What sort of advice would you give to an atheist whose fundamentalist 13-year-old daughter is upset at belief that her father is going to hell? If you're Salon's advice columnist, Cary Tennis, you give the worst advice possible.
Her problem is not that she believes in God. It's that she believes you are going to burn in hell when you die. It's her concern for you, and her fear for you, that are the problem. She wants to believe otherwise but has no solid grounds on which to place any hope. If you go to church with her, you will make it possible for her to believe that there is at least a chance that you will not burn in hell.In other words, lie to your kid and help validate her beliefs that everything you stand for is against the wishes of God. The problem here is that the daughter's view of religion is a choice between "friendly people who say daddy's going to Hell" and "sleeping in on Sunday". If you want your daughter to respect your beliefs, you should start by making your two weekends a month count for something.
. . .
But don't just go to church with her. Meet with one of the officials. That's right, wander right down on to the field and speak with one of the guys in the striped shirts. Or whatever they wear. Arrange a private conference. In this private conference, you can say whatever you like. It doesn't matter really. It might be a good conversation or it might be utterly ridiculous. But show your daughter that you are willing to engage with one of the people she respects. Show her that you have enough humility and independence of spirit to engage, that you are not fearful or dogmatic or close-minded.
. . .
Once you have done this, and conversed with an official, you might be able to confidently tell your daughter, without going into specifics, that you think everything is going to be OK, eternal-life-wise. She would probably appreciate that.
When she's with her mom, let her go to the fundie church where they tell her gay people are sinners, the Earth is 6000 years old, and stem cells are babies. When she's with her dad, rather than argue about the merits of her religion (which is a waste of time), use the opportunity to broaden her religious horizons. Start by taking her to Catholic, Baptist, Presbyterian, Zionist, and Lutheran churches to experience different flavors of Christianity. From there, broaden her horizons even more with trips to Jewish synagogue, Islamic mosques, and Hindu temples. Show your daughter that there's a broad spectrum of religious belief, not just a choice between religious extremism and no faith at all.
When you visit different houses of worship, don't just sit there passively and let the words go in one ear and out the other. Ask for a meeting with someone there to ask questions about their beliefs. Encourage your daughter to ask questions too. Hang around in the lobby after the service and mingle with people. Not only should your daughter experience how other religions worship, but she needs to learn firsthand that one doesn't need to be a fundamentalist to be kind-hearted person.
After you've given your daughter a worthwhile religious education, encourage her to find her own path. If she still decides to be a fundamentalist, then respect that decision, but with the insistence that your beliefs deserve respect as well.
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I wouldn't say that (I don't think), but honestly....when will human beings start to question belief? Not this belief versus that belief, but belief itself? ALL belief? I would urge that child to ask a cat about its beliefs. To ask a rosebush, a rock, or the moon. To ask her toenail.
Belief — wholly the product of thought — makes the unknown seem knowable, the insecure seem secure. If we only believed in the tooth-fairy, it wouldn't much matter, but we've used belief to justify our hatreds, judgments, prejudices, and killings.
If elected Emperor Of The Universe, my first order of business would be to teach children about the illusory, limiting, and dangerous nature of belief.
"Human beings have a drive for security and safety, which is often
what fuels the spiritual search. This very drive for security and
safety is what causes so much misery and confusion. Freedom is a
state of complete and absolute insecurity and not knowing. So, in
seeking security and safety, you actually distance yourself from the
Freedom you want. There is no security in Freedom, at least not in
the sense that we normally think of it. This is, of course, why it is
so free; there's nothing there to grab hold of.
The Unknown is more vast, more open, more peaceful, and more freeing
than you ever imagined it would be. If you don't experience it that
way, it means you're not resting there; you're still trying to know.
That will cause you to suffer because you're choosing security over
Freedom.
When you rest deeply in the Unknown without trying to escape, your
experience becomes very vast. As the experience of the Unknown
deepens, your boundaries begin to dissolve. You realize, not just
intellectually but on a deep level, that you have no idea who or what
you are. A few minutes ago, you knew who you were—you had a history
and a personality—but from this place of not knowing, you question
all of that. Liberated people live in the Unknown and understand that
the only reason they know what they are is because they rest in the
Unknown moment by moment without defining who they are with the mind.
You can imagine how easy it is to get caught in the concept of the
Unknown and seek that instead of the Truth. If you seek the concept
you'll never be Free, but if you stop looking to myths and concepts
and become more interested in the Unknown than in what you know, the
door will be flung open. Until then, it will remain closed."
~Adyashanti
At some point I saw that so much is allegory, some is just more benign and fascinating than others. What would you rather have as a god image, the Christian Father God sitting on a throne in judgment, OR Krishna incarnating into 1000 lovers and making love to the milkmaids in the forest in the way that each woman would like to be made love to? Yeah. Exactly.
Some cultures produce sex averse religious imagery and others produce sex positive/body positive imagery. I think we can agree which is healthier for the human psyche. Additionally the concept of "eternal damnation" is so much more punitive than the concept of reincarnation again and again to work out one's karma and eventually learn life's lessons.
It seems the Middle Eastern desert religions were really anti-human and unforgiving. The Indian and Asian religions seems more tolerant and compassionate.
BUT the stories within each are just reflective of the subconscious archetypes of that culture. Bottom line: they are STILL stories.
