I have been a Christian for nearly a quarter of a century now, and if there is one thing time has taught me, it is this: my understanding of what it means to be a Christian has not stood still. It has shifted, deepened, sometimes been corrected, and occasionally overturned altogether.

A hermeneutic is the interpretive lens or set of principles a reader brings to a text that shapes how its meaning is understood. No reading of scripture is presupposition-free — every interpreter operates from one, whether named or not.

When Scripture is not read in the right order and in the manner Scripture itself teaches us to read it, we can end up creating strange ideas, theologies, and doctrines that form images of God radically different from the God Jesus reveals. 

This Meditation is for the parents of the faithful—for those raising children who, like the ones Christ welcomed, possess that rare and luminous faith only a child can carry. It is for the curious, questioning ones who dare to believe there is more to this life, more to God, than what they hear from pulpits echoing with certainties mistaken for wisdom. Too often, these children are met not with wonder but with well-meaning platitudes from teachers of the faith—trusted voices, yes, but ones that often speak more from tradition than truth, more from fear than faith.