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Once, as an apartment painter in New York, I worked for a young man who was planning to get married. And as I painted his living room, we chatted ... what about kids, what about religion, what plans did he have. "I want to bring the kids up Jewish," he said at one point. But why would he want to do that, I asked, since he himself was a fallen-away Jew. And he gave what I thought was a very sensible answer: "I want them to have something to rebel against."
Looking back, I think that anyone who has taken spiritual practice seriously may recognize that it was the mistakes and missteps that led to the richest understanding. Dive-in-dive-deep-and-discover-the-mistake-you have made ... like that. Of course in the process, it was never a mistake, never a mis-cue ... this was serious and serene and important and worthy. But with time and practice, I think the lily no longer requires the kind of gilding it once attracted. And it is at this point that something resembling honest understanding can arise. Perhaps you were on precisely the right track. Perhaps you were on the wrong track. The point is that now you are comfortable with the actual-factual track you are on.
Was it wrong to provide an answer to impossible questions like where anyone goes after death? Was it right? My feeling is, just take a stab at it and keep an eye on it ... just as any kid might. Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Muslim ... keep an eye on it; rebel as necessary; and relax.
I think that the answers I give my children, are the best I can do for my children. I won't claim what is best for anyone else's children. Do as you will for your life. Not for everyone else's. I was raised with the Christian answers to those questions, but I had the scientific answers, too, where they existed. Does science answer where someone comes from and where they go? No, only if you hold particular beliefs. We can know what happens to the human body, but not beyond that, and even children know there is more to humans than their bodies. I chose not to keep those beliefs. But they did not harm me. Would judgemental, foreceful parents have harmed me? Yes. But that is not Christianity. That is parental faults.
If you don't want to raise your children as Christians, then don't. But don't tell others how to raise theirs. That is pretty much how I life my whole life. As for my own kids, we discuss many belief sets in regards to these questions. But people being people, we simply choose what makes us feel the best about icky life situations. Some will find the idea of heaven to be a comforting answer to the death of a loved one, even from a young age. Some won't and prefer other answers. It doesn't mean one answer is true or false, since we don't really know. It's just what about makes life easier to get through.
Being so sure you know the right choice is what causes so many of life's problems. You can only make the right choice for yourself (and your family to the best of your ability). Not anyone else. This is exactly why countries have laws about who can marry and who can't, and whether abortions are legal or not. All based on belief of a group of people determining what is RIGHT for everyone. It doesn't work.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
@karasti, there are some good cases where the law exists to constrain people from damaging behaviour. Child marriages, the age of consent, free speech, laws against causing people injury. They are all cases where a group of people has decided what is right for everyone, and it Not only works well, it is necessary. So I don't think things are as cut and dried as you present.
I've made my own views clear in the hope that it will get people to think, despite some rather fiery replies, and given my reasons for thinking the way I do. As I stated before, I'm not being prescriptive, and if some people have difficulty coping with the fact that there are well-reasoned, clear dissenting opinions then that is their own issue to resolve.
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
I dispute the 'well-reasoned, clear....' And trust me, the general consensus is that the issues to resolve do not lie within us.
If you can sleep at night knowing you wilfully ostracise some quarters of Humanity from your understanding, purely and simply because of the divisive actions of some, then sweet dreams.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
edited November 2016
@federica said:
And trust me, the general consensus is that the issues to resolve do not lie within us.
If you can sleep at night knowing you wilfully ostracise some quarters of Humanity from your understanding, purely and simply because of the divisive actions of some, then sweet dreams.
Now who is imposing their views on others? Or making assumptions about the general consensus? If I were to ask people around me, they would largely agree with me, and the fact that many Western countries are heading past 50% non-religious views tells me I am far from alone in seeing negatives in the Abrahamic religions.
If the core of the faith is nonsensical, it is only those who blindly adhere who stay. Seems perfectly clear to me. And I'm certainly not ostracising them - as I indicated earlier, I am perfecty willing to engage with them and debate them - I just think they have chosen a path littered with spiritual and worldly delusion, and some are still indoctrinating other innocents to follow them. It's a sad business.
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
I tend to find that when people say "I'm sharing to make you think" it's a lot of ego behind it. It means you think your way is right and you want people to consider it long enough to come around to agree. Others are trying to say "Ok, and here is what I think" and you are basically coming back with "No, you are wrong, you need to sit down and think about what I said and clearly you will arrive at where I am."
