My son, Daniel, was born in June in South Korea. My wife, Ji-yeon and I aren't sure which country we'll end up raising him in, but I know I want him to have an Adventist upbringing.

Technically speaking, all he'd need to do to grow up Adventist is go to church with us, follow the dictates of the Bible and give his heart to Christ. But to experience a true Adventist upbringing there are a few other experiences one must live. Here are a few examples:

Sports-Related Angst: Like all young boys Daniel will probably go through a phase where he'll think it would be nice to have the universal admiration and respect of his peers. Later in life, he'll realize that it's basically impossible to obtain everyone's admiration (unless you develop a revolutionary means of feeding the impoverished,  in which case you'll be almost universally loved by everyone who has actually heard of you). During his high school years, however, he'll find that it's relatively easy to prompt positive feelings among his classmates by hitting, catching, throwing or kicking a ball with greater efficacy than his peers.

This is true of both America and Korea, though the latter country leans more toward the kicking of balls than catching them, throwing them or hitting them with a stick. Another thing these countries have in common is their tendency to host said contests on the seventh day of the week. This leaves Adventist teens that happen to be good at a sport with a choice: 1) disobey the dictates of their God or 2) risk being ignored by girls.

Anyone who thinks this is an easy choice has never been a teenager or male.

There are ways to avoid this frustration, however: For example, if Daniel closely takes after his father, he will be too slight of build to have much success in hitting balls as hard as other boys, and not fleet of foot enough to have much success catching or kicking them. In this case, whether or not he plays sports on the seventh day of the week will not be the deciding factor in terms of how popular he is.

In other words, there will be angst, but not because of his religion.

Questions About Food: Perhaps we can send our son to an SDA academy, then an SDA university, and then watch as he takes a job with an SDA general conference until a) the second coming or b) he retires.

If that's not the life path he finds himself on, though, he'll almost certainly have to answer questions about what he does not eat. If he goes to a public school and eats some meat, this will mean four years of walking through cafeteria lines, pointing at each unfamiliar dish and asking, "What's in this?" If he eats no meat, it'll mean using a lunchbox many years after the age where it is fashionable to do so.

Eventually, people are going to notice, and ask why. By this point I'm sure he'll have at least a few passages from Exodus 20 memorized and will be able to recite them. This won't be argued with most because a lot of people -- and this is true almost everywhere -- don't read much of the Bible. Even among your more well-read Protestants, no one has ever found a verse that says "Eating pork is okay" (or "Thou shalt eat the fresh meat of a pig" in the hypothetical KJV). Instead, he'll meet a lot of people who say, "But it tastes good!"

My son, if he's like most SDAs, will see problems in this line of thinking, but will note that it seems to be enough for most people.

Of course, it may be possible for my wife and I to send Daniel to an SDA academy throughout his education, and then an SDA university throughout. That would minimize his trouble with these concerns, but would leave him to contend with:

Colossal Amounts of Debt: Many students leave their universities with loans it will take a lifetime to pay off. It's not uncommon for graduates of SDA universities, particularly those who attended the church's academies, to leave their whole families under mountains of red ink.

We might be tempted to make a joke, saying that facing so many more years of debt is the trade-off for all the things we get out of our Adventist educations: an additional dozen credit hours of religion classes, a vast professional network of other Adventists, and much less red meat lodged in our digestive tracts.

However, there isn't that much of a trade-off. In speaking with graduates of non-Adventist institutions, one finds them to be facing a similar ordeal regarding how much they owe. When one student's tuition is five times greater than the others, this shouldn't be possible; the only explanation I can think of is that we learn early on that we have to sacrifice, whether it's money, college football scholarships, or the ability to bond over a pepperoni pizza.

Despite losing these things, SDAs generally do all right for ourselves in this world, even if it's not the one we're living for. My hope is that Daniel grows up knowing the rewards that sacrifices bring.

That, and a thorough knowledge of the Morningstar Farms product line.