Valuing Parental Influence

Introduction

I appreciate so much the capable men who have spoken the last two weeks, and I know we have many more who are willing and able, and that’s just such a wonderful thing to know about a group, about this congregation. I’m I love what I do, and I love being able to study and preach and teach, but there’s just something valuable about the reality that if the preacher’s gone, there’s really not much to worry about. You have people who can do this, people who can preach and who can teach, and I think that just shows those are signs of a healthy congregation. And so I appreciate so much the diligence and the work that goes into your lives that this is what matters to you and your faith matters in such a way that we really don’t have any problem if the preacher’s not here with someone getting up and delivering messages that are extremely helpful and encouraging, that exhort us and admonish us.

And so I appreciate the two men who did that the last two weeks, and I know there’ll be more in the future. I appreciate as well your prayers for Xander, that means so much to us. He’s probably listening this morning with Katie at home. things are going well in his recovery, things kind of go up and down, as you probably are aware. he felt pretty good. first few days, he’s kind of not feeling as good today, which is expected. And so I just appreciate all your encouraging words and your love for us. As you look around, as Craig mentioned earlier, see a sizable portion of our congregation is not here this morning. many of them being young people, but also their parents.

And sometimes in these situations, not always, but sometimes in these situations, I like to kind of take an opportunity to spend a little time talking about parenting, talking about the home. And some of our young people are still here, and that’s great. And I think it can be valuable for them to hear, but I think also maybe a place for parents and grandparents to think about some of the important aspects of what’s happening in a home and what that means for our families and for our faith. And so I want to begin reading in 2 Timothy. These are passages you’re familiar with, I’m sure. so it’s nothing revolutionary here, but a little bit about some of these characters in Scripture and their families and what that meant to them.

Second Timothy chapter 1 in verse 3, Paul says, I thank God whom I serve, as did my ancestors, with a clear conscience. As I remember you constantly in my prayers, night and day, as I remember your tears, I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and now I am sure dwells in you as well. My Bible, you turn the page to chapter three, and toward the end of that chapter, Paul has quite a bit more to say, and there’s there’s some things, there’s a lot of things we can’t discuss this morning, but I’ll just mention that Paul’s kind of like a father in the faith to Timothy.

And although his father, we don’t know a lot about him, he was a Greek and probably has a very different background, which is kind of pertinent to what we’ll talk about this morning a little bit. Paul sort of steps in here in multiple roles as a father in the faith, as a mentor, as one who preaches the gospel, and is encouraging Timothy in kind of a multifaceted way, both as a man, but also as a man of God who’s proclaiming God’s word. And so he mentions in verse 10 how he’s followed his teaching and his conduct, his aim in life and his faith. These are all important aspects of what Paul was doing for Timothy. And so I think that’s a great concept to think of as well.

And you know, as men and as women, when we see these opportunities to mentor people who need mentoring, or just we think this is a helpful thing for them in their life, we see the benefit even in scripture of that sort of thing here with Paul. But I want to focus down in verse 14. In verse 14 of chapter 3, he says, But as for you, continue what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. And then he goes on to make this statement about scripture in general. All scripture is breathed out or inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for approval, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

1. The Numbers: Teens Follow Their Parents

Now, I want to spend a few moments here as I go forward, kind of talking about some statistics and some studies. And I’ll give a disclaimer here in just a moment about all of that. But first, just kind of follow me into this, and there’s sort of different directions I want to go as we think about some of these numbers. All right. So the first of these, I almost put an unsurprising result, because that’s what this is. the study here, this is under Pew Research, and you can find all sorts of studies. It’s just overwhelming what you can actually find. but this is about parents, how they pass along their faith to their teens. So here’s what’s found 82% of Protestant parents had teens who also were Protestant.

