I said that perhaps he's atheist with respect to that particular brand of god? He didn't acknowledge it, which I took as an indication that he might need to think about that for a while to become comfortable with the label. (It didn't occur to me until later that I might have told him Dawkins's remark that we are all atheists when it comes to most of the gods mankind has believed in.)
Then we got to talking about whether or not our children "believe in god." I told him that my daughter recently wrote me (in a comment on my blog) that she had concluded as a kid that there's no god. And my friend told me a little story about his own daughter:
When she was three years old she had a friend whose family belonged to a fundamentalist church. One day she told us that her friend had invited her to go to church with them. She wanted to know what we thought. We told her fine, go ahead if she wanted to. So she did and went pretty regularly. She seemed to enjoy going.This six-year-old knew what she believed—or didn't believe, at any rate. I didn't ask my own daughter what "as a kid" meant in her case, but when I read her comment I imagined her when she wore a pair of fairly large-rimmed eyeglasses and seemed particularly independent and inner-directed. That might have been about sixth or seventh grade, but I'm not sure. I hope she'll read this post and let me know!
But came the time (three years later) when her friend's mother asked her whether she would like to join the church.
Our daughter said, "I thought I was already a member."
"No," they said, "there's a requirement for membership."
"What's that?"
"You have to believe."
"Believe...what?"
"You have to believe that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Personal Savior."
Our daughter hesitated not a moment before answering, "Well, no, I don't believe that."
She never went back.
Here's to independent minded little people, from the very beginning!
ReplyDeleteIndeed! Both of these female "kids" (each now 38 years old) have my unalloyed admiration.
ReplyDeleteHi Dad, I can't say that I can remember a moment like what you are describing happened with KB. I can say that I was pretty surprised when we started going to church (I was in elementary school, I think) as I "knew" there was no God. It amuses me that people have no problem stating emphatically that the Greek Gods did not exist yet they believe in THEIR God and cannot understand how anyone does not feel the same. :-) JDN
ReplyDeleteWell, JDN, it's over 30 years too late, but I apologize for your parents' putting you through that "church phase" of theirs! I hope that whatever "religious instruction" we may have given you and your brother during that time didn't cause you any mental anguish. But I can't imagine that I gave you much instruction. I believe that I considered myself a "mystic" then, with virtually no dogmatic content. At some point around 1976, I discovered a profound meaning in the burning bush's statement to Moses that I AM THAT I AM: all of our ideas about "God" are beside the point and may all be wrong. I'm pretty confident that I didn't tell you a single thing that you "had to believe." I hope that no one else in that little Episcopal church did either.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a child, I would occasionally go to the vacation bible school at a nearby Baptist church. My family otherwise attended a Methodist church, my mother once having had a bad experience being baptized in the Baptist. One year the bible school classes all met together at the end of the week in the church sanctuary. The minister gave a sermon, then "invited" all the children to come up to the altar, kneel, receive Jesus, and pray with him. I very much did not want to go, thinking it all too creepy. One by one, all those around me got up and went to the altar. Finally, I was the only one left, sitting out there in the middle of a pew, all by myself. I don't remember if the minister looked at me at all, but eventually it must have become clear to him and to the teachers that I wasn't going to budge. So they had everyone else rise and start toward the doors. I followed, feeling a little self-conscious but secure in my choice. When we got back to the classroom, my teacher, clearly annoyed, asked why I hadn't reported to the altar. Hadn't I felt something? Well, yes, I guess I had, I replied, but I thought it was just because I hadn't yet had lunch and my stomach was growling. She gave me up as hopeles and left me alone.
ReplyDeleteGood on you, anonymous child! Myself, I was not so brave at that age. It wasn't until the age of seventeen, the year before I went away to college, that I abstained from drinking the grape juice at the local First Baptist church. And it wasn't until 47 years later (on September 9, 2007) that I took a definite stand (on this blog).
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