The assumption that children of Christian parents are or will be Christians
Common but not warranted.
I’ve long noted a common assumption in the church which has no biblical or even empirical basis, that is, that the children of church-going, Christian parents will end up becoming Christians themselves, or are already (in the case of Presbyterians, who believe that somehow children of Christian parents are part of a “covenant”).
The pastor of my current church often refers to the children as “the future of the church”. But is that a safe assumption?
Not really. The hard reality is that most children of Christian parents stop attending church once they become adults and can make their own choices. Empirically, we all know that to be true; most of us who have been in the church long enough have seen adult children of devout Christian parents walk away from the faith.
For example, I have a friend who has a 90-year-old “spiritual mother”, as he refers to her. She and her now-deceased husband have five sons, all of whom no longer claim faith, despite the strong example and Christian upbringing they received from their parents.
She’s not the only older Christian parent I know who has no Christian adult children. Many have a mix of believing and unbelieving offspring.
Yet I find that despite the evidence, many Christian parents simply assume that their children will grow up to claim personal faith in Jesus and follow in their footsteps.
The reality is, all children naturally believe what their parents believe. An unsurprising finding from a recent Pew Research Report is that “Most teens share the religion of their parents or legal guardians.” This seems so obvious as to hardly need a citation to support it.
This is why, I believe, it’s normally misguided to baptize and receive as church members children or teenagers. This is not because I don’t think they can genuinely be saved; I think they probably can. But the fact is, children both naturally believe what their parents believe, and wish to please them. This makes any childhood profession of faith suspicious until it has borne fruit with the test of time.
How many testimonies have we heard where the person made a profession of faith as a child, then describes how they “walked away from God” for a period where they lived a totally worldly life, then “came back to Jesus” later on in adulthood?
I think the reality is, they were probably never saved to begin with, only following in their parents’ footsteps as any child does. When they became old enough to do as they pleased, they followed their true sinful desires. The “coming back to Jesus” later on was more likely their actual conversion moment.
The real test of a young person’s conversion is, what happens when they become independent, are no longer under their parents’ control, and can make their own choices? This is where a person’s true orientation is seen. As Jesus told us, the fruit identifies the tree.
However, even adulthood isn’t really the ultimate test of a person’s faith. I’ve known many adult children of Christian parents who continued going to church, even for years, but later apostatized.
Even adult children still often want to please their parents. Or, they simply are doing what they have always done, out of habit rather than true conviction.
Children who grow up in the church are used to church culture, church community, church traditions. It can leave a pretty big hole in one’s life to walk away from that completely. But eventually the strain of the gap between one’s profession and one’s true beliefs becomes too much, and they can no longer sustain a set of customs that have no personal meaning for them.
But I think there may be another category of adult children of Christian parents, and that is those who continue professing faith in Christ, continue attending church, and continue living an outwardly moral, religious, and “Christian” life, but who may not be regenerate. That is, they are more naturally conformist than those who leave the church, or have a good relationship with their parents and continue to wish to please them, but they are simply continuing a lifestyle they learned as children out of habit, not out of true, Holy-Spirit birthed faith.
These people might even be very active in the church, or in church leadership, but they are simply following the customs and traditions they learned from an early age. They may not even realize they have never had a genuine encounter with the Spirit of God. Church is simply the “family business”, and as people have done throughout history, they carry on the tradition.
So what’s the answer to this?
I’m not a parent, so I hesitate to give prescriptions. But here are a few thoughts, for what they’re worth:
The hard reality is that children conceived by Christian parents are every bit as sinful, every bit as lost, and every bit as dead in sin as any other child. Biblically, we should know this, but Christian parents often seem to assume that their children are somehow “Christian”.
The fact I’ve observed is that children of Christian parents are often simply better at hiding their misbehaviour, and working at appearing to be “good” in front of other people.
Secondly, children of Christian parents are in just as much need of the supernatural, spiritual “new birth” that Jesus tells us is essential for entering his kingdom, as any other person:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3)
This is not something that happens through being catechized, instructed in the faith, going to church, etc. (though of course that needs to happen in order to hear the message of the gospel). This is a sovereign, supernatural work of the Spirit of God, regenerating and making spiritually alive the dead souls of sinful human beings.
Thirdly, this of course does not mean that Christian parents should not instruct their children in the faith. People cannot believe without hearing (Romans 10:14). Those who do end up becoming believers often credit both the teaching and example of their parents.
Fourthly, don’t assume your children will become, or are, Christians. Don’t discourage a child’s profession of faith, but wait to see if maturity proves it genuine. I personally wouldn’t baptize a child or teenager, though I can’t say with certainty it never should be done.
Fifthly, the New Testament nowhere commands us to have large families to propagate or preserve the faith. Many people come to this conclusion, but it is not only false evidentially, it has no biblical basis whatsoever.1 Jesus commands us to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19-20)
The book of Acts shows us that the church grew exponentially by preaching the gospel to everyone they encountered. There is no Scriptural evidence or command whatsoever that it grew or should grow by physically having children.
Of course Christian parents should “bring [their children] up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4), and pray for their salvation. And of course the hope and best outcome is that they would become genuinely faithful, regenerate followers of Jesus.
But I think parents should be careful of pressuring or assuming this outcome, which can have the result of making the children into conformist hypocrites. It’s better for a person to know they are not a Christian than attempt to walk the walk to please their parents, perhaps even fooling themselves.
Of course there’s nothing wrong with having a large family if you feel called to it and capable of it, and can provide a loving and healthy atmosphere for your children. I grew up in an unhealthy “Christian” subculture which encouraged large families, but sadly those families were often controlling and abusive and most of their now-adult children don’t claim faith. Of course that’s not an inevitable result of having lots of children, but “Christian” ideologies of large families, it seems to me, often create dysfunction.