Teaching Children to Love God

Teaching Children to Love God

Children learn love of God by the example of their parents

Every Orthodox parent wants their children to grow up attending Sunday Liturgies and staying active in the life of the Church throughout their lives. Yet many parents don't demonstrate the importance of having a personal relationship with God in front of their children. If you do not make God important, neither will your child.

Children observe their parents. They see hypocrisy and know when you are not following through with the teachings of the Church during the week. They hear when you take the Lord's name in vain. They notice when you reserve prayer to weekend service. They notice you only speaking of God on a Sunday morning.

Making the sign of the cross, lighting candles and burning incense only on Sundays teaches your children to compartmentalize their own faith, and leaves them defenseless in a world fulled with temptations and distractions from things that are of a spiritual nature. If you do not demonstrate the importance of prayer before your children, you will leave them defenseless in a world that hates Christ. Your children need to pray with you, read the scriptures with you, be taught the faith by you.

If you do not make your home a domestic church, your children will be lost to Christ, and Orthodoxy will not be lived out beyond your own grave. If they do not see you living a committed life in Christ, they will turn from the faith, and Orthodoxy will not survive into the next generation.

Love in Christ,

Abbot Tryphon