← Faith Matters
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- [00:00]
A
Hey everybody. We just wanted to let you know about an event that's coming up. It's the first ever Faith Matters Family Night. We'll be joining with For Little Saints for an evening of music, storytelling and connection designed for families, both parents and kids. So if you're looking for ways to nourish a deep and thoughtful faith, we hope that you'll come join us. There'll be live music from Emily Susan Pack short, inspiring reflections on faith and family from Whitney Call and Lauren Yarrow, food and community building and simple activities for kids. So come bring your kids exactly as you are. Exactly as they are. And we'll see you on May 1st from 6 to 7:15 at the Big Pavilion in Kiwanis park in Provo, Utah. The link to RSVP is in the show notes and we can't wait to see you there. Hey everybody, this is Aubrey Chavez from Faith Matters. Today we're exploring a tender question that so many parents are carrying. How do we help our kids grow in faith when we're still figuring it out for ourselves? And underneath that, what if we get it wrong? What if we hand them something they'll spend years trying to untangle? Today we're joined by pastor, author and researcher Meredith Miller, who has spent her career thoughtfully engaging these questions. Her book, nurturing a faith your kid doesn't have to heal from offers a grounded and practical guide for what it can look like. Meredith invites us to move away from rigid faith metaphors like walls and foundations and instead to see faith more like a web, flexible, resilient and uniquely woven for each person. That shift opens us up to a spacious way of thinking about what it means to guide our kids spiritually. Anchoring this conversation is her distinction between obedience based and trust based faith. Meredith makes a compelling case that trust must come first, that obedience, when it matters, grows naturally out of a relationship with God that we've come to know and trust rather than fear. We also talked today about how to approach scripture with kids and what her research revealed about the strengths of a Latter Day Saint Ward based model, the value of family warmth and why I don't know can be a great answer. This conversation was a steadying reminder for us that while we can't control how our kids faith unfolds, we can trust that God is already at work in their lives. We hope that this episode gives you both some practical tools and a little more peace for the long, slow work nourishing of faith your kid doesn't have to heal from. And now, here's Meredith Miller Well, Meredith, welcome to the podcast. We're so excited to talk to you. We loved your book and have really been looking forward to this conversation. So thanks so much for joining us.
- [02:25]
B
Oh, I'm so grateful for the invitation.
- [02:27]
A
Yeah. We spend. We have a lot of conversations about faith journeys and faith expansion and the way faith develops over time. And I think inherent to those experiences is this real ambiguity around parenting, because at the end of the day, it feels like the question is always, okay, but what do we. What do we say to our kids? And this is a. This is something that comes up all the time from listeners, too. And so we were so intrigued by the title of your book, and we're so happy that it really felt like an answer to this question in a lot of ways. And so we appreciated that. And I'd love for you actually to just frame sort of the. You think about faith before we even really get into the meat of the book and talk about the title and why a web has felt like such a fitting metaphor versus a wall, which is probably how a lot of us grew up thinking about building our faith.
- [03:21]
B
Yeah. And we might not realize that's what we thought, but it is how a lot of stuff functions, especially for children. The starting point often being this common phrase of we want to give kids a firm foundation for their faith. And so what that ends up looking like is that adults have already decided what kinds of things a kid needs to know and do, and they give those to kids sort of brick by brick. Here are the Bible stories you need to hear, or perhaps the specific passages of scripture you need to have memorized, or here's what regular worship attendance needs to look like. Here's how our family does certain kinds of things. Maybe that's meal, prayers, or bedtime rituals. And. And there's a certain rigidity to the whole model where it has to be that way. And it's very one size fits all, very much like how someone follows a blueprint and ends up with the same building. And there's a lot that functions with that idea that every kid's faith basically looks the same because the stuff of faith is shared. And what I found fascinating, as someone who got to be part of some research teams related to faith formation, is just how much one. Kids need a lot more flexibility, not in terms of the point of faith being to live a life with God, but in terms of how that life could look. And the fact that the way that gets expressed will change as they grow or as their circumstances change. And they need more uniqueness. Than this one size fits all. Again, not that we aren't all going to engage in scripture, for instance, but how one engages in scripture, there are a lot of great ways to come into that text. And the idea that a family can be doing it in a unique way to themselves that maybe doesn't look like another family, and then that a kid would learn they could be doing it in a way that's unique to themselves, that will be shared with some people and not with others. Those are features that are really helpful for a kid in terms of what this whole faith thing is about. And that feels a lot more like how a spider weaves a web, that that structure is flexible. But it's not just that it's flexible. Mit, they did this research on why spiderwebs are strong, and it's because of its ability to flex when stressed. You can see it on YouTube. You can hang paperclips from the thread of a spider web, and they do it against a steel cable that's the same dimensions. And the web wins because that flexibility is unbelievably strong. And there's something about this idea that you say, okay, what if a kid grew up understanding that faith doesn't have to look always the same in every part of life all the time, and that that doesn't change your connection to God or the relationship you have with God that's growing? Like, wouldn't that be of such great service to them? And so that became then sort of the guiding metaphor for the book and its title image in the end, because I thought it could be a lot more helpful in its understanding of flexibility and in uniqueness. Webs, one to one, they're like snowflakes. Literally no web is identical to another web, even within, like, the same type of spider. And it's like, oh, that the idea that our faith is unique, that it doesn't have to be identical to be good, and that adults are more helping kids weave something for them that might have shared features with others, but it doesn't have to be absolutely, absolutely in lockstep with everyone else.
