THE CHILD'S RELIGIOUS IDEAS
How shall I begin to talk with my child about religion? Even the most
religious parents feel hesitancy here. It may not be at all due to the
unfamiliarity of the subject, though that is often the case; hesitation
is due principally to a conscious artificiality in the action. It seems
unnatural to say, "My child, I want to talk with you about your
religious life." And so it is. There is something wrong when that
appears to be the only way. That situation indicates a lack of freedom
of thought and intercourse with the child and a lack of naturalness in
religion.
§ 1. THE FUNDAMENTAL DIFFICULTY
The instinct is correct that tells us that we should be trespassing on a
child's rights, or breaking down his proper reticence, in abruptly and
formally questioning him about his religious life. The reserve of
children in this matter must be respected. The inner life of aspiration,
of conscious relationship to the divine, is too sacred for display, even
to those who are near to us. He violates the child's reverence who tears
away his reticence. Even though the child may not consciously object,
the process leads him toward the irreverent, facile self-exposure of
the soul that characterizes some prayer meetings. But we may, also, as
easily err in the other direction and, by failing to invite the
confidences of our children, lead them to suppose we have no interest in
their higher life.
§ 2. CONDITIONS OF SUCCESS
First, we must be content to wait for the child to open his heart. We
must not force the door. But we can invite him to open, and the one form
of invitation that scarcely ever fails is for you to give him your
confidence. Talk honestly, simply to him of the aspects of your
religious life that he can understand. If he knows that you confide in
him, he will confide in you. Here beware of sentimentality. Religion to
the child will find expression in everyday experiences. Your philosophy
of religion he cannot comprehend, and with your mature emotions he has
no point of contact. Perhaps the best method of approach is to relate
your memories of those experiences which you _now see_ to have had
religious significance to you. At the time they may have had no such
special meaning. You did not then analyze them. Your child will not and
must not analyze them, either; he must simply feel them.
Secondly, rid your mind of the "times and seasons" notion. There is no
more reason why you should talk religion on Sunday than on Monday,
unless the day's interests have quickened the child's questioning. There
can be no set period; no times when you say, "This is the forty-five
minutes of spiritual instruction and conversation." The time available
may be very short, only a sentence may be possible, or it may be
lengthened; everything will depend on the interest. It must be natural,
a real part of the everyday thought and talk, lifted by its character
and subject to its own level. Its value depends on its natural reality.
§ 3. RELIGIOUS REALITY
Thirdly, avoid the mistake of confounding conversation on "religion"
with religious conversation, of thinking that the desired end has been
attained when you have discussed the terminology of theology. To
illustrate, in the family one hardly ever hears the word hygiene, but
well-trained children learn much about the care of their bodies in
health, and the family economy is directed consciously to that end. A
good, nourishing meal always contributes more to health than many
lectures on dietetics. Yet back, hidden away in the manager's mind, is
the science of dietetics. So is it with quickening the child's power and
thought in the spiritual life. We must avoid the abstract, the
intellectually analytical. Religion should present itself concretely,
practically, and as an atmosphere and ideal in the family. We parents
must not look for theological interest in the child. A Timothy Dwight at
ten or twelve, though once found in Sunday-school library books, is a
monstrosity. The child's aspiration, his religious devotion, his love
for God will find expression in almost every other way before it will be
formulated into questions of a serious theological character. Nor ought
we to force upon him the phrases of religion to which we are accustomed.
He will live in another day and must speak its tongue. His faith must
find itself in consciousness and then be permitted to clothe itself in
appropriate garments of words. Those garments must be woven out of the
realities of actual experiences in the child's life. We cannot prepare
or make them for him. The expression of religion will be consonant with
the stage of development. If his faith is to be real he must never be
allowed or tempted to imagine that if only he can use the words, the
verbal symbol, he has the fact, the life-experience. Try then to use
words which are simple and meaningful to him and be content to wait for
life to lead him to formulate vital verbal forms for himself.
