Maybe We Should Go Back

My kid is asking me religious questions

My son is asking the inevitable questions I dreaded when my husband began to take him to church.

"Who is Jesus?" he asked me as we drove to school the other day.

I tried to approach the subject in a fair way without telling him what to believe, or what not to believe. I want him to have complete freedom in this choice, something I was never offered. I said,

"Well, he was a man that lived a long time ago. Some people believed he was able to do miracles, which is like magic, and some bad guys didn't like him because he was popular, so they killed him. Some people believe he came back to life three days later and went to Heaven."

"Oh. Why does Daddy say 'in Jesus's name," when he prays?"

"Because some people believe Jesus is God and will answer their prayers if they pray in his name. It's like when you want my attention and you say, 'Mommy!' They think if they use his name he'll hear them better."

The question I dreaded the most was, "What do you believe?" I hardly want my five-year-old, of all people, to be the first to hear about my de-conversion and the years-long absolute mind-fuckery that accompanied it. But he didn't ask, thankfully.

When I pray with my kids, I address "Spirit," and I end with a plain, "Amen," because I've always been told this means, "May it be so." I don't address God, Jesus, angels or spirits directly. I want my kids to have freedom in these areas. Plus, who are we even addressing when we pray? And how do we know? I believe it's something, so I call that something Spirit.

We only pray together when we see someone in trouble we can't help (car wrecks, etc). Why do I encourage this? I want my kids to notice the pain of other people and to acknowledge it, to think about it, imagine themselves in it even if they can't do anything about it. I think that builds empathy. It's better than just pretending the car wreck isn't there at any rate.

I am just concerned my son, and by extension my daughter as she gets older, is getting too influenced by Christianity. I kept trying to emphasize that this is something, "Some people believe..." the way I would explain any other religion in the world if he asked. I feel like I can't emphasize it enough: the absence of solid fact and absolute truth and that I am completely unable to give either to him and no religion will either. He will just have to figure this stuff out for himself and come to a place of satisfaction with not knowing all the answers.

He also asked me about who dies and why they die. I told him that everyone will die, but I believe we go on afterwards, though I don't know for sure what it will look like, but I believe it will be good. He said, "I don't want my mom and dad to die!" (😢 My freaking heart!) I said, "Well, I'm pretty sure we won't for a long, long time. It's not something you need to worry about anyway. Only worry about treating others kindly and fairly every day, and you don't need to think about death."

And that was it. Not as scary as I imagined, and I don't feel like I "indoctrinated" him into either my beliefs or whatever they're telling him in Sunday School. If they ever mention hell, though, I will have a big problem with that. No other doctrine has harmed me so much as the teaching that the God who is supposed to love me even more than my parents would have no problem casting me into an eternity of torture because he was displeased with something I did, didn't do, thought or believed. If he ever does bring it up, this will be my explanation: "Do you think it would be right to send someone to jail forever with no chance for them to ever get out, even if what they did wasn't so bad and they were really sorry for it?" And when he says, "No," I will say, "Exactly. Would you want to follow a God who would do that to someone?" And I'll leave it at that. Even a child can reason and come to the conclusion that hell is completely indefensible by any argument. I hope it's enough for him to not endure the lifetime of mind games I've experienced over this concept. Because as sure as I know this religion inside and out, I know this idea is coming his way if he stays in church past the age of 5. It is, after all, the foundation of the entire religion. Without hell, Christianity falls apart. I can't be convinced otherwise. It's the absolute bedrock of the whole thing. That's why when I tried to hold onto my faith and just stop believing in hell, the rest of it fell apart in my hands.