- [06:44]
C
Yeah, I think one of the tricky parts about that for me is, and this is the way I would have thought about this a couple decades ago or whatever, that in many instances in our lives, of course, flexibility is important. And we can't take for granted that institutions have figured out a framework that works for us necessarily. And so I think in many areas of people's lives, it's easy to say, of course this is going to be somewhat unique. Of course, I'M going to be flexible about this. But with their faith, often there's this separate element which is like, this is God ordained in some way. And therefore I don't have the right, you know, as God's subject, to implement flexibility in the same way I do in all other areas of my life. I don't know if that resonates for you and coming from your tradition or if you. I mean, the way. Just wondering about the way you've thought about that.
- [07:28]
B
Yeah. And I do think that's a really common question that people are sorting through is like, when you say flexible, what do you mean by that? And. And again, if I lean into where I loved the metaphor. When you watch a spider weave, they have these specific silks that are their anchor threads. That's what makes it strong. And where I opted to lean in is that with faith, that's about who God is. Right. This is the strength of faith is being anchored to not just right behaviors, not absolute identical beliefs in minutiae, but really in knowing God. And so when we talk about flexibility, we're talking about, like, practices and expressions and these things that we would have in my tradition, you know, we talk a lot about majors and minors. Right. And that majors have to do with the God that we are following and the ultimate goals to be aligned with God and what God is doing in the world. And minors would be, do I have a quiet time practice, or do I reflect on scripture in some other sort of way? Right. Minors would be when. When we pray. Not necessarily that we pray, but when we pray or how we pray, does it have to sound the same way? Right. That the flexibility is not necessarily about majors and core beliefs. It's about expression and process of getting to know them. And I think that that part is important to your thing of like, but isn't this all from God? And then probably along with that, and you all, I'm sure, notice this. When it comes to faith and parenting and faith in family spaces, there sure is a lot of cultural interpretation we put on what it means to be a good Christian family. And so there has to. I think part of correcting that it has to be a season of at least little more openness to maybe it doesn't have to look this way. That was sort of dominant in our culture in the last 50 years or so.
- [09:22]
A
This kind of brings me to this, to what you write about obedience, because I think the way I had always thought about faith is that it's like this milk before meat concept that, like, you're gonna yeah, your kids won't totally understand, but you're gonna teach them about obedience because then they'll grow up and be able to be more flexible and interpretive because it's just, it's scaffolding. Right. And you really challenge that, that paradigm that that's the way, that's the order of things and that. And actually challenge the challenge what we think about obedience altogether. And that was maybe my, the most important takeaway, I think, for me from, from this book. And so I'd love for you to talk about what a, what a trust based orientation looks like in a child who's, who's, you know, needs something very elementary versus an obedience based framework for their new faith.
- [10:12]
B
Yeah, it is, I don't know, maybe the more controversial part of the whole book. Not intentionally, I just think it's actually true. It is generally the assumed framework of an obedience training paradigm that adults know what obedience looks like and feels like and sounds like. And it is, to your point earlier, God ordained. Therefore we train our children in it. And then the assumption is that the fruit of that obedience will become evident to a child in such a way that they realize that the God who tells them to do that is worth trusting. Two problems come up with this. One is just from a practical and like research, faith formation perspective, it doesn't work. And I'll unpack that in just a second. And the other is that it reverses a process that is not how God chooses to actually interact with people. Like in the story of scripture, God comes to Abraham and says, go into the land, I'm going to show you. And there's this journey where God like basically introduces themselves to them. Like, this is who I am and this is what I'm like, and this is why you follow me. And it's obedience is a response to trust. Right. The Exodus story is God saying, this is the God that I am and you'll be my people. And all of the Exodus happens before God ever gives the ten Commandments. Like, here's this list of obedience that comes out of God saying, this is who I am. This God who has chosen you and fought for you and freed you. And then obedience is a response to be my people and live this way. And so there is this, it's just about putting obedience in its, in its right flow. It is downstream from trust. And when you really think about why we do things that we are told to do just because someone tells us to do them, the choices are trust or fear. We either do them because we trust them or we do it because we're afraid. Now, children, when they have trust with their parent, their grownup or grandparent, whoever's raising them, they'll obey out of the trust for the. The parent or the adult. And that can kind of extend to God sometimes, but also kind of not. And. And then other than that, they do it because they're afraid of sort of this or else. Obey God or else. And so theologically, biblically, I think we see God going first to say, here's who I am, and as you know me, the invitation is this response of a life that follows me and is faithful and obeys, but not out of nowhere. And then back to the faith formation thing that it doesn't work. So back in 2007, I joined a research team following church kids in their senior year of high school through their first few years after. And we really wanted to know what happened in their faith that would make it vibrant and strong and healthy and lifelong. And in a lot of ways, it was kind of. We were sort of maybe secretly hoping we could find a magic bullet, something that I could tell you. Now, if everyone does this, it's the thing, the secret sauce. And we did not. Which does not mean we didn't find anything. We found some really wonderful things. But in the midst of that, there was this emerging finding from our research. It was paralleled in some other research that was happening around the same time, which was that as adults tell kids what obedience looks like, kids end up basically becoming absolute masters of two lists. The things that Christians do and the things Christians do not do. They know those lists. They will try their very hardest to perform those lists because they think that's what makes God happy. And they will think that faith is fundamentally a project in less management. It won't connect them back to God. It will connect them to a version of God who likes them best when they behave and likes them less when they don't. And you play it out and you end up with kids who are really disillusioned because there's sort of a promise baked into list management faith, which is if I do that, if I am a good Christian kid who does what I should and doesn't do what I shouldn't, then God is going to keep me happy and keep me out of crisis. And so when pain comes and challenge comes in life, well, then where's God in that? And so there's a real disillusionment that comes when that system starts to break, because it's not real to how things go. The other thing that comes is exhaustion. It's just so hard to always try to be more good and less bad all the time. There's no grace in a list management faith. And more than that, there is not Jesus himself with grace in a list management system. They, they haven't been able, they actually haven't been able to get to know God in the middle of that because they've been so focused on getting it right. And so when I say putting obedience first doesn't work, that's really what I'm summing up that it. This really well intentioned thing from adults of making faith concrete and actionable gets turned sideways and becomes learn these lists and do them.
