Wow, interesting,how old our your children now? what is your position if don`t mind me asking, sounds like you believe in God but don`t believe that Jesus died for our sins, am I right?
Ya as Christians the best thing to do is to explain to people why you believe what you do ( assuming they are interested) and never take the approach that they should believe so or must, so simply telling them the reasons why you believe is getting any message across without the fundamentalist aspect that throws so many away.
They are both mature adults. Our son is 46 and our daughter is 37. Both our son and our daughter married Catholics and married in the Catholic church as did my wife and I. All of our grandchildren were baptized in the Catholic church. Guess I am the renegade in our family, huh?
I have faith in a higher power. Most people understand this as being God, but I am open to idea of a divine intelligence, be it Mohammed, Buddha, God or whatever. For me, it is more about believing in something greater than yourself. I believe Jesus was an amazing man who accomplished some fantastic things for the short time he was in this world. Had he not been crucified and thus been made a martyr, how most people feel about him might be very different.
It bothers me that so much fighting has gone on since the beginning of time because of religious beliefs/differences. Because of this, I believe religion is a human invention and not necessarily divine. The bible is an interesting book. It is surprising to me that many people believe it is the gospel. I see it more as folklore. Not that there aren't some valid lessons to be learned from reading the bible, because there are. I believe in hell on earth not in some afterlife. I don't expect others to believe what I do.