“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” Colossians 2:8

Religious noise is a real problem, and kids raised in church all their lives can easily fall prey to it.

Think about it…

• What happens when you listen to a speaker who is continuously monotone in their delivery? You naturally tune them out.
• What happens when a parent constantly nags and criticizes their kids? Their words become background noise.
• And what often occurs when children grow up in church and that’s all they’ve ever known? They can easily compartmentalize their faith as just another category of their lives.

If we’re not careful and intentional as parents, our faith can become nothing more than transactional religious noise rather than transformational and life-changing good news.

Here are 3 ways to help your kids avoid religious noise:

1. Don’t trade best things for good things (because even good things can distract us from the best things).

In religion, it’s very easy for outward good things (church attendance, biblical morals, good behavior, etc.) to get more priority and attention than inward matters of the heart (humility, Christlike character, growth in grace).

Kids can quickly become deceived into thinking they are good little Christians because they are following the rules and doing all the “right” things, yet their hearts be far from God.

Jesus accused the Pharisees of being guilty of this in Matthew 23:23. They were doing all the good religious stuff, but they had totally missed the more important matters of the heart, including the most important of all—Jesus himself. They had traded best things for good things.

This is why we must emphasize and celebrate Christlike character over just good behavior in our homes. This is what separates us as Christians from being just “good people” in the world. We have a much higher motivation and calling, and our kids need to see and understand this.

May all things in our faith point us to Jesus, and not distract us from him, because it’s all, only, ever, always been about Jesus (Before Paul’s warning above to the Colossians in 2:8, notice what he said about the foundation of our faith in verses 6-7).

2. Emphasize and embrace biblical truth over religious tradition.

Traditions are not bad in and of themselves, but any tradition is only so good as it points us to Christ. Otherwise, it “spoils” our faith according to Col. 2:8. There are some good traditions in Christianity, but not all of them are firmly rooted in Scripture. In fact, many of them aren’t.

It is important that we hold loosely to things that are not clearly expressed in Scripture, because if we are loudest in places where the Bible is silent, we have inadvertently passed on an imbalanced faith to our children by prioritizing lesser things than God ever intended.

We’d do our kids a huge favor to be far more clear where the Bible is clear, and far more silent where the Bible is silent. If our kids grow up knowing our personal standards and opinions better than they know God’s clear commands and expectations, we have done them a great disservice.

Oswald Chambers once said, “You have to learn to go out of convictions, out of creeds, out of experiences, until so far as your faith is concerned, there is nothing between yourself and God.”

3. Prepare your kids to reach their own generation with the Gospel by giving them the freedom not to be cookie-cutters of you.

Our kids are not our own, so we must trust God’s Spirit as he leads them toward new and innovative ways to reach their generation for Christ.

With God’s help, may we raise kids who first come to passionately know Jesus through the Gospel, and then whose worldview reflects that they are more loyal to God’s kingdom than they are loyal to us.

I love what Jon Tyson says: “If we are not careful, we will moralize opinions from our moment that are not rooted in Scripture and cause the next generation to carry an unnecessary missional weight for no redemptive reason.” (Wow. Humbling.)

This requires that we loosely hold to tradition and tightly cling to truth so that our children can “lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and… run with patience the race that is set before (them).”(Hebrews 12:1)

Religious noise CAN and must be avoided in our homes. For the sake of our children and grandchildren, we must deal with the religious baggage of our own generation, so we don’t pass on any “unnecessary missional weight for no redemptive reason.”

In what ways could you remove the bondage of religious noise in your home and release your children to experience the beautiful freedom they’ve been promised through Christ?

Andrew Linder is a husband, the father of four awesome kids, and a children’s pastor at a thriving church. He is the founder of GodlyParent.com and is passionate about intentional parenting and helping other parents and leaders effectively reach the next generation. He is also the author of the new book, Godly Parenting In An Ungodly World: How to raise not just good but godly kids through heart-driven grace-based parenting.

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