- [15:14]
C
Yeah. I'm curious what that looks like a little bit more in, in practice, you know, in, in the relationships between parents and children especially, because I'm thinking like, I don't know if you've read Falling Upward. This is Richard Rohrer, like first half of life, second half of life type stuff. And he gets it from Carl Jung where, you know, in the first half of life it's sort of more about, you know, developing scaffolding, developing structure and to some extent, you know, children's minds and some, you know, adults minds obviously are very black and white and simple in some ways. And that's what they can, children especially, what they can handle. And then there's the second half of life in which things become for many people developmentally, you know, more flexible and they internalize some of their own authority. But the way that Richard Rohr puts it is that, you know, the second, a positive second half of life. And this is paraphrasing, but like, sort of depends on a positive first half of life. And the, and that first half of life stuff necessarily does need to come first. And so as a parent, I often find myself in this situation where I'm talking with my kids and I know that there's more, but you can't, it's very difficult to give them that second half of life stuff when they're, you know, 8, 12, 15, whatever. And sometimes. So it's sort of just like we're gonna do this just because we do it and then we'll talk about it, we'll talk about it later. So like, in practice, how do you. Yeah. How do you actually work with kids in that necessary developmental stage.
- [16:36]
B
Yeah.
- [16:36]
C
And not. But, but recognizing that there's, there's gonna be more, there's gonna be more to come later.
- [16:41]
B
Yeah. Part of this comes from education theory. So teachers will talk a lot about spiral learning that if you want a kid to be able to do calculus, you actually can go round and round on the math that they've been learning all the way back to kindergarten. And there is a connection between kindergarteners making groups of 10 and 18 year olds doing calculus that's built by going around and around math concepts and adding a bit of complexity each time. So every individual math lesson is not that long and it's not that hard, but it has one new thing. And I think there's a really analogous space for us when it comes to faith or knowing scripture or how we live things out, that you give kids something true at their level, but you know, you have to come around again and we can't really do one and done. It has to be that we start with pieces and we talk about it again with a new piece and again with a new piece. This is where Christmas and Easter are wonderful opportunities of like, instead of doing the whole gall darn thing every single year, when they're young, you might tell those stories pretty short and simple. And then they move into being 6, 7, 8, and they love stories, so you tell more stories. And then they move into being 9, 10, 11, and they're more able to do complex thinking. So you might start adding in some of the interpretive layers to the meaning of these two marker events. And then they move into their teenage years and it's really going to be about following their lead on what they think is interesting or the part of them that's like, I don't understand why this matters. It's like, that is a great question. I'd love to talk to you about why this matters. You get these reps and we try not to go too big any one time because it's overwhelming. But we also have to recognize we can't just assume that one time's going to cover it. And together that I think is a really helpful piece of this, which can be challenging for adults who feel like, well, gee, doesn't that mean I have to sort of be an expert or know a lot or you know, that kind of thing. But, but you don't. You just have to be in the conversation. And I think that's a big. That's a helpful piece, is smaller but, but more frequency. Yeah.
- [18:40]
A
One of my very favorite lines from the book is you say something like fear or fruit can't grow in the soil of fear. Sometimes it feels subtle, like obedience versus trust in the context of making a decision can. Can be a little bit subtle. And it felt like the, the consistent thread is that when it's coming from fear, you're probably pressuring obedience. And when it's coming from trust, it feel the. The energy of the conversation feels different. And so even though this is still something I'm.
- [19:10]
B
I'm.
- [19:11]
A
I'm examining, you know, as situations come up with our. With our own kids, it feels like fear is kind of the thing that everybody. Everything hinges on.
- [19:19]
B
Yeah. I think that's a big piece of it. And. And yeah, it changes the energy of a conversation. I think sometimes too, when we are thinking about their faith growing, that's different than their character development or their moral development or their decision making. Those are also important human skills where we know as adults, we are the coach right now on what you need to know. And maybe part of how we leave fear out of it is to just let faith not be the driver of how we're processing this decision, this choice, this right thing right now.
- [19:51]
A
Interesting. Yeah.
- [19:53]
B
And a lot of times kids sort of their moral and character development is sort of happening in parallel to their faith development. And the integration of. I do this as a person of faith is often more. More a part of their teenage years. And so as adults, I think there is this culture I sometimes observe where, like, God has an opinion about every choice a child makes.
- [20:16]
A
Yeah.
- [20:17]
B
And so we need to make sure they understand that God has feelings about your choice to not tell me the truth or to not listen about what we're going to do tonight or. And when we just sort of pull that away so that I'm no longer afraid that God likes me less, that I did this wrong, but instead the adult who is right here with me, who I know loves me, is coaching me on the fact that this can't happen because, you know, we're a family and a team or because of this other important reason for who you're becoming. Kids will integrate that in time. It's just slower. And adults have to become more comfortable with the pace because we try to stick them all together. And that creates, I think, a lot of confusion for kids. And confusion is also scary to your point of fear being within it all, like not being able to make sense of what's going on and why I feel this way and how I'm supposed to be. That's. That's a scary thing to a kid.