What I have come to know through my own experiences and then the validation of sages who have seen Reality, is that the ONLY true thing anyone can say about the Universe and Life itself and their place in it is "I AM". Beyond that, it's all guesswork. Even the scientific point of view can really only say that about the human experience in Consciousness.
I would point that out to my daughter and let her work it out intellectually herself, over time.
then explain the complex and circuitous role
that money plays in perverting the church
into a power-hungry political entity with
an insatiable appetite for gullible would-be
True Believers, like her.
This girl is only 13, with a world of experiences, heartaches, joys, disappointments and thrills ahead of her - she could be a Wiccan at 20, a Greek Orthodox at 30 - who knows?
I do believe in God, I am a highly imperfect follower of the Lord Jesus Christ; I converted to Roman Catholicism at age 40. I began my spiritual life in a most fundamental of fundamentalist church, of the GARBC (these folks would make Southern Baptists look like Druids). As I went into my teenage years, events in the wider world (civil rights struggle, assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, women's rights, etc), and my own experiences of prejudice against me as a black woman caused me to become extremely bitter at the church and society.
I found redemption, even salvation, in the works of Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn - I read "One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich" at age 14, and I was STUNNED - these where WHITE PEOPLE getting the shaft ("One Day" is a fictionalized account of life in a Stalinist gulag) - I was riveted.
I read everything by Solzhenitsyn I could get my hands on, and I started reading about the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, Northern Ireland, etc - I realized that ALL PEOPLES have, at one time or another, experienced persecution and oppression - black people did not have an exclusive claim to being persecuted!
My weltanschauung (great word that you can rarely use outside of a sociology class) began to change, and the worldview offered by Christian fundamentalism just seemed too narrow and restrictive.
So, Dad - love your daughter, be honest with her, and allow her to find out what she truly believes for herself.
So right now I'm a seminarian, someday will wear a collar, yet I've watched my own theology crash and burn at least three times in the last year or so as we talk about the concept of a vengeful God brought up against the knowledge of our day. I struggle, I wrestle to see how my faith can work in this world but ultimately it does. But I never, ever accept anything on blind faith. By nature, I question. I doubt. And that's a key issue here: so many fundamentalists accept on blind faith because of the notion that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. If I were to, say, drop the fact that there are two versions of the "flood" story in a fundamentalist gathering, I'd probably be run out of town for suggesting that God made a mistake.
One of the best things to do, religious or no, is to be exposed to multiple faith traditions. One of my favorite classes was World Religions and I love being a participant at ecumenical and interfaith celebrations. Experiencing other religions doesn't diminish my faith, but makes it that much richer.
Change can be a scary thing, but it can also be a fabulous growth experience. It can work. My best friend of 25 years is an atheist and we have had the best conversations. I shift a little to her point of view, she shifts a little to mine but we agree to disagree in love. Never, ever would I tell her she's going to hell. How dare I? Why should I play God and determine who is and isn't going to hell, whatever hell is?
Maybe someday I'll meet this little girl and be able to say "Fear not"....
I remember asking my father, the staunch ultra-educated atheist, if he believed in God. He answered in the same manner as he had before to such standard coming-of-age questions like "does Santa exist?" and "where do babies come from?". He said "Do you really want to know?" I replied yes and then he proceeded to explain that while he couldn't be sure, he seriously doubted the existence any supreme being.
As a 13 year old, this was certainly upsetting at the time. However, having both him and my mother be so honest with me about what they believed not only allowed me to develop my own educated and reasonable stance on religion, but grounded me with an even more important principal: true honesty with myself and those that I love.
So, rather than taking your daughter on some idealistic ballpark tour of religious organizations or feigning interest in church, you should really just be honest as possible. Your fear of upsetting her is of course warranted, however to avoid that now will only lead to an even worse outcome later. While your baby's momma certainly has a right to promote her own beliefs in her child, it is wrong to distinguish your daughter as fundamentalist Christian so early, just as it would have been wrong to call me a spiritual Jew (my mother’s teachings) at the time when I asked my father about his beliefs. Rather, I was the product of two separate belief systems that, though at times difficult to reconcile, can both inhabit me simultaneously. Furthermore, knowing that two people can hold different yet equally strong beliefs has provided me with a compassion and understanding of others that would never have been fostered by limitation to one point of view. For every piece of fundamentalist dogma your ex teaches your daughter, you have the right and the responsibility to teach to her one of your own real, intelligently held beliefs.
I had a friend who became a WOW fundie when she was in college. Her family (actually moderately religious) was very disturbed by the whole thing. I think it took severa decades to get her out of there.
Yeah, this is gonna drive a lot of you crazy. You think I'm an idiot because I believe in God and Jesus, heaven and hell. Fine. I promise you, though, I'm not going to treat you any different because of your beliefs or lack thereof and am definitely not in favor of forcing any religion on you. I have a distaste for "fundamentalist" Christianity as well. I'm just saying from my own experience, my aunt's father didn't accept Christ until he was in his 70s.
So anyway, I wouldn't suggest the father lie to his daughter in any fashion. And to that extent, if he's being true to himself, I'm not quite sure there's much he can do besides have an amicable heart-to-heart with the girl's mother.
It's even more frustrating to be expected to finance the person who is brain washing your child to hate, fear and distrust you.
As a gay father I fully understand this frustration and anger.
Maybe also get her a copy of this song:
http://www.ocap.ca/songs/workingc.html