

Discipleship is simply following Christ and sharing what the Holy Spirit is doing in your life with others.

When it comes to sharing faith with our kids, as we’ve seen from the examples above, it’s important to do it intentionally. To be clear, intentionality doesn’t mean putting on a complex production of faith. In fact, quite the opposite, intentionality is simply being attentive to the ways you are modeling faith.

My work with children and families over the last decade has taught me a very important truth about kids, one that I see every day at play in my little girl: Children are ALWAYS learning.

This means that whether we are explicitly teaching them about something or unintentionally modeling a behavior or routine, kids pick up on everything. This is why being attentive to the ways that you talk about God and intentional about the ways you share your faith with your kids is important.

Intentional discipleship is simply associating faith intentionally with other positive experiences and showing our kids that faith isn’t a strict set of teachings and rules, but rather a holistic way of living our lives dwelling in God’s love, as experienced in a multitude of ways, and following Jesus’s example together.

Together for marriage,

Mike and Holly