- [21:06]
C
Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if we could. If we could talk a little bit about scripture and your approach to. To Scripture. Obviously, you know, engaging with the Bible and for us, you know, we have some other texts, is an important ritual for many people. Of faith, you know, with, along with their families. And it can get tricky, especially if as an adult you've started to feel somewhat uncomfortable with some of the things that you grew up with. Just recently as a church, we're going through the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament this year, and we were like talking with our kids about some of these stories and it's like, and then Abraham took Isaac up the mountain too. I don't know exactly. I'm just thinking about what must be going through my kids minds. The corollary here, I mean, is like the parent me, you know, took up the kid. You. It's easier to like skip that story, you know. So how do you, how do you think about that?
- [21:52]
B
So I think that when I'm trying to decide if a part of scripture is for the real kids, I know because, because that's part of the privilege of weaving our own web, right? Is I know it's a real child and their story and their wiring and all of these things. I'm often asking myself, okay, can I tell this story in a way that I think is faithful to the text and also honoring of this kid? Can I tell it in a way that's kid accessible, but I don't have to hide huge chunks of it or try to change them or try to sort of sweeten them up in order to make it so my kid can hear it? Because then they'll eventually come back and be like, wait, that's not what this is about at all. And that will just create even more confusion if I can't find that way to do that. Which could be for a variety of reasons. It could be that a kid is just too young. It could be that the cultural distance between our world and the story is too far for them right now. It could be for some people, it could be that their kid has gone through something really hard where a certain story is going to be harder for them than it might forget another kid with a different set of experiences. But if I can't get there in a way that's really faithful to the text, then I can save it for later. That doesn't mean I'm withholding the Bible from them. I'm just giving, giving scripture time to, to meet them as they are. And you know, scripture's not really written for children. Like, it doesn't mean they can't do things with it. They absolutely can. There's so much of it available to them. But there are going to be these tricky spots. And Abraham and Isaac is actually, I think, a really Great example of a story where once you get a little bit older kid and you can say something like, did you know that in the world that this story happens, there were other people living there who sacrifice their children to the gods because they thought that's what made the rain come and the crops grow, and that's how they didn't starve. They thought they weren't going to be okay unless they were willing to do this terrible, sad thing. And Abraham's getting to know God and so. And God is wanting Abraham to understand that they're not going to sacrifice their kids. But you have to remember there's no text messages, there's no emails, there's no, like, megaphone. There's no record. Like, how is this story going to happen? Well, they told stories. They. They went through things and they told stories. And so once you can get a kid to understand some of those important historical kind of cultural elements, then you have the story of someone going through an experience. You know, what gets called a sign act. And that the. This is the story of, of Abraham not sacrificing his son. We always call it Abraham sacrifices Isaac, which is so interesting because he doesn't sacrifice Isaac. Right? Like the little header in the text says that. It's like. But it. But it doesn't.
- [24:37]
A
He.
- [24:37]
B
He literally doesn't. That is the point of the story is. And they would sit and say that to each other, generation after generation, remember the story. And when there was a drought and they were afraid the rain wasn't going to come and they wondered what they should do about it, they would remember, we are not people who sacrifice our children because our God values life and our God values young people. We know because remember that one time God said to Abraham, take Isaac, and then he stopped him in the end. But you. That only makes sense in their world where you go through stuff in order for the story to be told. We don't communicate like that. That's not how we get important messages across. But once a kid knows that, then. Then the story opens up in a way that's really very lovely and not frightening in the same sorts of ways as it will be when they're younger and they're gonna just take it at face value because that's how their brains work. And so I think a parent knowing that they are allowed to be wise and discerning about what their kid is ready for and what they're saving until their kid grows a little bit more, so that scripture can speak for itself and it doesn't get confused in a kid's mind in ways that become maybe really hard to undo later on. If you become scared of the Bible when you're young, that's a real hard thing to. To untangle later.
- [25:52]
C
Yeah, well, I think that's.
- [25:53]
A
Yeah, go ahead, Sam.
- [25:55]
C
Oh, thank you. I think that's. I was just going to comment that I think that's an important reason to not necessarily bring obedience as the primary paradigm to your scripture reading too, because that's the, that's the default framing to view Abraham and Isaac. It's like this story is all about how Isaac obeyed God, was taking up, taking him up the mountain, and then he obeyed God by, by declining in the end, you know, to sacrifice Isaac. And so that's how Abraham proved his faithfulness. And so if you just bring that obedience lens, then you could actually come up with or come away with a version of the story that's not really all that helpful at all.
- [26:26]
A
Right.
- [26:26]
B
And so much of these stories, the point is to show something about who that is and what God's like. And, and out of that, for all the hearers to realize that there is yet another reason that God can be trusted and the person might indeed be obedient and trusting and following through. But then you get to ask, why in the world would Abraham be. Be willing, what is it Abraham does or does not know about God that is maybe driving what he's up to in this story, and that's fun with kids because there's no right or wrong answer to that. What do you think he's wondering or thinking or feeling? You know, do you think he has a lot of trust that God's going to take care of him? Or do you think he maybe is kind of upset with God right now and doesn't know that about God yet? Do you think Abraham's trust in God grew or changed after this story compared to where it was before? Like, these are really fun questions to have with kids that open up once I'm allowed to talk about who God is in a story. And I'm not only trying to teach them obey like Abraham.
