In America, where diversity and tolerance are prized above all else, there is a growing pressure to allow your children to make their own choices concerning gender, sexuality, morality, and religion rather than intentionally shaping the way that they view themselves, others, and God.

This school of thought reasons that any efforts to teach your children concerning God and morals amounts to taking advantage of a child’s innocence and trust, and forever predisposing them to this certain belief, hindering them from becoming their true selves. What is more, many blame religion for the very existence of guilt and shame and reason that were it not for religion, our children would feel much more accepted as they are.

As a parent, this seemingly carefree and hands-off viewpoint has appeal because it allows you to breathe a sigh of relief, lay down what can seem like a heavy burden of parenting, and just let your children grow into the person that they want to be. All you need to do is give them a loving and accepting environment that gives them the freedom to grow into their true self. 

 

 

But just a trip around the block (or a ride on the school bus) will tell you that the “loving and accepting environment” that post-modern America actually fosters is often simply an environment of permissiveness and self-indulgence that comes with a price tag of the loss of innocence and often deep emotional scars that remain even into adulthood.

If we leave our children to themselves they will learn all that they need to know through the tumultuous experience of trial and error in every place their minds and bodies are allowed to go. They will learn it from the internet, from their peers (some of which are struggling through molestation and abuse), and from short quips in otherwise clean movies and TV shows (or worse if you are not keeping guard on what they watch). And their exploration will take them further than they wanted to go, keep them longer than they wanted to stay, and cost them more than they wanted to pay.

 

 

 

What are we to do?

Before you get overwhelmed by the responsibility of being the protector of little bodies, minds and souls, let me encourage you that the answer to your child’s struggles lies within your own faith journey. Believe it or not, your children REALLY look up to you! (Whether they want to or not).  And what you believe concerning God, yourself, and who they are will shape the way that they view the world.

And trust me, what you have to teach your children will be far better than what they learn from their peers. It is far better for us to encourage our children to use what we have found to be good, noble, and true from our own experience as a starting place rather than send them out innocent, but directionless and vulnerable. 

To teach our children what we have come to learn and believe does not soil their innocence, but protects it. They will still need to come to own their own faith and self-understanding, but they will hopefully come to it without as much pain as many who had to learn the hard way. Far too many suffer at the hands of their own decisions (and even worse, the decisions of others). It is far better for us to help our children view the world standing on our shoulders than to simply thrust them into the world to attempt to blindly discover their own path.

What this means is that your spiritual journey is now more important than ever. It is not only your heart, mind, body, and soul that is dependent upon what you do and believe – it is also your children. To lead them, you need to be ahead of them, discovering the answers to questions before they ask them.

 

 

I am fortunate enough to work with college students on a daily basis and am seeing the kind of questions that they are asking and helping them to pray through the scars that they received while they were seeking to discover their true self. Let me leave you with a few bits of advice that I am sure that I will be passing onto my sons concerning Guilt and Shame, Love, Gender and Sexuality that I have learned on my faith journey.

 

Concerning Guilt and Shame:

1. There is right and wrong and when we do wrong we are guilty and there is shame associated with guilt. It is actually good to feel our guiltiness at first, but God does not want us to live in guilt and shame, but in joy and peace through His Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23).
2. The Holy Spirit convicts and the Accuser (The Devil) condemns (John 10:10; 16:8). The Holy Spirit empowers and the Accuser dis-empowers (Acts 1:8, 1 Peter 5:8).
3. God and His people forgive (Matthew 18:21-22). Remember, forgiveness is not saying “its OK”, but that its “not OK”, but I am giving all judgment to God and choosing to walk in grace.
4. God has paid for our guilt through His Son (Colossians 2:14). There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).

 

Concerning Love, Gender, and Sexuality:

1. God created us male and female in His image. And we are under a curse where men tend to wrongly lord over women and women tend to wrongly look toward men to fulfill them (Genesis 1:27; 3:16).
2. All people are created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27).
3. There is a difference between love, lust, passion, and obsession. We must learn the difference and be careful not to get them confused.
4. We should love everyone and know that some touch is appropriate for those we love and other touch is not. Do not confuse touching (an expression of love) with love. There is appropriate touch and inappropriate touch. Just because something is consensual does not mean that it is not mutually harmful. And God tells us that sexual touch is an expression of marital love between husband and wife (Matthew 19:5, 1 Corinthians 6:9, 7:5).

 

What have you learned on your faith journey that you can pass onto your children? I am sure that you have a lot of great things to share. How will you share them with your children? How will you help guide them so that they can process the complex situations around them without picking up emotional baggage? It might be good to spend some time praying through these things.

 

Lord God, thank You for all that You have taught me in my journey so far. I ask now that You would guide me today to process what I have learned so that I may lead my own children. Lord, I dedicate this room that I am in to You and I ask that You would silence the voice of all accusers who seek to take my power from me and I ask that You would turn my ear to Your Spirit that I might sort through all that I need to in order to lead my children.

So, Lord, I ask would You bring my mind to rest [let your mind to come to rest] and bring my heart to peace [submit your heart to His peace]. No Lord I ask, would you show me, “What are the ways that You have already equipped me to lead my family?” Would You bring to my mind those things that you have taught me that I need to embrace and pass on to my children? [write these down] And Lord, would You show me, “Are there any false lessons that I learned that need to be renounced?” [write them down and renounce them]. Lord would You show me, are there any lessons that I need to learn right now? Would You bring these to my mind? [write these down].

Lord, thank You so much for all that You are doing, I give myself over to You to guide me to be the parent that You want me to be. Help me to learn even more what it means for You to be my Father and for me to be Your child. And out of this relationship, help me to lead my children as the parent I never had.

Amen.

 

You can Read Part 1 and 2 of our series here:

How Almost Ruining my Emotional Son Led to my Spiritual Renewal

Wholeness or Bitterness: The Power of a Father’s Words

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You can find other Christian based articles on the Salt & Light linkup!