Christianity: An Environment Or An Experience?

Beautiful home with signage

Is the Christianity in Your Home an Environment or an Experience?

Welcome to part two of four part series on spiritual stewardship for Christian parents. Today, we dive into that vital distinction between an “environment” and an “experience”, x-raying both words through the lens of impact and heart transformation as stewards of God’s heritage.

As a parent, I have been entrusted with the care and management of my children. This stewardship includes:

• Care of their wellbeing: Physical, emotional, and spiritual. 1 Timothy 5:8

• Managing their gifts, talents, and time: Nurturing and directing their potential toward God's purposes. Proverbs 22:6

• Outcome-oriented focus: It is not a temporary activity but one that tends toward a specific goal or "outcome." Galatians 4:19

• Authority with Accountability: I have full authority, yet I shall account for how I used my opportunity for oversight. What are my goals for this period? John 17:6-7

• The Mandate (Ephesians 6:4): Avoiding provocation to anger and instead focusing on the "discipline and instruction of the Lord."

Environment vs. Experience 

We must distinguish between the "setup" of our homes and the "transformation" of our children's hearts. Setup in this context refers to the mechanisms we have designed and established as mediums of enculturating our children into our faith. They include all the activities and rituals we have put in place to mold our children into our faith mold.

When we rely solely on the environment, we often inadvertently force our child to conform to a set of external religious behaviors, language, and cultural expectations, a checklist of behavioral compliance; morning devotion at 5am, Sunday school on Sunday, join the teens evangelism unit, attend weekday bible study, etc. These are excellent practices but not sufficient in themselves as the evidence is beginning to show.

A mother reading the Bible to her daughter

Our children learn to say the right things and avoid the wrong things to survive the "environment," look and act the “part”,  but there is no internalized "experience." The moment the external pressure of the home is removed, the shape collapses because there is no internal structure holding it together. Let’s break it down a little more:

• Environment: Speaks to externalities—physical space, resources, people, atmosphere, or culture. One can be immersed in an environment (like a library) yet never become a part of it or be impacted by it. You can be within an environment without ever truly belonging to it.

  
  

• Experience: An internalized response to an environment. It is an active and personal engagement involving sensory processing, emotional reaction, and cognitive processing. Our children must relate with and question the beliefs we pass down and be sufficiently guided through the scriptures and our shared spiritual history to own an unshakable faith, like the four Hebrew children whose stoic faith we are often quick to pronounce over our children. This leads to a consequent internalization of belonging.

A proper "mould" is more like the framework used in a foundry. You are not forcing solid clay into a shape; you are providing a strong, deliberate, and protective container into which the "liquid" potential of your child's life is poured. Moving from a passive environment to an active, lived experience requires more than just good intentions and rituals; it requires a specific biblical methodology that we must acquaint ourselves with for faith to be effectively transferred.

In our next article, we look at the make up of the mold that builds into an experience of internalized faith, proven strategies for outcomes-driven spiritual stewardship. We explore the ancient concepts of Paideia and Nouthesia, and how storytelling and questions serve as anchors for a child's identity. Without a full conceptualization of a consolidated sense of their “spiritual self”, there can be no internalization. Ready for that next deep dive? Click here: https://www.lolparenting.org/post/proven-strategies-for-outcomes-driven-spiritual-stewardship