by Meg Meeker
I don’t make statements like these lightly. I make them as a doctor, based on what I have observed, studied, and know from experience, and I make them as someone who relies on the evidence of scientific studies with reproducible facts and correlations. When I write prescriptions for my patients, for example, I need to know they are going to work. If I prescribe Zithromax for pneumonia, I need to know that there is a strong probability that the antibiotic will cure the infection. I can’t say to a patient, “Good luck. I hope this works, but I can’t really be sure.” The American Academy of Pediatrics would toss me out on my ear.
So if I make a statement about what is good for kids, I need research to show me. That’s exactly what I will show you. When it comes to our kids—what is good for them and what they want—most parents have been duped by the media to believe many things that are blatantly false, especially about religion. The media often treat religion—especially denominational Christianity—as repressive, antiquated, unrealistic, unintelligent, and maybe even psychologically harmful to kids. That is what the media say; the statistical evidence says something very different. I would like you to read the following data with an open mind. We adults all have prejudices about what kids want and need. Here’s what the evidence says.
Religion is protective for kids. Studies on adolescents reproduce this fact with extraordinary consistency. Religion is defined here as a belief in God and an active participation in worshipping at church or temple, going to youth groups, and being involved in religious activities. Research shows that religion (some studies refer to “religiosity” and I am inferring it to be equal to religion): Helps kids stay away from drugs1
Helps keep kids away from sexual activity2
Helps keep kids away from smoking3
Gives kids moral guidance4
Gives them feelings of mental and psychological security5
Contributes to their growing maturity as they pass from childhood through adolescence6
Helps them set boundaries and stay out of trouble7
Helps teens keep a good perspective on life8
Helps teens feel good and be happy9
Helps most teens get through their problems and troubles10
Helps kids feel better about their bodies and physical appearance11
Helps girls delay the onset of sexual activity12
Helps girls be less rebellious13
Makes girls less likely to exhibit bad tempers14
Make girls less likely to cut class15
Makes girls more likely to watch movies with a lower rating (G or PG)16
Protects girls from watching X-rated pornographic movies and videos17
Makes girls less likely to spend a lot of time playing video games18
Makes girls more likely to get higher grades19
Makes girls less likely to have depressive symptoms20
Positively affects personal adjustment into adult population 21
Other studies, focused mainly on adults, but with implications for kids as well, found that religion: May cut the chance of committing suicide fourfold22
Predicted suicide rates more effectively than any other factor, including unemployment23
Leads to higher ego strength24
Helps reduce paranoia25
Helps reduce anxiety26
Helps reduce insecurity27
These aren’t just ideas, hopes, or pie-in-the-sky wishes—they are facts. Many of these findings come from the excellent studies recently released in Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers by Christian Smith, which I highly recommend. It is an eye-opening study on our kids’ desires and beliefs. Interestingly, girls tend to be somewhat more religious than boys, and both sexes want more religion than we are giving them.
Many parents say they don’t want to push God on their daughter because she needs to make up her own mind about religion. Of course she does, but that’s not the point. Parents teach their children not to smoke, or drop out of school, or drive too fast. We teach our children to be respectful and kind. We teach our kids what we believe they should know about math, great literature, science, and history. When something is important, we teach it to our kids. But we back out when it comes to teaching them about God. In part, I believe, this is because many of us weren’t schooled in religion ourselves; we simply don’t know enough about God and faith to say anything.
But this isn’t about us; it’s about our kids and what they need. You need to tell your daughter what you think and believe. What you believe will have a strong impact on what she believes. And if you feel you need to start your faith journey right alongside her, do it. She’ll love it.
Clarification is in order. When I say your daughter needs God, I am being specific to the Judeo-Christian tradition, which is the tradition of more than two-thirds of American teens (52 percent are Protestant, 23 percent are Catholic, and 1.5 percent are Jewish). 28 As far as belief in God goes, 84 percent of kids between the ages of thirteen and seventeen say they are believers, 12 percent are unsure, and only 3 percent say that they do not believe in God.29 This is consistent with my experience with my own patients and with the teens I come in contact with across the nation. Many kids may talk a lot about whether God exists, but very few are atheists. As Christian Smith states, “Contrary to many popular assumptions and stereotypes, the character of teenage religiosity in the United States is extraordinarily conventional . . . the vast majority of U.S. teens are not alienated or rebellious when it comes to religious involvement.”30 The fact is, your daughter is eager to hear what you think about God—and chances are she will embrace your beliefs.
Kids are born with an inherent sense that life is more than what they see. When I ask kids about their spiritual lives, they know exactly what I’m talking about. They realize that they are flesh and bones, that they read and play piano, but somehow they see in themselves an invisible, real, and wonderful part that is indefinable. There is a space in each that is the soul, and even very young kids understand this: the unknown dimension, deep, unexplored, and difficult to define or articulate. Believing that they have a soul makes girls feel good. It makes them feel significant and connected to the eternal. And you, as her father, can see this as well.
