What do you tell your children when they tell you they fear for your soul?

This is hard, folks, in case you didn’t know. There isn’t an easy solution.

People with no clue how delicate these matters are will chime in and assure me that I should just lay it all on them at once. Just go full atheist on them. They suggest I should just look at my children, who have no other people in their lives who think this way, and tell them flat out that it’s all bullsh*t.

Are you out of your mind? Forgive me, but you have no idea what my world is like. I know there’s a lot of debate between firebrands and diplomats and I can’t speak with authority about everywhere else, but I can speak with relative certainty about my own little corner of the world. You won’t get anywhere burning your bridges like that. And there is no way in hell I’m going to look into my little children’s eyes and ask them to ingest whole the idea that every single adult in their lives save for one is completely wrong about this vast network of ideas about which they are all gravely concerned. I am not interested in making my own children afraid of me, thank you very much.