551. Indoctrination

Parents tend not to want their children to end up being punished eternally for the way they’ve lived their lives. Most people I know don’t think that’s going to happen. I don’t think it’s going to happen. Never having actually died myself (as far as I can remember), I can’t be sure, but it just doesn’t seem likely to me. If I’m wrong, and especially if I’m one of the unlucky ones who lived the wrong way, I’ll sure be sorry. But I think I’m doing mostly good stuff. And I think if there is a deity I’ll meet when I die, she/he will be pretty nice.
I recently had a conversation with a child whose parents see things a different way. I like the parents, and they like me, I think. Same with the child. But this child is being taught that the only people who are going to go to Heaven are the ones who see things a certain way – a way that’s different from the way I see things. So even though we have friendly conversations and enjoy each other’s company, they believe that I’m either going to start thinking the way they think or burn eternally.
I try to avoid talking about religion when I talk with this child. I think parents have the right to raise their children the way they want to, and if they don’t want their child to question what she’s been taught, I don’t think I should question it when I talk with her. When she brings up the subject, I try to show interest, and not to let her know that I don’t like the kind of religious education she’s getting.
The religious education I got taught me to question lots of things, and to come up with my own answers. I got the impression that I wasn’t supposed to convert to another religion, but I didn’t get the impression that I would be punished eternally if I did. The god I was supposed to believe in was open-minded, and had a sense of humor. My rabbi was that way, too, and so were and are my parents.
But the conversation I had with my young friend worried me. She was being taught that there was a “right” thing to believe, and that anyone who didn’t believe that “right” thing was eventually going to suffer a horrible fate. Not believing in what she believes in is, in her mind, a sin. She was going to get into Heaven, and I wasn’t.
I believe in freedom of religion, so I think parents have the right to bring up their children with any religion that doesn’t teach clearly antisocial things. But talking with this young girl reminded me of a scene from a movie about a housekeeper in Nazi Germany. The housekeeper was friends with a child, but when this child discovered that the woman was not a Nazi sympathizer, she turned her friend in to the authorities.
I intend to maintain my friendship with the child who thinks I’ll burn forever for not believing what she believes. But I hope her monolithic thinking doesn’t result in problems later on.

Similar Posts

  • 541. “What?”

    ByJoe Oliverio

    Most people are pretty used to repeating what they’ve said if someone says, “What?”, “Huh?”, or more politely, “Excuse me?” They forgive listeners if it’s their fault that they didn’t hear, and they leave room for the possibility that the message wasn’t spoken clearly. It’s often simpler to just repeat a message than to make…

  • 86. Peer Pressure

    ByJoe Oliverio

    There are things you’d like to do all the time, but you don’t do them in public. And things you never want to do, but you do them in public. There may even be behaviors you rule out entirely in both public and private, but you harbor secret fantasies. And the reason? It’s against the…

  • 41. Favoritism

    ByJoe Oliverio

    Everybody likes some people more than others. Even teachers. We’re human, too. Teachers, in fact, like some children more than others. Even the most egalitarian teachers, somewhere deep inside, have some favorite children, and some they don’t consider their favorites. A parent or child may have a hunch who the teacher likes or dislikes, but…

  • 170. Some Good Advice

    ByJoe Oliverio

    Advice is a touchy subject. In this paragraph, I’m going to give you advice that I think is phrased ineffectively, and in the next paragraph, I’ll try phrasing it better. Here goes: don’t tell people what you think they should do. When you tell people what you think they should do, you’re casting yourself in…

  • 487. Review

    ByJoe Oliverio

    One of Caleb Gattegno’s favorite statements was, “Memory is weak.” Another was, “The only thing educable in human beings is awareness.” Teachers try hard to get pupils to understand things. We try to increase children’s awareness. But we also want them to memorize several things, and we have all sorts of ways to try to…

  • 458. Book Reports

    ByJoe Oliverio

    Imagine doing something you have just learned to do, and are already beginning to enjoy. But then imagine that as soon as you finish doing it, you’re going to have to do something you are still trying to learn to do – something you can’t yet even imagine enjoying. And that’s what it means to…