Now let me just stop and kind of define terms here. These are very big terms. You’re gonna have Protestant versus Catholic, and kind of under big umbrellas, we would we probably don’t consider ourselves Protestant, but we’re kind of within that umbrella from the Reformation movement, then kind of the American Restoration movement. And so we are sort of connected, even though we might not really connect ourselves to that. But these are just big picture, right? So kind of big picture ideas. 81% of Catholic parents had Catholic teens, and 86% of unaffiliated parents, these are atheists, agnostics, those who say they’re not religious, they describe themselves as atheist agnostic or nothing in particular, right? These are called religious nuns. Kind of a play on words here, I think is what they’re going for.

But this is how they’re they’re referenced. But this is very unsurprising, right? I mean, this just kind of shows that teens, at least, now we’ll see some different data about adults and where this goes. but when it comes to teens, even though we think they don’t listen to us, this is how things end up. And so I want to give some summary thoughts about that here in just a few moments, and just think, is this good or bad? You know, are is this information good or is this data or these statistics? Are they good or are they bad? I guess I would just say it really depends on what these parents are teaching their children. I think this is as God intended, right? But it doesn’t mean that as humans, as adults, we always go the right direction and then we always teach our kids the right thing.

But the process itself is going to work.

And what’s going to happen with that is for the most part, we’re going to follow them. And interestingly, in these studies, they also talk about politics and some other things, and it’s the very similar result. Right? So if you have a certain political stance, very highly likely your kids are going to have the same one. And so one thing I want to come back to as I do some interpreting of this data here in just a few minutes, but I want to point it out to you now is the reality of bias that we should all understand and operate with and trying to come to a better understanding of who I am as a person, what God wants from me, and where I can go to make that happen, is first recognizing that I’m actually very biased as a person.

That’s the foundation. And if I can’t recognize that, I’m gonna have a really hard time moving forward to anything meaningful. Well, let’s talk about the numbers a little bit more. So those are just very basic. I know some of these might be hard to see, and it’s really just kind of the big picture I want you to get. We don’t have to analyze every bit of data and all of that, but I just want to kind of see some of the gaps and the differences in these major sort of trends. The first of these has to do with if you have in the there’s a whole other set of data for Catholics. All right, we’re not talking about because I think we more closely associate at least with Protestants, and the numbers there are equally interesting and they’re very different, but that’s for another time.

But this is exclusively Protestant background. Okay, so you have two parents who are the same faith is the idea, right? Again, broad spectrum here of what’s being talked about. And then there’s kind of these categories under here that then show the results of what happens, at least in the study, with what comes from various things within these homes. Okay. So in a home where you have two Protestant parents and they talk about religion a lot, 89% of their children are still Protestant. They still have the same faith. Right? So work your way down. They don’t talk about religion very much. Now it’s 67%. So you’ve probably heard a whole lot of different numbers about how many children stay faithful and all those sorts of things. But what I want you to see is obviously it’s extremely dynamic.

And there’s all sorts of variables and probably things we don’t even realize that are a part of all of this picture. And of course, this study is only looking at certain ones, and some of the other studies will point out, are only looking at certain aspects, right? There’s innumerable variables that we probably can’t process all at the same time, but this is just trying to give us a little bit of help and understanding the sorts of things that happen and the results that come from them. The next two are interesting as well. That if the if religion is very important to the respondent, to the person in the study, then again, 89% follow their parents. If it’s not, this is kind of a big number, which is why I highlighted it here.

So in their growing up years, as they’re growing up, if religion, if faith is not important, this is this 38% number. That’s pretty big. Right? So something to take note of and be aware of. Is my child, do they do they is faith important? Does religion seem important to them? Now there may be some things we need to talk about in regards to that, and we will here in just a few minutes. And then there’s the aspect of the family. Is religion important to the family? 85%, right? Follow the faith of their parents if religion is very important, and 26% do not, if it’s not important. So just some interesting details about how all of this works. Okay, another kind of little side thing here, this has to do with the dynamics of marriage, and how much religion is talked about in the home, because one of the leading concepts or figures, at least in this study, of faithfulness or following your parents’ beliefs is how much religion is talked about in the home.

