Dear friend,
I want to write to you today not as a commentator on politics or current events. I want to write to you as a pastor who has spent fifty years watching families navigate difficult seasons.
And I want to talk about your grandchildren.
I know many of you are worried. I know some of you have sat at dinner tables where the conversation went somewhere that made your heart sink. Where a grandchild said something that sounded nothing like how you raised their parents. Where you looked across the table and thought: where did this come from?
I know that feeling. I have heard it from thousands of people over the decades. And I want to tell you something important before we go any further.
Your instinct that something has changed in what children are being taught is not paranoia. It is not old age making you resistant to progress. It is accurate observation. And Scripture gives you both the framework to understand it and the tools to respond to it.
What Is Actually Happening
Let me be specific rather than vague. Because vague complaints accomplish nothing. Specific understanding leads to specific action.
In classrooms across America right now children are being taught several things that represent a direct departure from the values most of your generation built your families on.
They are being taught that truth is personal. That what is true for you may not be true for someone else. That there is no objective right and wrong — only perspectives to be respected. This sounds tolerant. But it is the most radical idea in the history of human civilization. Every society in history — including the one described in Scripture — has been built on the premise that some things are true and some things are false regardless of how anyone feels about it.
They are being taught that identity is self-defined. That a person's deepest sense of who they are is something they choose and construct rather than something given to them by God and confirmed by biology. This teaching is reaching children as young as five in some school districts. Many parents — let alone grandparents — do not know it is happening until they see its effects in their own children.
They are being taught that America's history is primarily a story of oppression. That the founders were not visionary men building something new in the world but simply powerful men protecting their own interests. That patriotism is naive at best and harmful at worst. That loving your country is something to be examined critically rather than felt naturally.
I am not telling you any of this to make you angry. Anger without direction accomplishes nothing. I am telling you this so that when you sit across from your grandchild and something they say surprises you — you understand where it came from. You understand what they have been swimming in every day for years.
And then you are equipped to respond.
What Scripture Says About This Moment
The book of Deuteronomy chapter six contains what Jewish scholars call the Shema. It is one of the most important passages in the entire Old Testament. And it is directly relevant to what is happening in American classrooms right now.
God says to His people: these commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road. When you lie down and when you get up.
Notice what God does not say. He does not say send your children to an institution and hope the institution passes on your values. He does not say appoint a committee. He does not say write a letter to your representative.
He says impress them on your children. Talk about them constantly. Make faith and values the atmosphere of daily life rather than a weekly appointment.
The Hebrew word for impress in that passage is shanan. It means to sharpen. To engrave. To repeat until something is inscribed so deeply it cannot be erased.
That is the standard God set for passing on faith to the next generation. Not a Sunday school lesson. Not a vacation Bible school week. Daily. Constant. Woven into the fabric of ordinary life.
America largely stopped doing this somewhere in the last fifty years. The Church outsourced faith formation to institutions. Parents outsourced it to youth groups. And the secular world — which never stopped doing its version of shanan in classrooms and screens and cultural messaging — filled the space.
This is not a mystery. It is a predictable outcome of abandoning a clear biblical instruction.
The good news is the instruction is still there. And it is still possible to follow it.
What Proverbs Says About the Long Game
Proverbs 22 verse 6 is one of the most quoted and most misunderstood verses in the entire Bible. Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.
People quote this verse to mean that if you raise a child correctly they will never stray. That is not what it means and the evidence of millions of faithful families whose children walked away from the faith proves it does not mean that.
What it actually means is about trajectory. The word translated as train in the Hebrew is chanak. It means to dedicate. To initiate. To set on a path.
The verse is a promise about direction not destination. A child set on the right path — even if they wander from it for a season — has a path to return to. The foundation is laid even if the house built on it looks different for a time.
This matters enormously for grandparents whose grandchildren are currently somewhere they do not recognize. The prodigal son came home. He came home because there was a home to come home to. A father waiting. A feast prepared. A welcome ready.
Your job is not to win every argument at the dinner table. Your job is to be the home they can return to when they are ready.
That is a long game. But it is the right game.
What Jesus Said About Children
In Matthew chapter 18 the disciples ask Jesus who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And Jesus calls a child to stand among them and says unless you become like this child you will not enter the kingdom.
Then he says something with enormous weight. Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble — it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.
That is one of the strongest statements Jesus makes in the entire gospel. He is not soft on this subject. The protection and spiritual formation of children is not a secondary concern in Scripture. It is central.
And the flip side of that warning is the promise. Those who nurture faith in children — who plant seeds that may take decades to bloom — are participating in something Jesus considers among the most important work available to a human being.
Your relationship with your grandchildren is not a small thing. It is not a supplementary role to their parents. Scripture places the passing of faith across generations at the very center of God's plan for His people.
You are not a bystander in your grandchildren's spiritual lives. You are a designated participant. Scripture says so.
What You Can Actually Do
I promised you this letter would be practical. Here is what fifty years of pastoral experience and a close reading of Scripture tells me a grandparent can actually do right now.
The first thing is to pray specifically and consistently. Not general prayers for your grandchildren's wellbeing. Specific prayers. Pray for their teachers by name if you know them. Pray for the specific ideas they are being exposed to. Pray that God would give them a spirit of discernment — the ability to recognize truth from falsehood — even before they have the theological framework to articulate it. Daniel was a young man in a pagan culture that tried to reshape his identity and his thinking. He held firm not primarily through argument but through a prayer practice so consistent that his enemies used it as evidence against him.
The second thing is to build the relationship first and the theology second. A grandparent who argues about ideology every time they see their grandchild will lose access to that grandchild. A grandparent who shows up consistently with warmth, genuine interest, and unconditional love will have a relationship that survives disagreement. Jesus did not begin his ministry with a doctrinal statement. He began by calling people into relationship. The relationship is the vehicle for everything else.
The third thing is to tell your story. Not lecture. Not debate. Tell your story. What did faith do in your life during the hard seasons? When did God show up in a way you could not explain away? Your personal testimony is the most powerful evangelistic tool available to you because it cannot be argued with. It is your experience. Nobody can tell you that did not happen.
The fourth thing is to make your home a place of prayer. When your grandchildren visit, pray. Before meals. At the end of the day. When something worrying is in the news. Not performatively. Naturally. As if it is the most normal thing in the world — which it is, or should be. Children absorb the atmosphere of a home. A home where prayer is as natural as breathing plants seeds that take root in ways you will never fully see.
The fifth thing is to be patient with a very long timeline. The seeds planted in a grandchild's heart at eight years old may not bloom until they are thirty five. That is not failure. That is how seeds work. Your job is not to see the harvest. Your job is to plant faithfully and trust God with the growth.
A Final Word
I know some of you reading this are in pain about your grandchildren. I know some of you feel like you are watching something happen and you do not have the power to stop it.
You cannot control what is taught in classrooms. You cannot control what a screen shows them at midnight. You cannot control the friends they choose or the ideas they encounter or the culture they swim in.
But you can control your knees. You can pray. You can control your kitchen table. You can feed them and love them and tell them your story. You can control your welcome. You can be the home they return to.
Deuteronomy says to impress these things on your children. It does not say achieve results. It does not say guarantee outcomes. It says be faithful. Show up. Keep going.
That is what grandparents have always done. And in a world that is trying very hard to disconnect the next generation from everything you know to be true — showing up faithfully is one of the most important things any person can do.
God sees it. Even when no one else does.
God bless you and your grandchildren and everyone you love.
— Father Thomas