Guest Post by Matilda
I was a teacher, a new term started and I soon worked out that one of my class of six-year-olds, Ben, was from a Christian family. He was a chatty child and told me of church picnics and events, of the preacher he liked because he always brought a ventriloquist’s puppet teddy for children’s talks. (Cringe, cringe from me – it was called Brother Ted.) Ben said the name of his church. Google told me it was a Brethren Assembly, KJV-only church, and in pictures of the congregation, l saw that some of the older women wore hats that looked like ones my old grandma wore in the 1940s and 1950s. No one was smiling.
I was fundamentalist, mainstream Baptist, so not as dyed-in-the-wool fundy as Ben’s church obviously was. Looking back, my dissonances had begun partly through knowing young Ben, but it was years before I faced them, until finally, they got to be too many and too compelling for me to disregard any longer.
Over the coming months, having Ben in my class certainly brought some of them to the fore. The children were allowed to bring a new toy they’d had for their birthday. Ben brought a spaceship and explained it to me. He detached the capsule and said two astronauts were bringing a dead astronaut back to earth in it. When they got here, they’d bury the deceased spaceman in the ground and include a shovel. Naturally, I asked, ‘Why a shovel?’ and he said it was so that the man could dig himself out of his grave when Jesus came back and go to Heaven with him. (I still can’t pass a cemetery without smiling at the thought of all those graves with shovels in them, laid across deceased Christians’ chests. Maybe it’s true, God helps those who help themselves.)
One day he told me he’d learned the memory verse for Sunday School. From the Google pictures I’d seen, the Sunday School children all appeared to be under ten years old. Ben said they were going to stand out front next Sunday and say it to the adults with actions. Then they’d repeat it ten times so the adults learned it too. It was Romans 6:23, ‘The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.’ (I daren’t ask what the actions to Romans 6:23 were.) What a verse to be indoctrinating small children with.
One morning, Ben’s mother asked to speak to me to tell me Ben might be upset that week, his grandad had just died, and Ben had also seen a funeral group leaving a house in their street and asked about death. As I expected, Ben wanted to tell me about this. He said neither grandad, nor the deceased man in his street, went to church. He paused and then added, ‘But they were both kind, good people, so I think they’re in Heaven now.’
What a mash-up that poor child was being indoctrinated with. They were told every week that they must accept Jesus as their Saviour or they wouldn’t go to Heaven when they died. Or when you die, do you stay dead in the cemetery with your shovel till Jesus returns? Or does God let good people into Heaven the minute they pop their clogs, even if they didn’t go to church? Which is it?
I wonder what happened to Ben. I do hope his keen mind enabled him to figure it all out and escape that rigid Brethren upbringing. He’s not the only one, of course, confused by the dissonances, contradictions, and clear-as-mud commands of the Bible — lots of us were — until we finally made our escape. I hope so very much that Ben did too.
(He also told me one day of a disappointment. He’d been assigned the part of Jesus in a church drama about the call of Matthew. I said that was a very important part. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I wanted to be Matthew, the Snack Collector.’ I guess in that role, he hoped he’d be able to legitimately extort chocolate bars or Pringles from the others in the play!)
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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I understand why Ben would want to be Matthew the Snack Collector. It seems like a great role.
I feel for children like Ben, mostly because I was like him and dealt with these kinds of questions ALL THE TIME. I wish my family had not been religious so that I coukd have had the freedom to explore more. It takes a toll on a child or a teen to be told that they need to be wary of schools/universities that don’t follow the religious dogma. I craved nothing more than to learn and travel (that never changed).
Matilda–I would love to see kids act Romans 6:23. Which sins would they portray? Would one kid play God and smite sinners?
(Smite is a verb transitive. Smite, smote, has/had smitten, smiting or smite-ing? I digress.)
I can imagine Ben wondering whether he was sinning as he embodied some act that would displease God. Perhaps that could have been a catalyst for experiencing dissonances of his own.
As an after school care provider, I meet a lot of kids who are blindly obedient to the god of their parents. I was a kid who was blindly obedient to the god of MY parents.
Last week, I wiped a bit of dye on the floor for the 20th time in the cafeteria while we were dyeing our shirts. The rag I grabbed wasn’t one of the clean ones, so then I had a big streak of blue that had to be cleaned up. My back hurts. I am tired. Dyeing over 40 shirts in two days is exhausting. 🙂
I let out a frustrated, “Gaahhhhhh!” and one of the kids thought I said “God.” She admonished me that SHE had been taught not to take the name of our lord in vain and told me that if I “Do that too many times and you will go to the hot place.” Here, she pointed at the floor and looked scared/sanctimonious at the same time.
It’s really hard not to do a little course correcting of my own, but instead I explained to her that I’d just made a noise, not a word, and that I thought I’d be okay.
I am asked about my religious beliefs from time to time by the kids. I always tell them that religion is a personal choice, and is the business of individuals and that I choose to keep my beliefs personal.
I always hope that the little people I hang out with will be able to escape the indoctrination, though.