Father: Cultivating Faith as Fathers: Questions Dig Up the Deeper Motivations

Not a photo of our walk, but of Colin and I recently

Just got back from a walk with Colin, my oldest son, and we had some great conversation about Faith, why to pursue God, what questions to ask yourself as you prepare to give your life to following Jesus. 

Colin is a kid growing up with two parents who fell in love with each other after they fully committed to God, so he's growing up differently than his parents, and it's easy to say the right "churchy" answers when asked questions about his faith.

So today we talked about urgency, and why anyone would be urgent to become a Christian.  Below are some questions and lines of questioning I think we might use to get our sons, daughters, and mentees to think deeply about their faith, and avoid the religious, goody two-shoes types of answers.  You see, kids in our church figure out pretty quickly that baptism is a big deal, and they get a fair amount of tunnel vision about that as their primary goal in their teen years.

First I let him talk about why he's serious about baptism and becoming a Christian.  He asked me, "What should I do to show that I'm urgent to get baptized?"  I said, "You should do what you do because you are urgent.  the question is, 'What would make someone urgent to get into a lifelong relationship with God?'"

I shared my story of becoming a Christian, how off-center I was at living my faith, how self-righteous I was, and how often I still battle with people-pleasing.  I shared that back then it was WAY worse.  The power of reading scriptures with a committed disciple of Jesus and consistently asking my self if I was following these scriptures was so convicting and different than any experience I had ever had, I knew I was being called to follow, not just admire, Jesus. I told Colin that that was my story, not his.  He has been raised to know about following scripture, and I have raised him to know the Bible, so he is going to struggle with more of this "gotta give the right Bible class answer" mentality.  So authenticity and honesty is critical, as well as thinking deeply. So I asked, "Why are you urgent to make this commitment?"
"To take advantage of how I grew up"
What do you mean, take advantage of...?"
"To do what's right"
Ok, that makes sense, and is one good reason, what are some others?
"Well, I'd like my friend [Joe] to be in heaven"
Ok, outreach and care for others is another good reason.  What else?


It is really important to unpack WHY.  I explained we are getting to our real motivation, our real urgency when we can answer "Why?" 3-5 times after the initial response of what.  This is called a root cause analysis, and I was applying it to Colin's motivation to do a good thing, like give his life to Christ.  I kept asking 2-3 more times, "What else would make you want to live a whole life for God, right here on earth?"  he mentioned the hope of Heaven, which was far away, wanting his buddies at school to have heaven and a relationship with God, and we talked about whether or not we really do have a better life if we are Christians, and if a "better life" should be a motivation for becoming a Christian.  This was a rich conversation as we walked the dog.  


We appreciated that there is no guarantee of an easier life for him as a Christian, but some aspects of community and benefits of having all sin forgiven and total acceptance from the creator of the universe are huge!  There is so much less power to conform in a public middle school when you have great buddies from church.  You can be yourself. Judgment from others will hurt, and get your attention, but the power is blunted quite a bit when we are centered in our family, our spiritual community, and our identity. So, on some level, yes, a better life might be a motivation to become a Christian, but not a lasting one.

As we ended the walk, and were sitting on the back patio, I realized and gently reminded Colin that on our long walk, never once did Jesus come up.  He said, yeah, he didn't want to say that because it was too much like a churchy right answer.  I reminded him that it's ok to say the answers that sound religious if they truly are what you believe.  If they truly are your motivation, it would not be honest to hold those reasons back.  What became clear is that it is hard for a kid raised in a religious setting to separate who he is from who he thinks he should be.  And I think that is where questions, conversations, and relationships are so critical.  I encouraged him to talk to any man that we both trust and ask them: 

"Why become a Christian?  Why did you?"
"What are the best motivations to live the Christian life?  What motivated you to commit to God, live for him?"  
"What keeps you going in your faith in God?"

Finally, I reminded my son that these questions should not just be asked of key men, but key women in his life. And, most importantly, these are the kinds of questions that we take to God over time.  We read stories of regular men and women in the bible, some with great faith, some with inconsistent characters, and we reflect on our own faith and our motivations to pursue and keep pursuing God.  

So, when talking about faith with our adolescent children, I think the conversation is key, as are open-ended questions.  I love the open stems we can use, like:

"What are some...?"
"What might be some...?"
"What else?"

And, my favorite all-time question to end with is, "What was helpful [about this conversation]?"  This allows our children to summarize and highlight what was most salient.  When I asked Colin today, his answer was along the lines of, "It was helpful to think through many reasons why I should become a Christian."  Great!  Mission accomplished.  We don't want our kids to need us to tell them what to think, we have to support them learning to think, and then think a bit harder than they were planning on, or about different angles on the given topic.

With all this in mind, what was helpful about this blog to you?  

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