A Father’s Wisdom
Can you remember sitting on the edge of your three-year-old daughter’s bed, watching her bundled in the peace of sleep? You gently leaned over her to kiss her forehead and pulled the blankets around her shoulders. No father can adequately articulate the experience of watching his sleeping child—it must be lived. Now, imagine you are walking out of her room. Could you turn around and look at her and believe that the sum of her existence rests in a mass of cells?
Certainly not. But this is exactly how a rank secularist is obliged to view his daughter. She is nothing more than a genetic product of his and her mother’s DNA. The puffing of air through her tiny chest keeps her alive. Your time with her is precious, meaningful, but purely a biological phenomenon. Her thoughts and feelings can be traced to neuronal firing in her brain. One day you will die and she will die and that will be that. Life began through the splitting and rejoining of DNA and when they stopped functioning, she did too.
I can’t imagine a father feeling this way about his daughter. When you look at your sleeping daughter, you are confronted with a spiritual reality that you can’t deny. From the moment she was born, you sensed the awesomeness of her life, the fact that there is something mysterious and transcendent about it, that she goes beyond you and your spouse. A man can banter with his friends and colleagues about whether God exists. But a father looks at his daughter and knows. Often I find parents (particularly fathers) shy away from discussing spiritual issues with their daughters. Talking about faith is akin to talking about sex. We feel paralyzed. We choke. We don’t know where to start. Or perhaps we’re afraid because we don’t have all the answers. Perhaps we struggle with faith. That’s fine. You don’t have to provide all the answers, and you can keep it simple.
Kids always want to know about God. Their questions are intuitive. If you don’t give guidance to your daughter, she’ll come up with answers of her own—which means your authority will be replaced by someone else’s. This is how cults are formed. You wouldn’t ask your daughter to cook coq au vin for dinner without giving her a recipe. And God is more important than dinner.
Whether you’re a Christian, a Jew, or a Hindu, when your daughter asks about God, you need to give her something to work with. Your daughter wants to hear something from you. And for most parents, that means imparting your own faith in God, which you learned, if nowhere else, while watching your baby daughter sleep.
Why God?
Why does your daughter need you to enlarge her faith in and understanding of God? Well, Carl Jung wrote that “Among my patients in the second half of my life...there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religious of every age have given their followers and none of them really healed who did not regain his religious outlook.” Or to put it simply, your daughter needs God for two reasons: she needs help and she needs hope. God gives help and He promises her that the future will be better.
No matter how influential you are in your profession, how wealthy or hardworking, you can only offer your daughter so much. Many men don’t like to face this fact. But you can’t protect your daughter from all pain and suffering. When people are really hurt, they cry out to God. The reaction is natural and instinctive. I see it all the time. But when your daughter faces these situations, will she be ready? Will she know who God is? Will she know God hears her? Or will she look outward and see nothingness? Secular fathers who deprive their daughters of God often say they do so because their daughters don’t need a crutch; God, they say, is only for the weak.
But every daughter needs help—and so do fathers. Don’t deprive your daughter of this help and hope. There are moments when she will need it, when she will feel alone, when the only one she can turn to is God. I’ve sat with patients as they die, and I can tell you that death is shrouded in mystery. I held a premature, one-and-a-half-pound baby boy for forty-five minutes after I couldn’t resuscitate him. I have stroked the swollen feet of a comatose old woman and felt her body change as she died. These weren’t physiological changes. Her heart rate stayed regular. Her breathing was rhythmically shallow. But something changed: she left before she died.
When I spoke with Judy about her memories of her car accident, her coma, and her recovery, I asked her if there was anyone she knew before the accident that she recognized as the same person after the accident.
Her answer hit me like an electric shock. “Yes. Only one person. God. Before my accident, I prayed a lot. I went to church and I got to know who God was and what Christ is all about. When I was in my coma, I felt his presence. He was there. He was right there with me. And when I woke up I only knew God at first. Everyone else in my life seemed completely different.”
One of the things I like most about medicine is that it requires honesty. Sick people shoot straight. I’ve noticed that people who are critically ill simplify their thinking, prioritize their lives, and easily consider God. Most believe in Him. Some turn away. But kids universally believe. For some reason, the supernatural doesn’t frighten them. Their hearts and minds are less dull than ours and they accept God’s presence and love much more readily than we do.
When Jada was eleven, she was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor. Her parents and older brother were devastated. She was strong, athletic, and appeared extremely healthy. But when her face became erratically contorted and her body shook from seizures, they knew something was terribly wrong. Jada’s father was a quiet, kind man who turned his grief inward to appear strong for his wife and son. But every day after her diagnosis, he felt his guts rotting inside him.
