A professor at a Catholic University in his column in the Catholic Peace Weekly discusses the process that we experience in our growth in faith.
In Jesus' parable, there is a story of two sons who were commanded by their father to work in the vineyard (see Matthew 21:28-32). The older son initially responded: 'I don't want to do it,' but later changed his mind and went to work, while the other son said he would go and didn't go. In the end, it was the eldest son who carried out his father's will. When you hear this story, you may think of ‘turning your life around’ or ‘turning things around at the last minute,’ but it is actually a story about faith and obedience to the Father’s will.
Like the father in the parable, God never forces himself on his children. He seeks and asks and expects you to answer for yourself. He waits for you to understand and follow His will. This is God's method of education.
Faith is voluntary obedience. It may seem contradictory at first, but through experience, one realizes that true obedience in faith can only be voluntary. This is similar to the process of a child growing up and becoming an adult. When you are young, you do whatever your parents tell you, regardless of your will. Your parents' world becomes your world, and your parents' thoughts become your thoughts. However, as children grow up, they become ready to take responsibility for their own lives—dream of the future, prepare for a career, and learn to do on their own what needs to be done.
In this process, the child becomes conscious of his own thoughts and will and begins to challenge themselves, rather than challenge, the authority of his parents or teachers. Through this difficult, but necessary, period for both parties, the children become adults who take responsibility for their own life. And as they live their lives they go through various trials and make mistakes. In particular, they go through what their parents went through and recognize that their parents' thoughts and will were right. In the end, they voluntarily obey their parents.
The same goes for faith. When young, you held your parents' hand and went to church, but as you grow older, you may feel that faith is a shackle that makes you uncomfortable and unfree in many ways. There are times when your body and mind become distant from the church. However, as we are being tossed around by the winds of the world, we eventually return to the Father, realizing that God's Word and the Church's teachings are right, and that the only ones who believe in me and wait for me are God and the Church.
This is very important to understand the path of faith you are walking and to raise your children in faith. At some point, when your child asks about faith and expresses dissatisfaction, you need to view it as an opportunity rather than a crisis. This is because it is a process of moving from passive faith following the authority of parents to voluntary faith on one's own. We also need to acknowledge that we have walked that path, and we need to understand and sympathize with what our children experience as a process of growing into believers.
The important thing is not to persuade with a perfect argument (that's not what your child wants), but to talk openly and honestly with each other and maintain a trusting relationship. Here, sharing parents' experiences about faith and life is very important. Children will be able to continue to find what is good and right on their own through conversations with their parents who listen to their stories and share their life stories honestly.
The God we meet through this process is not someone trapped in doctrine or the Bible, but someone who lives in our lives. He wants his children to be joyful and happy, filled with mercy, justice, becoming freer and experiencing more of his love. You discover that we are walking this beautiful and joyful path of faith.
