My son is quite impressionable, and he has shared with us quite often his tender musings about god and what he associates himself as being (Christian Nondenominational). So, I intend to fully support his right to worship, but I refuse to go to church myself. He is 12 years old, so naturally, I asked him to speak to his friends who attend church and ask their parents if he can attend with them. I told him most religious people would be glad to have a guest come to their church. So far, he has not followed through. We have bibles in the home, but he doesn’t read them. I really think he should read the bible and see what he is choosing to believe in, but he doesn’t seem compelled to do that either. Since I am not pushing anything on him or restricting him from anything, I don’t know where he is getting all this religious fervor from, but I would like to see him think about things more instead of jumping into murky tanks of water. How do you do that gently? For example: Yesterday at the dentist’s office while waiting to be seen, my son has this dialog with me (the atheist mom):
“Mom, look at this picture (Some place in BFE, Texas, it just had a cross on it) is this where Jesus died?”
“I don’t feel qualified to answer such a question, son. But I would have to rationally guess, no.”
“Mom, do you know when Jesus is coming back?”
*I cringe*
“Um, I think you should ask a religion professional that question. But keep in mind, humans are prone to make errors with predicting the weather, and they have meteorology schools to teach this skill. I don’t think we can accurately predict a thing like that if it is so.”
So…you see some of my problem. Then most of my family are hardcore fundamentalists and I don’t want to expose my son to that. The friends I have that are “Christian” are unaffiliated or loosely affiliated and they don’t do church. What would you do in my situation?