Questions about your parents' faith
8 questions
Whether your parents are devout, secular, or something more complicated, faith and meaning sit at the center of a life. These questions are open enough to work for any of them: what gives their life meaning now, what they believe about what happens next, what they've stopped trying to answer. The answers tend to be quieter and more honest than you'd expect.
Faith & meaning
- 01
Do you consider yourself a spiritual or religious person? Has that been consistent throughout your life?
Ask what event or period most tested or shaped that belief.
- 02
What gives you the most meaning in your life right now?
Ask if that's changed from what gave them meaning 20 or 30 years ago.
- 03
What do you believe happens after we die?
Ask if that belief brings them peace or is something they still sit with.
- 04
Have you ever had an experience you couldn't explain — something that felt miraculous or deeply strange?
Ask what they made of it then, and what they make of it now.
- 05
How do you make sense of suffering — of bad things happening to good people?
Ask if their answer there has cost them anything, or brought them peace.
- 06
What's a question about life you've stopped trying to answer?
Ask if making peace with not knowing felt like loss or like freedom.
- 07
Have you ever felt held by something larger than yourself? When?
Ask what they'd call that, if they had to give it a name.
- 08
Is there a prayer, a saying, or a verse that's stayed with you all your life?
Ask where they first heard it and what it meant to them then.
How to actually ask these
- ·Pick three or four. Trying to ask all of them in one sitting will exhaust you both. The best conversations come from one question that opens up into twenty minutes of unrelated stories.
- ·Don't correct or argue. If their memory of an event doesn't match yours, that's a separate conversation. Right now you're collecting their version.
- ·Write down what they say while it's fresh — or record it. Phones are good for this. You don't need anything fancier.
- ·If asking face-to-face feels like too much pressure — for either of you — consider letting our service text them one question every few days. Many people open up more easily over text than across a kitchen table.