Let the conversation begin with wonder....I've just co-directed a three year project on The Child in Religion, Law, and Society and written a book on The Mystery of the Child .
From that project and its score of participants I learned how rich are the imaginations of children, how creative they are when dealing with mysteries.
Adults tend to want to overdefine, to press God into convenient molds.Trust the child to come up with some creative responses to her own question about God. The child is likely to discern where there are overlaps and interactions between the faiths of the parents--and then might be ready for conflicts.
Religions have much in common on many levels, and the child will help the parents find that. On the other hand, they have real differences.
Philosopher George Santayana says that that which gives religions life are "the surprising and often idiosyncratic stories they tell." At the holidays, tell the various stories which "describe" God--God in action more than God as an object to be pinned down and outlined. The point of it all in the child's world is to let the love which the faiths profess be experienced by the way in which parents and siblings relate to each other when they talk about God.
It just may be that adults may learn more about the "God of idiosyncratic stories" from children than children will from adults who so often use religious faith to create strangers, distance, and exclusion.
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