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Every year it seems around Easter I start getting all the Jesus questions, the whole "Daddy you know everything tell us all about Jesus...like did he really come back from the dead? etc"
SO lets cut to the chase and get down to brass tacks shall we ?
There are two good quotes I am teaching thiem this year for Easter.
One is by Ghandi “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
The second is by the Dalia Lama originally by Bertram Russell "the best argument against christianity is christians themselves."
I am tempted sometimes to take them over here across town (From the old house where we spend weekdays until school is out) , to First Baptist Church, just so they can see first hand how dreadful of a place it is, how hypocritical the people there are, how it compares to the actions of a hoover vacuum cleaner etc If they see how bad it is, they will never ever want to go back. Just like supposedly if you take at risk kids to jail for a weekend it shows them how they can end up if they don't straighten up? (Supposedly)
Show my kids "These are the kids of people who think Jesus came back from the dead" ...." When they are not here judging you and me and everyone else, they are home abusing their wives and kids and doing who knows what else. They want your money though. ... and they want to scare you into giving it to them by telling you stories about this non-existant boogeyman they call the devil who is waiting to get you !!!!! Doesn't seem to make them any better and in fact, do you really want to be like them? Didn't think so."
Bottom line is, who would want to be like them? Dalai Lama and Ghandi were right then. End of discussion.
But Honestly, I would not want my kids to suffer any of the kinds of abuses I did growing up in a Baptist church, and I certianly do not want any association with those kinds of people,
SO For now, Logic and Reason and good old fashioned intellegence will have to suffice. Logic and reason that explains mythology, human fear, socio-cultural conditioning and the morbid fascination humans have with wanting to overcome death and the inabilty to accept mortality.
Every year it seems around Easter I start getting all the Jesus questions, the whole "Daddy you know everything tell us all about Jesus...like did he really come back from the dead? etc"
SO lets cut to the chase and get down to brass tacks shall we ?
There are two good quotes I am teaching thiem this year for Easter.
One is by Ghandi “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
The second is by the Dalia Lama originally by Bertram Russell "the best argument against christianity is christians themselves."
I am tempted sometimes to take them over here across town (From the old house where we spend weekdays until school is out) , to First Baptist Church, just so they can see first hand how dreadful of a place it is, how hypocritical the people there are, how it compares to the actions of a hoover vacuum cleaner etc If they see how bad it is, they will never ever want to go back. Just like supposedly if you take at risk kids to jail for a weekend it shows them how they can end up if they don't straighten up? (Supposedly)
Show my kids "These are the kids of people who think Jesus came back from the dead" ...." When they are not here judging you and me and everyone else, they are home abusing their wives and kids and doing who knows what else. They want your money though. ... and they want to scare you into giving it to them by telling you stories about this non-existant boogeyman they call the devil who is waiting to get you !!!!! Doesn't seem to make them any better and in fact, do you really want to be like them? Didn't think so."
Bottom line is, who would want to be like them? Dalai Lama and Ghandi were right then. End of discussion.
But Honestly, I would not want my kids to suffer any of the kinds of abuses I did growing up in a Baptist church, and I certianly do not want any association with those kinds of people,
SO For now, Logic and Reason and good old fashioned intellegence will have to suffice. Logic and reason that explains mythology, human fear, socio-cultural conditioning and the morbid fascination humans have with wanting to overcome death and the inabilty to accept mortality.
Shame on you for wanting to turn the impressionable minds of children into thinking that an entire group of people are nothing but bad people who are out to get them and their money. just shame on you. This is no better than the fundies that lied to me growing up when they they told me Atheism = evil devil worshippers who are moraly bankrupt. Why don't you just present the facts and leave the mud-slinging to the politicians? These are children you are talking about. The things you teach them now will be carried with them for the remainder of their lives, and instead of showing them the flaws of religion you are just going to spew hate by the sound of it.
You know what? Take them to that church. You might be surprised how many are good people...... deluded, but good.
Sounds like the OP has adult issues that likely shouldn't be put onto the kids.
Why not the same as people who don't believe, or believe in something not-Christian, etc.?"Well, we don't believe ____, but some people do." "I don't personally believe that, but some people do. I don't know why, but they do."
Adding in that one's actions are a lot more important than one's concept of Jesus or not.
"We just like it all because it's a spring celebration, and people in the old days were happy to see things growing and babies being born, because it meant they lived through another hard winter."
Etc.
that would not be too complex for mine, and if they are interested, we would discuss those things.
Remember , all "hatred" aside, I love my hildren, and I would not put them in harms way, which is what taking them to said church on Easter would be doing. Keep in mind, I used that particular congregation as an example because I have dealt with several different individuals from there over the years (including the two who came door to door preaching and left staring at the ground with no reply for what I said to them)
Perspective here...logic, reason intellegence not fear based superstition. Which is what a story of a person conquering death symbolizes..fear of the ultimate finality of the human experience.
Reinforcing the concept of a super magician that can do anything, yet does nothing by teaching nonsense about rabbits (mammals) that lay chocolate eggs, to prove that a Jewish zombie rose from the dead after a barbaric execution.
And you want anyone with a room temperature IQ to buy your barge full of bovine excrement? Sadly there are many with IQ's that most consider chilly that do.
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