So I just want to get some data that sort of gives us a foundation of how this works within marriage, okay? If both are affiliated with the same religion, they talk about religion in their home substantially more than if they’re in a mixed faith marriage.

So just at the very outset, if you’re married to someone who has a very different belief system than you, automatically almost you’re going to talk about religion way less. Those are substantial drops in numbers when this happens, okay. So if they’re both believers, different religions, still gonna talk about it some, quite a bit less. And then if you have one who is essentially an atheist agnostic, it’s gonna be much less. Right? Less than half. Right. So this is this is kind of connected to the previous one, only in the sense of one of the determining factors of these results, not necessarily your results. We’ll talk about that in a minute, is how much religion is talked about in the home. So, particularly for those of you who are younger and you’ve not gotten to the marriage years yet, just consider these basic details.

I’m not telling you what your results will be because statistics don’t do that. But we do see a big picture of the sorts of things that happen, and right, this is a survey, this is we can try to deny it, we can try to fight it, but these are the numbers. This is what tends to happen, this is what we are prone to do in these various circumstances, and we will be foolish to ignore that reality in terms of how important or how vital this is and how things function in our home. Similarly, children of mixed faith marriages are more prone to totally abandon the faith. Now, obviously, we’re talking big picture terms here and what belief is and what Christianity is and all of that, but and so the numbers could actually be, I think, more severe, depending on your perspective of all of this.

But if you’re raised by two parents who are the same faith, Protestant faith, 80% of their children remain Protestant. Right? That may be actually higher than you would have thought. But notice the next two set of points of data here. Raised by one Protestant and one Catholic, 38%. Raised by one Protestant and one atheist, 56%. So you got you go from 80 to 38, from 80 to 56. My point here is that there are things that matter. There are things that make a difference in the decisions and the choices that are made and how we are influenced in a home. How we see the world, the way we see God, the way we see Scripture. These are all very much influenced by the things that are happening around us, particularly the things that are happening in our home.

And then I highlighted here at the bottom, unaffiliated or non-believers is essentially what we would probably call that. That’d be our terminology. The numbers jump drastically in homes where there is division and belief. Which makes a lot of sense because there’s going to be a lot of confusion about what is true or what is right. And that tends to lead to things like apathy, where, well, this doesn’t matter anyway. You know, mom says this and dad says that, and how can I even know the truth, right? So it I mean, there’s sort of some sense to some of these numbers. Interestingly, I think, and not all these numbers are down and negative and bad and all of that. It’s just data. It’s just revealing things.

I found this interesting. And we saw it back on an earlier slide. I didn’t highlight it. but in a single parent home, the results are not a whole lot different than in a two-parent home where both are Protestant. You go from 80% to 75% who remain Protestant. It’s interesting that in our text, we’re reading about Lois and Eunice, a grandmother and a mother. The father is not here, and Timothy is this faithful man of God who comes from this, no doubt influenced by Paul and maybe others along the way, but I think that’s an important part of a congregation and how this would work and how God’s people should work. But I mean, just because you’re in a single parent home doesn’t mean you’re some big disadvantage in establishing faith in your child.

At least not from what this data is showing. That a person of strong faith can pass that faith on to their child. Now, obviously, I think we would want to have two parents in the home and influencing a child, but things don’t always work out the way we would like for them to. But it is interesting the way this data pans out. Okay, so here’s my disclaimer. Statistics, numbers, they don’t tell stories, right? They don’t tell your story specifically. They kind of tell a big picture story of how culture or society works, but they are not deterministic in your life. You know, like if you come from a home that has mixed faith, one person is a Christian, one person is a Catholic, which is how these things worked out, right?

Protestant, Catholic, or Protestant and non-affiliated or atheist. It doesn’t mean that you’re part of these statistics and now you just have a you just don’t have a chance to have belief. That’s not what’s being said here because statistics are just telling records of what has happened. It’s not some prediction of what’s going to take place in your life. However, we do see from studies like this, and there was multiple ones that presented here. I didn’t try to break them down and tell you all about them, but there’s not just one study. This is multiple studies from pure research. It does help us sort of identify important factors within ourselves or within our homes that do have an influence on our faith that do matter, that we should pay attention to, that we shouldn’t just ignore.

