Reply to How to teach children not to feel ashamed due to stigma attached to your religion?

Forum Index » Religion

Reply to "How to teach children not to feel ashamed due to stigma attached to your religion?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Question for OP: Are you talking about feeling ashamed because of your religion's theology (or incorrect perceptions of your religion's theology)? Or because of people who happen to share your religion and did something bad?

If it's about a stigma attached to your beliefs themselves, then you'll want to help your child understand your beliefs better. This can be difficult, because religion is often not entirely logical; it requires faith. Reconciling, for example, dinosaurs with the Creation story can be hard to do for the black-and-white thought processes of a child. Sometimes it's easier to redirect attention for now to the parts of your religion that are positive and less messy (holidays, family, community, charity/good deeds) and come back to the more difficult concepts when the child is older. Admitting that the concept is difficult, even for an adult, can also be a good place to start. Something like, "That's a great question, Tommy, and it's something that our best clergy/scholars have grappled with for a long time." And then talk about the value you find in your faith, how sometimes it's easier to think of religious stories as metaphors or allegories, or something like that.

If it's about bad people in your religion who do secularly bad things (like Bernie Madoff), then it's a matter of telling your kids (and anyone who tries to connect you to that person just because you share a religion) that bad people exist everywhere, but your religion doesn't condone their behavior. Prosperity gospel people or conversion therapy people and others who do bad things [i]in the name of religion[/i] are a different animal, because then you have to explain how those people [i]twisted[/i] your theology and that can be harder to explain, since their behavior is often couched in religious language.[/quote]

Wow, a response that’s actually helpful to OP instead of 1. Trashing all religion, or 2. Trying desperately (and failing) to prove that all religion is dying. Took two pages to get here.

Thank you pp for taking the time to post a thoughtful response.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics