At the risk of offending my die-hard Christian friends and family, I am going to address a little problem we're having with the boys. We are not church-goers, nor do we talk to our kids about God. We respect Christianity, but we do not practice it. We feel that when they get older and know more about the world, they can choose for themselves if they want to practice religion, whatever type of religion it is. The key is to be objective, knowledgeable, respectful, and not ignorant.
Anyhow, on our ride home this evening, the boys were discussing the moon. How did it get there? Tyler quickly said that God put it there, and made the sky, the earth, and was still working on outer space. How do I respond to that without discouraging him? We want him to know about science, but we also want him to respect other peoples' beliefs. I am also perterbed that someone keeps yapping to him about God and Jesus. He knows so much about Christianity that I find it hard to believe it's one of his friends--it has to be an adult telling him this stuff. And the only adults he's around, besides us, are the daycare staff and his teachers. I find it hard to believe a teacher has time in a public school to talk about God--so that means someone at daycare is flapping their mouths about it.
I know someone reading this is going to take this the wrong way. I have absolutely no problem with people choosing to worship God. I have a problem with people being pushy about their religion--and then being offended if I tell them to shut up (in a more politically correct manner). I especially have a problem with someone pushing it to my kids without discussing it with me first. I might agree to the discussions as long as they iterate to my kids that it's one viewpoint--and there are other viewpoints out there that are ok to learn and discuss.
1 comment:
I feel the same about pushy religious people. My favorite line - a wiccan friend of mine was having dinner at a restaurant when a woman at the table next to her asked about the pentagram necklace she was wearing. She politely explained she was wiccan, and the woman went on and on about how she was a satan worshiper and she should come to god, and jesus this and god that.. my friend leaned over and asked her, "I'm sorry your god died, would you like to borrow one of mine?"
Interesting - I used firefox which has an integrated spell check, when I typed satan it flags it, and says it should be capitalized, but doesn't flag god or jesus. Weird.
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