Making Beliefs

The lies we tell our kids

There is an ongoing debate in our household, one that has now become more prescient since the birth of our daughter.

Unique among our arguments, this one has found us switching sides and arguing the opposite point in consecutive days. My wife has come to a landing spot, but I continue to debate, if not with her, then with the different parts of myself.

To do Santa, or not to do Santa? That is the question.

The dad in me says “Of course we’ll do Santa. Am I raising a little fascist?” The father in me says, “We don’t have time for such nonsense. I am raising a lion.” The truth-teller in me says, “We shouldn’t lie to our kids.” The storyteller in me says, “I could do Santa better than anyone. And stories aren’t lies, they’re how we know the truth.” The theologian in me says “God will not give his glory to another.” Nor will I for that matter. I bought the friggen pony. The sinner saved says, “God is not so small that he cannot abide the joy of a child.” The teacher says, “It’s a good instructional opportunity.” The lawyer says, “How will I reason with someone who thinks a jolly elderly man is led by reindeer to reverse-burglarize our home?”

I am not sure where I will land in the years to come. What are the implications? If I teach my kid that Santa is a real based on the premise that lying is bad, isn’t she duty bound to free her fellow grade-schoolers from the tyranny of their deceptive parents?

If I lie to her, will she grow to lie for convenience or to keep others happy?

I wish I were kidding, but it’s actually one of the more confusing and agonizing parenting questions I wrestle with in my three weeks of being a dad.

When kids make up stories to develop their creativity, put on costumes or enact stories to learn something, we call it playing make-believe.

It would be easy to explain away this term by saying kids are simply pretending. But when little girls dress up as princesses, aren’t they learning femininity? Grace and charm? When little boys play at cops and robbers, aren’t they learning justice? Don’t little soldiers grow to be men that fight for their idea of what is good?

It does make me sick to hear an adult woman describe the desire for a partner to treat her like a princess. I unfollow any grown man who posts an Instagram clip calling himself a king. But the principle is true.

Make-believe is an apt way to describe what’s happening. Children are making their own beliefs every time they dress up, every time they create an elaborate world for themselves and their friends.

Before I was a husband and father, I thought of indoctrination as the greatest sin. To condition a child to believe something without allowing them to consider any other ideas still strikes me as wicked.

I responded as most kids do. I was taught that Jesus was Lord and he would not tolerate false Gods. So I embraced atheism. I was taught by my church that sex and alcohol and popular literature were sins. So I became a drunk philanderer who could be found reading anything he could get his hands on. Tattoos, of course not. I have gotten just about one a year since I was 18.

I was taught by the background soundtrack of my childhood, Fox News, that liberals would be the death of America. So I spun my way through different political ideologies at a really fast pace. I was an anarchist for like two weeks, and toyed with the possible biblical evidence for socialism for a few months.

For the most part though, I have returned to the indoctrination of my youth. Not that the indoctrinated brain has taken over, but in my rebellion, I evaluated the claims of my indoctrinators. I have returned to Solus Christus as the defining characteristic of my faith. I am married to one woman, and cannot imagine life with any other. Much less a night.

We do have a beer tap in my home, and my wife has gifted me a tattoo for Father’s Day.

I lean conservative, but still cannot stomach Fox News.

My parents, my community, my friends all played a role in making my belief system just as much as the days where I found a stick in the shape of a gun and went off to war with friends from the neighborhood. I learned as much from calling out the name of a football player that I would be for that day as I did from watching my parents watch the news.

I fought my indoctrination and later returned to it, because it wasn’t indoctrination at all. It was the influences in my life joining me in my natural inclination to make beliefs.

Indoctrination, forcing beliefs on vulnerable people, is a wicked thing to do. A greater sin, though, is to refuse to participate in the belief shaping work of story-telling, of parenting, out of fear of indoctrinating your kids.

We are making beliefs whether we want to or not, so isn’t the best case scenario to tell stories, or not tell them, in order to produce whole people capable of making wise and morally sound decisions?

And maybe some of those stories we tell are not true, not in the most basic sense of the word.

But couldn’t Santa’s fatherly and joyous demeanor give a child insight into who God is? Couldn’t his gift-giving point to the gift of God on Christmas? Jesus, who came to save people from their sins. Cue the unhinged radio pastors of my childhood pointing out that “Santa has the same letters as Satan. Think about it.”

Could not talking about Santa give us more opportunity to talk about family, and faith, and the deadly combination of the American obsession with consumerism and obligatory “family” interactions. My kid will be fun at parties.

I don’t know if we will do Santa in our home. I don’t know if God cares about the man with the bag. I don’t think I have grasped the implications of either side of the debate. If we throw out Santa, do we throw away all Christmas music too? If we keep the jolly weirdo, do I have to spend months putting up lights and decorations the way my father did?

I don’t know any of that.

But I do know that I will not outsource the duty of belief-making to anyone. And one day, she will run from the beliefs I made for her to continue making her own. But if the story, the lie, is good enough, she may be willed to return.