Children and religion

Salvation is a difficult thing to grasp because no one (short of these after death experiences which unless you've experienced one and I haven't, it really doesn't speak a confirmation) has seen heaven or anything close to it. I've told my wife that heaven to me is us on our own island in solitude from all the hassles of life. Well, in a metaphorical sense, that was Adam and Eve, and although I don't think of heaven as a some tropical rain forest with everything I need for survival, there's a slight ring to it. Gold streets as described in Revelation doesn't turn me on either. When I explain heaven to my kids, it's a sense of everything we enjoy about life that's good multiplied many-fold. The concept of the Garden of Eden was man's dominion over the earth and simultaneous communion with God. Our flawed disobedience has placed havoc in that. Hope that makes some sense.

 

Dick 's fears about religion stunting understanding of STEM-related subjects aren't unfounded. I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian household. Throughout high school, I basically zoned out during biology discussions of human origins or during science discussions of the universe's formation. I was essentially rolling my eyes when discussions of the age of certain geological formations or fossil dating came up throughout high school. The same way some people look at Biblical stories as fables or parables meant to teach us lessons, I looked at some elementary scientific phenomenas as inventions. It took until college, with some soul-searching and understanding professors in several geology and physics courses, to really come to grasps with how outlandish my beliefs were.

I'm an outlier and most people function quite well in the world even after being exposed to fundamentalism. Most people, even as children, possess a bullshit detector in their heads. I didn't, I guess. Find a kid as malleable and trusting and naive as I was and there can be real problems.

 

All the major religions will tell you the same basic message (be good to others, don't kill each other, love each other, respect each other, don't steal...) it's just packaged a little differently. To say that Jesus is the only way to salvation, to me, does not make any sense because some people never have the chance to know Jesus. Is that their fault, and due to this they will burn a hell fire or some other shit?

But whatever is out there and what ever happens to us when we die, and yes I do beveive in a higher power and life after death or a next step after this one, we just do not understand yet or are not meant to.

My family is a member of a Methodist Church and go about 50% of the Sundays. Daughter is in the choir and will be attending their summer day camp. My wife's view on God is different than mine, but we still believe in the same end game.

I think the church helps build the character of my daughter, and if she stops going when she is older, I am fine with that. I feel if you are good to others, God looks at that more than if you show up on Sundays, give you money and act like a SOB to your fellow man the rest of the week.

And I was raised a Jehovah's Witness until I broke away when I was about 13, so knowledge of the Bible, which I pretty much know cover to cover, is not important to me, and I could give two shits if my daughter, at five, can explain to me why we rejoice at Christmas, are somber on Good Friday and rejoice again on Easter Sunday.

 

And my daughter will understand science. Science is what makes me believe that all this shit just didn't happen out of the blue.

 

If you're talking about a seven-day creation, fundamentalists don't necessarily embrace that. I consider myself what you might call fundamentalist but believe that the seven days were eras of countless years but that it all had a universal architect.

 

As far as knowing Jesus: Scripture addresses this, I believe, in Romans 1 and the understanding/evidence of God in creation.
And it also addresses the issue of being a churchgoer 52 Sundays a year and a son of a bitch the other 313 days, give or take 24 hours. Grace covers humility a lot more than hypocrisy.

 

If Grandma gets to take the kids to mass, you might consider taking them to your local mosque or synagogue or Buddhist temple, too. Visit some monasteries and reading rooms and mandiram as well. Find a Baptist church, or some activist Unitarians or your local Quaker meeting. Try the AME.

A catholic approach to religion can be broadening and deepening for you all.

 

My son has been going to church with me since the first Sunday after we were released from the hospital. He got his first beginner's bible for Easter and I have started reading to him from it every night. I taught the 2s and 3s class at my church in Georgia for years, so I'm pretty confident in my ability to teach him about God while he is really young. I just have to hope for the best as he ages.

 

This

 

It's easy to understand how someone who hits the sixth grade, much less college, can begin to understand that Jonah spending three days in a whale is a bit of a literal reach and most if not all of the stories of the OT prophets brought communication with the almighty in allegory, dreams, or just that sense that God is speaking to their spirit. My wife hates me for daring to suggest this, but let's face a reality that much of that area of the world has always had plenty of hallucinating consumables and that some of this could have easily developed out of that. Who knows? But in all cases, it was a story of people acting on faith in response to what they believed God was telling them. That, I can't judge.
The Ten Commandments and the words of Jesus are much more substantive.

 

I have no faith. My husband has plenty. Although he's nominally in charge of the religious stuff, he doesn't got to church and our kid hasn't either. She is well aware of the god and jesus story. When she was quite young, she believed wholeheartedly. She did attend a bible camp one summer. Now, at 10, she has become skeptical.
OK by me.

 

The way I was taught (I'm was raised Evangelical Pentecostal within an Assembly of God church) is that only those that were explained the Truth and path of salvation through Jesus (who is The Way, The Truth and The Light), yet rejected it, were condemned. Jesus told the disciples to go and preach the Good News throughout the nations.
It's much like babies before they know the difference between good and evil, you can't judge someone for something they never had a chance to make up their mind about. So with that, most of the 2/3rds you mention would not be sent to Hell. That's how I see it.