Similar letters from Cary Tennis, Dear Prudence, and Damage Control: religious kids who think their non-religious parents are going to hell.
Here's something I don't get, and I say this as a former religious child myself: why would you care if someone else is going to hell? The only reason I can possibly think of is because you want them to be in heaven with you. But surely any deity worth being worshipped as a deity can arrange things so that you have everyone you need for a heavenly heaven experience, while everything deserving of a hellish hell experience experiences just that. (In fact, just to make things easier, maybe some people's hellish hell experience is being trapped for eternity with their evangelical relatives!)
3 comments:
I notice that the solution, invariably, involves the parent going to church with the child. While I don't disagree with the advice, I'd be interested in seeing a similar letter to a religious advice columnist where the child has become atheist. Would the columnist suggest that the parent stay home from church with the child on the occasional Sunday?
Since writing my book on secular parenting, I've had several parents ask questions similar to this. The most heartbreaking are parents who raised their children as fundamentalists, then found their own way out and tried, without success, to give their kids a boost out of the mess. It creates a terribly sad family dynamic, even more challenging than the (more common) reverse situation the previous commenter has mentioned.
Dale McGowan
Editor/author, Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion
www.ParentingBeyondBelief.com
Yeah, as an intentional atheist I would bristle at the idea that I should go to church just because my kid's into it, but the other layer is that kids can't just go places themselves. The 13-year-old could maybe get dropped off, but the 10-year-old shouldn't quite be sitting alone in church just yet - even if it's perfectly safe, it's just WEIRD, and the adults in the church would think something's wrong. (Aside: I HATED this when I was a kid - despite their best efforts, it was clear to me when my parents weren't into the stuff that I was into, and I hated having them sitting there when they didn't want to be.) There's also the fact that parents like to sort of monitor the stuff that their kids are into, to see what it's all about and to see if the kids are getting any inappropriate messages etc. so they might want to go along just for that.
It's like your kid wants to go to the opera, you go with them - drive them there, sit with them in the theatre, deal with any difficult questions the opera might raise (because the subject matter can get a bit adult). You don't say "No, you can't experience opera because I'm not into it," and you don't say "No, you can't experience religion because I'm not into it."
It would probably have been more user-friendly if the advice columnists had presented it that way, as a child supervision issue, to monitor the people the kid's spending time with and the messages they're intaking. By giving it a "Come on, just go, you don't have to live up to your atheist principles every minute of the day!" sort of tone, they're really hitting a sore spot for those of us who deliberately left religion for reasons of conscience, and especially for those of us who were pressured to continue putting on an appearance of being religious.
Would the columnist suggest that the parent stay home from church with the child on the occasional Sunday?
Actually, I think the answer might be different before we even arrive at questions of religion. Going somewhere and doing something seems to be generally considered "superior" to staying home. "What, you're not just going to stay home and do nothing?!?!?" If you reject an invitation on the basis that you'd rather stay home, that's considered an insult. So I think an advice columnist would subconsciously answer in terms of "The parent shouldn't have to stay home and do nothing just because the kid doesn't want to go," or even "One person shouldn't have to stay home and do nothing just because the other one doesn't want to go."
Post a Comment