I've known quite a number of people who have had an abrupt apostasy when confronted with their childhood version of God. The most dramatic I have witnessed was in a theology class at Notre Dame, where an 18-19 year old, fellow student became visibly devastated when the professor-priest pretty much denied his 'Catholic upbringing' view of God.
Whether or not it's done on purpose, it seems most children develop a sense of God as a supreme holy person, a sort of super Santa Claus. Children will dismiss Santa in middle school, but this same magical person as God will last into college or beyond for many, if not most, people. I certainly believed in a super santa God into high school before my older brother Bob brought back stories from college. God saw everything and heard everything—that seemed pretty super human to me. And I think the longer one goes with these ideas from childhood the harder they are to break.
Anyway, I wish I could create a poll. But here is my poll question, especially now that a new generation is coming along, and parents will have to decide how to approach God:
How should parents teach children about God?
1. Do nothing. Let them pick it up the same way as they will learn about sex.
2. The values learned from science are more appropriate than any about God. Teach them about science.
3. Down play God per se, but teach humanitarian or social principles, such as compassion and the golden rule.
4. Teach God as the Mysterium Tremendum, overwhelming mystery, awe, and terror (the numinous).
5. Teach God is love. The rest is all but leather or prunella.
6. Teach the Christian (or preferred religious) tradition with the corresponding stories and values, but treat God as unknowable other.
7. Current religious educational methods are very good for teaching children, at least much better than any other alternative, especially when coupled by example from home-life as shown by the parents.
8. None of thee above. Please give alternative answer.
1 comment:
I'm not prepared to say how a parent SHOULD teach children about God, but this is how I went about it.
No. 4 was, of course, tempting. But I'm not sure kids are ready for God as ground of being or being itself. Could they even begin to understand Tillich's statement: “God does not exist. He is being itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore, to argue that God exists is to deny him." (This eerily echoes Bob's line -- and I don't think he ever studied Tillich: God is so unlike anything we know that perhaps the truest thing we can say about him is that he does not exist.)
So, what I ended up doing was a combination of Nos. 3 and 6 -- emphasizing the importance of being a decent human being while teaching them the Biblical stories.
And I did one other thing not mentioned. (I suppose that's No 8.) I pushed religious practices -- without ever linking them to an idea of moral obligation or later reward. Sunday mass, grace before meals, Dad's morning prayer, getting ashes on ash Wednesday, palms on palm Sunday. As we did growing up, quizzing my kids about the readings over Sunday brunch, Lenten observances, abstinence on Fridays.
We saw Ellen over Easter weekend, and she was telling us that, when she recently told her friends about always going to Tenebrae services during holy week as a child, their reaction was something like "your parents must have been very Catholic." Her response was, they really weren't, they just liked doing this stuff.
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