Outside the Lines

     
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.”- Buddha

you don't have to be a religious person to worry about passing on morals and values to your kids. But I think for religious people there is an even greater pressure to instill not just a moral compass, but the specific religious framework and practices that help to guide it. This is something I think about a lot as a parent, even though my children are quite young. As a parent, you have your own experience with what you believe is true, your own deep passion and relationship with your faith or lack there of. But those things do not automatically translate to the next generation.

How do I pass on these things to my children? And what exactly do I want them to inherit?

In pondering these things I have to think about what I inherited from my own parents, and how those things contributed to my life of faith. Upon reflection, I'm starting to believe that maybe it's not any particular ideology or system that is itself faulty or divine, but it's about how we as humans put it into practice.

In the early days of our movement, members, like my parents, were told to give up everything, to leave their families and homes to do God's work. They sacrificed their college educations, jobs, and relationships with their families to take up a cause that they believed in. While there were many who powered through and came out better for the experience, many were also hurt.

I always hear people talk about how a leader "forced" them to do something or "I wasn't allowed to". While I sympathize with people and certainly acknowledge that wrongs have been committed, I could never quite buy into especially the brainwashing claim, because at a time when my mother was told she couldn't go home for Christmas, even when her father was in the hospital, she went anyway. When she was fundraising and realized that she was "spiritually dead" and did not want to fundraise anymore, she stopped. She left. and yet, she was never excommunicated, and she never turned her back on her faith. She did not walk out with bitterness and resentment. She simply continued to follow her own inner wisdom, and she fought for her own spiritual life. To me, this is what true ownership of faith is all about.

My mother's decision to declare, "my children are my mission now" when she became a mother, was part of what helped me to make the decision to stay at home with my own children. I remember even as a young child being very grateful to her for that. I understood that she was putting her family and children first, ME first, and the love and dedication I felt from that, translated into my experience of God's love. It's why I believe in a God who wants me to be happy and Joyful, who is not just some absent being up in the sky, but a parent.

I know for me, the things that touch me about my own parents' faith, are not how many rallies they attended, or how much money they made fundraising. It's the stories of their personal experiences with God, of working through struggles, and finding Joy and truth. It's watching my father get choked up by a bible verse, or my mother lost in prayer.

What I hope to find is a balance between communicating what I believe to be true, my own faith and experience, while also being sensitive to the uniqueness and individuality of my child. As a parent, if I really believe in my faith, then of course I want to teach it to my children, because if I didn't think it was right I wouldn't be following it. But as a believer, I must also be humble enough to know that I may not always know what is best, and that I can guide and support and nurture, but in the end, there must be an ownership of faith by the child. At a certain point, it is up to them, and I must put my faith in God that he is leading them when I cannot see the path.

I grew up in a religion that claimed "not to be a religion" but a movement. It wanted to be beyond religion (perhaps all religions start out this way), in order to unite all peoples of faith, and yet, it has become comfortably situated as it's own little "Christianity knock-off," lost in rituals and politics, in an endless series of "duty" and "faith without works", the very failures we have criticized modern Christianity for.

The thing that resonates with me about my faith, is the inclusiveness, the unity, the fact that I can read an Islamic text or do a Buddhist mediation and feel God in all of those things. To know that I am not limited by man made boundaries.

I had a good experience overall growing up in the movement, probably 70-30, maybe even 80-20. But many people did not, many people my own age have heartbreaking stories and are still dealing with very real pain.

Everyone will have their own interpretations of what it means to be a "true" Christian, a "true" Unificationist, a "good" person. What I think it comes down to in the end is responsibility. There is no ownership in simply following along with the majority because that is what is expected. If "faith without works" is dead, then "works without faith" is an undead zombie like existence of conformity. Real ownership of faith means evaluating everything, even if it goes against the acceptable or majority opinion.

It is a balance for sure. I must be self aware enough to know that I am resisting something out of fear, pride, ego, or emotion, rather than prayerful contemplation, and self study.

America, we are a land of revolutionaries. We do not do obedience well. But if we are loyal to anything, it's to that very freedom for every man to forge his own path. As religious people, we have forgotten to trust God with our children, thinking that we needed to pound religion into their heads. When all he is really asking for is a chance to speak to them directly.

What I've learned in my life of faith is that no matter what, it is about me and God. Everything else is just secondary, and frankly, no one else's business. If I worry about judgement from others, then I am a part of judgement as well.

So how will I raise my children?

Honestly, I don't care if my kids wake up and do HDH, I don't care if they go to all of the workshops and weekly bible study. I don't even care if they decide to marry someone of a different faith. What I want for my children, is a real relationship with God, for them to know their identity and value as his beautiful son. I want them to be wrapped in love by the presence of God through their family and community. I want them to develop compassion and empathy, to be peace makers, and servants, the kinds of people who make a difference in the world for the better. Maybe sunday school and workshops can do that, but if not, I'm okay with that.

None of this is a prescription, it's just my own thoughts, and I even reserve the right to change my mind. But I am grateful for the things that growing up in this movement has brought me, even the bad, because it made me into the person I am today. More than anything though, I deeply cherish the particular brand of religion that my parents gave to me. For better or worse, I'll always color just a little outside the lines. And isn't that what all the great artists do after all?