Both my children were baptized Catholic in a beautiful ceremony full of rituals and blessings, as my husband and I were decades earlier. However, this initiation full of both traditions and superstitions, felt more like a placeholder than a forever commitment. While I believe in the communal benefits of a church, I do not believe in organized religion.

Growing up, I enjoyed Catechism classes and devotionally read my grandfather’s old prayer book. I never enjoyed, though, sitting in church. It seemed more of an hour of mental discipline than spiritual awakening. For one hour each Sunday, I would try to contain my natural propensity to fidget and roam and to stave off boredom. It seemed so passive.

As I grew older, I became more resentful of the role of women, the discrimination of homosexuals, and the history of corruption and violence. I remember my first college philosophy class and how existentialism spoke to me, how we can self-create and regulate our own reality and find eternal life through the legacy of our actions. Every action becomes weighed then and no slate can be wiped clean simply by asking for forgiveness.

I feel every step of my spiritual journey, which continues, was important. So how do I start off my own children in a way that feels honest? Inevitability, as citizens of a predominantly Christian culture, they are already aware of the concepts of God, Jesus, heaven, and hell. However, they do not all quite make sense and they have endless questions. Today, my son asked why the devil is evil? I had no ready answer. I ended up explaining how the world is full of opposing forces. However, my six year old was not ready for an epistemological discussion of dualisms. I then, and I regret this, discussed how you could not have superheroes without villains. Is it blasphemous to discuss God as the ultimate superhero?

More than anything I want my children to understand that people hold a variety of beliefs and that anything is possible. I want them to believe in something, but I do not want to dictate, or have a specific book or religion dictate, the tenets of that belief. How do we begin?