Teach Those Kids!

These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. (Deuteronomy 6:6-7)

            I know a few people who claim that they do not want to shove their beliefs down their children’s throats, so they aren’t going to teach them about religion at all. When they grow up, they can make their own decisions. I suppose they think they’re being fair, not making such an important decision for their kids, but the reality is that they are either being negligent, or dishonest, or both.
            Part of the difficulty stems from a misunderstanding of what a religion is. Some people seem to think that a religion I “the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.” By rejecting the superhuman controlling power, they consider themselves without religion and therefore superior to all those “sheep” who unthinkingly go about their lives in accordance with something external that is imposed on them. 

            Instead, they declare themselves spiritual, or philosophical, or as having a worldview. Let’s consider some dictionary definitions:

Spiritual: “relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things; relating to religion or religious belief.”
         Philosophy: “the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence; a theory or attitude held by a person or organization that acts as a guiding principle for behavior.” 
          Worldview: “a comprehensive conception or apprehension of the world especially from a specific standpoint.”

            Each of the four terms refers to a set of beliefs about the universe and the person’s place in it. More often than not, each of them also provides a rationale for how we are to treat one another, for what is good, and for what is evil. Oh, religion might be red, philosophy, pink; spirituality, sky blue, and worldviews, white, but they are all colors, the means by which we describe what we see and experience… our beliefs about the universe and truth. 

            The problem for some is that this levels the playing field. They can no longer declare themselves “above” religion. And with regard to educating their children, understanding that religions, spiritualities, philosophies, and worldviews are effectively the same reveals the truth: that those who declare that they are leaving the decision of religion up to their children when they grow up by maintaining silence about religion are teaching their children a godless religion, and not leaving anything up to the children. They impose it on their children by deliberately withholding everything but their own opinions from their children, “sheltering” them from contaminating influence, just like the “religious fanatics” they despise. 
            What Moses commanded the Israelites to do is precisely what every good parent does: to teach their children how to see the world (and universe) and how to behave. It's also what every bad parent does, and what every negligent parent does, whether they realize it or not.