There are some morals that should be pretty inherent in all of humanity, such as respect of the right to life (aka murder is bad) or the ability to make choices about our own bodies (aka consent etc) but several of your examples are very cultural. Laws of consent vary greatly around the world. That doesn't mean I approve of 9 year olds being able to give consent, of course. But as the world has gone the past 150 years, "kids" were making much bigger decisions than they do now and I am not 100% sure that turning them into people who can't make life decisions has really done them or society any good. It wasn't unusual for a 16 year old couple to get married, have jobs, build houses, run farms. I'm not so sure we've made things better by dragging childhood out for 10 extra years, it's just mostly been a ploy to control the labor market. Now we barely trust them to leave the house alone. A lot of that is about parental control and society rather than true nurturing of confidence and responsibility. Anyhow, not to get off topic, just an example. Just because the western world does things one way doesn't always make them the best way.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
@karasti wrote:
I tend to find that when people say "I'm sharing to make you think" it's a lot of ego behind it. It means you think your way is right and you want people to consider it long enough to come around to agree. Others are trying to say "Ok, and here is what I think" and you are basically coming back with "No, you are wrong, you need to sit down and think about what I said and clearly you will arrive at where I am."
There is an element of truth in that, although I would argue the ego part. Much of my participation in this thread has been defensive or expanding on opinion when asked, and i am not a very ego-driven person imho.
You certainly don't need to agree with me, I am not trying to convince you around to my view. Perhaps there will be a certain percentage of those who read this to whom it makes sense, and that is enough of a reason that writing it won't have been a complete waste of time.
Trying to convince individual people to change deeply-held religious beliefs is usually useless, I have seen it happen once in three years of being online in forums. But leaving a record of your opinion is worth it, if only to sound a warning note, and, indeed, to make people think.
I don't think anyone here has deeply held Christian beliefs (In this thread, that is, there are some members who are Christian Buddhist around the board). I am actually quite averse to Christianity for a variety of reasons but I think the core teachings of love, forgiveness and compassion for all people are pretty ideal. Where people go wrong is not the fault of the teachings but their own fault, and I think that is where we disagree.
It is worth noting that a while ago, most countries in the UN ratified what is known as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the US is one of a couple that has not ratified it. Because they (our government) want parents to retain the right to control their children and make their choices for them, and one of the biggest sticking points is religion. The convention includes allowing children the ability to choose their faith, and for a freedom loving country, the US doesn't like to expand those rights to kids. It's an odd thing.
Anyhow, like I said early on, my reason for not agreeing what you say about parents not raising kids in Christianity (or whatever) is my experience in having to parent them through the loss of their father. For some, religion/belief/faith is a huge help to the emotional support needed to go through something like that and in my experience with my children, at least one of them would have benefited from having something in place to turn to. 7 years later, he is still struggling with some things, and I think for him having an anchor would have helped. But just like Buddhist practice any belief set needs to be in place, in practice before the poop hits the fan. It's easy to say to let kids choose (and overall, I agree, that is how I have raised my kids, but I'm not convinced it's the right choice for all kids) No one expects to deal with the death of a parent when a child is 5 years old. But there it was, and I lacked the tools to help him because I had no basis in any tradition at that point. And while it worked fine for me, I don't think it worked for him. Despite my aversion to Christianity myself, I think a tradition, any tradition, would have been better for him than nothing.
He would have benefited from Buddhism as well, but I was not a Buddhist then and the only faith I had access to in order to help him would have been Christianity. And I regret allowing my aversion to it to keep me from taking all possible avenues to support him in what he was going through.
Actually, I don't believe I specifically stated what religious backgrounds my wife and I came from, only that they were different and we held similar agnostic view points.
For me the question was more of how to introduce a child to a religion, in this case Buddhism without bias.
However since the question loosely came up, I will share. My wife's Father was Zoroaster and her Mother was Jewish. My Father was an Atheist, and my mother was Christian (only towards the end of her life, before that she was more of a Pagan).
Anywho, I believe my question was answered log ago but if the discussion can be of help to anyone else please continue...
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
@Richdawson said:
Actually, I don't believe I specifically stated what religious backgrounds my wife and I came from, only that they were different and we held similar agnostic view points.
I apologise for the error, and stand corrected. Thanks @Richdawson ...
For me the question was more of how to introduce a child to a religion, in this case Buddhism without bias.
However since the question loosely came up, I will share. My wife's Father was Zoroaster and her Mother was Jewish. My Father was an Atheist, and my mother was Christian (only towards the end of her life, before that she was more of a Pagan).