§ 4. PATIENCE AND COMMON-SENSE
Fourthly, we must have faith in God's laws of growth. If we be but
faithful, furnishing the soil, the seed, the nurture, we must wait for
the increase. Many factors which we cannot control will determine
whether it shall be early or late and what form it shall take. We must
wait. It is high folly that pulls up the sprouting grain to see whether
it is growing properly.
Fifthly, manifestations of the religious life will vary in children and
in families. The commonest error is to expect some one popular form
alone, to imagine that all children must pass through some standardized
experiences. Mrs. Brown's Willy may rise in prayer meeting. Do not be
downhearted. Willy is only doing that which he has seen his parents do,
and, usually, only because they do it. Your boy, or girl, is seeking
health of life, of thought, of action; is growing in character. Let them
grow, help them to grow. You know they love you even when they say
little about it; you do not expect them to climb to the housetop and
declare their affection. A flower does not sing about the sun, it grows
toward it. That is the test of the child's religion: Is he growing
Godward in life, action, character?
§ 5. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD
Sixthly, deal most carefully with the child's consciousness of God. The
truth is that the child in the average home has a consciousness of God.
It grows out of formal references in social rites and customs, informal
allusions in conversation, and direct statements and instruction. But
frequently the resultant mental picture is a misleading one, sometimes
even vicious in its moral effect. Where superstitious servants take more
interest in the child's religious ideas than do his parents, we have the
child whose life is darkened by the fear of an omnipotent ogre.
Nursemaids will slothfully scare small children into silence by threats
of the awful presence of a bogey god. The life of the spirit cannot be
trusted to the hireling. Parents must be sure of the character as well
as the superficial competency of those who come closest to childhood. A
child's ideas are formed before he goes to school. The family cannot
delegate the formation of dominant ideas to persons trained only for
nursery tasks.
But frequently the mother is a misleading teacher. To her the child goes
with all the big questions outside the immediate world of things. Is she
prepared to answer the questions? Few dilemmas of our life today are
more pathetic than this: the mother has outgrown the theology of her
childhood; she remembers keenly the suffering and superstition, the
struggle that followed the darkened pictures she received as a little
one, but she has nothing better to offer the child. No one has taught
her how to put the later, more spiritual concepts into language for the
child of our day. Weakly she falls back on the forms of words she once
abhorred.
There are certainly two approaches of reality for the child-mind to the
idea of God. Two immediate experiences are rich in meaning; they are the
life of the family and the wonder of the everyday world, the life and
variety of nature and human activities. The first is a very simple and
rich approach. By every possible means help children in the family to
think of God as the great and good Father of us all. Do this in the
phrasing of prayers and graces, in the answers to their questions, in
the casual word. Why should we assume that the Fatherhood of God is for
the adult alone? And why should it be that this rich concept dawns on us
like a new day of freedom in truth in later years instead of becoming
ours in childhood and so determining the habit and attitude of our
lives? The finest, the ideal person is, to the child, the father. God in
terms of fatherhood is the sum and source of all that is ideal in
personality.
The child's keen interest in the world of nature is our opportunity to
lead him to love the gracious source of all beauty and goodness. How
keen is the child's enjoyment of the beauty of the world! Can we forever
fix the general concept of all this beauty as the thought of God in the
words of flower and leaf, mountain and stream? And might we not also
connect the idea of God with the affairs of daily life? That depends on
the parent's attitude of mind; if we think of the universal life that is
behind all battles and business and affairs, there will be a difference
in our answers to the thousand curious inquiries that rise in the
child's mind.