2. Interpreting the Data

And so it’s those I want to kind of work through as I sort of interpret this data a little bit, and then give some points here at the end that I think will maybe be helpful for us as parents or as children as we think about where this is gonna go moving forward. So first I just want to kind of interpret. I know we ran through that data quickly, and I want to, as I went through it much more slowly on my own, go through and kind of give some summary interpretation of what is shown by a lot of this data. The first is that the worldview of your child is heavily influenced by you, and there’s just no way around it. I think this is what God wants, and it should be done in a way that is working toward God and what pleases him, and ideally, then that is passed along to the children.

Religious beliefs, even in adulthood, are substantially biased by what their parents believed. Now, part of this is also just how the home functions, right? So that’s certainly part of the influence as well. And as you get older, obviously you’re going to develop more of your own thoughts, and those numbers don’t stay in the 80s, they start to change when you go from the teen years to the middle of life. Now, it’s interesting in the data, most of those changes occur between 24 and 35 years old, and very rarely do any changes occur after you’re over 50. Kind of interesting. I don’t know what it says, other than we don’t like the change after we get a little bit older, but that’s what the data shows. But we’re very influenced kind of in our middle years, 24 to 35.

We’re starting to think on our own, develop our own faith, which is good. I mean, that’s what we want to be doing. We want to be asking questions and seeking truth, and that’s sort of where all this is going here this morning. Who we marry significantly influences how faith is passed to our children. There’s just no denying it. It makes a huge difference. And that’s what all the data shows, both in this study and any study I’ve ever read about any of this, is that it makes a huge difference. And we’ve saw that in all of the numbers. And then there’s also this just this reality that we are biased as humans. When I started grad school, I probably told you this before. One of the first things we did, which you know, again, I just wasn’t used to this, but it’s, and I thought, oh, this is sort of silly.

I think I’ve later come to realize actually it was very valuable. we had to do what’s called a self-statement. We had to write things about ourselves, about our background. So, for example, I came from a home with two parents who are faithful Christians. That was part of my self-statement. I grew up always going to church. I don’t remember not going to church my whole life. Right? I mean, I had kids in my class with me, students, I should say, as many of us were older in the class with me, who they didn’t start going to church at all until they were adults. That’s a very different background, right? That they’re working through compared to the things I will be working through with my influence. And of course, the self-statement’s not, it’s it’s not positive or negative, it just is what it is, and it’s coming to terms with your heritage, with your background, and how that influences the way you see the world.

And it certainly does, even in interpretation, that will be for another sermon some other time. But the reality of bias is there. And if we don’t recognize that, we are going to be lost. We’re not going to know where to go. We’re not going to understand the right direction. We have to be willing to challenge our biases to actually come to truth. And if we aren’t willing to do that, all we do is believe what our parents told us or what someone else told us. Right? No, that’s not a bad starting point. And I think it’s intended to be so, that we’re brought up with wisdom and with love for our parents. But at some point, we have to be willing to challenge and to think for ourselves.

All right? And then this last one is when we realize how important it is that children value religion in terms of where this brings them in their future. I think this should give us an idea of how important it is that we work on shaping their hearts, not just their outward actions. Like I can force my children to do all kinds of things, at least now, the little ones. I can make them do stuff. But just forcing them to do things outwardly doesn’t necessarily do anything to their heart. And if I’m forcing them to do things and not teaching them to love God, and not teaching them to praise God, and not teaching them to love piety and religion and orientation toward God, if I’m not teaching those sorts of things, and they just learn to go through the motions and say the right things and do the right things, I mean, maybe it’ll work out and they’ll figure it out on their own, and that would be great.