Anywho, I believe my question was answered log ago but if the discussion can be of help to anyone else please continue...
I have great admiration for Zoroastrianism. it is held by some that those Biblical 'Wise Men' were of this calling.
Their Motto is, I believe, "Think Good Thoughts, Say Good Words, Do Good Deeds." and I remember seeing a documentary on their quiet and understated faith.
I'm part Jewish, on my Italian Grandmother's side, and I think she was of Hungarian stock....
so maybe we iz related (But then again, aren't we all...? )
Comments
Once, as an apartment painter in New York, I worked for a young man who was planning to get married. And as I painted his living room, we chatted ... what about kids, what about religion, what plans did he have. "I want to bring the kids up Jewish," he said at one point. But why would he want to do that, I asked, since he himself was a fallen-away Jew. And he gave what I thought was a very sensible answer: "I want them to have something to rebel against."
Looking back, I think that anyone who has taken spiritual practice seriously may recognize that it was the mistakes and missteps that led to the richest understanding. Dive-in-dive-deep-and-discover-the-mistake-you have made ... like that. Of course in the process, it was never a mistake, never a mis-cue ... this was serious and serene and important and worthy. But with time and practice, I think the lily no longer requires the kind of gilding it once attracted. And it is at this point that something resembling honest understanding can arise. Perhaps you were on precisely the right track. Perhaps you were on the wrong track. The point is that now you are comfortable with the actual-factual track you are on.
Was it wrong to provide an answer to impossible questions like where anyone goes after death? Was it right? My feeling is, just take a stab at it and keep an eye on it ... just as any kid might. Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Muslim ... keep an eye on it; rebel as necessary; and relax.
I think that the answers I give my children, are the best I can do for my children. I won't claim what is best for anyone else's children. Do as you will for your life. Not for everyone else's. I was raised with the Christian answers to those questions, but I had the scientific answers, too, where they existed. Does science answer where someone comes from and where they go? No, only if you hold particular beliefs. We can know what happens to the human body, but not beyond that, and even children know there is more to humans than their bodies. I chose not to keep those beliefs. But they did not harm me. Would judgemental, foreceful parents have harmed me? Yes. But that is not Christianity. That is parental faults.
If you don't want to raise your children as Christians, then don't. But don't tell others how to raise theirs. That is pretty much how I life my whole life. As for my own kids, we discuss many belief sets in regards to these questions. But people being people, we simply choose what makes us feel the best about icky life situations. Some will find the idea of heaven to be a comforting answer to the death of a loved one, even from a young age. Some won't and prefer other answers. It doesn't mean one answer is true or false, since we don't really know. It's just what about makes life easier to get through.
Being so sure you know the right choice is what causes so many of life's problems. You can only make the right choice for yourself (and your family to the best of your ability). Not anyone else. This is exactly why countries have laws about who can marry and who can't, and whether abortions are legal or not. All based on belief of a group of people determining what is RIGHT for everyone. It doesn't work.
@karasti, there are some good cases where the law exists to constrain people from damaging behaviour. Child marriages, the age of consent, free speech, laws against causing people injury. They are all cases where a group of people has decided what is right for everyone, and it Not only works well, it is necessary. So I don't think things are as cut and dried as you present.
I've made my own views clear in the hope that it will get people to think, despite some rather fiery replies, and given my reasons for thinking the way I do. As I stated before, I'm not being prescriptive, and if some people have difficulty coping with the fact that there are well-reasoned, clear dissenting opinions then that is their own issue to resolve.
I dispute the 'well-reasoned, clear....' And trust me, the general consensus is that the issues to resolve do not lie within us.
If you can sleep at night knowing you wilfully ostracise some quarters of Humanity from your understanding, purely and simply because of the divisive actions of some, then sweet dreams.
Now who is imposing their views on others? Or making assumptions about the general consensus? If I were to ask people around me, they would largely agree with me, and the fact that many Western countries are heading past 50% non-religious views tells me I am far from alone in seeing negatives in the Abrahamic religions.
If the core of the faith is nonsensical, it is only those who blindly adhere who stay. Seems perfectly clear to me. And I'm certainly not ostracising them - as I indicated earlier, I am perfecty willing to engage with them and debate them - I just think they have chosen a path littered with spiritual and worldly delusion, and some are still indoctrinating other innocents to follow them. It's a sad business.
It certainly is.
