As Christian parents, it can feel like the best way to describe the world is by using scare tactics. However, I am about to show you why communicating through scare tactics will have a higher probability of failure to connect faith to practice. 

Imagine we used the example that drinking alcohol leads to alcoholism which leads to death. There is a high probability your kids will meet someone in their life that has a beer from time to time that does not have an alcohol problem and that does not die from alcoholism. By using this narrative we open the door for a mistruth, "if you lied to me about this what other things are exaggerated lies?"

Our goal is to connect our worldview and faith practically. We want to express the right things to do in a way our kids can mirror. The most embedded behaviors we gather in life are by witnessing how the most important people in our lives respond and react. 

Creating the image of a God that is All-Knowing will help to set the positive fear of God in our kids. Knowing he is there to protect us and also that he will bring all that is done in the dark into the light. This helps set the self-reflection as well as a comfort that there is an all-knowing being that is protecting me. Everything you do is between you and God. You are responsible for owning to your choices not to me but to God himself. 

We separate ourselves from the "owner" of our children and our goal is to be authoritative parents who prepare their kids for the plan that God has established for your kid's life. 

Don't lean on feelings that are based on our own trauma-based experiences and therefore are projected onto our children. 

How do we navigate communication and truth?

Ask yourself what our kids haven't experienced yet and what will they likely experience.

Are we equipping them with truth or are we equipping them with fear?

Are we hoping others teach our kids what they need to know in life?

Are we living a life that is contradicting the life we are telling our kids to live?

live it don't just learn it (something I learned from my father)

know it don't just just feel it (something I learned from my mother)

Deter away from JUST being sin-focused. Don't shy away from it but make sure you aren't hanging your entire faith definition on narratives that have a possibility to be dispelled. 

Deuteronomy 6:6-7