3. Making Healthy Religious Discussion Normal in Our Home

But man, think about that number. It was the most important, at least in this study. Most important number is how important is religion to the respondent. If it was very important, then 89% stayed faithful. And the bigger number, I think it was 36 or 38, maybe, were unaffiliated. I don’t know what that faithfulness number means in this study and how they view Christianity or any of that, but I do know what the 38% means. And that means they don’t believe in God and they don’t have faith. So, what are some things we can think of in terms of shaping hearts in our home, including our own as parents? I think just even looking at this data, looking at the concepts and the principles we see in scripture, I think the place that we have to start here as parents is making healthy religious discussion normal in our home.

This is what should be happening on a regular basis. It should be normal. Now, you’re familiar with Deuteronomy 6 and Deuteronomy 11, there’s passages we go to a lot where God is guiding his people to do this very thing, right? Everywhere they go. When you’re sitting down and when you rise up, and the his law should be on the doorposts and on the gates, and when you’re in the field and all these different situations, you’re bringing God into that and you’re talking about God. That’s that’s the concept. In our world in our culture, it’s something very different than how they would have seen things in ancient times. I mean, we have this kind of like divide of secular and religious. Like, this is my secular life, and this is my spiritual life.

And very much this is how it’s viewed often in our culture, and really it’s just life. They’re together. And whether it’s at school or at work or wherever we are, God should be a part of that. He is the creator of the whole universe. He’s the creator of the world. Everything is created by his hands and is by his doing. He upholds, he sustains the world. And so it’s not like this portion over here, we don’t really need to talk about God, and this one we do. That doesn’t make any sense at all. God is a substantial part of everything that’s happening in our life. If we’re a believer, we ought to know that. If we’re a non-believer, it’s still true. It doesn’t change. It’s still the reality, whether we admit it or not.

And so we don’t have these two separate designs. In fact, you know, our word culture kind of represents this reality. It comes from the idea of cult. And now we think of cult as like the crazy people who have all these weird beliefs and drag, but that’s not necessarily the initial concept behind that term. It was really like the temple cultists. It’s the way you worship God. But that’s very tied to culture. You know, all of these ancient cities had temples to their gods, including Jerusalem, which had the temple to Yahweh, but then they had means and methods of going about worshiping. That was part of their culture. Right? And so they’re not separating life as if like you’ve got one part of your life here and the other part over here.

And so this should just be a regular part of home discussion. There’s a lot of ways to do this in a lot of ways that probably y’all already do a lot of this, talking about sermons or Bible classes or doing your lessons at home. And I think all that’s valuable, and I would suggest some things along those lines that I think are helpful. avoiding like yes or no questions. did you like the sermon this morning? Do you want to go to heaven? I mean, like, what are they gonna say? Like, you know, it’s more like, what did you think about the sermon this morning? Did you agree with what was said? Did you disagree? Why? You know, getting into some deeper discussions and allowing opinions to be shared and thought through and vetted.

And sometimes those opinions and ideas may be really good. And things that as adults we haven’t thought about. Sometimes they may be a little off and they may need some correction, and that’s fine. And we shouldn’t lose our minds and get all upset. That’s part of the growing process. And I think it’s really easy in many parts of life, not just spiritual life, but it’s easy to kind of as an adult think that our little kids should already operate like adults. But it just takes time to grow and to mature. And so when our expectation is one of maturity when they’re not mature, that can be a big problem. And often what that does is just shut down conversation. If you can never please mom and dad with your answers or with your opinions or with your thoughts or your ideas, you start not giving them.

Hopefully you’re beyond that in your marriage. But you know, just coming up with some ways to generate discussion. And some of these can be super valuable. If you can’t find them, create your own. Write down your own questions that you want to ask your kids and start engaging them in a way where they can share their ideas. And as parents, that’s one of the best ways we can help them along the way, too, if their ideas are off, if they’re wrong, if they’re inaccurate. We can start to hear that and try to patiently guide them through a process where they come to better ways of thinking and better philosophy. This is, I think, super important in our world. Where they are bombarded with ideas, with philosophies that are completely erroneous and illogical, and yet it is just shoved down their throat constantly to the point where often young people think things that are completely illogical that starts to make sense in their mind.