I tend to find that when people say "I'm sharing to make you think" it's a lot of ego behind it. It means you think your way is right and you want people to consider it long enough to come around to agree. Others are trying to say "Ok, and here is what I think" and you are basically coming back with "No, you are wrong, you need to sit down and think about what I said and clearly you will arrive at where I am."
There are some morals that should be pretty inherent in all of humanity, such as respect of the right to life (aka murder is bad) or the ability to make choices about our own bodies (aka consent etc) but several of your examples are very cultural. Laws of consent vary greatly around the world. That doesn't mean I approve of 9 year olds being able to give consent, of course. But as the world has gone the past 150 years, "kids" were making much bigger decisions than they do now and I am not 100% sure that turning them into people who can't make life decisions has really done them or society any good. It wasn't unusual for a 16 year old couple to get married, have jobs, build houses, run farms. I'm not so sure we've made things better by dragging childhood out for 10 extra years, it's just mostly been a ploy to control the labor market. Now we barely trust them to leave the house alone. A lot of that is about parental control and society rather than true nurturing of confidence and responsibility. Anyhow, not to get off topic, just an example. Just because the western world does things one way doesn't always make them the best way.
There is an element of truth in that, although I would argue the ego part. Much of my participation in this thread has been defensive or expanding on opinion when asked, and i am not a very ego-driven person imho.
You certainly don't need to agree with me, I am not trying to convince you around to my view. Perhaps there will be a certain percentage of those who read this to whom it makes sense, and that is enough of a reason that writing it won't have been a complete waste of time.
Trying to convince individual people to change deeply-held religious beliefs is usually useless, I have seen it happen once in three years of being online in forums. But leaving a record of your opinion is worth it, if only to sound a warning note, and, indeed, to make people think.
I don't think anyone here has deeply held Christian beliefs (In this thread, that is, there are some members who are Christian Buddhist around the board). I am actually quite averse to Christianity for a variety of reasons but I think the core teachings of love, forgiveness and compassion for all people are pretty ideal. Where people go wrong is not the fault of the teachings but their own fault, and I think that is where we disagree.
It is worth noting that a while ago, most countries in the UN ratified what is known as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the US is one of a couple that has not ratified it. Because they (our government) want parents to retain the right to control their children and make their choices for them, and one of the biggest sticking points is religion. The convention includes allowing children the ability to choose their faith, and for a freedom loving country, the US doesn't like to expand those rights to kids. It's an odd thing.
Anyhow, like I said early on, my reason for not agreeing what you say about parents not raising kids in Christianity (or whatever) is my experience in having to parent them through the loss of their father. For some, religion/belief/faith is a huge help to the emotional support needed to go through something like that and in my experience with my children, at least one of them would have benefited from having something in place to turn to. 7 years later, he is still struggling with some things, and I think for him having an anchor would have helped. But just like Buddhist practice any belief set needs to be in place, in practice before the poop hits the fan. It's easy to say to let kids choose (and overall, I agree, that is how I have raised my kids, but I'm not convinced it's the right choice for all kids) No one expects to deal with the death of a parent when a child is 5 years old. But there it was, and I lacked the tools to help him because I had no basis in any tradition at that point. And while it worked fine for me, I don't think it worked for him. Despite my aversion to Christianity myself, I think a tradition, any tradition, would have been better for him than nothing.
He would have benefited from Buddhism as well, but I was not a Buddhist then and the only faith I had access to in order to help him would have been Christianity. And I regret allowing my aversion to it to keep me from taking all possible avenues to support him in what he was going through.
Actually, I don't believe I specifically stated what religious backgrounds my wife and I came from, only that they were different and we held similar agnostic view points.
For me the question was more of how to introduce a child to a religion, in this case Buddhism without bias.
However since the question loosely came up, I will share. My wife's Father was Zoroaster and her Mother was Jewish. My Father was an Atheist, and my mother was Christian (only towards the end of her life, before that she was more of a Pagan).
Anywho, I believe my question was answered log ago but if the discussion can be of help to anyone else please continue...
I apologise for the error, and stand corrected. Thanks @Richdawson ...
I have great admiration for Zoroastrianism. it is held by some that those Biblical 'Wise Men' were of this calling.
Their Motto is, I believe, "Think Good Thoughts, Say Good Words, Do Good Deeds." and I remember seeing a documentary on their quiet and understated faith.
I'm part Jewish, on my Italian Grandmother's side, and I think she was of Hungarian stock....
so maybe we iz related (But then again, aren't we all...?
)