I decided I would never lie to my children when I was four years old.
Not in some noble, tiny-philosopher way. I was just a kid watching my parents pull a bicycle out of the trunk and hand it to me from “Santa.” A loving act, obviously. Sweet, generous, normal. Norman Rockwell with a trunk latch.
But some part of my tiny animal brain went: Oh. Adults are just saying things.
The bike was beautiful, but the revelation was radioactive. I learned that the people I trusted most could participate in a shared fiction and call it magic. I carried that tiny betrayal until I had my own child at forty.
Now I have an eight-year-old daughter I have never lied to.
Not about Santa. Not about death. Not about how humans started. Not about why people believe what they believe. She gets the truth, dialed to the level she can hold. Not the whole ocean dumped on her head, but a cup of water honest enough to drink.
This carries over to God too.
Mary and I both escaped fundamentalism, which sounds dramatic until you’ve done it and realize “escaped” is the polite word. We talk with Jettie about the beauty religions can hold, the teachings that help people be kinder, the myths that make humans feel less alone. We also tell her the truth: I don’t believe God exists. Her mother mostly finds the question unimportant.
Because nothing is hidden, nothing becomes too large to touch.
That’s the part people miss. When every subject is allowed in the room, no single idea becomes a haunted mansion. God, Santa, evolution, death, kindness, fear, Jesus, dinosaurs, consciousness, whatever weird sentence Dad says before coffee—everything becomes discussable. Everything becomes the perfect acceptable size.
Living in Oklahoma, Jettie hears about God everywhere. Television. Friends. Family. The cultural wallpaper hums with it. She understands God as something like an adult version of Santa, but she’s curious. Curiosity is sacred in this house, even without gods.
But church invites? Camps? Youth group sleepovers with acoustic guitars and emotional manipulation in the name of eternity?
Firm no.
Mary and I were talking about this recently. She had that good-parent ache of not wanting Jettie to miss out on things. And then, without conscious thought—because apparently my mouth is just a trapdoor for whatever the subconscious has been cooking—a sentence fell out:
I have never met an adult who resents their parents for raising them secular.
Twenty-five years since leaving fundamentalism. Twenty-five years surrounded by atheists, agnostics, spiritual weirdos, exvangelicals, Buddhists, artists, skeptics, therapists, burnouts, mystics, and people who only believe in Costco.
Not one person has said, “I really wish my parents had made me believe in God.”
Not one adult is in therapy because they weren’t forced to attend church three times a week.
Sure, outliers exist. Somewhere there’s probably a guy mad he missed Vacation Bible School crafts. But generally, I know many people deconstructing religious childhoods.
I don’t know anyone deconstructing honesty.
Maybe we’re not depriving her of anything. Maybe we’re giving her the rarest inheritance there is: a childhood where wonder does not require deception, morality does not require fear, and love does not need a supernatural witness to count.
No adults hating their parents for a secular upbringing.
That’s not a slogan.
That’s a compass.