Maybe more so than we even realize they begin to think this way. Because it’s the way their friends think, it’s the way some adults in their life think. And so if I don’t know what’s going on in my kids’ head and the sorts of things they’re thinking from these influences, I’m going to be at a loss at how to help them. And so some of this is going to come just from generating and allowing and even pushing healthy religious discussion. Now I know how this works because it happened when I was a kid, it happens with my kids. You get in the car and you say, What did you think about the sermon today? I don’t know. I’m hungry, you know. Like I get it.

But my point is don’t stop. Don’t say, Well, they just don’t want to talk about it. They probably don’t sometimes, and that’s fine. But it’s just not giving up on those ideas. And maybe it’s a different time. Maybe the ride home on a Sunday morning when it is lunchtime and people are hungry isn’t the time to try to get into deep theological thought. But we can find other times. No, but it’s not giving up on that reality. And maybe if a child seems uninterested in faith, it’s time to start asking other questions. You know, if we can see, they just start, they don’t pay attention at all. They are not interested one bit. You know, as a parent, and I again I know this is a process, and there’s days where that’s going to be how it is, but I mean consistently showing that they are not interested.

Maybe that’s the time to start asking deeper questions. What do you think our purpose in life is? You know? Tell me. What do you think we’re here for? Maybe it is time to get into deeper philosophical questions about where this is all going. But it’s certainly not time just to stay silent and allow it to happen. And I know many of you are like Katie and I, we even last night were laying in bed talking about our kids, worried about our kids in various ways, and you’re probably the same way. And sometimes you’re just at a loss for what to do. But I know, even in my lack of knowledge, one thing I do know is that not talking about things is not the right way.

4. Live in a Way That Prioritizes Faith

Staying silent, not engaging conversation, watching something run off the rails and not trying to help it, that’s not going to be the right way. And ultimately, even as we saw in the study, it’s you can’t force them to make a decision. Right? The most important factor is how important is religion to them as they’re growing up. And so ultimately it comes down to what they choose, and we can’t force them to make choices. All we can do is try to shape their heart to love God and to honor Him and praise Him. And so part of that is making these discussions an important part of what happens in our home. Again, pretty simple stuff here. I think if we’re going to shape hearts, it’s going to be that we live in a way that prioritizes faith.

I love how Paul sort of hints at this in this letter to Timothy. And you know, it’s interesting. He his ancestors certainly didn’t do everything right and didn’t make all the right choices. But there’s a heritage here that Paul at least appreciates. You know, he says, I thank God, whom I serve, as did my ancestors, with a clear conscience. He sees value, even in some of the errors and the mistakes and kind of ultimately the rejection of the Messiah that some of his ancestors, you know, led to with some of his people. There’s still a value he places here on what he was taught and the heritage he had, how he learned scriptures that was valuable to him. And the same sort of thing here with Timothy.

He’s reminded of Timothy’s faith, but it didn’t just start with Timothy, right? This started somewhere else. It started with his grandmother and his mother probably rocking him at night, singing all those Jewish hymns, you know, like we do with our kids. We rock them and we sing the songs that we like. This is where it all begins, and these choices matter. Choices and how we demonstrate the importance of our faith. Because the second one behind how important is religion to the respondent is how important is religion to the respondent’s family. So what are we doing as a family that demonstrates how important our faith is? And I don’t just mean the outward stuff, right? Like going through the motions and saying the right things, but sincere faith, right?

This is what Paul talks about here with Timothy. I’m reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt with first with your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice. This is a sincere faith. It’s honest, it’s vulnerable, it’s the real thing. And it’s demonstrated by the way people are living and the things that they’re doing in the life, what they’re prioritizing. And so it’s all the normal things, right? Like prioritizing worship and Bible class. But not just that, but also prioritizing time with brethren. One of the things I love about Decker Prairie from the first moment I was here is how much the people here prioritize being together and how much you want to be together. I think that is equally important to prioritizing worship in Bible class.

