Perhaps you saw Bruce Feiler’s recent column in The NY Times, “For A Child, God’s Back Story,” in which he endorsed a full disclosure approach when answering children’s questions about God. It’s painfully predictable, but it also got me thinking:
[My daughter] Eden looked at me and asked, “Daddy, if I speak to God, will he listen?” I froze. I was so completely unprepared for the question, she might as well have asked me, “What’s a ménage à trois?” In my panic, I had three quick thoughts. First, Who told you about God? I certainly hadn’t initiated the conversation, and I thought I knew everything she had learned in school.
Second, I should be able to nail this question. I had spent a dozen years tracing biblical stories around the world and had written four books about God. Surely I had learned something. Third, and more important, I didn’t want to say anything that I would have to unsay later. In other words, I didn’t want to lie to her just because she was a child.
If the idea is that when children are young you should give them very definite answers that do not reflect your actual experience of life, then you’re lying to your children, and one day they’re going to realize that you were a hypocrite. And isn’t being true as much as possible in life the best kind of education you can give the young?
After catching my breath in response to Eden’s question, I said, “Some people talk to God, and it brings them peace.” I gave myself a solid B for my inartful dodge. My answer was true, at least, and it did get me through the moment.
Funny how Feiler sees hypocrisy as a fate-worse-than-death here, a surefire torpedo to his kids’ religious curiosity, rather than, say, an abiding truth about human nature that might lead to a deeper understanding of who God might be… Lisa Belkin offered a different, considerably less self-involved take in her Motherlode column, reprinting a response from blogger KJ Dell’Antonia:
[When I speak with my daughter Rory about God] I’ll put a whole lot less emphasis on sharing my own doubts and beliefs, and try to give Rory room to share hers. “Where do you think they go?” I’ll ask, and if she can’t answer, I’ll meet her more than halfway. Does she think they go to heaven? Does she believe they’re happy there? Are they with God? Whatever she says, I’m there with it. I may mentally cross my fingers, or place my own meaning on the words, but I won’t insist that she understand my doubt. Whatever she believes, I plan to embrace.
Another expert Feiler consulted rejects that course. “You’re lying to your children,” John Patrick Shanley, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the play “Doubt,” says of professing a definitive belief you don’t share, “and one day they’re going to realize that you were a hypocrite.” Until now, I’ve shared that view. I don’t want my kids to wake up at 10, or 15, or 50, and realize that I lied to them! That would be awful! What would they think of me? I can’t help noticing, as I think that through, that there’s an awful lot of “I” and “me” in those worries, and not a whole lot of anyone else.
If I accept Rory’s view of the afterlife, will she wake up one day and realize that I was a hypocrite? I hope so. I hope, of course, that she’ll forgive me for it — that she, or one of her brothers or her sister, will remember how much it meant to her as a child that whatever she’d already learned about death not be torn away from her along with everything else. I hope she’ll understand. But if all I get out of abandoning principle is is an eventual quiet ride home, I can live with that. It turns out that my deepest beliefs aren’t about what happens when we die, or even what life is all about. My deepest belief is in my love for Rory (and all of my children).
Although Dell’Antonia’s take is certainly more loving, is it not equally lame? I’ve always felt that the whole thing of supporting whatever conclusions toddlers come to on their own is a little cruel (like telling a teenager interested in Christianity to simply read the Bible and expecting them to get anything out of it that isn’t pure Law), i.e. it might not be terribly wise in the long run if it makes them easy-pickings for anyone with a real point of view. So while both Feiler and Dell’Antonia are clearly attempting to be honest with their kids, which is hard not to admire, maybe giving children a bit more of a “canvas against which to paint” wouldn’t be ill-advised? Or perhaps unconvinced parents are right to give their children no impression of God rather than the “wrong” one? I honestly don’t know. Either way, it certainly puts a lot of pressure on the parent to “get it right” – ironically ruling out God as a (f)actor in the equation almost entirely. Or perhaps the whole thing is just another sad comment on a culture that’s light years away from any understanding of the divine that is based on more than the one’s feelings at the time? For us fickle-hearted hypocrites, that’s a pretty scary scenario…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ofbe158uk7k&w=600]
COMMENTS
13 responses to “Talking With Kids About God”
Leave a Reply
this is so interesting. I believe that children have an innate spirituality and interest in spiritual matters. Some researchers call this "implicit theism". Children (and adults) are implicit dualists (i.e., they believe in that souls and bodies are different things and souls "live in" bodies). They show promiscuous teleology (i.e., they believe that natural objects are made that way by agents for a reason, e.g. "the rock was made to be sharp so that no one would sit on it" and have a tendency to think about events in terms of having some kind of ultimate cause). They are able to simulate what someone would be like after they died, and possess the concept of a soul even before they might be socialized to believe in souls (e.g., kindergarteners will say that a mouse who has been eaten by a crocodile will not need food or water to survive, but still has feelings and is sentient; elementary school students and adults actually show _less_, rather than more, of this way of thinking). They believe intuitively in an omniscient God (e.g., they know that God knows more stuff than their parents do). So there are ways in which children are kind of "wired" to have religious beliefs that are _not_ a result of socialization. These intuitive beliefs are then _constrained_ during development. (If anyone is interested in the developmental aspects of religious belief, I would highly recommend "Why would anyone believe in God?" by Justin Barrett.)
