I was reading an article in Newsweek again. I know, I should just stop, it always gets me all riled up… Anyway, it was about this family. The mom was Jewish, the dad converted to Judaism when they got married and they agreed to raise their daughter Jewish. Then, the divorce happened. The mom won full custody of the kid and dad got some visitation rights.
Well, dad decided that he never really wanted to be Jewish, that he had in fact converted under duress and therefore the conversion was null and void. He went back to his original Catholic faith. Then one weekend he took his daughter with him to Mass AND had her baptised. She told mom, mom had a fit and the whole thing ended up in court. Now a judge has to decide the faith of this very young girl before she is even old enough to know what that means. Mom is trying to bar dad from seeing the kid unless he agrees to continue raising her as a good little Jewish kid. Dad says that infringes on his personal freedom of religion, and that of his daughter. He called the media and the cable networks went with him and his daughter to Mass and have helped the whole thing into a deranged three-ring circus.
And no one is really thinking about the kid at all. Last time I checked, the Jewish faith doesn’t really have a hell, AND they worship the same God as the Catholics, they just don’t think the messiah has come yet. The Catholics do believe in Hell but dad isn’t saying that he’s doing this for his daughter’s soul. In fact other than spite against his ex, I’m not sure why he’s doing it.
Here’s the thing, if I divorced my husband and he took my kids to church and got them baptised (not likely but I’m trying to make a point here) as an Atheist I’d think it was silly, I might rage a little, I’d certainly want to talk to him about what was going on and what he was teaching our daughters about this stuff. But mostly, I’d use it as a conversation starter with my own children. “Daddy did this thing, do you know what it means? What do you think about this? Did you know that there are lots of other ways of thinking about this?” and so on.
BUT – because both parents are religious, and each one believes that their religion is the only true religion they can’t have that conversation. They each have a sick, vested interest in convincing a mere child that their belief is the only belief. I think this kind of early indoctrination amounts to child abuse.
I remember my best friend in elementary school, Kim, used to cry every day because I was going to Hell and she wouldn’t get to see me there. (Her father was one of the founders of the Promise Keepers.) Later, after we had parted ways, her older brother hit the rebellious teen years and announced at a family dinner that he no longer believed in God. The parent’s response was to put him in a psych ward where he was given electro-shock therapy and who knows what else until he came back into the fold! Water-boarding for Jesus anyone? Seriously, this was a 13 or 14-year-old kid.
That IS child abuse. But they were doing it for his eternal soul, so that’s OK, right?
Today I was cruising Pearl Street Mall and saw a family with 9 kids. Another couple who was handing out cards to people that said “Smile, Jesus Loves You” started talking to them and complimenting them on doing Gods work having so many children. They smiled and said, oh yes, and we’re not done yet! They all talked about the amazing power of prayer and how they just knew that God wanted them to keep breeding. Otherwise, surely he’d stop sending them babies! This woman had one set of twins and ten months later, another baby slipped out!
Lady, God can only do so much, either stop having sex or tell your husband to get a damn vasectomy! Seriously, there are so many kids out there who need good homes, if you just have to surround yourself with gobs of kids, I bet God would want you to help some of the ones already here and already struggling. But wait – God has a plan for those kids. It’s called foster care, a cycle of abuse, and later, a prison sentence. (Not that all kids who get forced into foster care roulette end up in prison, but let’s just say I’d rather gamble on Russian Roulette…) Now that’s what I call a loving God!
So – do what you want, believe what ever helps you and makes you a better person, but PLEASE, keep your God off the children. Let them grow up, let them read books, let them meet different people and form their own ideas and opinions. If God is real, and just and good, then they’ll probably come back into the fold, without the shock treatment, water-boarding, bible thumping, or media circuses. And they certainly won’t need a court order!
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