What I write below is in language for adults not children and I presume, of course, that it would be rephrased for their understanding. The oath of a medical doctor begins with “First do no harm.” That of a religious parent should begin with “First tell no lies.”

I have no personal experience of mixed-faith marriages but I make that opening claim from decades of teaching comparative religion to mixed-faith classes. I also make it as an empirical conclusion from studying religions across time and space rather than as an act of personal faith.

And, for me, the best analogy for our religious hard-wiring is our linguistic hard-wiring. We are not pre-programmed for any specific religion or any specific language but, paradoxically, religion or language must always appear as this or that specific one. There is no generic religion just as there is no generic language and whenever either is proposed the mystery of particularity – which is absolutely different from either exclusivity or relativity - rejects it vehemently and even violently.

Religious hard-wiring has, for me, the following major components. First, we are hard-wired to search for meaning and indeed for ultimate or transcendental meaning. Second, we are hard-wired to name the transcendental meaning by which we commit ourselves to live human lives in the certainty of human death. Third, we are only able to express those names for transcendent meaning by metaphor and indeed by mega-metaphor. Fourth, across time and space, across religions and faiths, the great grounding metaphors for transcendent meaning are to imagine and to experience it as Power, as Order, as State, or as Person – and those are simply the four mega-metaphors I have been able to recognize clearly.

Finally, each of those base-metaphors is as valid as the other, each has its own faith-building failures and successes, each has its own culture-building advantages and disadvantages, and while each is true, all are more true together than any one alone, and you only get out of one mega-metaphor to find yourself in another.

For myself, therefore, I would never begin with “God.” I prefer to begin with our human experience of being surrounded by a profound mystery of meaning which, to include all religions, I would call the Holy, the Sacred, or the Transcendent.

I would not begin this discussion with “God” because that is but one perfectly valid name for the mystery that surrounds us, the name which envisions that mystery as Person. That name of “God” is absolutely valid for some religions but would, foe example, exclude Buddhism – for which the Holy is State not Person – or Confucianism – for which the Sacred is Order not Person.

Since I myself am a Christian, my foundation metaphor is the Holy-as-Person but I always recognize therein both our common human destiny to particularity and our common religious destiny to metaphoricity.