Reply to Religious families-Do your children easily love God?

Forum Index » Religion

Reply to "Religious families-Do your children easily love God?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
I'm the PP whose post you quoted last.  I am glad to hear you think I'm taking the right approach.  The thing is, we cannot (and should not IMO) try to control our kids' spiritual lives.  We can only lay the foundation and show them how we approach our own spiritual lives.  My kids know that I pray, they know that I give thanks, they see and participate with me in religious observance.  They understand why I value it, even as they say (from time to time) that they do not.

Despite protests to the contrary, my older child is so interested in all things spiritual/religious that I would be surprised if he didn't participate in organized religion of some kind as an adult.  I don't know that he will be a Christian (he says Judaism makes more sense to him) but I think he will practice *something*.  He is very well-versed in religion generally.  If he does choose to practice as an adult, I will feel I have done my job in terms of giving him familiarity and comfort with religious rituals, communities and practices, all of which have served my needs in so many ways during my life.

You can't choose something from nothing.  You can only choose it from some basis.  My goal has been and is to give my kids that basis.  The rest is up to them.[/quote]

Just a reference point, but I'm the PP who grew up is a very religious household and who stopped believing as a child. During middle childhood and my teen years, [b]I sounded a lot like your older kid[/b]. I knew a lot about religion, prayed constantly, actively participated in the church community, etc. My mom and religious teachers thought I was deeply religious and interested in religion. The truth was that I did not believe but had no language to even explain what it meant to not believe. I thought something was wrong with me, so I overcompensated in an attempt to force belief.

I am not raising my children religious at all. I have offered to take them to my parents' church and they could go with my mom, but none have shown interest thus far. So far they've decided they're atheist as well, but we're careful to let them know it would be okay if they decided to believe in a god or gods, so long as they were kind about it. [/quote]

You sound nothing like my older kid.  He says he is agnostic.  He does not pray.  He loves youth group but hates going to service.  All of which is fine with me; I've given him the foundation and now it is up to him whether or not to do anything with it.

He is interested in spirituality and religion as academic matters, e.g. comparative religion and the role religion and religious beliefs play in politics.

So no, nothing like you.[/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