- [27:25]
A
Yeah. I mean, that's the hard. That's the hardest part. Like when you're trying to make a story feel more palatable for a younger child. It's so easy to pick one principle and accidentally teach that because they did this thing, they got this miracle and everything turned out great after all. And, and then you. And it's a. You feel relief because you don't have to get into what feels messier about the rest of the story. But I hear what you're saying is that that will eventually become problematic whether, whether or not it happens in that conversation.
- [27:56]
B
Yeah. And part of the reason is it will make every Bible story get reduced down to something that gets put on the list. Right. Every person I meet either does it right or does it wrong. And then their behaviors or their attitude or whatever, it, it just goes on the list again. Good Christians are like Abraham and they obey and they aren't like whoever, you know, disobeys along the way or whatever sort of details there may be. And that reduces the Bible stories down to something that's so much less than what they really, I think, offer.
- [28:28]
C
Yeah, yeah, I think there's, I mean, I really like that paradigm of like using scripture to sort of like explore who God is and what we really believe about God. Because I think if you sort of like look at the Bible as an arc overall getting us there, then, you know, a lot of these stories in the, in the Old Testament can sort of point to, to or to a God who seems kind of transactional or at least to a people who believe that God is very transactional in that way. It's like, I'm going to do this, I'm going to, I'm going to get this, or I'm, I'm going to violate a commandment and I'm going to be, and I'm going to be punished. And then as scripture sort of matures and Jesus comes into the picture, he unravels a lot of that transactional paradigm to the extent where he's saying, you know, it doesn't matter the hour at which you join the work, you're still going to get paid the same as everybody else. That's, you know, that's like as non transactional as it gets. What, what do we have to believe about God if that is true? And it's very, it's interesting, it's sort of interesting to see the progression of scripture in that, in that way at least as people, as people's recordings of their understanding of God change.
- [29:30]
B
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
- [29:33]
A
I'd love to ask you about uncertainty because I think this is where fear really feels alive as a, as a parent. And you say that a lack of certainty is not the same thing as having nothing to offer, which I believe. But also I know the feeling of like, I don't even know what I can say about this particular story or this particular concept because it's a place where I'm exploring and growing and it's really hard to, to feel like there's anything conclusive to share. And you want to, you want to do that well and you want to do it honestly with your kids. And so I'd love for you to just talk about what those kind of conversations can look like if you as a parent are, are in this place of a lot of growth and change.
- [30:18]
B
I mean, saying it is what it looks like. It looks like your kid asks you something and you don't know, so you say you don't know. And then you can go from I don't know in a variety of directions you can go I don't know. And honestly, nobody else does either kid, because sometimes that's true. And then you have a. So since we don't know, let's take some guesses together. Why might that be? Or what might be an answer or based on what we know about God, what, what would that maybe mean for this? You know, if scholars have written books 3 inches thick about it and then some other scholar writes another 3 inch thick book refuting the first one, that kind of gives you as an adult permission to not know, because really they don't. And so there's something exploratory in the I don't know that can model that God is trustworthy, not because everything is clear, certain and firm, but because God's character is firm. And these other questions are great. We can talk about them without our faith being under threat. So that's really an important gift you're giving your kid and saying you don't know. But then also, I don't know could lead to I know there's an answer to that. Let's go figure it out together. And you go down looking for the podcast or the substack article or the book that kind of shed some light on it and you can circle back to say, oh, this is what I learned about that really great question you asked last week. And I just thought that you've asked such this it honors their question as worthy like you asked them how good it stung me. Kids love to stump us and so I went looking and again you are showing them that when I have a faith question, I can go looking for good resources to help shed light on my question. You're also helping them filter what are good resources and what are maybe some less helpful resources for one reason or another. Maybe the person offering them doesn't have the credentials to make them a great person to trust. Or maybe they don't share enough core values for us within our faith and so we can listen to them, but we're going to dialogue with them instead of just taking their answer. And that's all important for this process as well. And so when I say you don't have, you know, certainty isn't the only thing we offer how we carry questions. That's so important for kids because they, they have them and they will continue to have them. And the more they decide if they'd like this faith to be their own, knowing what to do with the stuff that is not clear or that they wonder, knowing that doesn't break everything, like, that's super important.
- [32:46]
A
Thank you for that. That, I mean, that just feels so intuitive now that you've articulated it. We were with these two toddler twins, and there's like this stage where when something happens, maybe they're. They're hurt or something breaks, where they still look at the adults in the room to figure out if they should cry. And if everybody's smiling and, or clapping or everybody looks calm, they can move on. And if you look like you expect them to cry or that you. You look like it was a disaster, they. They completely reflect that. And I think that instinct must just be so deep. I still do that. You know, I feel that the way someone receives a question really triggers my own nervous system. And so it makes sense that, like, what a gift to just show that the question itself isn't. Doesn't create. It doesn't have to create fear and that this can feel like such good energy and the opposite of fear and something curious and safe.
- [33:38]
B
Exactly.
- [33:39]
A
So love that. Yeah.
- [33:40]
B
Thank you. And the dynamic you just named actually has a name. It's called mirroring. It's kids really great ability to pick up on the energy of the adults, and then they will reflect back that energy.
- [33:51]
A
Yeah.