Nor must we leave the child to think of God as a separate, far-off
person, on a throne somewhere in the skies. The child is finding his way
into a universe. The God who is a minute fraction of that universe makes
possible the religion that is no more than a negligible fraction of
life. The child asks concerning clouds, the sea, the trees, the birds,
and all the world about him; he tends to interpret it causally and
ideally. Childhood affords the great opportunity for giving the color,
the beauty and glory, the life of the divine to all this universe, to
instil the feeling that God is everywhere, in all and through all, and
that in him we live and move and have our being. The child's joy in this
world can thus be given a religious meaning. He sings
My God, I thank thee thou hast made
This earth so bright....,
and so beauty and joy become part of his religion. His faith becomes a
gladsome thing; he knows that the trees of the forest clap their hands,
the mountains and the hills sing, and the morning stars chant together
in the gladness of the divine life.
Such a view of the world comes not by prearranged and indoor interviews.
One must walk out into the good outdoor world for the opportunity and
the inspiration. The garden plot, the park, and, best of all, the open
fields and woods speak to a child and furnish us an open book from which
we may teach him to read. Recalling religious impressions, the writer
would testify to feeling nothing deeper, as a result of church
attendance in childhood, than the shapes of seats and the colors of
walls; but there remain deep impressions of wonder, beauty, and the
meaning of God from Sunday mornings spent with his father under the
great beeches in Epping Forest, listening to the reading and singing of
the old hymns, or joining in conversation on the woods and the flowers,
and even on the legends of Robin Hood in the forest.
§ 6. THE EVERYDAY OPPORTUNITIES
Seventhly, natural conversation affords the best opportunity for direct
instruction. A child is a peripatetic interrogation. His questions cover
the universe; there are no doors which you desire to see opened that he
will not approach at some time. There is great advantage when the
religious question rises normally; when the child begins it and when the
interest continues with the same naturalness as in conversation on any
other subject. Then questions usually take one of three forms: mere
childish, curious questions, questions on conduct, and questions on
religion in its organized form.
The child's curiosity is the basis of even those questions which have
usually been credited to preternatural piety. The tiny youngster who
asks strange questions about God asks equally startling ones about
fairies or about his grandmother. But his questions give us the chance
to direct him to right thoughts of God. Here we need to be sure of our
own thoughts and to keep in mind our principal purpose, to quicken in
this child loyalty to the highest and best. He must be shown a God whom
he can love and, at the same time, one who will call for his growing
loyalty, his courage, and devotion. Everything for the child's future
depends on the pictures he now forms. We all carry to a large degree our
childhood's view of God.
Some of the child's questions probe deep; how shall we answer them? When
you know the truth tell him the truth, being sure that it is told in
language that really conveys truth to his mind. The danger is that
parents will attempt to tell more than they know, to answer questions
that cannot be answered, or that they will, in sloth or cowardice or
ignorance, tell children untrue things. If a child asks, "Did God make
the world?" the answer that will be true to the child may be a simple
affirmative. If the child asks or his query implies, "Did God make the
leaves, or the birds, with his fingers?" we had better take time to
show the difference between man's making of things and the working of
the divine energy through all the process of the development of the
world. When the child asks, "Mother, if God made all things, why did he
make the devil?" it would surely be wise and opportune to correct the
child's mental picture of a personal anti-God and to take from him his
bogey of a "devil." But the question of the relation of God to the
existence of evil would remain, and the best a parent could do would be
to illustrate the necessities of freedom of choice and will in life by
similar freedom in the family.
It must be remembered that children's curious questions are only their
attempt to discover their world, that they have no peculiar religious
significance, but that they afford the parent a vital opportunity for
direct religious instruction. These questions must be treated seriously;
something is missing in parental consciousness when the child's
questions furnish only material for jesting relation to the family
friends.
§ 7. MORAL TEACHING
_Questions on conduct_: Scores of times in the day the children come in
from play or from school and tell of what has happened. Their more or
less breathless recitals very often include vigorous accounts of
"cheating," "naughtiness," unfair play, unkind words, discourtesies,
all dependent as to their character on the age of the children and all
opening doors for free conversation on duties and conduct. Here lies one
of the large opportunities for moral instruction. There is no need to
attempt to make formal occasions for this; so long as children play and
live with others they are under the experience of learning the art of
living with one another; this is the simple essence of morality. The
parent's answers to their questions on conduct, the comments on their
criticisms, and the conversation that may easily be directed on these
subjects count tremendously with the child in establishing his ideals
and modes of conduct. Returning to his play, there is no mightier
authority he can quote than to say, "My mother says--," or "My father
says--."
