Childhood spiritual styles: Rational Style

In what environment does your child feel particularly close to God? It’s not that God is objectively closer to them in those situations, but that they feel God’s closeness more, they sense God to be closer to them.

These “locations” reveal a child’s spiritual style.

Spiritual style is the way we receive the never-ending stream of communication God sends out to humankind.–Christian A. Schwarz

rational high school studentsThe Rational Style: A child understands the nature of God through logic and science.

Note the items that apply to children in your life to determine whether they likely possess a rational style of spirituality.

  1. The child’s views the study of science as a wonderful way to learn more about God.
  2. You would say that the child loves God with her mind.
  3. The child is curious to find truth wherever it may appear.
  4. Intellectually learning something new about God is a deep spiritual experience for the child.
  5. The child considers it positive to have a critical mindset toward spiritual questions.
  6. The child is skeptical toward a faith that constantly offers “easy solutions.”
  7. It is important for the child’s faith that his mind is regularly stimulated.

Discovery questions for rational children

rational middle school studentIf you notice five or more of these characteristics, the child probably has a well-established pattern of expressing spirituality with their mind.

The following questions may be useful as you seek to strengthen their connection with God:

  • What questions about God does this raise?
  • What is puzzling about it?
  • Where is God’s truth in it?
  • How are your doubts causing your own faith to gain power and depth?
  • What do you want to explore further?

Coming up: The Bold Idealistic Style

Adapted from The 3 Colors of Your Spirituality, by Christian A. Schwarz

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Passion for science sets his soul on fire

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When your child is a budding scientist, you scrub home experiments off your walls and ceiling. Your hard-earned money goes toward chemistry sets.

In addition to milk and eggs, your grocery cart contains oddball ingredients destined to bubble and overflow onto your bathroom floor.

You are scrambling to help them satisfy a deep passion for learning and unending curiosity.

Glen was one such child.

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Fortunately his parents nurtured his scientific bent. The son of a deeply religious US Navy captain, Glen and his family were church members. Glen leaned toward science as a young man and went on to study nuclear physics at the university.

Science captivated his mind and soul.

“The nuclei were responding to our questions, speaking our mathematical language, completely understandable, telling us the nature of their binding forces,” he said. “It was as if they were saying to me, ‘Finally, someone has asked us. We have waited so many eons.'”

Glen recalled being “so spiritually elated after a day at the lab that I would go outdoors and just run as fast and as long as I could, in exultation and gratitude.”

Both mind and soul factored into an important career choice.

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Years later, unwilling to aid in weapons development, Glen abandoned nuclear physics and moved into a teaching career, with Ethics as his area of specialization. He did not abandon his passion for intellectual study through observation and experimentation: “My way of thinking is incurably curious and integrative. I can’t teach Ethics without attention to numerous related disciplines.”

Children are going to experience the divine in different ways. Passionate scientific inquiry is one of them.

“be passionate in your work and in your searchings.” — ivan pavlov

 

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