- [33:52]
B
And so it's part of their developmental process, and kids are great at picking up on the energy. What they're not great at is interpreting why. So if faith brings up panicked toddler fall energy, they will understand that for some reason, when I ask my grownup questions about the Bible, they freak out. They won't be good interpreters about why. So if the reason is, oh, I'm just in a season where things are changing and expanding, but I don't name that with my kid. If I don't ever talk about that part, they're going to wonder if that actually means faith is not a safe part of life. And so the more things are speakable, then we take this skill of mirroring that they are so great at, and we help them name what. What it Is and what? So you can even say, oh, that's a great question. Oh, okay, wait, I'm noticing. I. I probably feel a little nervous right now. That's because when I was young I was supposed to have to have an answer to everything and I actually don't know. But you asked a great question and we don't have to be scared of it. So give me a sec. I'm gonna take a breath because I love that you're asking this stuff. This is good for both of us. You're giving meaning to the panic, you know, a person might feel and that helps them too.
- [35:02]
A
Amazing. I love that.
- [35:03]
C
Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I. What if. I mean, I. I'm thinking about a very particular Persona, someone that is struggling in their own faith right now and has lots of active questions and actually does feel very triggered by some of these questions and they're afraid that they are going to reflect that fear, fear based energy on their kids. It's not easy in the moment to turn that around and, and sort of exude positive energy. Do you have advice for that? For that moment? You said take a breath. Is there anything, Is there anything else?
- [35:37]
B
I would maybe anticipate ahead, if you can, knowing yourself and that's where you are in your story. What might be one line you could remember to say that you'd like your kid to hear? Can you kind of. Would you give yourself a few minutes privately to anticipate? Okay. At some point my kid's gonna ask something. I know this is what's gonna happen in my body. And so in addition to a breath, like what would you like your kid to hear back? Is it, you didn't do anything wrong? I just need a second. Is it, you know, when I was your age, I got in trouble for asking that. I'm so glad you did. We're gonna find a new way forward. Is it, you know, so it could be part of your story or that might be too private and personal and. But maybe you find one sentence ahead that you've picked that is your preloaded response so that when the moment comes and maybe your whole system feels a bit overwhelmed, you're not also scrambling for words. And that answer probably depends a bit on your kid's age. It depends a bit on your own story and what's, you know, the right amount to say. So there's that, you know, to find the words. But just having that first line primed sometimes helps us when we know we're going to get tongue tied because of how it feels. Yeah, that's a. I appreciate you naming that because that's so true. It's so true.
- [36:50]
A
Yeah. One of these places that I think can, can really bring up that, that full bodied fear is when you see your own kid really questioning their faith and really pushing back. And even if you've, even if you've been there or are there, I think there's something about your child doing it that feels so out of control. And so I'd love for you to talk about the, about faith development and specifically, I never heard of the framework that you mentioned with foreclosure and moratorium, and specifically moratorium versus deconstruction. And I think that did a lot to just have words for something that is very normal and healthy for, for a kid.
- [37:29]
B
Yeah. So that's James Marcia's work. There are these folks that talk about stages of faith or the way faith grows. And so he talked about his observation that faith in a healthy development system goes through a time of moratorium. Everything goes on pause. And whatever input someone has had up until that point, they sort of stop taking in new input for a while. And the length of time varies, but it often is a season in sort of emerging adulthood, or it ought to be, where it's almost like you've been given a suitcase that an adult packed for you. Or in a faith perspective, probably a lot of adults who care about you helped pack this suitcase with all kinds of things they thought you would need for your faith, things that you've experienced, things that you know. And then you sort of take the thing and unzip it and look through everything you've got inside and decide what stays and what goes and why. Like, why do I need this? Right. For five years we lived in Chicago and I came back home to Southern California. And there was a point where I look at that winter coat and I'm like, I don't need this thing ever again. It served a purpose for time. And some very kind people told me which coat I needed that was the proper length and the proper temperature for that time. And I don't need this coat anymore. And I don't even need to keep it in my closet. I can give it all the way away. And moratorium is that unpacking sort of phase for faith. And it's different than a deconstruction a bit if it's in a healthy system because it's seen as normal and necessary. Whereas sometimes the vibe around a deconstruction, especially by maybe one's community, is that this is something scary or it Means somebody has done something wrong. It's something to be feared. It's a bit of a crisis. Moratorium is just very much a. Oh, of course you're going to sift what this all means for you. The posture of it is really different in that sense. And for adults who get to be with kids, the idea that we know moratorium ought to happen means part of what we get to do is help our kids be ready for it. Hey, somewhere down the line, you're gonna decide what you think of all this for yourself, and I'm just here to help you. Or, hey, there's gonna probably be a time where you decide if you agree with me or not. Here's what I think about this. Just for what it's worth, you don't have to agree with me, but here's my opinion on this particular topic. You're doing these things that prep for. Well, of course at some point you're gonna sift. The goal is not for you to be a carbon copy of me in faith. The goal is for you to be integrated yourself with your faith. And I'm here to help you in that.
- [40:04]
C
Yeah.
- [40:05]
A
And so. Well, just one more. I mean, that. That is so useful to understand, I think, and to prepare for, so that I think, especially, you know, in the kids shoes, that when that starts happening, you also don't feel like it's a disaster. It's just. I'm sure that already that fear has. Has. It just isn't there. But I'd love to also understand it. I mean, you. There's this other stage that he talks about called foreclosure.
- [40:30]
B
Yeah.
- [40:30]
A
And. And it was interesting hearing the description of that stage, because I think sometimes that's what we're. It sounds like we're nourishing. Like, we like to guarantee that everyone will stay in foreclosure. And so what an interesting word to choose for that stage. But I think it'd be helpful to be able to juxtapose those, too.