Community is a huge part of the entire story of Scripture. God chose a people. Salvation came through the Jews. He forms us in congregations. He wants us to be together. And so, in terms of the formation of our faith, the influence that we have, think about Timothy. Timothy has Paul as a mentor influencing him. This isn’t just something Timothy just goes and does all alone.

We need the influence of our elders, not just the ones with the title, the shepherds, certainly them as well, as they are examples of faith, as the Hebrew writer talks about. But those who are older, those who have been through things before, those who have experience, we need that. We need their encouragement at times when we’re struggling as parents or we feel like we’re lost and we don’t have answers. And they can help us out and they can lift us up, or they can help correct us even when we need it, if we’re willing and able to listen to them. But this is all important part of this process. And so the worship, extremely vital. Bible class, extremely vital. That’s just a few hours a week.

What about the rest of the time? What are our kids seeing about us being in each other’s homes and prioritizing those times with other Christians, other people of like faith? It may be that they learn more from those moments, even. Learn more about how sincere our faith is. And how committed we are to the ways of God that we actually want to be with these people. We want them in our life. This is so important. They are the priority. And of course, as life is, it’s busy, and there’s all sorts of decisions to make along the way, and we can’t always be at every get together and gathering that takes place. But this is a long-term process. Over the course of time, what are my kids seeing?

What are they learning about what I think about God’s people and what they mean in my life? And it also can be a really important way our child’s heart is shaped. They have all sorts of grandmothers and grandfathers and the faith and mothers and fathers and the faith. Sometimes we even call them that. We have terms of endearment for people who are not even blood relatives because they mean so much to us. And that’s how important those relationships are. People who watch our kids or people who watch kids for others in the congregation and care about them and want to help raise them and want to help shape them in the right way. All of these things matter. And if we are tuned into that, and that is a priority to us, it says so much to our children.

And it may be that it actually says a whole lot more when we aren’t. When those things don’t seem to matter. And we aren’t ever at any get togethers, or we don’t make those things a priority, or we’re not coming to classes. We casually miss worship when it’s just inconvenient. Those certainly give a message to our kids. And they learn what really matters, and here’s what happens. They follow us.

5. Seeking Truth and Sincere Faith

That first slide, 82%, 82%. You think those Catholic children are following their Catholic parents because when they’re teenagers, they’ve found that is the truth, and that’s everything about that is completely correct. And why are they doing that? What their parents did. Same thing with the Protestants. 86% of non-believers, atheists, agnostics, their children, their teenage children, are also atheist agnostics. Is that because they’ve found all the answers to life and they’ve discovered that’s the truth? No. It’s a process, it takes time, and so really it comes down to this last reality, and that is in our families, in our homes, what needs to be praised, what we need to be doing is seeking truth and sincere faith. And let me kind of show the contrast to that.

That is particularly in contrast to mere tribalism or sectarian thinking, or like you need to think like we think, right? This is the kind of like maybe the problem in some of the study, if there’s a problem with it. You’ve got Catholics and you got Protestants, like we’re categorized, we kind of love to be tribal. Right? We find confidence in our tribe. And some of that’s not all bad. We’re social creatures, and so we’re going to naturally kind of gravitate toward those who are like us. And in our case, it’s those of like faith. And some of that is very appropriate as long as we realize our actual motivation and desire should be to seek Christ, to diligently seek God, as the Hebrew writer says in chapter 11 and verse 6.

It’s not to diligently seek Catholicism or diligently seek Protestantism in various forms, or to diligently seek atheism. That’s not really our goal. It’s to diligently seek God and to seek the truths of God. And so if I’m caught up in sectarian thinking or parties or part of a tribe or any of that sort of thing, and I’m trying to defend all of that, then I may be missing the big picture. This is where questions become dangerous, right? Our kids start thinking about other things. Oh, you can’t think that. Well, they are. And we need to talk about it. We need to address it honestly, truthfully, with scripture, focused on following Jesus Christ and his will and his way, not following some kind of human tradition. In fact, Jesus talks about this very thing.