For me, the question isn't really about how to share the more universal aspects of religious belief (e.g., God as creator, afterlife and souls, etc.). If I know, as a parent, that my child is more likely than not going to show intuitive belief in the afterlife, in some kind of creator God, and that this God knows all sorts of stuff, then that's great (since I'm a Christian and those beliefs are part of Christianity). Less work on my part! The question for me is how to share the _particular_ aspects of my faith that makes it different from other faiths. How do I share about God's lovingness but also God's judgement? For example, my son is really into Noah's Ark these days and I have a *really* hard time reading the part about God wanting to get rid of the "wicked people" (incidentally the version of Noah's Ark that we borrowed from the library is a bit theologically off – there's a whole page about God punishing the wicked but no mention about the rainbow – only a picture!). How do I explain to a 2 year old why God wanted to punish people by killing them off in a flood? That's what I have a hard time with! (Any of you other parents out there care to share with me how you've told the Noah's Ark story?)
This is a powerful illustration of how the Western rationalist tradition has influenced the modern person's everyday life. Questions about God have to begin with a Cartesian skepticism, from which there is no real escape. The funny thing is, you would think that by looking at how a child actually learns things, we would have rejected this method a long time ago. (Imagine a two-year old being told not to do something and replying, "But you haven't given me theoretical justification!")
Maybe the best thing is to admit that we're all children when it comes to theological questions.
Those are interesting study conclusions claiming an innate, intuitive belief in, or at least feeling for, an afterlife in children. A couple of questions come to mind: (1) aren't children who are old enough to verbalize responses to study questions already the products of much formative socialization? and (2) I seem to recall that the standard currently accepted critical view of the OT is that the OT writers did not "believe" in an afterlife. If this is true from a textural criticism standpoint, then should we trust the OT less than we trust our own intuition?
Great great post Dave. Thanks.
This really is a very interesting post, Dave. As a parent who has been there, done that, I am thankful that, if God really is there, then my own parental inadequacies in explaining, defending, or ridiculing God to my children are all trumped, in the final analysis, by that God who really is there. On the other hand, if God is NOT there, then fear of parenting should bring the human race to an abrupt and merciful end.
My conversations with my son tend to have more to do with the process of salvation rather than the stories themselves.
One time, Jacob asked me why Jesus had to die. I started explaining sin to him in this way: "You know when you do the wrong thing, and even though you know it's the wrong thing, you can't stop yourself… you go ahead and do it anyway?"
To my shock, my (then) 6 year old exclaimed, "Yeah Daddy, why does that happen?" My son had felt his own sin and wondered about it, without having any concept of "sin".
So I explained to him what sin is, that when we sin it hurts God's feelings, and that the Bible tells us that the punishment for sin is supposed to be death. But God loves us, and he doesn't want us to have to die, even though we do things that hurt his feelings, and so he sent his son to die in our place, knowing that since Jesus is God just like him, that Jesus' death wouldn't be permanent–that he could take the punishment in our place and yet be able to live again. And since Jesus has already taken the death for our sin, that's why instead of death just being the end for us we get to go to heaven to be with God instead.
Jacob turned to me and very quietly said, "Wow Daddy, God must really, really love us." All that was left to say was, "Yes, Jacob, he does."
I think that's why Jesus pointed to children and said that the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Christianity is not some difficult system: a child can understand it. But if we don't at least try to explain it to them, how will they ever understand?
Jeff: what an amazing story!
