Here is a really nice post I found and thought I would share it with you – so you could enjoy it as well 🙂
I like the take on values, and especially the need to transfer good values to our kids, but it was the quote from David Foster Wallace towards the beginning that I wanted to highlight:
“This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted: You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship… Because here’s something else that’s true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or The Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth.”
You get to decide what to worship – literally, what to value as having worth in your life. Everybody worships something or someone.
The best thing we can do for our children is give them a good and balanced education – give them the tools to make their own decision based on knowledge and understanding. Part of this is to provide them with a rational value system. We all want our kids to feel safe and loved, to be happy and healthy, kind and caring, but they will only be that way if they see those same values lived out in our lives. Ultimately, we will only transfer values to our children that we hold ourselves. How safe and loved do we feel, how happy and healthy, kind and caring are we? What do we value, what do we give worth, what do we worship? The values that our children see and experience working out in our lives are more likely to be the ones that will flourish in theirs.
Obviously, as a deliberate disciple of Jesus, I have my own take on that, mainly that only as we find ultimate worth in God do we truly start to put everything else into perspective – that the beauty, grace and forgiveness that we find in God makes all else seem taudry and fake. That in the end, the only real place to feel safe and loved, happy and healthy is in Jesus, and as we feel and experience his love and forgiveness then we slowly become kind and caring towards others – changing our values and reprioritising the things that are important in our lives.
To quote Matthew 6: 19-21:
“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there you heart will be also.” ESV (bold added by me)
Your heart will be where your treasure is, or in other words, your values, and your children’s values, will be influenced by what or who you worship – simple as that!
Deliberate Disciple 