My mom is the single greatest influence on my life, and the Lord used her in a vital way to bring me to a saving knowledge of Christ. She laid a framework that made the Christian worldview intelligible and, eventually, compelling to me. I’m certain my story is like countless others where God worked through the discipline and instruction of parents to reach their children.
But one thing makes my situation unique: my mom isn’t a Christian.
For most of my childhood, she’s been an atheist. During my growing up years, she talked about church as punishment. She’d even threaten to take me and my siblings to church when we were misbehaving. Yet in many ways, the manner in which Mom raised us betrayed dependence on a Christian outlook on reality.
We were brought up with an unshakable sense that we lived in a morally charged world—meaning was derived from the world around us, not something we imposed on the world. We heard we weren’t the only significant people but rather part of a larger network of people who are just as important as us. My mom knew the most loving way to raise us was to teach us we weren’t the center of the universe.
Home Didn’t Revolve Around Us Kids
This was perhaps most clearly evident in the decisions my mom made for me growing up. While she cared about what I wanted, she was most concerned with what was best for me. If the two were in conflict, no amount of protesting on my part would change her mind. Our household didn’t revolve around my desires but around the fixed reality of the world I lived in.
We were brought up with an unshakable sense that we lived in a morally charged world.
I was taught to eat my vegetables, do my homework as soon as I got home from school, and get eight or nine hours of sleep each night. I might not have always appreciated the wisdom of these rules, but even as a kid, I understood at least theoretically that they existed for my good.
This was important in at least two ways.
First, it taught me there’s meaning and coherence to the world around me. I didn’t have the burden of painting meaning on the world’s empty canvas, but I did have the responsibility to live wisely (or at least follow my parents’ wisdom) in a world already colored with meaning.
Second, it taught me I didn’t know everything. There’s always some legitimate knowledge that’s foreign to me. And that reality cultivated a sense of humility—or at least caution—as I evaluated others’ ideas. Eventually, this conviction that I don’t know everything made me willing to consider the claims of Christianity, though they felt alien at the time.
Home Was Deeply Moral
My mom also insisted on a fundamentally Christian understanding of morality. When I was around 10 years old, I was a little philosopher piecing together life’s meaning in a world without God. I once confidently told my mom the purpose of life was to pursue happiness. I was sure that in a world devoid of any transcendent standards to which I might be held accountable, this was the only sensible answer to life’s meaning.
Our household didn’t revolve around my desires but around the fixed reality of the world I lived in.
But my mom quickly rebuked her little hedonist and told me life was about more than enjoying yourself. Life is about helping others and making the world a better place, and while happiness is a good thing, it can’t be the ultimate thing. Her words rang true though I couldn’t assemble a solid foundation on which to place these ideas.
I don’t know if my mom could’ve explained where her ideas about morality were founded either. Nevertheless, that conversation put the first cracks in my atheistic worldview. It tilled the soil where the seed of the gospel would eventually take root.
Home Prepared Me to Hear
Reinforced by my mom’s parenting, I came to understand reality in a way that was ultimately incompatible with my (and her) stated beliefs. As the cracks in the foundation of my atheism began to widen, I legitimately considered other perspectives that could better account for the world around me. Then, when I was 15, when God had made sufficient room in my mind for me to consider the gospel’s claims, he brought me to a church service where I heard this world’s true story.
The richness of the gospel gave me the resources to make sense of the world in an existentially satisfying way. The gospel message compelled me to explore the distinct picture of the world God paints in his Word, and eventually, Christ convinced me this picture was more true, compelling, and livable than any other.
As yet, my mom hasn’t followed me in becoming a Christian. (That fills me with both sorrow and hope.) But she’s the one who prepared much of the kindling in my life that God’s gospel later lit and fanned into flame. She’s the one who taught me to look at the world in such a way that it simply didn’t make sense without God.
The Gospel Coalition