I’m An Agnostic So My Kids Need Church [View all]

http://www.babble.com/kid/im-an-agnostic-so-my-kids-need-church/

By REBEKAHKUSCHMIDER | April 12th, 2013 at 9:10 pm



I’m what you might call a fundamentalist agnostic: I really don’t know if there’s any sort of higher power or afterlife and I really don’t care. I’m at peace with uncertainty and I live my life trying to do as much good – or at least as little harm – as possible. My husband is similarly minded and so we’ve spent our Sunday mornings doing things like eating bagels or watching SportsCenter. This didn’t change for us after we had kids.

However, my son is 5 now and he has a lot of friends who are church-goers. Those friends have started sharing their religious education with him and suddenly I’m fielding questions about things like heaven from the backseat of the minivan. If I were talking to another adult, I’d offer a flip shrug and say “I don’t know about heaven. I’ll find out after I die, I guess.” That’s not going to work with my son. He has a child’s earnest curiosity about the idea of heaven; where it is, what it looks like, how can he go check it out without dying. All good questions. All questions I’m not entirely good at answering. The best I can do is say “Some people believe that after a body dies, the thoughts and feelings part of you – your soul – goes to heaven.” So far, that’s working for us.

He’s going to need more than that though. Religion is a big subject area and he’s only going to hear more about it as time goes on. I want to make sure the strongest messages in his head are ones of acceptance and tolerance of other faiths. I want other religions explained and demystified so he understands what people believe and how it drives their behavior. I want him to know that practicing religion is a choice he can make – or not make – on his own.

The best place for him to learn that is probably at church.

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