- [40:47]
B
This is, in his framework, the first stage, the earliest stage. And it kind of. Tim, goes to your point about first half of life from Roar's work. This is when a kid basically just believes what they're told because a trusted person told them so, and they accept whatever input they've been given, and that's what they think. This is when you hear kids parrot the opinions and perspectives of their parents to their classmates, and they're mouthing off about something that's really nuanced and controversial, but they're really certain because that's what they hear at home. And that is what they are meant to do in that stage of life. But it is a foreclosed sort of place. Everything's kind of locked in because somebody else has determined it. And I think that there is a myth and a myth in systems that believe that that's actually the goal. We want kids who believe what we believe. We want kids who see the world how we see it. We want them to copy our faith. And so sometimes that means we have family faith cultures or church faith cultures that do far more to keep kids in foreclosure than they do to help equip kids for moratorium. And they do far more wanting kids to just lock in with what we've already decided. And we think that healthy faith is just the faith we've already determined for kids, when really healthy faith is a faith a child has chosen to have be part of themselves as their own choice because they really believe this God can be trusted. And I want to have my life shaped around living in relationship with this God. Yeah.
- [42:14]
C
I'm curious if you have advice for us, because there's this difference between how Latter Day Saint people orient church communities and the broader Christian traditions. There's not a lot of flexibility in terms of. In terms of which ward you attend. It's just you, you happen to live in this address. You go to this, you go to this ward. And so we don't necessarily choose the flavor. It depends to some extent, just in the culture of where you're living. And you talk about this in your book, that the community is very important in children's faith formation. And so how would you think about raising your kids with a faith that they don't need to heal from, given that maybe sometimes you're not fully in control of the message?
- [42:54]
B
Yeah, 100%. Part of what's great about award driven model is that you have put people around your kid that they are actually going to get reps with.
- [43:06]
C
Yes.
- [43:06]
B
And relationships don't grow without enough reps. And increasingly, culturally, finding friendship and being in sustained relationship, both with peers and with other adults, is harder and harder to do. And a word model offers that in its structure and the relational gift adults especially give to kids. Adults beyond the nuclear family, is to be seen and known and cared about just as a person to know what they're into, what they're up to, to ask to say you're praying for them and mean it. That relational warmth is such a big piece of it. And it really arguably is more important even than the particulars of the teaching and the details now, then it becomes different if the adults don't respond that way, if they're prickly about children, if they expect children to sort of behave in order to demonstrate that we are indeed a faithful community. And then you get to come back to the other piece of research which is largely family wins, family faith culture and the faith of the adults that are raising a kid. That has far more influence on the faith of a child than the role of any church community expression does. And so when a particular thing comes up where it's like, oh, we don't really see it like that, or oh, I wish they hadn't have said it like that or that tone, the role that a parent gets to have is to sift that with a kid. And that message is really most of the time going to be what sticks. And so that can be by degrees. Right. Depending on what it is and how mild to egregious, you know, then you get to respond accordingly. Right. When it's small, it's like, yep, some of what's funky is we don't all see it the same way. When it's egregious, it's like, oh, I know we care about them and I know maybe even that they have a leadership role and we really don't see it that way. And this one's actually pretty important for us to unpack together. Okay, so let me. We're going to take a few minutes. They said this. I think they're totally wrong about it actually for these reasons. And, and also we appreciate them because we want to be in communities where we don't all see things the same way. But you can go harder in the paint something you think is really a big deal and you can be milder on. Like, yeah, we don't all. It's okay.
- [45:14]
A
Yeah.
- [45:15]
B
But largely family debrief and family faith culture, it wins way more anyway. So you get to take part in that when things are a little bit imperfect.
- [45:23]
A
I love that it's so it's therapeutic to hear you say it without any drama. Like it just seems like, why does this ever feel like a big deal?
- [45:30]
B
Well, because that's not health right now. Right. Everything is a little bit loaded and, and we have a, especially an Internet driven mechanism that rewards the drama, it rewards the emotionality. And, and then you get to come to your own home and say, okay, if faith is safe and if God is safe, then how do we navigate even very controvers controversial, loaded conversations in ways that help model this for our kid and it might be a little fake until we make it. Sometimes I'm real riled up and I'm trying real hard not to show my kids depending on what happened I did.
- [46:03]
A
But I love this idea that the warmth that the reps and the relationship, that that is more valuable maybe than what, than what you think, you know. And that's something I think I totally take for granted. And I love recognizing that they're. There's so much at play there that we're not even or maybe that's invisible, but that is but powerful. And I love when you talk about also family warmth and how that is connected to faith transmission. And I thought that was so fascinating that actually family warmth was more important than the literal things like the habits and the things you're doing perfectly because that's where all the anxiety comes from. Right. And I love the idea that maybe it really is about going all in on creating these relationships that feel so like they're magnetizing, you know?