Let no one say that instruction in moral living is not religious, for
there can be no adequate guidance in morals without religion, nor can
the religious quality of the life find expression adequately except
through conduct in social living. Children need more than the rules for
living; they must feel motives and see ideals. They do not live by rules
any more than we do. Besides the rule that is known there must be a
reason for following it and a strong desire to do so. All ethical
teaching needs this imperative and motivation of religion, the
quickening of loyalty to high ideals, the doing of the right for
reasons of love as well as of duty and profit.
The father's opportunity comes especially with the boys. They are sure
to bring to him their ethical questions on games and sport; he knows
more about boys' fights and struggles than does the mother. When the
boys begin to discuss their games the father cannot afford to lack
interest. Trivial as the question may seem to be, it is the most
important one of the day to the boy and, for the interests of his
character, it may be the most important for many a day to the father. If
he answers with sympathy and interest this question on a "foul ball" or
on marbles or peg-tops, he has opened a door that will always stay open
so long as he approaches it with sincerity; if he slights it, if he is
too busy with those lesser things that seem great to him, he has closed
a door into the boy's life; it may never be opened again. Children learn
life through the life they are now living. Real preparation for the
world of business and larger responsibilities comes by the child's
experiences of his present world of play and schooling and family
living. To help him to live this present life aright is the best
training that can be given for the right living of all life.
_Questions on organized religion_: As children grow up, the church comes
into their range of interests. Just as they often make the day school
focal for conversation, as they recount their day's work there, so they
retain impressions of the church school, of the services of the church,
and will always ask many questions about this institution and its
observances. Here is the opportunity, in free conversation, to tell the
child the meaning of the church, the significance of membership therein,
and to lead him to conscious relationship to the society of the
followers of Jesus. (See chap. xvii, "The Family and the Church.")
I. References for Study
Alice E. Fitts, "Consciousness of God in Children," _The Aims of
Religious Education_, pp. 330-38. Religious Education Association,
$1.00.
W.G. Koons, _Child's Religious Life_, sec. II. Eaton & Mains,
$1.00.
J. Sully, _Children's Ways_, chap. vi. Appleton, $1.25.
II. Further Reading
George Hodges, _The Training of Children in Religion_, chaps. i-vi.
Appleton, $1.50.
George E. Dawson, _The Child and His Religion_, chap. ii. The
University of Chicago Press, $0.75.
Edward Lyttleton, _The Corner-Stone of Education_, chap. viii.
Putnam, $1.50.
T. Stephens (ed.), _The Child and Religion_. Putnam, $1.50.
C.W. Richell, _The Child as God's Child_. Eaton & Mains, $0.75.
W.G. Koons, _The Child's Religious Nature_. Eaton & Mains, $1.00.
III. Topics for Discussion
1. What are the special difficulties which you feel about
introducing the topic of religion to children? Describe any methods
or modes of approach which have seemed successful?
2. Would you regard it as a fault if a child seems unwilling to
talk about religion? What do you think "religion" means to the
child-mind?
3. In what ways do children's aptitudes differ and what factors
probably determine the difference? What was your own childish
conception of God? Did you love God or fear him? Why?
4. Is it ever right to teach the child those conceptions which we
have outgrown? What about Santa Claus and fairies? How can you use
childish figures of speech as an avenue to more exact truth?
5. Does the child learn more through ears or eyes? Through which
agency do we seek to convey religious ideas?
6. Is it possible to make the child see the intimate relation
between conduct and religion? How would you do this?
7. Give some of the characteristics of a religious child of seven
years, of ten.