Stu and Joaquin didn’t have faith in God. They simply lived life as though He didn’t exist. They never went to church. Sundays were family days. As her death grew closer, Jada began worrying about her parents. She worried about her dog and her friends. Mostly she worried about herself. At times she became visibly frightened, particularly by the process of death.
One evening, after spending most of the day in bed, Jada fell asleep for the night. But she was restless, awoke in the night, and was unable to go back to sleep.
In the morning, she walked out of her room and found her mother and father sitting in the kitchen talking. The words that came from her lips changed their lives.
“Mom. Dad. You don’t need to worry about me anymore. An angel came to my room last night and told me that I’m going to be alright. I will be in heaven and it will be really nice. I mean it. We don’t have to worry anymore at all! And the angel told me that you’ll be with me there too some day.”
Stu’s mouth dropped open. He immediately thought Jada was having delusions from her brain tumor or her medications. He said nothing. But when Jada left the room, he realized that her demeanor had changed, that even her skin looked different. For the first time in months, she looked happy.
Stu and Joaquin, like any parents, were skeptical about what had happened. They shelved it away in the backs of their minds, wishing they could have such reassurance but not willing to believe it.
Jada died about a year after she told her parents about the angel. Never once, however, during the days between her experience and her death did she waver on the truth of her encounter. In fact, she reiterated it often to her parents and said that she—and they—would see each other again and that God, the angel, and heaven were real.
The great mystery in life is the existence and activity of the supernatural. Was Jada crazy? If she were the only child who spoke like this, I would say yes. But she isn’t. I had another child in a cancer ward tell his crying mother that it was okay for her to go home and sleep at night. “The angel comes,” he said, “and helps me and keeps me company while you’re gone.” I heard this fifteen years before I heard Jada’s story.
And there have been others. As a doctor, I believe these testimonies, because the physical descriptions, the feelings, and the resulting peace and confidence are the same.
Doctors witness a lot of pain and sadness. I have come face-to-face with the limitations of men and women. There is only so much that any of us can do for our patients. Our intellect is limited, our knowledge sparse. As Thomas Edison said, “We don’t know a millionth of 1 percent about anything.”
One advantage that young patients have is that they don’t try to rationalize and control everything. They allow human instinct to take over, and when they do, they connect their spiritual dimension to the transcendent.
Your daughter needs a faith in God, because life will inevitably take her to a place where neither you nor anyone else can help. And when she gets there, she will either be alone or put her trust in a loving God. So when she experiences this, do you know what your daughter will do? When neither her own abilities nor your help nor the aid of anyone else will be available, what will she think and what will she feel? Will she pray? Will she know who she’s praying to? What she does during those pivotal times in her life depends upon you.
Can you, will you, teach her to turn to God when she needs desperate help?
In a young girl’s eyes, you and her mother are the beginning and the end of the line when it comes to love, help, and support. Beyond you, she sees nothing. Many girls who feel emotionally rejected, abandoned, or even simply misunderstood for a period in their lives need to find security somewhere. So they look for something strong, loving, and secure to latch on to. Many turn to God. But others turn to things that are not healthy (drugs, sex, drinking, cults) because they feel so desperate.
Many healthy girls, too, need something other than you to attach to as they mature emotionally and psychologically. This is a normal and healthy process. During her early childhood, your daughter easily attaches to you i
f you provide enough warmth. As she moves into adolescence, she will begin to pull away from you to see what she can accomplish on her own. But she will still need an anchor while she ventures into new territory. When you’re not there as her anchor, she will need something else. Many parents—and teens—will want that something else to be God.
Teens want faith because, I believe, faith in God gives them hope. Your daughter needs hope. We all do. There is so much pain and cynicism in the world that many of us become callous and fatalistic. I hear adults say, “What’s the use of anything?” Kids, though, aren’t as jaded. They grab onto hope more easily than we do, and we must be sure not to withhold hope from them simply because we’re old and crusty.
I was privileged to know a married Jewish couple who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp in World War II. While I met with them only a dozen or so times, they left me with an extraordinary understanding of who God is. When I first met them, I noticed their accents and tattoos. I cringed when I saw the tattoos. I wanted to ask them a million questions. But I was also scared to hear their answers, to learn about the horrors that men can inflict on one another. Reading books had kept me removed. These survivors were flesh and bone.
One evening, they talked about God. They rarely told specific stories of Auschwitz, but they seemed to talk easily about God. At first I was shocked. How could they talk about a good God? How could a good God have allowed such horrific suffering? But I said nothing, and they carried on the conversation with my mother and father, who are Catholic.
“Heda,” I heard my mother say, “I have to admit that I don’t think that my faith could survive in that situation. How can you really believe that God helped you? If He helped you, why didn’t He help everyone else?”