I do (contrary to how it looks) respect your apologetics a lot. But with this one it seems you’ve taken a look at, well, what’s obvious to me.. admitted it… then ran away from it a bit.

An AHRC research project found that only one in twelve adults have a fundamentally different religious world view to their parents. Furthermore, those who did have a differing view had predominately taken up the prevailing religion/denomination in their society. Whilst I’m always skeptical of statistics, I think most would say that those figures are reasonably self evident.

So does god love my son less than yours? What has yours done to inherit the kingdom of god other than been lucky enough to have you as a dad?

Mine will grow up with an agnostic father who’ll tell him that there’s probably no god and he should be careful to be taken in by charlatans, cults and deluded religious types. To keep an open mind but assume that miracles and magic don’t/didn’t happen unless there is loads of evidence.. and not make sure he’s not manipulated by his hopes and his fears.

Your son’s daddy will tell him that Jesus loves him and he needs to reach out and accept the gift of life. He’ll probably ‘do the right thing’ when he’s old enough to realize what he’s meant to do. He’ll ask Jesus to look after mummy and daddy he’ll ‘ask him into her heart’. With zero effort on his part he’ll be ’saved’, as you were, as your dad was and (I imagine) your grandfather was. My son probably won’t do this, and in fact if we lived in turkey and he turned out to be the 1 in 12, he’d probably be a Mohammad believer rather than a Jesus believer.

This is the reality of how religion exists and trickles through our society and always has. Does this seem fair? Does it point to an interventionist/loving god? Does this self-evident circumstance indicate that the new testament narrative of accepting Jesus rings true?

Of course, if you are a believer then the rationale is that although this is troubling the Jesus stuff needs to be better understood and that are small minds are inadequate to understand the wonder of god etc etc. But surely its hard to imagine that if you step outside of your world view for a while (maybe had a memory loss) and traveled the world studying the major faiths, that would honestly be convinced that the Bible was reliable enough reportage to base your integral world view upon. So much so that you’d teach it to your kids as sure as any other historical event.

(this doesn’t count as spamming! as I’m sure no one else will be drilling down to this post so long after the post)

Mark – just don’t say it too loudly.

QMonkey – allow me to be a little cheeky in response to your cheekiness. Do you think that a child brought up by parents who regard all religious belief as a virus (!) might experience a degree of emotional confusion and psychological pain if they ever made the choice to be baptised as a Christian??

I think the risk of that kind of pain is not a result of religious faith – it is unavoidable if parents have strong convictions of any kind, and yet allow their children the freedom to make their own choice. We can diminish the pain by being gentle and gracious, encouraging honest discussion, and treating alternative views with respect – but we can’t avoid it.

The only way to avoid the risk of pain is to hold no strong convictions at all, or to use guilt etc to prevent them choosing to leave. Neither option seems better to me than the approach I’ve outlined in the original post (remember that?).

I’m struck by the thought that in the Christian-version-of-things we believe that God himself decided it was better to create children who were free to walk away, rather than children who were forced to conform to his way – even though he knew their walking away would cause him the deepest kind of pain. Where there’s genuine love and genuine freedom, there is the risk of pain…

Peace.

Now HE’S bringing up his kids in an interesting home. On one side their granddad is a poet laureate, and their mum’s dad is Arthur Miller. What a crucible!