Recently we marked the anniversary of my daughters’ baptism into the Christian Church. I thought of the commitments my wife and I made as parents to nurture and raise the girls in the Christian faith as best as we can, with the help of our congregation. As I shared before, the faith of my kids at times consumes my thoughts.

Living in the Bay Area of California, I regularly hear adults (parents and otherwise) say they don’t want to force religious beliefs on children and instead want their kids to choose their own faith, or non-faith. Some take this line of thinking further and claim a parent raising their child in a specific faith is akin to brainwashing or, as evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins puts it, “child abuse.” Similarly, I have heard it argued children only believe in God because they are taught to do so. While this point is debatable, I will entertain it for purposes of my argument.

We chose to have our children baptized well before they could ever have made that decision for themselves. According to the perspectives I detailed above, my wife and I are brainwashing our children. I am comfortable with that.

Let us set aside the idea that a child would not believe in God unless she was taught about God somehow diminishes theism’s validity. There are a lot of things children (and adults) believe that they would not had no one taken the time to teach them: washing hands prevents disease, carrots are healthier than cookies, humans are more closely related to humpback whales than they are to ravens. That assent to these facts may not come naturally to young children does not make the truths any less true.

I brainwash my children on a host of matters. I put carrots on my son’s plate far more often than cookies, despite his protests that cookies are actually nutritious and will make him just as healthy as any vegetable. I don’t present my children with a series of options concerning safety around water or cliffs. My children will not draft their own moral codes. We teach them stealing is wrong. Punching other kids is unkind and hurts community. It goes against our nature and self-interest to tell the truth when doing so will get us in trouble. All the same, we implore our children to tell the truth even when it hurts. I hope one day they will internalize these ethical values as their own. Until then, we will remind them several times a day to be kind and think about how someone else is feeling.

As a parent it is my responsibility to choose things for my children they might not think of for themselves, or even want. My wife and I will decide whether they go to school. (They do.) We will ensure they have vaccinations so they won’t die from a rusty nail scratching them. And we will tell them over and over again those inoculations, however painful in the moment, will keep them and their communities healthy for a long time.

So we read the Bible with our children. We recount the stories of the Abraham and Sarah, the Exodus, Jesus and Zacchaeus, and the Apostle Paul, as our family’s stories. We tell them God made them and had a great time doing so. I want my children to know Jesus loves them more than my wife and I ever could. We tell them Jesus died because he loves everyone, even the Roman soldiers who killed him. We have to take God’s example, respecting and loving people even if they disagree with our faith or want to harm us. My wife and I practice forgiveness and invite our kids to participate. We join in the life of our church community to show faith in God is not individualistic. We want our kids around other folks who also show God’s love to them. We bake cookies and buy beanies and socks to hand out to our homeless neighbors, in part to foster generosity and compassion in our children. We take our kids to the local Women’s March even if they won’t remember it because we want them to care for the well-being of everyone in our society. We pray with them every day and tell them the Holy Spirit loves to hear their thoughts and questions. My wife and I pray regularly for wisdom in parenting our kids. We know we need help.

The day will come when my children will need to make up their own minds about the Christian faith. I pray they will continue to believe and explore the riches of God’s grace. But I know they may reject what we tell them about God just as they might reject what we say about vaccinations or the ethical boundaries we placed around them regarding stealing. For now we will make choices on their behalf, teaching them the specifics of the Christian faith, praying that these children will be people who “do justice…love kindness, and…walk humbly with God.” (Micah 6.8)