I’m still amazed by what I saw kids from Christian homes do when they got to college, away from their highly sheltered lives. They had professed to follow the Lord and receive His whole council, and they had lived such highly prescribed lives, but if their parents only knew half their exploits, they might, like Job, tear their clothing and sit in ashes.  “Every fall,” observes John Portmann, professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia, “parents drop off their well-groomed freshmen, and within two or three days many have consumed a dangerous amount of alcohol and placed themselves in harm’s way.  These kids have been controlled for so long, they just go crazy.”

By and large, we’re not debilitating our kids on purpose. Over the years I’ve slogged through a ton of negativity, and I’m insistent that guilt is not an acceptable synonym for parenthood.  Nonetheless, often with the best of intentions, Christian and non-Christian parents alike are raising children who are passive, pleasant, and malleable rather than innovative, proactive, and bold.  These “nice” children prevalently struggle with fear, anxiety, loneliness, and, later in life, relational instability and divorce.  Our goal should be to create confident and truly virtuous kids who are capable of doing more than their part in obtaining an abundant life.  These children become adults who lend their strength to others and help them obtain happiness as well.

I have coached soccer for both genders, mostly boys, for more than a decade.  Some are home-schooled, most go to public school, and some come from private schools.  The kids from religious homes are mostly Christian, some Jewish, or a mixture of religious expressions and beliefs.  Some don’t go to a house of worship at all.

The only consistent difference I’ve noticed is that the kids who come from religious homes might swear less.  If my kid doesn’t curse, we say to ourselves, I’m doing well.  In that one sense, this does make them different, but in the larger picture of life, it’s a pathetic difference.  Talk about straining at gnats and swallowing entire camels!  (See Matthew 23:24.)

Jesus used this metaphor to describe errors the religious leaders of His day were perpetrating.  They paid too much attention to minor matters and in the process ignored “weightier” matters like “justice, mercy, and good faith.”  I sometimes do the same thing as a parent, and I’m not proud of the reason: I strain at gnats because in myriad ways it’s easier than teaching and living out for my kids a Christlike example of what matters most.

Swearing is the gnat some schools strain as well.  My old high school, for example, held a summit among teachers and staff and decided that in the entire galaxy encapsulating tumultuous youth—which includes bullying so pervasive that an estimated 160,000 U.S. kids each day skip school—curtailing swearing was the most important crackdown they could undertake.