Beware of God?

I guess we should have seen it coming…

“Parenting Beyond Belief” is a book published in April by Amacom, a wing of the American Management Association (not sure what their stake is in all of this) to help parents raise their children without religion or God. As Lisa Miller wrote in her Newsweek review of the book this summer: “It raises more serious concerns about how to bring up ethical, confident, nonbelieving kids in a culture saturated with talk about God.”

Regarding explaining the concept of death to a child when one doesn’t want to suggest the possibility of an afterlife, the Unitarian minister Kendyl Gibbons recommends such phrases as “No, honey, Grandpa won't come for Christmas. He died and is dead for always.” Boy, that’ll set the mood for the holidays, won’t it?

Never mind that most Americans say they believe in God. A 2006 Newsweek poll revealed that “Americans said they believed in God by a margin of 92 to 6—only 2 percent answered, ‘don't know.’” Now, don’t misunderstand me. I will defend an atheist’s right to freedom of religion and freedom of expression…I’m just saddened that people can be so blind. I believe Pastor Adrian Rogers was right when he said, “An atheist can't find God for the same reason a thief can’t find a policeman.”

It makes me think of a story I read once and tucked away for just a time like this. In Our Greatest Gift, Henri Nouwen tells an intriguing parable. He imagines twins—a brother and a sister—talking to each other in their mother's womb:

The sister said to the brother, “I believe there is life after birth.”

Her brother protested vehemently, “No, no, this is all there is. This is a dark and cozy place, and we have nothing else to do but to cling to the cord that feeds us.”

The little girl insisted, “There must be something more than this dark place. There must be something else, a place with light where there is freedom to move.” Still, she could not convince her twin brother.

After some silence, the sister said hesitantly, “I have something else to say, and I'm afraid you won't believe that, either, but I think there is a mother.”

Her brother became furious. “A mother!” he shouted. “What are you talking about? I have never seen a mother, and neither have you. Who put that idea in your head? As I told you, this place is all we have. Why do you always want more? This is not such a bad place, after all. We have all we need, so let's be content.”

The sister was quite overwhelmed by her brother's response and for a while didn't dare say anything more. But she couldn't let go of her thoughts, and since she had only her twin brother to speak to, she finally said, “Don't you feel these squeezes every once in a while? They're quite unpleasant and sometimes even painful.”

“Yes,” he answered. “What's special about that?”

“Well,” the sister said, “I think that these squeezes are there to get us ready for another place, much more beautiful than this, where we will see our mother face-to-face. Don't you think that's exciting?”

The brother didn't answer. He was fed up with the foolish talk of his sister and felt that the best thing would be simply to ignore her and hope that she would leave him alone.

“We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18).