I was raised in Hawaii, possibly the most secular and multicultural state in the union. My mother is a devout Catholic and my father a committed atheist. So when people talk about how to engage in inter-religious dialogue, I want to say, “Boy, you should have grown up in my house!” Every day was a kind of unspoken dialogue about how our beliefs shape our lives, with competing systems of belief claiming superiority in the where-the-rubber-hits-the-road category.

While it’s fairly obvious that, as an Episcopalian, my core beliefs are closer to my mother’s than my father’s, it has been part of growing up for me to see how much my values were influenced by my dad. His beliefs, which are based on a liberal political outlook and a passionate desire for social justice, had a direct impact on his actions. He took low-pay, low-status jobs as a Legal Aid lawyer because it was “the right thing to do.”

And after my parents divorced, my father continued to take my brother and me to Mass every Sunday that we were in his care, although he never darkened the parish door himself. When I asked him why he kept taking us to church, even though he didn’t believe in God (and my brother and I certainly wouldn’t have snitched on him to my mom if he’d stopped taking us!), he replied simply: “I made a commitment to your mother. We’re not married anymore, but our agreement about how to raise you kids still holds.”

Commitment, faithfulness, concern for the poor and oppressed, a willingness to sacrifice personal comfort, and a desire to shape one’s life in adherence to one’s most deeply-held beliefs : those were the values I learned from my father the atheist. And they’re the values I hope to instill in my own children.

But I wonder sometimes how to teach not just tolerance but even love for people like my father–people who have radically different beliefs than mine–while still teaching my kids that in the end I believe what I believe for a reason: I think it’s true. True with a capital “T,” true in both substance and detail.

When I teach children, my own and other people’s, about the Lord’s Prayer or the Nicene Creed, I’m not just teaching them about our church’s traditions. I’m teaching them about what I believe. And what I hope they will come to believe.

I also hope that along the way they’ll find a teacher like my dad, someone whose life is the lesson.

So, tell me: what have you learned from someone with radically different beliefs?