Mommy the Heathen

My son just started first grade. This means CCD has officially begun.

And I gotta admit--I'm a little worried about it. Here's the problem: I'm not religious. Like at all. I'm not Catholic and I don't believe in many of the church's stances or teachings. Don't get me wrong. I like the idea of providing our kids with religious education. I got very little of that when I was young, and though I don't exactly regret it, there were definitely times in my life when I wondered if maybe I'd missed out on something. I like the idea of introducing our kids to religion and allowing them to make their own decisions about what to believe.

If it was up to me, my kids probably wouldn't attend church. But it's important to my Catholic husband, so every Sunday, he packs up the crayons, coloring books, and emergency snacks and walks them over. And I go for a run or hit the gym. It's a pretty good deal, and I'm not complaining.

I admire my husband's dedication. He's been taking the kids to church ever since they were babies. Because of him, our kids view going as a given--it's just something they do every Sunday, no arguments.

But now that CCD has begun, I'm starting to fear the dogma a little. After the first day, my son showed me the worksheets he completed in his shiny, new, full-color workbooks. One of the sheets asked kids to circle the things they could do to help take care of God's world. "I can turn off the water," I can plant trees and flowers," stuff like that. Sweet.

But then there was the worksheet about The Creation:

Which of these are you most thankful that God created? Circle your choices: 

People               Plants              Animals  

Um...none of the above? My son, of course, circled all three.

Uh-oh. See, I don't believe in that. At all. I mean, the case for evolution is pretty slam dunk.

So what do I do if/when my son starts asking questions? He's a smart kid with an inquisitive mind, who happens to love science. It might not happen in first grade, but it will happen. And then what? I can only tell him what I believe to be true...which just happens to not be what the Catholic church teaches. Or do I say, "Ask your father when he gets home"? Not my style.

People I've spoken to about this have told me that they had no problem believing both things--evolution and the creation story--when they were little. Okay, fine. But if my son starts talking about how God created the bunny rabbits, the birds, and the stars in the sky, there's no way I'm gonna just sit there and listen.

When my son mentions the sun going down, I make sure to remind him that the sun doesn't actually go down, but rather it's the earth spinning that makes it look that way. If necessary, I draw pictures to illustrate. I am a rationalist. That's just how I roll, people.

So I'm not going to react differently just because the situation involves religion. But nor do I want to completely contradict what he's being taught in CCD. It's going to be a really difficult balancing act, and I'm not looking forward to it.

Has anyone had a similar experience? If so, how have you handled it?

The Dreaded Post About Religion

My husband and I watched Bill Maher’s scathing documentary, Religulous, for the first time last night and I have to say, it made me happy not to be religious. No duh, of course it did; Maher found and interviewed every religious wacko he could find, so there was no chance of religious fanaticism coming across as anything but ridiculous. Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Mormons alike were skewered.

There is no one more cynical and mean-spirited than Bill Maher, and this movie was by no means a fair and balanced investigation of organized religion. Nevertheless, I can relate to a lot of what he said in Religulous. I'm a realist (even as a child, I was less prone to flights of fancy than most kids) and therefore I've always found Biblical "stories" (The Creation, The Resurrection, etc.) hard to swallow. I can remember many an Easter, sitting in Sunday School (which my dad forced us to attend only sporadically), listening to the teacher explain the resurrection story, and trying really hard to believe that Jesus actually came back to life on the third day. Even as a kid I knew that dead is dead and there's no coming back.

Even though I had issues with some of the Bible's contents, that didn't mean I didn't pray to God just like the other kids. Every night before bed, I’d pray for my family and friends, as well as for whichever animal or people were in the news at that time (starving Ethiopians, clubbed baby fur seals, etc.). My final prayer would be, “And please, God, don’t let there be a nuclear war.” Hey, it was the Seventies, after all.

Occasionally I would communicate with God at other times, but it would almost always be when I either wanted something or was in trouble and as a result, it ended up being stressful for me, not reassuring. I figured that since God sees and knows everything, he most certainly would have realized that I only called on him in times of trouble. I was a poor-weather friend to God: when everything was going great, I forgot all about him. This made me nervous that perhaps God didn't hold me in very high regard, and therefore I was never confident that my prayers would be answered. I started to get resentful of the whole God thing.

Despite my misgivings, I generally believed in God while growing up. It seemed like the thing do to, and since I was always pretty much a rule-follower, I just went along.

But then I became a teenager and, as teens will do, started questioning everything I believed in. God and religion came under fire, and I stopped praying. I didn't exactly stop believing, but God pretty much disappeared from my life. Eh...I had other things on my mind, you know?

Then came college, and agnosticism set in. Being religious in college was almost as bad as having an STD: it made you a social pariah. You were basically considered an idiot of you were religious. I'm sure there were God-loving and God-fearing people around, but I certainly didn't know them.

And that brings me to the present. I have two young children with malleable little brains: what to do, what to do? We live in a very Catholic town, so when it comes to religion I've decided to keep my mouth shut and leave their religious upbringing to my Catholic-raised husband. He takes them to church (while Mommy goes to the gym) and leads them in their bedtime prayers. I figure my role will come later on, when they are teenagers and begin to question and doubt. I'll tell them it's okay to be unsure, that they need to make their own decisions, and that they are wonderful people no matter what they choose to believe.

What else can I do, right? After all, I can't make myself believe in something I don't. And when it comes right down to it, I'll admit it: I'm sort of with Bill Maher on this one.