Blog Grenade
I do not belong to a religion. Please get over it. Please stop explaining to me why kids need to go to church to learn morals or have answers in the world and then complimenting me for having a great capacity for independent thought.
I far prefer people who ask questions than follow prescribed answers. It's one thing to want your kid to get cultural history or community or even to force a conveniently matching viewpoint to your own on them. But I've heard this bit about morals coming only from church too often lately. Even from friends who are thinking of having kids who don't attend church themselves.
Where does this come from? Are you hoping your kid will stop asking you pesky hard questions and instead say their questions in their heads with their eyes closed? Do you want them to not to begin sentences with WHY? Good luck.
By the way, my first trip to the principal's office was in first grade when I encountered a girl talking about "God," a completely foreign concept that sounded nuttier to me than believing Santa had the same handwriting as my mom. I asked her why this, and why that, and tried to understand until she burst into tears.
Do you think your kids are listening intently to sermons to learn how to act in the world? Newsflash: They are learning from your actions. Sending them to church for a couple of hours a week isn't teaching them to navigate their world. You are. Don't use religion as an excuse for your own personal failings. There are lots of options. Like being okay with not having all the answers so that your kids are, too. Or …like birth control.
Living is hard. Living with other people is hard. Our stifling society teaches us that if we just don't address important, extremely normal parts of life and buy all the right products then everyone can pretend they're happy. Why do Christians often seem to need to ask me "but what will you tell your child about death?" Are those of us without a religion supposed to keep our thoughts on this subject a secret? No one told me.
There are many reasons people turn to prescribed religions. I think there are a lot of reasons you might want your kids to share this with you. But if you presume it's the only place to learn morals, then you are assuming I am immoral. So you probably shouldn't provoke me then, right? Especially since you won't know what to expect from someone whose allegiance has not been pledged to anything you can Google. . . .
Labels: death
posted by bethany @ 11:59 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
I believe that there is an omnipotent force that works for good in the world. Most of the time I call it God. Sometimes I call it nature or beauty or innocence or friendship.
I was raised Catholic. I left the Church when it saw fit to grant my father an annulment of his 13-year marraige to my mother. (I am one of five. He had two additional children from a second marraige, and was seeking to marry their mother in the Catholic Church.)
I never, however, left God. I don't know why I have faith, I just know that I have it.
It isn't a question of whether I *want* a relationship with God. I have no choice in the matter. And it's not in a scary, mean, gonna-flood-the-world kinda way. It's like the really good friend who always is there even when you blow them off to go out drinking with the married guy you shouldn't be dating. I'm stuck with God.
And I still go to Catholic Mass even though I disagree with the church's stand on, oh, just about everything. I like Mass. It soothes me. And I always leave there feeling like I'm energized and full of hope and love. So I go.
I don't know how I will explain all this to my sons when the time comes. I have canceled and rescheduled their baptisms twice.
I wonder if I should be a Catholic if I can't be a "good" one. Maybe my sons won't have the same faith I do. Who knows?
I think, I hope, that Will and I will teach them morals through our actions. That they will learn from our example and from our friends and family. And that they will learn that there is good, and it doesn't matter what they call it. And that tolerance might be the greatest good of all.
Clearly I haven't introduced you to my friend BuddhaShivaYahwehAllahWakanTankaJewishGod!
what an oversight,
Shannon
What do you tell your children about death? I find "grandma's up in heaven smiling down upon us, Junior" to be simplistic, a way to really avoid talking to your kids about death. Or to avoid talking to yourself about it, for that matter.
Better to say: Death is the very stuff of life. It breaks our hearts. It gives us an opportunity to love more deeply and live more keenly. It also really sucks. It's what makes us as tender as we are, and as tough. And, oh yeah, it really, really sucks.
For me -- I'd say that's exactly where God, or higher power, shows up. But God has no answers. Just, maybe, tenderness.
I like the Buddhist approach to these questions: Only don't know.
Suggesting believing in God is the domain of purely simple minded people who fear questions is dogmatic drivel as bad as those you criticize. That is unless you feel your intellect matches Hegel, Einstein, Gahdi, Martin Luther King, etc. etc. ad nauseum. Certainly addressing specific groups of religious though such as evangelical protestants, conservative muslims and catholics which have over time shaped culture in the negative ways you mention is a worthy endeavor and worth a great deal of thought given the state of the world. A sharper critique, one that does reduce the world to rigid black and white choices, would be far more provacative and interesting.
I didn't say believing in God is simple minded. I said it is simple minded to think that the main way your kids will learn morals is at church. That is what was bothering me the day I postd that. I have a thousand things to say on other related subjects, but probably won't devote my life to it like some others you mention.
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