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Parents Should Share Doubts As Well as Beliefs
Family stresses are often at their greatest during holiday time, in part because millions of people all over the world are indeed in mixed-faith marriages and partnerships.
They are also in sequential monogamous relationships, with stepchildren, semi-attached children and children who are living with two adults, neither of whom are their natural parents.
In the United Kingdom, marriage breakdown over Christmas and New Year is fairly commonplace! So adults must be honest with their children.
It would help if they were prepared to talk to their children about their doubts as well as their faith, about the fact that we all worship the same God, about how many of us cannot quite conceptualize God, but know that there is a voice within us -- our conscience? -- that seems like the still small voice of God.
Children need to know that adults may have the strongest or weakest of faiths, but that they are still searching, and that there is within us all something that makes us realise that we are not just machines, or animals, but there is an awareness, a spirituality,
that can move us to great things -- at its best.
Speaking personally, my strongest awareness of a spiritual sense has always come when working with people who are dying, whose awareness of something within and beyond themselves, whatever their faith, has seemed pronounced and almost infectious.
As a congregational rabbi many years ago, when I visited hospices, I first became aware of that phenomenon. In more recent years, with my parents when they were dying, and others I knew less well, I was more aware of it again -- a sense that the people who are dying feel a presence within and beyond them, and that there is a yearning for a closeness to that presence that one rarely encounters with other people.
We cannot give our children certainties about so many things -- but we can give them the desire to search, to feel, to be aware, to learn, and, above all, to realize that people of all faiths, and sometimes of none, share these sensibilities.
By
Julia Neuberger
|
December 6, 2006; 4:30 PM ET
| Category:
Personal Religion
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Posted by: adults chat | January 17, 2007 3:43 PM
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Patty:
"Conducting a life based on faith takes a great deal more courage than conducting a life on the basis of evidence."
Following Aristotle's precepts -- perhaps the problem is that a life based on faith exhibits too much self-confidence -- moving one beyong courage into the realm of rashness.
The two most important things I've taight my children about religion are the phrases "I don't know" and "I might be wrong".
So far, so good.
Posted by: Anonymous | December 7, 2006 3:08 PM
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Thank you, Rabbi Neuberger. I would add that it is also important for parents to share with their children whatever practices help them to experience sanctity in their lives (e.g., praying, meditating, listening to music, walking outdoors, etc.)
Posted by: Andy | December 7, 2006 10:35 AM
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I advise my child,with mixed faith parents.That faith is where or what you are comfortable with in your heart,which you are able to act upon.Any commitment to a religion is a personal declaration and can not be imposed by someone else.I share what I understand about both religions,and willing admit that there is a lot I do not know.So I push the sound heart approach.
Posted by: raji | December 7, 2006 9:42 AM
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"The proper position to take . . .?" Mr. Wolfe, you sound as dogmatic as those you condemn. Conducting a life based on faith takes a great deal more courage than conducting a life on the basis of evidence. In fact, the more evidence I have, the more faith I have in God! I wish you well, Mr. Wolfe.
Posted by: Patty | December 7, 2006 6:24 AM
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Exactly. The proper position to take is agnosticism. Remember why Huxley invented the term "agnostic." He noted that dogmatic individuals were always telling him what they "know," whereas he did not know and did not see any evidence that the know-its were any more intelligent than he was. Nobody knows whether the universe and this earth are the product of a creator or multiple creators, or the product of a chemical mixture that exploded. Atheists and religionists share their primary characteristic in common: they are both dogmatists. But they are dogmatists without conclusive evidence one way or the other. The intelligent, rational human being does not accept the pronouncements of either on faith: on faith either in the authors of scriptures, clerics pontificating on the scriptures, or scientists whether they be the most brilliant physicists of all time. We are creatures who must of necessity conduct our lives on the basis of evidence. At present there is no conclusive evidence on how the universe and its components, or this earth and its creatures, came to exist.
Posted by: Burton H. Wolfe | December 6, 2006 5:35 PM
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