Quote of the Week: Ubi Dubium on Christianity in its Own Context

The other day I posted Laura Goans' deconversion account - an interesting read. In the comments thread, Ubi Dubium stated something I found really worthy. The point of this was that you should teach your children other mythical, religious tales and place Christianity in their in the context of that whole range.

I wouldn't recommend completely shielding your children from religion. You have a chance to introduce them to mythology, well before anybody has a chance to indoctrinate them into a specific religion. We made sure our kids were familiar with Greek and Norse Mythology, so that when they encountered the Big Book of Hebrew Mythology, they were able to see it in context. As they got older, we made sure they were familiar with the tenets and practices of many religions. Doing this can be a good vaccination, and both my kids decided individually that they were atheists, without my having to push it on them.

UUs often offer a class for middle schoolers called "neighboring faiths", which is a study of world religions, and includes field trips to as many different religious services as can be arranged. I recommend this class, even if you don't otherwise participate in UU. My youngest visited a Hindu Temple, a Sikh Temple, two different Buddhist temples, a Muslim center, a Synagogue, and maybe ten different flavors of christian services. Now, if some evangelist comes up to her and tries to tell her that they have the TRUTH™, she's prepared.

I think this is really good advice and is something I would like to think about with my own five-year-old twins.