Right? You honor me with your lips, but your hearts are far from me. And they’re teaching as commandments of God the traditions of men. And Jesus says that is not valuable at all. What truthfully needs to be happening is in their case, following Yahweh, following the things that God actually said, and not the traditions that the Jews had come up with and elevated to the place of God’s law. Jesus says, don’t do that. And to whatever extent that happens, and it happens in pretty much every heritage and every background, where there are human traditions, whether it’s Catholicism or Protestantism or whatever group, there are traditions that are formed that people begin to elevate as doctrines of God. And we have to be very careful about that.

For the most part, some of those things might be fine and good, but when we elevate them as this is what God wants and this is what God says, what happens, our children go up and they realize that’s not what the Bible says. And now they’re influenced in that in a way that’s negative and unproductive. The goal is truth, not ritual, not just going through the right motions. I know one of the struggles I’ve heard many times in my life is a parent comes and says, my child’s 14, 15, 16, and they’re not baptized yet. Okay, I mean, I understand the concern. Do you want them to get baptized when they don’t believe? Do you want them to get wet in water when they haven’t actually come to a decision?

I mean, surely we don’t. But sometimes it’s like there’s this comfort in the idea that they’ve done this thing. And what to me makes a whole lot more sense to be comfortable in is that I’m teaching my child to seek truth. That’s what I really want them to do. And if they do that, they’re going to come to that decision, because that’s what scripture teaches. If I’m trying to force it on them, I’m trying to push them toward these decisions without them actually getting there and developing for themselves. I’m not sure of the value of that or where that’s going to take them. But what I really need to be doing as a father and the leader of my home is pushing for truth seekers, people who have sincere faith.

And here’s the thing the truth, and you’ll probably hear me say this over and over again, as long as I’m here, the truth has nothing to fear. Absolutely nothing. And so if they ask a question about predestination or election or the Holy Spirit or whatever, the truth has nothing to fear. I’m not afraid of that question. I hope you’re not afraid of that question either. There’s nothing to be afraid of. We should be able to talk about all those sorts of things. They’re all in here. The Bible talks about them, and there’s nothing to be afraid of. And the moment we start being afraid, that’s going to be when we start losing our kids. And we aren’t willing to talk about difficult questions and things that are troubling and the things they don’t understand or the doubts they have.

Conclusion

Now they don’t see us as a reliable source anymore. And so despite all the variables and all the things that we can’t control, there are some things that we can control. There’s some things that we can do. We can have healthy conversation. We can prioritize the things of God, his people. And we can prioritize and praise the idea of seeking truth, not just tribe, not tradition. Seeking actual answers from Scripture, understanding what the will of the Lord is and seeking to please him, as Paul says in Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 10.

And if we’ve done that, we’ve done our part. We’ve done what we can do. We can’t make our children come to faith. We can’t make them decide to follow Jesus. That’s everybody’s choice.

But we certainly don’t want to take the idea that’s everybody’s choice just to mean that there’s nothing we can do. Because that’s certainly not true either. The data’s pretty clear, at least from the broad spectrum of how things work. There are choices and there are things that we can do that can at least greatly help the process along the way. I appreciate your attention this morning. If you are someone who’s seeking answers yourself, I think you’re in the right place. I think we have a group of seekers, people who want to know truth, who are willing to discuss, have dialogue with you. And if you want to know what you need to do to follow Jesus Christ, I can tell you the first step in this.

If you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and you believe that He came and He saved the world, He died for the sins of the world, He shed His blood, then you can be buried with Him in baptism and be resurrected to newness of life. You can be part of His people and start living for Him. That’s a very short version of the whole story. But at least it gives you an idea. And we would love for you to start there this morning to make that choice, to make that decision and begin working through Scripture to better understand what God wants from you. Can we help you? Why don’t you come as we stand and we sing?