I am a church kid, through and through. My parents had me in church 9 months before I was born. There has never been a significant period in my life when I have strayed from the church, and I began serving on staff at churches when I was 19 years old.

For all those reasons and more, I identified greatly with Daniel Darling’s book Real.

As Dan argues in the book, growing up in the church is a good thing. Clearly. It’s a characteristic I pray for my own kids, that they stay true not only to the faith, but that they grow in their love for the local church. But Dan also argues that some of the pitfalls for growing up in that environment include boredom, shame due to patterns of sin, and simply treating those things that are holy as things that are common. In other words, faith might not be real.

It makes sense, doesn’t it? You see it in any other cultural demographic – the more accustomed you are to something, the less awed you are by that something. And in the churchaholic culture, this has dangerous implications, chief among them that our faith (and that of our children) might simply be assumed by association rather than being real.

This is a battle most of us will face if not in ourselves, at least with our kids. For us, it’s the introspective question of whether we own our faith or whether we have a general knowledge. It’s the process many of us have gone through at some point in our lives when we asked the hard questions about life, the world, and ourselves.

For our children, it’s the tension between knowing that they need to struggle through various aspects of truth, and yet reinforcing those truths as fundamental. It’s the struggle between teaching our kids gospel-based obedience rather than simply behavior modification.

For all of us, it’s the difference between authenticity and a masquerade that poses as faith.

I found Dan’s approach to be honest and refreshing as he posed these kinds of questions and offered not only philosophy, but also practical helps, especially for parents I found, that are instructive in simple ways that we might empower our kids to own our faith. And that’s really what Dan’s book is – it’s a combination of biblical instruction, anecdotal evidence, and practical suggestions for reproducing real and owned faith.

If you’re like me, and you wonder how to raise a bunch of rascals in what is no doubt a churchified home, then I’d encourage you to pick up a copy. You’ll be encouraged.

You can order the book here, and read more from Dan here.