Religious Education in the Family Part 5

I. References for Study

G.A. Coe, _Education in Religion and Morals_, chaps. i, ii, xii, xiii. Revell, $1.35.

George Hodges, _Training of Children in Religion_, chaps. i, ii.

Appleton, $1.50.

J.T. McFarland, _Preservation versus Resurrection_. Eaton & Mains, $0.07.

II. Further Reading

C.W. Votaw, _Progress of Moral and Religious Education in the American Home_. Religious Education a.s.sociation, $0.25.

George Hodges, _Training of Children_, chaps. i, ii, xv. Appleton, $1.50.

G.A. Coe, _Education in Religion and Morals_, chaps. i, iv, xvi.

Revell, $1.35.

E.C. Wilm, _Culture of Religion_, chaps. i, ii. Pilgrim Press, $0.75.

C.W. Risch.e.l.l, _The Child as G.o.d's Child_. Methodist Book Concern, $0.75.

E.E. Read Mumford, _The Dawn of Character_. Longmans, Green & Co., $1.20. See especially chap. xii on "The Dawn of Religion."

III. Topics for Discussion

1. How would you define education?

2. What is the difference between education and religious education?

3. What makes the home especially effective in education?

4. Is it true that it is possible to discover the laws of growth and so determine the development of character?

5. Recall any very early manifestations of religious character in small children. What would you regard as the best kind of manifestation?

6. What is the essential principle of the right life? How may we develop this in childhood?

7. What are the things which most of all impress children?

8. Would you think it wise to bring a child under the influence of a religious revival?

CHAPTER VI

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 princ.i.p.ally 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 trespa.s.sing 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 relations.h.i.+p 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 a.n.a.lyze them. Your child will not and must not a.n.a.lyze 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 ill.u.s.trate, 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, nouris.h.i.+ng 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 a.n.a.lytical. 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d's laws of growth. If we be but faithful, furnis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.s through some standardized experiences. Mrs. Brown's w.i.l.l.y may rise in prayer meeting. Do not be downhearted. w.i.l.l.y 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 G.o.dward in life, action, character?

-- 5. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF G.o.d

Sixthly, deal most carefully with the child's consciousness of G.o.d. The truth is that the child in the average home has a consciousness of G.o.d.

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 superst.i.tious 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 G.o.d. 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 superst.i.tion, 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sume that the Fatherhood of G.o.d 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 att.i.tude of our lives? The finest, the ideal person is, to the child, the father. G.o.d 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 G.o.d in the words of flower and leaf, mountain and stream? And might we not also connect the idea of G.o.d with the affairs of daily life? That depends on the parent's att.i.tude 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 G.o.d as a separate, far-off person, on a throne somewhere in the skies. The child is finding his way into a universe. The G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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.