You Don’t Have to Earn It
Letting Go of Performance and Teaching Our Kids They Already Belong.
I was interviewing someone for a ministry position when she said something that
stuck with me: “You have to belong before you can believe.” At first, it sounded like
one of those catchy ministry phrases you might find on a retreat T-shirt. But it
wouldn’t leave me alone.
Maybe it’s because I’ve started to notice that a lot of the ways I teach the faith to
my kids—even with the best of intentions—are quietly reinforcing the opposite
message. Not “you belong here,” but “do this right, and maybe you’ll belong.”
That’s not how love works. Not with God, not with anyone. Real love isn’t earned.
It’s given. Freely. Or it’s not love.
But if I’m being honest, I slip into the old mindset every day: striving to earn
what’s already been offered in full. And unsurprisingly, I pass that pressure on to
my kids. Here are three areas I’m trying to clean up:
Turning Mass into a performance. I want my kids to participate, sure—
but when I hyper-focus on behavior, they start thinking their worth is tied
to how still they sat or how many responses they nailed. I’m working on
asking better questions after Mass: “Did any part of the Gospel stand out to
you?” “What color was the priest wearing?”—anything that pulls the focus
back to God instead of whether they were “good enough.”Treating the sacraments like prizes. Learn the prayers, go to class, check
the boxes. It’s easy to make it feel like a reward system. So, I’m learning to
explain it differently: the sacraments aren’t rewards, they’re gifts. We
prepare not to earn them, but to receive them more fully.Using faith as a means to an end. “Let’s pray, then you can have dessert.”
I’ve said it. But I don’t want my kids to think of prayer like spinach. Faith is
the feast, not the barrier to one.
If any of this resonates, you’re not alone. Let’s keep working on it together—so
our kids don’t just believe the faith, but know they belong in it. And while we’re at
it, we might find some of our own performance hang-ups loosening a bit too.
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