- [46:49]
B
Yeah, they are. It's like a little sneaky face supporter where it's like, oh, just the stuff that makes us glad to be around each other is actually contributing to what this means. And one notable thing, this didn't happen to come up in the book, just you know, you edit and you streamline and so on. But one of the big studies on this whole list management faith thing, which the academic term is moralistic therapeutic deism, okay. It was coined by Christian Smith. He is a sociologist at the University of Notre Dame. His team did a large study that came out in a book called Soul searching around 2010. But this is important because within their general finding that most young people kind of have this list management faith where if they're good, God keeps them safe and happy. That that thing. There were some notable exceptions because they surveyed religious teenagers across the country from all major faith traditions. They were not exclusively any one faith flavor. One of the exceptions were the Latter Day Saints of young people who had far less tendency towards a moralistic list management faith. The other was actually more orthodox Jewish communities. And one of the guesses about why that might be has to do with the high relationship model that is baked into ward driven worship communities and the education model where kids have far more opportunities to be in their classes when they do high school seminary because that's more conversation and that's more. Even though there's a lot of information, they're talking with adults about what, what we believe and why. And by doing that in adolescence when that, that why do I believe this stuff and am I sure I want to is very developmentally appropriate. They have more reps for the conversation than other traditions that might do a. Once a week or a twice a month or even, even high rep. You know, evangelical traditions might do twice a week at the most, which is, is just a different. And is driven by finding a community based on values or flavor or personality of the church. And so you might hop. Whereas that's not happening as much. There's consistency, relational structure to it, so it doesn't mean it wouldn't happen. But there was a statistically different outcome within that community that was largely linked to certain positive features for how things were organized and expressed there.
- [49:08]
A
That is so fascinating. I had never heard that.
- [49:11]
B
I mean, you're the first ones I've actually gotten to talk to you about it. I'm almost always with the evangelicals, with the post evangelicals and I love them too. Right. But like that, it doesn't, it doesn't come up in the same way. Whereas a lot of your folks, it might actually be another little like support to the way that you all have come in that maybe doesn't always get its credit.
- [49:31]
A
Yeah. I mean, I think we are guilty of often just focusing and wrestling with the shadow side, which is like, you know, with 200 people, you're gonna, you're gonna get a whole spectrum of flavors and what are all the problems? And it's really, it's really a gift to step back and, and remember that there's another piece to this which is, which is usually functioning really well and more effortlessly than if you were trying to create those connections one by one by one.
- [49:59]
B
Yeah.
- [50:00]
A
So, yeah. Thank you. That. How interesting. That's, that's really amazing.
- [50:04]
B
Yeah.
- [50:05]
C
I'm curious about. I mean, sort of the paradigm of the book really resonates with me. Like I want my kids to be people of faith. I want them to have a faith that they don't need to heal from. And so I guess the question is why do I want that and do I want that for them or do I want that for me? And I sort of like take your advice and I'm having these open conversations and it's, it's trust based and like I'm bringing a lot of warmth to it as I do that. Am I doing it because I have an agenda for what I think their life should look like? And so I guess the question is how can I live this without being manipulative in some way, without being control based or fear based myself about what my kids Life might eventually look like
- [50:50]
B
as much as any of us might hope our kids are part of faith and find their relationship with God meaningful. At this point in the research, there's simply no guarantees. There's nothing we can point to that you say if a kid has this experience, if their family's faith culture is this way, if they do these practically it's not, it's not there. Which means one, as adults we have to just wrestle and reckon with. We can't guarantee anything about our kids faith experiences. And yet what we can do is pick on purpose the way we'd like for this to go in our family and to do that I think, as humbly and as open handedly as we can, recognizing that God will move in our kids lives in ways that we may never have anticipated and recognizing that we can't force anything because that would become manipulative and dishonoring of our kid to intrude. But we can intentionally pick. This is how we follow Jesus into the world. And I choose that because of these things that I believe are really true. And we invite our kids along, they get to be part of it as observers, as participants along the way. But it is a little bit like they're tag alongs to our faith that we've already determined matters to us because we already do believe God can be trusted. And if we can respect that, that's actually important for them to be part of that process as a tag along. Not that we're not taking it seriously. We're taking it so seriously that we will not hijack it for an outcome that makes us more comfortable. And I think that's just an internal thing. We have to keep settling within ourselves because everything becomes a bit slower than an outcome that might say certain things have to happen by certain markers. Right? Yes. My understanding is right. You all have a tradition with age of accountability.
- [52:47]
A
That's right.
- [52:48]
B
That's going to be a really tricky piece of this to say that we believe certain things happen by eight and a neurodivergent kid may not be ready by eight. For example, a kid with trauma in their story might not be ready by eight. A kid with a million questions might not be ready by 8. Is God bigger than age 8? Can I as a parent walk with my kid if 8 doesn't come together like we thought? But we're going to keep following Jesus on purpose and I'm going to keep inviting you to tag along in purposeful ways. And I think that's really where the research points, I think, I think to Your point of the overarching arc of scripture. It's a long, slow story. And God sure does seem to be faithfully showing up and patiently showing up and graciously showing up. And so can we as adults rest in that being part of who God is? Can we, in our own faith be anchored to a God who is just relentlessly faithful, even when circumstances don't feel as comfortable as we'd like? That's kind of where I. That's where I land with kids. My. My kids are 10 and 13, and we're trying to do this as well as we can, and they're stuck with me, but that's. That's been part of it.
- [54:03]
C
It's been beautiful.
- [54:04]
A
Thank you so much. Yeah, this is. I want your voice to be the voice in my head. Like, this just feels like, intuitively like such a grounded, aligned place to be. Like, of course we believe God's at work in their lives, too. And the. The book, really and this conversation both just feel like such an affirmation of. Of that truth. So thank you so much for everything. This is. This is just incredible.
- [54:29]
B
Thank you for having me. Thank you for this time. I am so grateful to be in conversation with you both.
- [54:34]
C
Thanks, Meredith.
- [54:36]
A
All right, thanks so much for listening. We really hope that you enjoyed this conversation with Meredith Miller. You can find her book, nurturing a faith your kid doesn't have to heal from on Amazon or wherever books are sold. And you can find more from Meredith on her Kids in faith website@meredithanmiller.com thanks again for listening.