Mike: That's definitely legit criticism that you raise. The question is whether children who _are_ verbal (e.g., kindergarteners) are indeed _formally_ socialized in their afterlife beliefs, particularly if they aren't taught any of it in school. So, the question is whether the effect observed is entirely driven by religious parents socializing their children, in the home, to believe in the afterlife, or if other forms of learning (e.g., through storybooks) are sufficient sources of formal socialization. It's *always* the question you'll run into in developmental research that requires linguistic ability (even if just to communicate, not necessarily to read research questions and fill out surveys.)
Thanks for the response, Bonnie. I really would like to get your thoughts, and the thoughts of others who may be familiar with current Biblical scholarship, in response to the second question. That is, if children really do have an innate, intuitive understanding of some form of an "afterlife" then why would the OT writers not have the idea of an afterlife even on their radar screens?
Mike: I think it has to do with the interaction between such "innate" beliefs and situational/contextual factors like culture, what particular messages religious leaders prefer to transmit and uphold, etc. Not all intuitive (or, more properly, minimally counterintuitive) religious concepts a) are transmitted and b) become doctrinal. Ghosts, for example, is a MCI concept, but there isn't much in the Bible about ghosts either. I think the interplay between intuitiveness of religious concepts and social/cultural transmission of religious doctrine (which has been at work for thousands of years) is really interesting.
I think there are three aspects of the afterlife/OT question, only one of which I'd feel confident in addressing:
1) Would OT writers also have had some kind of _implicit_ representation of the afterlife; e.g., would they have felt that their dead grandmother was watching over them, even if they would not profess to believe in a doctrine of the afterlife?
2) If they did have those implicit representations, why were they not made into explicit doctrine?
3) Even though afterlife beliefs were not doctrinal, would OT writers have rejected them completely?
It's pretty impossible to answer #1, but I think it's likely they would have had *some* sense of the afterlife, just because it's so prevalent even among "secular" people these days. It is very difficult and cognitively laborious to conceptualize the complete end or absence of existence of a being. It is relatively less taxing to conceive of a being as ceasing to be in one realm (e.g., physically), but retain *some* aspects of the being (e.g., believe that they have awareness of what's going on in the world). There is little reason to believe that writers in the OT would have had cognitive structures vastly different to ours such that they would also find it cognitively taxing to really and truly accept the absolute non-existence of people who die.
So IF (and this is pure speculation) OT writers also had this intuitive sense of some sort of afterlife, why was it not written down? Would OT writers have rejected afterlife ideas? I think we'd have to visit historical and cultural factors that might inhibit the transmission of afterlife concepts. Maybe other doctrines were considered more important (e.g., the 10 commandments)? I'm just not familiar enough with the OT to know what sorts of narratives run though it, so I'm not a good person to comment on this!
Also, the fact that many other world religions have *some* sort of afterlife beliefs, whether it's heaven, or populating your own planet, or reincarnation. Most religions tend to believe that *something* happens to you after you die; you don't just cease to be. So your question about the OT and, by extension, Judaism, is really interesting!
The ancient Jews apparently did have SOME sense of an afterlife, viz the concept of Sheol.
It's referenced as early as the story of Joseph being sold into slavery. Jacob, not comforted at the reported death of Joseph, exclaims: "I shall go down to my son a mourner unto Sheol" (Genesis 37:35).
This wikipedia article is helpful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheol
Check out 1 Sam 28 for ghosts, Sheol, and one of the weirder storied in the Bible.
Bonnie, Thanks so much for your thoughts on this! I think you make some very interesting and valid observations, particularly with respect to the distinction to be made between what the OT writers may have thought/felt intuitively about an afterlife, and what they wrote. I am also not so sure that an implicit understanding of some form of afterlife is totally absent from the OT, although it is certainly not stressed. Of course, even if an afterlife were all over the place in the OT, the conclusion that would be drawn by certain omnipotent Teutonic scholars would be: The Jews just stole their understanding of an afterlife from the Egyptians, and moralized it.
Thanks Stampdawg and Aaron for the references. Are most of these references to Sheol explained by some scholars as metaphorical references to "just plain dead" rather than assertions of a conscious, self-aware life after death?
The I Samuel ghost story is notable for its odd out of character nature. To me, anyway, there are little windows like this throughout the OT, and the NT, which give the sense that there is a lot more to God than is being revealed at any particular place/time. Even some passages that (GASP!) seem to hint at a form of post-judgment quasi-universalism. Be that as it may, it seems certain that there was a lot going on that we will never know from the text.